BLACKTHORN
The price of existence is eternal warfare.39
Speaking as an Irishman, I prefer to say: The price of eternal warfare is existence.
And melancholy as existence is, the price is well worth paying.
Is there a Government? Then I'm agin it! To Hell with the bloody English!
"O FRATER PERDURABO, how unworthy are these sentiments!"
"D'ye want a clip on the jaw?"40
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COMMENTARY (P)
Frater P. continues the subject of Chapter 79.
He pictures himself as a vigorous, reckless, almost rowdy Irishman. He is no thin-lipped prude, to seek salvation in unmanly self-abnegation; no Creeping Jesus, to slink through existence to the tune of the Dead March in Saul; no Cremerian Callus to warehouse his semen in his cerebellum.
"New Thoughtist" is only Old Eunuch writ small.
Paragraph 2 gives the very struggle for life, which disheartens modern thinkers, as a good enough reason for existence.
Paragraph 5 expresses the sorrow of the modern thinker, and paragraph 6 Frater P.'s suggestion for replying to such critics.
NOTES
(39) ISVD, the foundation scil. of the universe = 80 = P, the letter of Mars.
(40) P also means "a mouth". |