Lilith | Page 8

a half-baked sort of
place, it is at once so childish and so self-satisfied--in fact, it is not sufficiently developed
for an old raven--at your service!"
"Am I wrong, then, in presuming that a man is superior to a bird?"

"That is as it may be. We do not waste our intellects in generalising, but take man or bird
as we find him.--I think it is now my turn to ask you a question!"
"You have the best of rights," I replied, "in the fact that you CAN do so!"
"Well answered!" he rejoined. "Tell me, then, who you are--if you happen to know."
"How should I help knowing? I am myself, and must know!"
"If you know you are yourself, you know that you are not somebody else; but do you
know that you are yourself? Are you sure you are not your own father?--or, excuse me,
your own fool?--Who are you, pray?"
I became at once aware that I could give him no notion of who I was. Indeed, who was I?
It would be no answer to say I was who! Then I understood that I did not know myself,
did not know what I was, had no grounds on which to determine that I was one and not
another. As for the name I went by in my own world, I had forgotten it, and did not care
to recall it, for it meant nothing, and what it might be was plainly of no consequence here.
I had indeed almost forgotten that there it was a custom for everybody to have a name!
So I held my peace, and it was my wisdom; for what should I say to a creature such as
this raven, who saw through accident into entity?
"Look at me," he said, "and tell me who I am."
As he spoke, he turned his back, and instantly I knew him. He was no longer a raven, but
a man above the middle height with a stoop, very thin, and wearing a long black tail-coat.
Again he turned, and I saw him a raven.
"I have seen you before, sir," I said, feeling foolish rather than surprised.
"How can you say so from seeing me behind?" he rejoined. "Did you ever see yourself
behind? You have never seen yourself at all! --Tell me now, then, who I am."
"I humbly beg your pardon," I answered: "I believe you were once the librarian of our
house, but more WHO I do not know."
"Why do you beg my pardon?"
"Because I took you for a raven," I said--seeing him before me as plainly a raven as bird
or man could look.
"You did me no wrong," he returned. "Calling me a raven, or thinking me one, you
allowed me existence, which is the sum of what one can demand of his fellow-beings.
Therefore, in return, I will give you a lesson:--No one can say he is himself, until first he
knows that he IS, and then what HIMSELF is. In fact, nobody is himself, and himself is
nobody. There is more in it than you can see now, but not more than you need to see. You
have, I fear, got into this region too soon, but none the less you must get to be at home in
it; for home, as you may or may not know, is the only place where you can go out and in.

There are places you can go into, and places you can go out of; but the one place, if you
do but find it, where you may go out and in both, is home."
He turned to walk away, and again I saw the librarian. He did not appear to have changed,
only to have taken up his shadow. I know this seems nonsense, but I cannot help it.
I gazed after him until I saw him no more; but whether distance hid him, or he
disappeared among the heather, I cannot tell.
Could it be that I was dead, I thought, and did not know it? Was I in what we used to call
the world beyond the grave? and must I wander about seeking my place in it? How was I
to find myself at home? The raven said I must do something: what could I do here?-- And
would that make me somebody? for now, alas, I was nobody!
I took the way Mr. Raven had gone, and went slowly after him. Presently I saw a wood of
tall slender pine-trees, and turned toward it. The odour of it met me on my way, and I
made haste to bury myself in it.
Plunged at length in its twilight glooms, I spied before me something with a shine,
standing between two of the stems.