"The Krazy Kat That Walks By Himself," from Seven Lively Arts (1924)

The theme is greater than the plot. John Alden Carpenter has pointed out in the brilliant little foreword’ to his ballet, that Krazy Kat is a combination of Parsifal and Don Quixote, the perfect fool and the perfect knight. Ignatz is Sancho Panza and, I should say, Lucifer. He loathes the sentimental excursions, the philosophic ramblings of Krazy; he interrupts with a well-directed brick the romantic excesses of his companion. For example: Krazy blindfolded and with the scales of Justice in his hand declares: “Things is all out of perpotion, ‘Ignatz.’ “ “In what way, fool!” enquires the Mice as the scene shifts to the edge of a pool in the middle of the desert. “In the way of ‘ocean’ for a instinct.” “Well!” asks Ignatz. They are plunging head down into midsea, and only their hind legs, tails, and words are visible: “The ocean is so innikwilly distribitted.” They appear, each prone on a mountain peak, above the clouds, and the Kat says casually across the chasm to Ignatz: “Take ‘Denva, Kollorado and ‘Tulsa, Okrahoma’ they ain’t got no ocean a tall-” (they are tossed by a vast sea, together in a packing-case) “while Sem Frencisco, Kellafornia, and Bostin, Messachoosit, has got more ocean than they can possibly use”-whereon Ignatz properly distributes a brick evenly on Krazy’s noodle. Ignatz “has no time” for foolishness; he is a realist and Sees Things as They ARE. “I don’t believe in Santa Claus,” says he; “I’m too broad-minded and advanced for such nonsense.”

But Mr Herriman, who is a great ironist, understands pity. It is the destiny of Ignatz never to know what his brick means to Krazy. He does not enter into the racial memories of the Kat which go back to the days of Cleopatra, of the Bubastes, when Kats were held sacred. Then, on a beautiful day, a mouse fell in love with Krazy, the beautiful daughter of Kleopatra, Kat; bashful, advised by a soothsayer to write his love, he carved a declaration on a brick and, tossing the "missive," was accepted, although he had nearly killed the Kat. "When the Egyptian day is done it has become the Romeonian custom to crease his lady's bean with a brick laden with tender sentiments . . . through the tide of dusty years" . . . the tradition continues. But only Krazy knows this. So at the end it is the incurable romanticist, the victim of acute Bovaryisme, who triumphs; for Krazy faints daily in full possession of his illusion, and Ignatz, stupidly hurling his brick, thinking to injure, fosters the illusion and keeps Krazy "heppy."

Not always, to be sure. Recently we beheld Krazy smok an “eligint Hawanna cigar” and sighing for Ignatz; the smoke screen he produced hid him from view when Ignatz passed, and before the Mice could turn back, Krazy had handed over the cigar to Offisa Pupp and departed, saying “Looking at ‘Offisa Pupp’ smoke himself up like a chimly is werra werra intrisking, but it is more wital that I find ‘Ignatz’ “-wherefore Ignatz, thinking the smoke screen a ruse, hurls his brick, blacks the officer’s eye, and is promptly chased by the limb of the law. Up to this point you have the usual technique of the comic strip, as old as Shakespeare. But note the final picture of Krazy beholding the pursuit, himself disconsolate, unbricked, alone, muttering: “Ah, there him is-playing tag with ‘Offisa Pupp’-just like the boom compenions wot they is.” It is this touch of irony and pity which transforms all of Herriman’s work, which relates it, for all that the material is preposterous, to something profoundly true and moving. It isn’t possible to retell these pictures; but that is the only way, until they are collected and published, that I can give the impression of Herriman’s gentle irony, of his understanding of tragedy, of the sancta simplicitas, the innocent loveliness in the heart of a creature more like Pan than any other creation of our time.

Given the general theme, the variations are innumerable, the ingenuity never flags. I use haphazard examples from 1918 to 1923, for though the Kat has changed somewhat since the days when he was even occasionally feline, the essence is the same. Like Charlot, he was always living in a world of his own, and subjecting the commonplaces of actual life to the test of his higher logic. Does Ignatz say that “the bird is on the wing,” Krazy suspects an error and after a careful scrutiny of bird life says that “from rissint obserwation I should say that the wing is on the bird.” Or Ignatz observes that Don Kiyote is still running. Wrong, says the magnificent Kat: “he is either still or either running, but not both still and both running.” Ignatz passes with a bag containing, he says, bird-seed. “Not that I doubt your word, Ignatz,” says Krazy, “but could I give a look!” And he is astonished to find that it is bird-seed, after all, for he had all the time been thinking that birds grew from eggs. It is Ignatz who is impressed by a falling star; for Krazy “them that don’t fall” are the miracle. I recommend Krazy to Mr Chesterton, who, in his best moments, will understand. His mind is occupied with eternal oddities, with simple things to which his nature leaves him unreconciled. See him entering a bank and loftily writing a check for thirty million dollars. “You haven’t that much money in the bank,” says the cashier. “I know it,” replies Krazy; “have you?” There is a drastic simplicity about Krazy’s movements; he is childlike, regarding with grave eyes the efforts of older people to be solemn, to pretend that things are what they seem; and like children he frightens us because none of our pretensions escapes him. A king to him is a “royal cootie.” “Golla,” says he, “I always had a ida they was grend, and megnifishint, and wondafil, and mejestic . . . but my goodniss! It ain’t so.”’ He should be given to the enfant terrible of Hans Andersen who knew the truth about kings.

He is, of course, blinded by love. Wandering alone in springtime, he suffers the sight of all things pairing off; the solitude of a lonesome pine worries him and when he finds a second lonesome pine he comes in the dead of night and transplants one to the side of the other, "so that in due course, Nature has her way." But there are moments when the fierce pang of an unrequited passion dies down. "In these blissfil hours my soul will know no strife," he confides to Mr Bum Bill Bee, who, while the conversation goes on, catches sight of Ignatz with a brick, flies off, stings Ignatz from the field, and returns to hear: "In my Kosmis there will be no feeva of discord . . . all my immotions will function in hominy and kind feelings." Or we see him at peace with Ignatz himself. He has bought a pair of spectacles, and seeing that Ignatz has none, cuts them in two, so that each may have a monocle. He is gentle, and gentlemanly, and dear; and these divagations of his are among his loveliest moments; for when irony plays about him he is as helpless-as we are.