The Dream Life of Balso Snell by Nathanael West

 
     
    While walking in the tall grass that has sprung up around the city of Troy, Balso Snell came upon the famous wooden horse of the Greeks. A poet, he remembered Homer’s ancient song and decided to find a way in.
    On examining the horse, Balso found that there were but three openings: the mouth, the navel, and the posterior opening of the alimentary canal. The mouth was beyond his reach, the navel proved a cul-de-sac, and so, forgetting his dignity, he approached the last. 0 Anus Mirabilis!
    Along the lips of the mystic portal he discovered writings which after a little study he was able to decipher. Engraved in a heart pierced by an arrow and surmounted by the initial N, he read, “Ah! Qualls…Artifex…Pereo!” Not to be outdone by the actor-emperor, Balso carved with his penknife another heart and the words “0 Byss! 0 Abyss! 0 Anon! 0 Anan!” omitting, however, the arrow and his initial.
    Before entering he prayed:
    “0 Beer! 0 Meyerbeer! 0 Bach! 0 Offenbach! Stand me now as ever in good stead.”
    Balso immediately felt like the One at the Bridge, the Two in the Bed, the Three in the Boat, the Four on Horseback, the Seven Against Thebes. And with a high heart he entered the gloom of the foyer-like lower intestine.
    After a little while, seeing no one and hearing nothing, Balso began to feel depressed. To keep his heart high and yet out of his throat, he made a song.
    Round as the Anus Of a Bronze Horse Or the Tender Buttons Used by Horses for Ani
    On the Wheels of His Car Ringed Round with Brass Clamour the Seraphim Tongues of Our Lord
    Full Ringing Round As the Belly of Silenus Giotto Painter of Perfect Circles Goes…One Motion Round
    Round and Full Round and Full as A Brimming Goblet The Dew-Loaded Navel Of Mary Of Mary Our Mother
    Round and Ringing Full As the Mouth of a Brimming Goblet The Rust-Laden Holes In Our Lord’s Feet. Entertain the Jew-Driven Nails.
    He later gave this song various names, the most successful of which were: Anywhere Out of the World, or a Voyage Through the Hole in the Mundane Millstone and At Hoops with the Ani of Bronze Horses, or Toe Holes for a Flight of Fancy .
    But despite the gaiety of his song, Balso did not feel sure of himself. He thought of the Phoenix Excrementi, a race of men he had invented one Sunday afternoon while in bed, and trembled, thinking he might well meet one in this place. And he had good cause to tremble, for the Phoenix Excrementi eat themselves, digest themselves, and give birth to themselves by evacuating their bowels.
    Hoping to attract the attention of an inhabitant, Balso shouted as though overwhelmed by the magnificence of his surroundings:
    “0 the Rose Gate! 0 the Moist Garden! 0 Well! 0 Fountain! 0 Sticky Flower! 0 Mucous Membrane!”
    A man with “Tours” embroidered on his cap stalked out of the shadow. In order to prove a poet’s right to trespass, Balso quoted from his own works:
    “If you desire to have two parallel lines meet at once or even in the near future,” he said, “it is important to make all the necessary arrangements beforehand, preferably by wireless.”
    The man ignored his little speech. “Sir,” he said, “you are an ambassador from that ingenious people, the inventors and perfectors of the automatic water-closet, to my people who are the heirs of Greece and Rome. As your own poet has so well put it, ‘The Grandeur that was Greece and the Glory that was Rome’…I offer you my services as guide. First you will please look to the right where you will see a beautiful Doric prostate gland swollen with gladness and an over-abundance of good cheer.”
    This speech made Balso very angry. “Inventors of the automatic water-closet, are we?” he shouted. “Oh, you stinker! Doric, bah! It’s Baptist ‘68, that’s what it is. And no prostate gland either, simply an atrophied pile. You call this dump grand and glorious, do you? Have you ever seen the Grand Central Station, or the Yale Bowl, or the Holland Tunnel, or