Can I Have Some More, Please?

That's Thomas More, some of whose work we will be discussing in a class this week. And in case I hadn't suckled full on the teat of More's wisdom (that metaphor failed worse than the time I described a co-workers commitment to finishing a job to a cancer that won't stop till it kills you), Ms. A kindly passed along some of the saint's epigrams. My radar was on high thanks to Kafka, and my attention was swiftly rewarded.

That the Tyrant While He Sleeps Is No Different from the Commoner (#114)

Well then, you madman, it is pride which makes you carry your head so high—because the throng bows to you on bended knee, because the people rise and uncover for you, because you have in your power the life and death of many. But whenever sleep secures your body in inactivity, then, tell me, where is this glory of yours? Then you lie, useless creature, like a lifeless log or like a recent corpse. But if you were not lying protected, like a coward, unseen indoors, your own life would be at the disposal of any man.

Ahem. Indeed. A lifeless log, your More-ness? That's how the commoner sleeps, eh? Like a recent corpse. Well, I've got news for you, bub. If my style of sleep (thrashing, screaming, conversing, sleepwalking) was how a recent corpse behaved, then Annabel Lee would have been an even more disturbing poem than it is.

As it is, Tom, I respect you and the great play you're the star of. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater, dude. If the tyrant sleeps like a commoner, and the tyrant also sleeps like a slab of pre-processed bologna, then the commoner ends up getting the same shaft. So, let's just say the tyrant sleeps like a man with boils on his soul (whereas the commoner probably just has them on his body).