III. The Culture of Jackasses When an ass leaves his village to go live in the city a wonderful change occurs in him: his asininity leaves the body and sets straight into the soul. In donkey parlance this means the respective jackass becomes cultivated. Thus, an educated ass is an animal that is clean on the outside and dirty on the inside. Culture itself in the Land of Jackasses is nothing but internalization of asininity; it is the magic touch that makes the asininity in one jackass go from the outer to the inner form, from body to soul. This runs counter to the opinions ever put forth by the experience of other nations. Where there is human life culture progresses like a divine flame that cleanses the soul, rendering it ethereal, floating above the daily mire. With donkeys, it is the very opposite: it purifies the body and stains the soul. Judging things from the right vantage it could not have been different. Because just as culture prompts people to progress in their humanity it equally makes jackasses stoop further into their asininity. It is only thus that it will proudly bear the name of asinine culture.True that asses have not been blessed with attaining this noble goal very easily for the path of culture has been laid with more thorns than any other. Therefore they took dark bypasses, they got lost on narrow roads, they climbed dangerous slopes so that at one moment they got somewhat dizzy and were about to lose control and stray so monstrously as to acquire human culture. To the glory of all jackasses we must say that at long last they shook off that beguiling sleep, diligently rubbed their eyes and discovered with a relieved sight the road leading to a truly asinine culture.Two cultural parties have emerged so far in the Country of Jackasses. The first and at the same time the oldest, which despite its obvious drift still enjoys sufficient kudos is the humanist or "alienophile" camp. The other, recently formed, is the asininophile or nationalist camp. Both cultural camps are founded on one correct assumption: that an ass is tantamount to a gross soul and a gross skin. The difference resides only in the way each behaves towards the original asinine grossness. Alienophiles, as they were later on solemnly and crushingly accused, are those sons of the country who have dealt with humans so much that they have come to fail to understand what jackasses are /…/ VI. The Morality of Jackasses We come now timorously and shudderingly to that immaculate gem of the nations' spirit called morality. It is a pearl crowning the whole of culture, and mirrors the loftiest and truest structure of the soul. Just as a man pushes forth what he cherishes best among his assets so that the others may better see it and he can take justified pride so a people holds morals above everything its spirit creates letting it deservedly stand as the Maker destined it: the sound of sweet harmony bursting forth from the depths of the being.It would be futile to look for the moral prescriptions of jackasses among their moral acts. It is true that they too have borrowed from a previous kin several conduct rules, one more beautiful than the other which they have poured into a sweet, soul-comforting form that caresses the senses and have filled with them long, wide and thick books meant to impart to the youth the wisdom of the world. Only that these amazing pearls of practical lore are merely glossed-over facts of "culture", superficially lustrous, and therefore excellent deceptions of what lies hidden beneath. Thus no jackass is likely to remember this unless the newspapers or the community bring such matters up. In fact, the true moral lighting up the path of good for jackasses throbs in their very blood and just as it happens with justice it is not and there is no need for it to be put down in writing. Because it is deeply rooted in the national asinine character making up its best expression. Only that, as is the sacred mission of all moral, it rightfully consecrates the way this character actually is. In other words, thick-skinned asinine moral does no longer show what the character of asses looks like but rather says that it should be as it is.It is therefore obvious that it must be composed of two parts, like the character from which it derives: words and deeds. Their origin is already known: words spring from external humanness, facts stem from interior asinine meanness. Such being the case, the commandment of jackass moral can be put in a nutshell: talk like a man and behave like a vile mule.It is clear that with any people morals are the most cherished pearls of the soul. With jackasses they can be no more than a jackass pearl.Two citizen virtues flourish mostly in the warm, beneficial rays of jackass morals. They actually make up one which, as the case may be, takes two special guises. From time out of mind in