God Killed the Queen

I tried to be an anarchist for a little while, not very hard, admittedly. Only as long as it was interesting, aping the wild kids with their neo-tribal get-ups and crazy train-hopping tales. I knew that, whatever my intentions, it wouldn't work. I was not, am not a true believer. Sooner or later I was going to run like Gulliver from the Brobdingnagians (or whatever they were called). The reason for this is that, in my heart of hearts, I did not care that a large number of English children died of starvation, black lung, and/or industrial machine malfunction in order to produce the decadence that made Oscar Wilde's flowered necktie possible. I preferred Oscar Wilde, an unnecessary dandy and wit-about-town, to a number of innocent, common, tortured children. Therefore I could not be an anarchist. Nor can I be anything at all useful in the world. In fact, I did the only thing my talents and this perversion allowed, which was to read a lot of literature and write useless stories.

I confess that I do not believe in equality, a requisite thing for any reformer. Philsophically, yes. Ideally, without a doubt. Each soul is glorious, irreplicable, and so beyond value that the word "perfect" is an insult. But equality is an artificial attribute. Why throw away children? Because I can't. Because they aren't my children. Because I have no say in it. God has already killed them, and no amount of violent, egalitarian rearrangement (however much I love to "smash shit," however earnestly God smashed his own shit on the cross) will bring even one back. (Interestingly, I just remembered that this is what Ivan Karamazov said... and Alyosha's answer, his great mystery and first commandment given to him by the dying elder, was, "You ARE responsible for every man. Every man's sin is your own." Hardly Christian...)

In "A Tomb for Boris Davidovich," Boris the aging revolutionary par excellence fights the interrogator to write his own story, himself as Revolutionary. This is his tomb. Oh it is a beautiful story. Does he get his tomb? Every word is a stone, set, then destroyed, then set again with all the agony and devotion of an animal struggling against death. This is all that matters. What revolution? Build your monument. Wear your flowered necktie. Love the children. God loves them and the capitalists. God loves the brick and the window. God will kill the children. God will kill the anarchists. God killed Oscar Wilde.

P.S. I understand that it is unfashionable to use the word "God." I should have substituted "life," "Nature," "the universe," or some such other abstraction. To me, it will always be God. So what. If you believe in the death of the author, you may read in whatever noun you prefer. Cabbage, for all I care.