Conversation Is an Art

An art, and one of the highest of the fine arts — like poetry, painting, and music... an art which, when mastered, is a spiritual pleasure full of rapture.

It is poetry that both the composer of the poem and its hearer enjoy, music that soothes the nerves or stirs them, a picture that begets in the soul comfort or aversion.

I saw the people around me, each carrying his lyre and playing upon it — some playing discordant notes and some harmonious, some dry and some tender — and I asked myself: what melodies does my lyre play, and what impression does it leave upon people? Then I set about studying myself minutely, to know my faults, the hidden and the apparent, that I might act on the maxim: Know thyself... I withdrew alone with my lyre to examine it, and found its errors many; so I set about trying to mend them, that perhaps by my art I might enter people's hearts.

I found myself suffering and complaining, now openly and now by hint, and I said: how contemptible is complaint, and how abject the complainer! My grandmother, for all her ignorance and at ninety years of age, used to repeat: complaint to any but God is humiliation... And I remembered that every single person has his own complaints and pains; if we let our conversations center on our pains, our society would become nothing but sighs and moans... And so I strangled my complaint. I shut the door of my room upon myself and upon it, or carried it out into the open air to tell the trees of it; then I put on my laughing mask and went out among people a cheerful talker, and they said: how happy she is, and how happy her company!

And I found myself talking about myself, so I said: this woman who is listening to me — does there not stir within her a desire like mine? So I set out to talk to people about themselves, and they opened up in conversation; and I listened, and encouraged, and consoled, and people said: what a skillful conversationalist she is! — and yet I had done no more than let people talk...

I learned that the young mother is made happy by talking of her children, the girl by talking of tomorrow and her hopes, the young woman about to marry by talking of the young man of her dreams and her wedding preparations, and the aged mother by talking of the wishes she has fulfilled... They all talked of what they love, and spent hours of pleasure with me, because in those hours they echoed the longings of their hearts.

I came to know people — among them the hopeful and the wretched, the healthy and the sick — and I rejoiced with the hopeful and felt with the wretched, and I understood that the loftiest thing in life is to come in upon the sad and wretched man and leave him having granted him some measure of comfort, or upon the sick man and go out having left him in better state... to plant hope in hearts and bring people relief. And I remembered the story of the sick man suffering in his knee, and how a philosophizing friend visited him and said: I used to know a verse of poetry, but I have forgotten its first half; only its second half remains in my memory, and it is:

And for the disease of the knees there is no cure! At which the poor sick man cried: would that you had forgotten the second half as you forgot the first!

And I learned that people have a fine sense: they perceive just how much true or counterfeit feeling there is in your talk, how much fellow-feeling and sincerity toward them, sympathy for them, and concern for the fulfillment of their wishes. And so I set about mending my inner self, that I might love people truly, and be sincere toward them, and take interest in them, and truly feel with them, so that my talk might become a true picture of what is within me, and not a painted mask.

And I learned that people have minds: they discern the measure of intelligence and understanding in your mind, or of stupidity and pretension, and they admire or they despise... And so I set about striving, that I might make of my mind something worthy of admiration and esteem...

I came to know people in their kinds: among them the cultivated man, whom nothing pleases but elevated talk, and the simple soul, whom nothing pleases but the talk of his own private world. So I rose to the level of the first, and we spoke of the latest the papers had published and the world had devised and invented, composed and set in verse... and I came down to the level of the second and spoke to him of the prices of radishes and lemons... I talked with my neighbor

the milk-seller about her cows, and with my seamstress about her dresses, and everyone was happy, and they said: what a skillful conversationalist! — though I had done no more than study people's natures, and cultivate myself a little.

And I learned that the style of conversation — the fine presentation of an idea, or a story, or a joke; presenting it briefly and without tedium, in a ringing voice that draws attention; presenting it at the fitting minute and on the fitting occasion — all these are factors beyond price. And I remembered the saying of Taha Husayn: ideas that are badly presented lose their value; and I remembered as well the verse of the poet describing a maiden sweet of speech:

One of the fair and modest maids — her companion wishes,
when a tale of hers is ended, that she would tell it again.

I learned that conversation is three quarters of beauty: the beautiful woman may speak, and it is said, would she had stayed silent; and the woman who is not beautiful may speak until people all but cry out, stuff her mouth with pearls!... And the truth is that never once have I looked at a beauty presiding over a salon — everything about her, from her hair and her gown down to the tip of her shoe, the utmost of elegance — without waiting for her to speak; and when she began to utter what is becoming and what is not, I said: would she had stayed silent; then she would have kept the splendor of the statues.

And I learned as well that conversation is three quarters of people's esteem and respect, or of their contempt. It is a picture of your hidden self and of the kind of creature you are: you may be wise or foolish — God forbid — cultivated or ignorant, delicate and gentle or coarse and rude, refined in your wit or crude in it; and you remain like a locked chest until you speak — and then you appear as you are. Among the Russian proverbs there is a lovely one that says: they receive a man according to his clothes and see him off according to his mind.

And now — do you reckon it an easy art?... Not I... In the dawn of my youth I would keep silent, and keep silent again, as proof of good breeding; then I took to talking and talking, to prove to people — out of vanity — that I understood every subject; but today, life having taught me much, and teaching me still, I have grown wary, and hesitate to plunge into any subject at all.

And after all that I still hold sessions with myself, and a reckoning no less strict than the reckoning of Munkar and Nakir on the Last Day; for I have understood that my errors are still many. I have understood that the wounds of the spearhead find their healing, but what the tongue has wounded does not heal. I have understood that by my talk I rise and by it I sink, by it I am loved and by it I am hated, by it I win friends and by it I lose them, by it peace hovers over my house — or enmity and strife.

No, madam, it is not an easy art; and believe me, had I my way I would bring it into the schools as an art to be studied, and would form its students into circles, receiving strangers and kinsfolk, trying to converse with them and to succeed, with grades and marks awarded them for it.

It is one of the loftiest of the arts, for it is the music of society, and its soul.