the Country of Jackasses, as is but natural, the virtue of sweat is known and glorified. All asses sweat, there's no foreigner who ignores this. Only that as true grabby jackasses they have justly divided things. The farmers sweat blood so that they gather what city dwellers find no sweat to squander. Which is right down the alley of unmindful jackass morals.From these two citizen virtues there stem most naturally two sorts of uncleanness, the village asses, toiling to a sweat all the time, dirty their bodies to amass things and thus get smudged as a special token of their class, acquiring a rich layer of external asininity. In exchange city asses sweat day in – and especially day out – to spend all the goods the village donkeys are so asininely stupid as to shove under their noses for free. Thus their bodies idle away, their brains rot, their consciousness mildews and they acquire a deep layer of internal asininity on their souls. This is how the two types of jackasses come to be, breeding two social strata in the Land of Jackasses /…/The thrifty farmer and the prodigal city-dweller, lavish as they say, are the two chosen types glorified by jackass morals, touted and awarded the laurels of citizen virtue, giving one and the other as an example for the respective class to follow. It duly vituperates whose who stray from said moral ideals and give a bad example to their gang fellows. In other words, it equally denounces the idle villager who dares leave empty the manger of his city relatives and the thrifty city-dweller who refrains from toppling the filled manger but rather lets it be, allowing the fodder to go stale. This is how jackass morals spread virtue and castigate asinine debauchery.Sure, it goes further and like all true moral is creates a scale of values – of the jackasses, of course. The most intelligent of all the asses climbs to the top of the stairs and receives the biggest award of the species' morals: a resounding renown! It is but natural that not any measly donkey in the ordinary donkey class should have the joy of getting this award of eternal pride. No way! For this the ass must be the meanest, most ungrateful and shameless of asses, and the asinine dirty mean thing he is celebrated for should stand out of the ordinary. There are two things in this world now and for ever insufferable to any donkey mind, two things all mulish population pursues with lethal hatred, and nips them in the bud whenever they see them: talent and honesty. Because these rise amid the community dinginess like two shining columns from a divine, immaculate world, appearing to the jackasses as a solemn, muted remonstrance of their double mental and mean moral asininity. So whenever they lay eyes on the two they feel as if their hearts were pierced by a hot iron. As long as they see around them only asses like themselves they get used to such a sight, and dirty asininity becomes the thing. But when here and there crops up a person bearing the twofold crown of talent and honesty things change. Then in the light of his aura they find out they are regular jackasses, animals oppressed and burdened, not endowed with the godly gift of understanding the truth, creating beauty and doing good. Hence their unappeased hatred against these miserable luminaries which nature, in its cruelty lights now and then in their country. They turn around them, poke at the folds of their lives to see if they cannot find any trace of mean donkey business about them. And infinite is their affliction when their efforts remain unrewarded. For the luminary is even brighter, revealing their brutishness ever clearer and further demeaning them in their own eyes. Then a more perspicuous ass steps out turning into a savior of endangered "asinineship". This one steals away, and getting close to the respective person, kicks him terribly with the hoof, leaving an indelible stamp. Then he starts braying forcefully for all his nation to hear that the miserable has always had that mark yet hid it masterfully like the sordid guy he is under the mask of talent and honesty. Then the entire tribe of donkeys frets with delight at having put out the muck-evading luminary, and in pious gratitude places the laurel of renown on the forehead of the ass to whom the entire kin is more indebted than to any other. Thus jackass morals create glories.As a matter of fact, an extreme sense of justice never fails when it comes to celebrating those that obey this sort of morals, or to punishing those who encroach it. The moral commandment above leaves room for two deviations, as it can be very easily seen.It may be that some time asses could feel not only like speaking but also like working as humans. Faced with such lost spirits, jackass morals shows a sweet sort of leniency. These strays are considered idealists, hazy minds, beings deprived of any sense of reality