Views
Save in exceptional cases, no reference to a bird is intended. The nightingale is generally, a platitude, a narcotic, indolent, stupid. With words we designate vague opinions rather than objects; we use words as adornments for our own persons. Words are, for the most part, petrifications which elicit mechanical reactions in us. They are means to power proposed by the wily and the drunken. The nightingale can be classed among the paraphrases of the absolute; it is the senior element among all those techniques of classical seduction in which we resort to the charm of the small. Nobody thinks the nightingale wild or excessively erotic. The nightingale is an eternal prop, star of lyric repertory, adultery's high point, the good courtesan's comfort: it is the sign of an eternal optimism.
Nightingale can be replaced: a) by rose, b) by breasts, but never by legs, because the nightingale's role is precisely to avoid designating them. The nightingale belongs to the repertory of bourgeois diversions, by which we try to suggest the indecent while skirting it. The nightingale can also be the sign of an erotic fatigue; belonging, in any case, like most words, to the paraphrase, this animal helps to ward off disagreeable elements. The nightingale is an allegory; it is hide-and-seek.
The nightingale is to be classed among those ideals devoid of meaning; it is considered a means of concealment, a moral phenomenon. It is a cheap utopia that obscures misery. The nightingale is to be relegated among classical still-lifes of lyricism.
It's cowardice that prevents people from using themselves in allegory. Allegory is, in fact, a form of assassination because it disposes of the object, robbing it of its literal meaning. It is defenceless animals, plants, and trees that get used; the weak like to juggle with the whole cosmos and get drunk on stars. Imprecision is the soul's façade, while precision is the sign of threatening and hallucinatory processes against which we defend ourselves with a superstructure of knowledge.
The nightingale helps to avoid thinking and psychic disquiet. It is a means of diversion, an ornamental motif. One attributes to animals, to plants, etc., a moral perfection with which one adorns oneself. Allegories and surrogates must hide the failure and ugliness of man: thus the human soul is made of stars, roses, twilights, etc. – that is to say, one schematises the defenceless world and projects one's idealised ego onto a Chihuahua. One weeps with the nightingale in hope of a good day at the stock exchange. Such is the American's winning sentimentality.
The nightingale outlives the gods, because it is merely allegorical, committing to nothing. Symbols die, but in degenerating, as allegory they pass into eternity. Thus what we call the soul is for the most a museum of meaningless signs. These signs are hidden behind the façade of actuality.
Poets – those gallivanters and embroiderers – transform the nightingale into turbines, baseball, Buddhism, Taoism, Tschou period, etc.
Mention must be made of the political nightingales, who take their coffee decaffeinated and practise, through Hegel and double-entry book-keeping, a politics of the absolute, gracefully avoiding every danger through manifestos. Song replaces action.
Let us also note that the nightingale sings best after having devoured a weakling.
The nightingale's music conforms to steady and classical taste; it seeks a guaranteed success. Its cadences are eclectic compilations: only the nuance changes. It even renders slightly daring sounds in a routine harmony, because the nightingale even uses sadness, like pastry. Let us now cite some highly successful nightingales: Mr Shaw, the nightingale of socialism, of common sense and evolution, for whom drama is a compilation of feature articles; Anatole France, the nightingale of Hellenism and saccharine scepticism. And we'll add to the list the scholarly nightingales who engagingly combine the remains of metaphysics with an optimistic biology. The nightingale plays all the flutes of all time; it is more eternal than Apollo, but it cannot master the saxophone.