NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH - peaceCENTERbooks

1 INOTHING BUT THETRUTH49 Classic Stories About TRUTH & Lies Susan Ives, editoriipeaceCENTER Books1443 S. St. Mary s, San Antonio, Texas Copyright 2009, San Antonio peaceCENTER. All Rights : 1449925138 EAN-13: 9781449925130iiiAll Is TruthWalt WhitmanO me, man of slack faith so long,Standing aloof, denying portions so long,Only aware to-day of compact all-diffused TRUTH ,Discovering to-day there is no lie or form of lie, and can be none,but grows as inevitably upon itself as the TRUTH does upon itself,Or as any law of the earth or any natural production of the earth does.(This is curious and may not be realized immediately, but it must be realized,I feel in myself that I represent falsehoods equally with the rest,And that the universe does.)Where has fail d a perfect return indifferent of lies or the TRUTH ?Is it upon the ground, or in water or fire? or in the spirit of man?or in the meat and blood?Meditating among liars and retreating sternly into myself, I seethat there are really no liars or lies after all,And that NOTHING fails its perfect return, and that what are calledlies are perfect returns,And that each thing exactly represents itself and what has preceded it,And that the TRUTH includes all, and is compact just as much asspace is compact,And that there is no flaw or vacuum in the amount of the TRUTH butthat all is TRUTH without exception;And henceforth I will go celebrate any thing I see or am,And sing and laugh and deny all the TRUTH but Tell it Slant Emily DickinsonTell all the TRUTH but tell it slant Success in Circuit liesToo bright for our infirm DelightThe TRUTH s superb surpriseAs Lightening to the Children easedWith explanation kindThe TRUTH must dazzle graduallyOr every man be blind ivYou are traveling on a road to a castle and come to a fork in the road where it splits into two paths.

2 Standing at this fork in the road are two gatekeepers, one who always tells the TRUTH , and one who always lies, but you don t know who is the TRUTH -teller and who is the liar. You need to know which road leads to the castle. What question do you ask to find the road to the castle?Answer on page 386v1. The Ape and the Two Travelers, Aesop - p. 12. TRUTH and the Traveler, Aesop - p. 23. The Boy Who Cried Wolf, Aesop - p. 24. The Emperor s New Clothes, Hans Christian Andersen - p. 35. The Elephant And The Blind Men, Traditional - p. 76. A Fable, Mark Twain - p. 97. The Mirror, Catulle Mend s - p. 118. The Ask Lad Who Made the Princess Say, You re a Liar!, Norwegian Folktale - p. 159. The Emperor and the Flower Seeds, Traditional - p. 1710. Qasiagssaq, The Great Liar, Traditional Inuit Folktale - p. 2111. Nam-Bok The Liar, Jack London - p. 2912. A Forfeited Right, Ambrose Bierce - p. 4313. At the Pole, Ambrose Bierce - p.

3 4314. A Fatal Disorder, Ambrose Bierce - p. 4415. The Devil s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce - p. 4316. Homer and Humbug, Stephen Leacock - p. 4717. The True History of the Hare and the Tortoise, Lord Dunsany - p. 5318. Truthful Oratory, or What Our Speakers Ought to Say, Stephen Leacock - p. 5519. The TRUTH About Home Rails, Milne - p. 5920. The First Newspaper: A Sort of Allegory, Stephen Leacock - p. 6321. The Petrified Man, Mark Twain - p. 7122. An Aphorism and a Lecture, Oliver Wendell Holmes - p. 7523. A Society, Virginia Woolf - p. 8124. The Coffee-House of Surat, Leo Tolstoy - p. 9325. Religions of Error, Ambrose Bierce - p. 10126. The Proselytes, John Greenleaf Whittier - p. 10327. A Moral Little Tale, Lord Dunsany - p. 10928. Something In It, Robert Louis Stevenson - p. 11129. The Faith Cure Man, Paul Laurence Dunbar - p. 115 CONTENTSvi30. Was it Heaven? Or Hell?, Mark Twain - p. 11931. The Purloined Letter, Edgar Allen Poe - p.

4 13732. Putois, Anatole France - p. 15333. The Open Window, Saki ( Munro) - p. 16534. The Woman Who Told The TRUTH , Saki ( Munro) - p. 16935. Simon s Papa, Guy de Maupassant - p. 17136. The Gipsy Prophecy, Bram Stoker - p. 17937. The Test, Jacobs - p. 18738. Telling Mrs. Baker, Henry Lawson - p. 19739. Gil Blas, Alain-Rene LeSage - p. 20940. The Tree of Knowledge, Henry James - p. 21341. The Verdict, Edith Wharton - p. 22742. The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, Fyodor Dostoyevsky - p. 23743. The Beggar, Anton Chekhov - p. 25544. The Liar, Henry James - p. 26145. What Is TRUTH ?, Maurice Baring - p. 30546. The Mark on the Wall, Virginia Woolf - p. 30947. The Wisdom of the King, William Butler Yeats - p. 31748. The Man Who Found the TRUTH , Leonid Andreyev - p. 32349. God Sees the TRUTH , But Waits, Leo Tolstoy - p. 373 Authors, Stories & Notes - p. 381viiINTRODUCTIONThe picture on page ii is of a bronze door at main entrance of the Library of Congress.