who could lead a better life if they only knew how to behave like any decent jackass. The melancholy attempts of the miserable donkeys who trample the rules of the community are met by shaking heads and pitiful smiles from their fellows. It sometimes happens that some of these idealist four-legged animals take their role too seriously, actually trying to adjust deeds to words, and thus overdoing their humanness. Then their kin will obviously lay aside some of their usual leniency. They tell the lost soul to his face that he is a lunatic escaped from a nut-house, and from time to time treat him to a hoof in his neck so that he gets his mind straight. Thus the fool continues to brawl and sweat for nothing, while the donkeys shrug and pass him by, seeing to their dirty donkey business. It may be that some get a contrary urge, in other words, not only to work but also to talk like donkeys. Things change then. All of the same kin rise like one against such lawlessness. Because their kudos among animals is founded only on the craft of hiding their dirty souls under immaculate words. It is easy to understand what a storm must brew in them one of their kin deems natural to be as dirty in deed and in words, and paint his species on the outside exactly as it is on the inside. The entire donkey nation, seething with rage, clamor then that the good reputation of the country's culture is in jeopardy. It is necessary to shut the mouth of the miserable ass who cannot weigh his words but lets them out as they are in their full national asininity which is displayed in front of other nations. It would be undoubtedly much easier if the rule-benders spoke not mincing words when they are among themselves, as all good patriots do. But to dust the house linen in the marketplace and show it to everybody so that all can see the dirt in a jackass soul, that simply won't do! Then asinine morals blush and call a sweet sister unto dirty jackass business, justice, to do its duty. How swell it meets this call, it is well-known. Hoof kicks start coming like hail on the heads of the mindlessness speakers and, if they get out alive, they are for ever cured of speaking like asses.This is the lot awaiting the donkeys who are so rash as to abuse the morals of the kin one way or another. Blessed is he who can live in sweet friendship with such morals. Blessed is he who is deftly speaking like a man and behaving like a dirty ass for his is the kingdom of Jackass Land.He shall live in superb barnsHe shall drink from crystal-clear watersHe shall graze in eternally green pastures. 1916 From the Country of Jackasses. Notesby philosopher Ştefan Zeletin Far from being a lampoon, as the suggestive title may indicate, Mr. Zeletin's book is an admirable and topical social sketch. A few puritans spoke disdainfully about it, condemning its author from within the country's teaching staff. The notes are a systematic account by a missionary the gods have sent to the Land of Jackasses drawn up for the divine rulers of Olympus. In his characterization of the social classes Mr. Zeletin sounds a lot like playwright Caragiale. If with the latter the traits of the heroes were willfully distorted to make them more laughable by their idiosyncrasies, some still preserving a honest heart, with the former the representatives of the classes are brutally dissected and presented ruthlessly in a light the more heinous as it is true.Alex ŞTEFĂNESCURevista criticaSecond year, issues 13, 14, 15, June 1916, p. 247 From the Country of Jackasses. Notes by philosopher Ştefan Zeletin (1882-1934) is a tragic book. One has no problem seeing through the flimsy allegorical fabric that the Country of Jackasses is the Romanian land, the very homeland of the author. Painful or not, that's how it is. The life of Romania does not hang on Ştefan Zeletin's book and nobody can tell how eternal it can be. The conflict is tragic since it reveals glimpses of the journey to unhappiness of the nation allegorized. Not through the truly grand intervention of destiny – Moira with the ancients – of incommensurate pride, hubris, with the same – or the fear aroused by the idea of impending evil, all specific to tragedy. But through one supposed characteristic specific to the animal in question: brazenness. The brass to abdicate from morals. The current semantics of the Romanian term have come to include several aspects: ingratitude, impertinence, stupidity, rudeness and shamelessness. Ştefan Zeletin dwells only on one: shamelessness, which he turns absolute. How fair or unfair this is remains for the readership of the ensuing epochs to say. And it is also up to them to declare whether Romania has stayed the same from one period to another. With Ştefan Zeletin the lot of this country appears to be for ever melancholy. C. D. ZELETINNemira Publishing House, 1998
by Ştefan Zeletin (1882-1934)
