Sweden's Laureate: Selected Poems of Verner von Heidenstam/The Fickle Man
Among many partly damaged Arabic manuscripts which Abu Barak, the book-seller, sat and spelled out by the light of his horn lantern, the uppermost had the following tenor:
Damascus, in the third year of Caliph Osman's reign and the forty-first after his birth. May the One grant to him and to all of you a peaceful year!
I can respect, perhaps even admire the man who lives according to rule, who is looked upon as a pattern, who even from his earliest youth falls into a given path, and dutifully and composedly follows it until he dies, surrounded by well-nurtured children. When I talk with him, however, it is as though I conversed with a very inexperienced and one-sided person. He has never been in a condition to test life from many sides. He has never by a violent impulse cast aside a piece of work already begun and attempted something new. The fickle man, on the contrary, because of frequently giving himself with renewed zeal to new enterprises, gains an assured experience in all, a rich versatility. I love the fickle man. His changes of mood remind me of the changing facets of a jewel. His conversation delights my ear in the same way as the gay arabesques in the mosque of Ispahan delight my eye. It is as though his mind were constructed of finer and more sensitive material than those of others. If he advances an opinion to-day, he will perhaps to-morrow attack it, because his mind is utterly carried away by his adversary's observations and arguments. In just this way he generally comes nearer the truth than anyone else, and if he makes a mistake, he quickly corrects it himself. What is in reality an immovable conviction? Is it not one-sidedness, obstinacy, spiritual sluggishness, or a presumptuous belief in one's own judgment? What a great gift it is to be able to put oneself instantly into another's thoughts and ideas, what a nimbleness of soul! The fanatic, the opposite of the fickle man, lacks this power entirely; he sticks fast to an opinion and goes to death for it as if it were the greatest truth in the world, although often it proves in time to be the greatest falsehood in the world. His narrow one-sidedness reminds us of the sort of men whom we call wooden-headed. Why should one enclose only a single hardened thought, a single kernel, like the insignificant little plum, instead of a hundred seeds like the great splendid melon? The God of the Christians hides three persons in one, but the fickle man at least ten. To associate with him has therefore the same variety as to associate with several persons at once. If a man were constantly clever or constantly high-minded, he would easily be looked up to as more than a common man. It appears therefore as if cleverness and highmindedness by a sort of destiny more seldom belonged to the constant character than to the fickle—who, however, always brings himself down to the level of a common man, because immediately after a clever speech or noble action he says something stupid or does something blameworthy. The fickle man's friendliness is the warm and sincere impulse of the moment and has therefore a peculiar charm. An affront from him is less grievous, because one knows that he will straightway turn around and make amends. Yes, I love the fickle man and am glad when I obtain his friendship, although I am compelled every day to win it anew. On the other hand, the friendship which I have enshrined in the constant man looks after itself; it becomes with him a sort of obligation—and I myself hardly ever think of it.