5 The sculptor, Olin Warner, called it TruthTruth is holding a long-handled mirror in her right hand and a serpent in her left. She appears to be staring at the snake; the snake seems to be looking into the mirror. (Or is it? Could it be staring at the woman? Or looking somewhere else? I can t tell.) What does it tell us about TRUTH ?The New York Times of January 1, 1898 speculated that perhaps he wished to signify by the two symbols the actual world, as the snake, reflected in learning and literature, the mirror, having in mind the dictum of Emerson that things are of the snake. The 1906 Handbook of the Library of Congress offers a different interpretation: TRUTH [holds] a mirror and a serpent, the two signifying that in all literature, wisdom (of which the serpent is the emblem) and careful observation (typified by the mirror, with its accurate reflection of external objects) must be joined in order to produce a consistent and truthful impression upon the reader.

6 So, here we have two respected critics, looking at the same three simple elements the woman, the mirror, the snake and delivering conflicting interpretations. Which version is true?My first reaction was that the snake symbolizes deceit it speaks with a forked tongue. The mirror reflects reality. The woman is forcing the serpent to look into the mirror to see the world reflected as it really is. The snake is bedazzled by TRUTH . But wait! If you look into the mirror NOTHING is reflected NOTHING ! Not the snake, nor the world beyond. It is smooth, blank glass. Perhaps the mirror is a reference to 1 Corinthians 13:12, For now we see through a glass, darkly. The entire verse refers to our imperfect knowledge of the world: For we know only in part, and we prophesy viiionly in part. The mirror in Corinthians is incapable of reflecting the whole truthOr perhaps the woman herself represents TRUTH - maybe an image of the Greek Aletheia or the Roman Veritas.

7 If so, are the mirror and the snake symbols of her office symbols of TRUTH or are they symbols of un- TRUTH that she has tamed and mastered?And I haven t forgotten where the door is located: at the entrance to the Library of Congress. Surely this has something to do with wisdom and learning. Why couldn t the sculptor have put a book in the door to make the symbolism easy for us?It is difficult to talk about TRUTH . It is even difficult to talk about how we talk about TRUTH . What seems at first to be simple something is either true or untrue quickly grows complex. Is there even such a thing as TRUTH ? Is there a universal TRUTH ? Is it knowable? Can my TRUTH be different than your TRUTH ? Is the opposite of a TRUTH a lie or another TRUTH ? Are there situations when a lie is preferable to the TRUTH ? Or, as Emily Dickinson recommends in her poem on page iii, should we tell all the TRUTH but tell it slant? Is TRUTH told slant still TRUTH ?

8 Perhaps, as Walt Whitman claims in his poem, everything is TRUTH .* * * The nature of TRUTH has challenged philosophers since the beginning of history. Wars have been fought over it. Fortunes won and lost, nations and religions founded, relationships destroyed and resurrected, reputations made and reputations ruined. Everything we think and do is influenced by our understanding of stories are stories about TRUTH ; these 49 classic stories by the world s greatest writers specifically explore the nature of TRUTH and lies. The first ten stories are fables and folk tales that recall how our earliest ancestors talked about TRUTH and remind us how we were first introduced to the concept of TRUTH when we were children. The last of these is a classic tale about an Inuit who told lies; following it is a Jack London story about an Inuit who told the next section is about humbug: humorous stories about lies, frauds, jokes and pompous prigs pretending to know more than they really do.

9 Here you ll find my favorite story in this anthology, A Society. Who knew that Virginia Woolf could be funny?The next group of stories is about the intersection of religion and TRUTH : eternal, immutable and absolute TRUTH . John Greenleaf Whittier defends absolute TRUTH ; Leo Tolstoy questions it. In between are characters who find that their truths are not as straightforward ixas they once remainder of the stories illuminate different aspects of TRUTH . Edgar Allen Poe, in The Purloined Letter, gives us not only a compelling mystery but also a perceptive analysis of the nature of TRUTH . Anatole France s Plutois and Saki s The Open Window are both about imagination and TRUTH . Edith Wharton, in The Verdict, and Henry James, in The Tree of Knowledge, explore artistic TRUTH . Dostoyevsky s and Andreyev s stories are about insanity and TRUTH , while Le Sage and Lawson give us examples of what can happen when we must relate an unpleasant TRUTH .

10 Both Bram Stoker and Guy de Maupassant address the un- TRUTH that becomes a TRUTH . This is one thing I know is true: these stories will raise questions rather than provide answers. But that s just as it should be. As Andr Gide reminds us, Believe those who seek the TRUTH , doubt those who find it; doubt all, but do not doubt yourself. TRUTH , said a traveller Stephen Crane TRUTH , said a traveller, Is a rock, a mighty fortress;Often have I been to it,Even to its highest tower,From whence the world looks black. TRUTH , said a traveller, Is a breath, a wind,A shadow, a phantom;Long have I pursued it,But never have I touchedThe hem of its garment. And I believed the second traveller;For TRUTH was to meA breath, a wind,A shadow, a phantom,And never had I touchedThe hem of its Ives,San Antonio, Texas10 December, 2009x148 CLASSIC SHORT STORIES ABOUT TRUTHThe Ape and the Two TravelersAesopTwo men, one who always spoke the TRUTH and the other who told NOTHING but lies, were traveling together and by chance came to the land of Apes.