"I Take Great Pleasure In Presenting"

A Distinguished Foreign Visitor to New York, Who Has Two Distinct Personalities

E. E. CUMMINGS

IN CONTRAST to some Americans, the readers of this journal have a reputation for being concerned with such neglected aspects of life as merit the adjectives "distinguished," "refined" and even "aristocratic." Unlike "the divine average" of our era (that two-fisted go-getting he or she whose spiritual nutriment, derived principally from the daily press, is confined to hand-picked manifestations of incredible unwisdom and superfluous mayhem) the readers of this periodical are said to demand nuances—and well-served. In this twentieth century chaos, where idiocies mutilate ideas, debutantes massacre policemen and bootleggers inherit the earth, these same readers flash their sabres (we are told) for the "finer" values of existence. Assuming this to be true I take great pleasure in presenting, to all such courageous and distinguished ladies and gentlemen, an unutterably distinguished visitor from a distant clime; a mysterious and magnetic personage who, although considerably more noble, as I believe, than any king or prince who has yet sojourned among us, at present occupies far from sumptuous quarters at the New York Aquarium.

It would be difficult to imagine a more unconventional domicile of nobility than the Aquarium. Situated at the south-west extremity of Manhattan, it consists of a small roundish ancient structure which served first as a fort and later as a cage for Mr. P. T. Barnum's "Swedish Nightingale" (otherwise known as Miss Jenny Lind). Then somebody had the brilliant idea that there ought to be a lot of fish in it; whereupon tanks, embracing many pleasing and hideous varieties of aquatic phenomena, were installed, also several small roundish ancient attendants—and a photograph of an octopus. Such is that hovel of hydraulic wonders, the New York Aquarium, wherein the extraordinary visiting nobleman above-mentioned has taken up his residence.

I suspect that most of my valiant readers associate great foreign celebrities with the Ritz and will consequently be shocked, upon learning that nobility can tolerate the extremely unRitzy environment which has just been described. But these readers muse understand that the celebrity in question is by temperament amazingly democratic. Instead of selecting the Aquitansa or the Olympic to convey him to our shores, he embarked at his native Galapagos Islands upon a by no means luxurious craft known as the S. S. Arcturus.

At the Aquarium we find him attended, not by a suite of valets, private-secretaries, newspaper reporters and plainclothesmen, but by a solitary gull of the species known as "Booby." Toward those hordes of curious onlookers which hang upon his every gesture—uttering such typical American profundities as, "Ain't he sweet?" "Just like a puppydog," "Looka de lidl ole man" and "Whudduhyuh mean dat fish ain't a boid?"—he maintains an attitude of perfect friendliness, without ever, for so much as an instant, relinquishing that poise which bespeaks generations of wellbred ancestors. Even the nickname "Charlie" (which has reference to his terrestrial emanation) cannot ruffle that cheerful and exquisite dignity which is perhaps his most striking characteristic.

When I say "his terrestrial emanation" I mean to imply a very significant fact. The Penguin, as this wholly unprecedented individual is entitled, possesses a double existence. Strictly speaking, he is two individuals. The first individual struts and dances upon a tiny wooden platform. The second individual glides and swoops through the negligible quantity of water which surrounds the platform. Only by considering separately these two remarkably distinct individuals, selves, or emanations—one terrestrial, the other aquatic—may we possibly hope to appreciate The Penguin. And The Penguin, as we shall see, is infinitely worthy of our appreciation!

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First, as to The Penguin's terrestrial self. Advanced persons who go in for antarctic movies, Anatole France, or natural history, invariably conceive of "penguins" as awkward, ludicrous, ungainly, ridiculous birds which cannot fly and, instead, walk about imitating humanity in general and Charles Spencer Chaplin in particular. Having observed The Penguin Himself almost every day over a period of some months, I beg to inform the readers of Vanity Fair, concerning The Penguin's terrestrial emanation—which, by the way, is as far from "awkward" as "humble" is from "servile"—that he "imitates" nobody. "Breathes there a man with soul so dead, who," having glanced at our excellent photographs of The Penguin's terrestrial self, can still doubt the originality of that self? If so he had better pay a visit to the Kraushaar Galleries and there study a bronze portrait, by the sculptor Gaston Lachaise, of The Penguin's terrestrial personality—after which he may inspect the original.

But to proceed with our analysis: The Penguin's second self is as different from his first as his first is different from most people's idea of it. For whereas, terrestrially, The Penguin is angular, restricted and sudden, aquatically he is incomparably fluent, completely uninhibited and (when he makes a dart downward through the water, in pursuit of his prey) irrevocable. No one who has failed to partake of The Penguin's aquatic emanation can form the faintest idea of the quite impossible smoothness and absolutely dreamlike velocity with which it is endowed. I shall content myself with the observation that The Penguin's second, unphotographable self does not merely swim in the water—quite the opposite. This astonishing self flies -through the water, by virtue of those very wings which "most people" consider so pathetically inadequate!

And now, my distinguished readers, having studied separately The Penguin's two different emanations, we arrive at the crux of the subject —who is The Penguin?

Of thousands upon thousands of adult human beings who have flocked to view this mysterious personage and to mock or marvel at what he does, the present writer honestly believes that he alone realises who The Penguin is. How should this be so?

Only one explanation suggests itself : these thousands upon thousands are totally unaware of—even—their own true selves; they do not realise who they are. I am certain that not a single member of these throngs of onlookers knows that she (or he), like The Penguin, is TWO selves, TWO individuals, TWO emanations. Of all the spectators who pity and ridicule The Penguin's terrestrial personality, not a human soul realises that the very part of her (or him) which is doing the mocking and the sympathizing (the "awkward," "ludicrous," "ungainly," "ridiculous" part of anyone which psychologists call "consciousness" or "the Conscious") is, in and of itself, but a stumbling and thwarted emanation— a silly strutting and dancing upon a tiny platform labelled "life";— whereas, the function which determines or fulfils each human being's destiny and which contains the essence or meaning of all destiny is each human being's second, inner, or uunconscious" self. Such, however, is the truth; whereof The Penguin, in his two different emanations, is a living symbol!

After observing The Penguin's second self, I put the question: "Does anyone imagine, just because his or her Unconscious cannot be photographed, that it does not exist? — Alas for human ignorance! Not only does the Unconscious exist—it is existence: and moreover, the best part of existence—an illimitable realm in which the human mind flies, as contrasted with a microscopic domain in which the mind's wings are next to useless."

Such, I think, is The Penguin's meaning.