The Drunk of Legend

Junior year in high school, first week of English class.

He tells us to underline items of interest as we read a short story, "Drunk of Legend," or something to that extent.

It is the account of the artist as a young man, scrounging a living in squalor by his pen, interminably interrupted by the ruckus downstairs where a habitual loafer sits by the bar, demands more alcohol, and goes about his day in a contented, placid sort of way unless someone interrupts him - at which moment he erupts in a magnificent show of slurred emotion.

It is this sort of interruption that bothers the young man, not only because it irrevocably interrupts his only source of income, genius, but more than that, he has this nagging feeling that he cannot fault the drunkard. The man is, after all, only pursuing his passion - just like the artist. Can he, he wonders, dictate what passions are worthy and which are not, especially given his current situation?

And he finds that he respects the man.

Sitting on the front row with a few timid strokes across my copy, I found myself in complete awe. You see, I saw myself in that story, raucous and discomforting though it was. I understood clearly the position of the young man and the other tenants - their irritation and impatience with the man.

And yet, more clearly, I understood the drunk. There he sat, ritual in hand, and people felt the necessity to bother him - to preach, to sush, to parry... alas, the world must be peopled. It was his passion and his world, and it consumed him.

And no one understood.

Funny, isn't it?


*Drunk of Legend is a short story by Ralph Ellison