Voyage Around My Room by Xavier de Maistre

Author:Xavier de Maistre [Howard, Richard; de Maistre, Joseph; Sartarelli, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 978-0-8112-2234-1
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2013-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XI

Once I had recovered somewhat from the distraction occasioned me by the sight of my artificial dove, the pain of the bump I had received began to make itself keenly felt. I ran my hand over my forehead and noticed a new protuberance in exactly the same part of the head where Dr. Gall had situated the poetic protuberance.* At the time, however, I had given it no thought; experience alone was to prove to me the truth of that famous man’s system.

After collecting myself for a moment before making one final stab at my dedicatory epistle, I seized a pen and set to work. To my great surprise, the lines flowed of themselves from my hand! I filled two pages in less than an hour, and concluded from this fact that if it was necessary for Pope to move his head to compose verse, mine required nothing less than a contusion. I will not, however, show the reader what I wrote, for the prodigious speed with which the adventures of my journey followed one upon another prevented me from putting the finishing touches on it. This reticence notwithstanding, there can be no doubt that my accident ought to be considered a most valuable discovery, one which poets could never use too much.*

Indeed, so convinced am I of the infallibility of this new method, that in a poem of twenty-four cantos that I have since composed, which will be published with La Prisonnière de Pignerol, I have found it thus far unnecessary to pen any lines of verse; I have, however, made a fair copy of five hundred pages of notes—which, as we know, always form the most interesting, and voluminous, part of the majority of modern poems.

Walking aimlessly about my room as I deeply pondered my discoveries, I then stumbled over my bed and fell upon it in a sitting position; as my hand had perchance come down upon my nightcap, I decided to cover my head with it and go to bed.

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