If only he could say what is true!” said Totochabo. Marcellin and I looked at him. He went on: “You heard. If only you could stop dreaming for a minu… - René Daumal

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If only he could say what is true!” said Totochabo.
Marcellin and I looked at him. He went on:
“You heard. If only you could stop dreaming for a minute, we could talk perhaps. But talk about what?”
And with a shrug of the spine, he made as if to go. Marcellin held him back by the tail of his coat, and declared:
“Now listen. I’m very much aware that I can’t think. I’m a poet. But I cannot think. I was never shown how. I’m always being teased about it. When I hear my friends holding philosophical discussions, I’d like to join in too, but they always go too fast for me. They tell me to read Plato, the Upanishads, Kierkegaard, Spinoza, Hegel, Benjamin Fondane, the Tao-Teh, Karl Marx, and even the Bible. I’ve had many goes at reading all of them, except the Bible, because (Bible indeed!) they must be having me on. It’s all crystal clear as I read the stuff, but afterwards I forget, or can’t talk about it, or come up with contradictory ideas which I can’t choose between, in a word, it doesn’t work.”
“My dear Marcellin,” I began, “first, you should …”
“Shut up, I said!” the old man shouted again and the superior smile blooming on my lips slid down into my stomach. “Carry on!” he said to Marcellin who proceeded to finish what he was saying:
“Well, now. I want you to tell me once and for all if I am an idiot and, if I’m not, what you have to do in order to think.”
“Think about what?” Totochabo said wearily and he turned away.
This time, we were both too dismayed to try and stop him. But, more important, we were thirsty and it did not take us too long to discover a small demijohn which fitted the bill very nicely. As we drank, lounging like ancient Romans, we recited convoluted poems. Just before my eyes closed, I had a vague twinge of conscience just as you do sometimes when you take a few steps back and rise onto the tips of your woes so as to get a good run at sleep and I remarked to Marcellin that I was much more of an idiot than he believed but a much less of one than I