Manalive

“Man found alive with two legs” is a telegram sent from one Innocent Smith to an old college friend Arthur Inglewood in G.K. Chesterton’s fiction piece titled Manalive. Innocent Smith is a sane man who has discovered that the key to keeping existence new and exciting is to depart from all that he loves for some period of time inorder to return to it anew. The telegram itself is never specifically explained but might have been the result of having tied up his legs, and after hobbling about on his knees for a day and he is exhilarated at having rediscovered the ability to walk and run and kick once again.

This idea is prevalent in much of Chesterton’s writing from one of his earliest works, Orthodoxy when he speaks of the youthfulness of God, who, like a child playing a game cries, “do it again”, but to the sun to rise again and for the grass to grow again. He creates daisies like a child will draw flower after flower, simple because he enjoys creating them. It is by growing old in sin that we grow tired of these things.

Nearly a year ago I asked a man I was working with at the time if he were going to have any fun that weekend. He replied something along the lines of, with a wife and child he was no longer able to do fun things.  At the time I laughed it off with him, but later as I considered those words I was saddened by them. That is indeed a popular sentiment at least in the current media; television sitcoms especially hold those tenants.

I didn’t get married to no longer have fun. I got married because I wanted someone to share all the fun with (I know there is suffering in marriage, I am not addressing that right now). The tale of Manalive offers something greater. It claims that you can have all the fun. Innocent Smith will break into his own house and steal his own wine. He will elope with his wife, a thousand times and a thousand different ways. He does this because he remains in love with her enough to pursue her time and time again, and pursues her time and time again, in order to remain in love with her. In this way he can do things that look from an outward observer to be the sins of adultery and stealing, but these actions, because it is with his wife and his house, are perfectly innocent.

Deo Gratias