This is intelligible. This magician of a street has created the
illusion in our heads that there are adventure and romance around us.
Fauns, Pierrots, Launcelots, Leanders--we walk, expectantly waiting for
our scenes to materialize. Here the little steno in the green tarn is Lais
of Corinth, the dowager alighting from the electric is Zenobia. Illusions
dress the entire procession. Semiramis, Leda, and tailored nymphs; dryad
eyes gleam from powder-white masks. Or, if the classics bore you, Watteau
and the rococo pertness of the Grand Monarch. And there are Gothic noses,
Moorish eyebrows, Byzantine slippers. Take your pick, walk up and down and
wait for your cue.
There are two lives that people lead. One is the real life of business,
mating, plans, bankruptcies and gas bills. The other is an unreal life--a
life of secret grandeurs which compensate for the monotony of the days.
Sitting at our desks, hanging on to straps in the street cars, waiting for
the dentist, eating in silence in our homes--we give ourselves to these
secret grandeurs. Day-dreams in which we figure as heroes and Napoleons
and Don Juans, in which we triumph sensationally over the stupidities and
arrogances of our enemies--we think them out detail by detail.
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