The Man Who Was Thursday

A Nightmare

G. K. Chesterton

London, Chiswick

The book was called The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare. It was not intended to describe the real world as it was, or as I thought it was, even when my thoughts were considerably less settled than they are now. It was intended to describe the world of wild doubt and despair which the pessimist were generally describing at that date; with just a gleam of hope in some double meaning of the doubt, which even the pessimists felt in some fashion.

G. K. Chesterton
in an article in the Illustrated London News,
13 June 1936 (the day before his death)

Table of contents
Chapter Name	Chapter Title
Chapter I	The Two Poets of Saffron Park
Chapter II	The Secret of Gabriel Syme
Chapter III	The Man Who Was Thursday
Chapter VI	The Tale of a Detective
Chapter V	The Feast of Fear
Chapter VI	The Exposure
Chapter VII	The Unaccountable Conduct of Professor de Worms
Chapter VIII	The Professor Explains
Chapter IX	The Man in Spectacles
Chapter X	The Duel
Chapter XI	The Criminals Chase the Police
Chapter XII	The Earth in Anarchy
Chapter XIII	The Pursuit of the President
Chapter XIV	The Six Philosophers
Chapter XV	The Accuser

TO EDMUND CLERIHEW BENTLEY

A cloud was on the mind of men

And wailing went the weather,

Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul

When we were boys together.

Science announced nonentity

And art admired decay;

The world was old and ended:

But you and I were gay;

Round us in antic order

Their crippled vices came—

Lust that had lost its laughter,

Fear that had lost its shame.

Like the white lock of Whistler,

That lit our aimless gloom,

Men showed their own white feather

As proudly as a plume.

Life was a fly that faded,

And death a drone that stung;

The world was very old indeed

When you and I were young.

They twisted even decent sin

To shapes not to be named:

Men were ashamed of honour;

But we were not ashamed.

Weak if we were and foolish,

Not thus we failed, not thus;

When that black Baal blocked the heavens

He had no hymns from us

Children we were—our forts of sand

Were even as weak as we,

High as they went we piled them up

To break that bitter sea.

Fools as we were in motley,

All jangling and absurd,

When all church bells were silent

Our cap and beds were heard.

Not all unhelped we held the fort,

Our tiny flags unfurled;

Some giants laboured in that cloud

To lift it from the world.

I find again the book we found,

I feel the hour that flings

Far out of fish-shaped Paumanok

Some cry of cleaner things;

And the Green Carnation withered,

As in forest fires that pass,

Roared in the wind of all the world

Ten million leaves of grass;

Or sane and sweet and sudden as

A bird sings in the rain—

Truth out of Tusitala spoke

And pleasure out of pain.

Yea, cool and clear and sudden as

A bird sings in the grey,

Dunedin to Samoa spoke,

And darkness unto day.

But we were young; we lived to see

God break their bitter charms.

God and the good Republic

Come riding back in arms:

We have seen the City of Mansoul,

Even as it rocked, relieved—

Blessed are they who did not see,

But being blind, believed.

This is a tale of those old fears,

Even of those emptied hells,

And none but you shall understand

The true thing that it tells—

Of what colossal gods of shame

Could cow men and yet crash,

Of what huge devils hid the stars,

Yet fell at a pistol flash.

The doubts that were so plain to chase,

So dreadful to withstand—

Oh, who shall understand but you;

Yea, who shall understand?

The doubts that drove us through the night

As we two talked amain,

And day had broken on the streets

E’er it broke upon the brain.

Between us, by the peace of God,

Such truth can now be told;

Yea, there is strength in striking root,

And good in growing old.

We have found common things at last,

And marriage and a creed,

And I may safely write it now,

And you may safely read.

G. K. C.

Table of related information
Copyright ©	G. K. Chesterton, 1908
By the same author	There are no more works at Badosa.com
Date of publication	November 2004
Collection	Worldwide Classics
Permalink	https://badosa.com/n216

Readers' Opinions

The Man Who Was Thursday
Creo que GK Chesterton es uno de los pensadores más completos de los últimos siglos y, por lejos, el más lúcido del siglo XX.
Javier
The Man Who Was Thursday
Sin duda, Chesterton es un ensayista y pensador inteligente, pero lo que hace que sus ensayos tengan ese atractivo especial son, ante todo, esas gemas brillantes que los enriquecen: me refiero a sus paradojas desopilantes.
En el siglo XX, existen ensayistas más demoledores y rigurosos (como Bertrand Russell o George Santayana) que Chesterton, básicamente porque no mezclaban poesía y filosofía en la argumentación de sus textos, lo cual los hace más rigurosos y científicos, pero menos divertidos que los del vecino de Beaconsfield.
Comoquiera que un ensayo debe ser inteligente y divertido, Chesterton sí podría ocupar el nº 1 como maestro en el ensayo genérico, pero no como el nº 1 en ensayo filosófico, que ocuparía seguramente Russell o Santayana, ya que Chesterton dio muestras de ser más artista que filósofo (su prolijidad, sus ganas de "pintar el pueblo todo de rojo", es la razón, como se opina en la biografía de Ward). De hecho, su catolicismo le hizo demasiado conservador con respecto al sexo (del que en sus ensayos no se habla, si no es a la manera de San Pablo), al valor social de la mujer (en casa cuidando hijos), a la ciencia (v.g. criticó a Einstein dando por supuesto que la relatividad era un despropósito, sin justificar sus argumentos por la vía científica, sólo con poesía y teologia apologéticas; también luchó por demoler los cimientos del darwinismo con poesía, lo cual es poco riguroso, filosóficamene hablando), al Arte (criticó el verso libre con vehemencia en sus ensayos, cuando, paradójicamente, siempre sintió un amor whitmaniano; despreciaba a Picasso y a la vanguardia; nunca los entendió, ni pretendió hacerlo: en este sentido, Santayana como esteta fue mucho más apreciativo y un crítico más racional y medido; véase su The Sense of Beauty, o The Life of Reason para ello).
Ricardo Mena

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The Man Who Was Thursday

A Nightmare

Table of Contents

G. K. Chesterton

Readers' Opinions

The Man Who Was Thursday

The Man Who Was Thursday

How to add an image to this work