By Lida Prypchan
It did not seem that he was so. He was so agreeable, so nice. He knew how to win people over … but in what a way. He was a flatterer. He despised himself because he did not feel capable of achieving things through his aptitudes, with his work and effort. He was very well connected. He was an attorney and had finished his degree although with a bit of delay because he was a very bad student, through a simple request made to a family member. He belonged to those wealthy families who wanted a doctor of some sort at home to boast about to their society friends. As soon as he graduated, he began to introduce himself as “Dooooooooctor.”
His manner of speech was exaggerated, almost vulgar. He accented each syllable slowly and glamorously. He was glamorous. A conceited person who, as any good conceited person, needed to be very likable, almost a clown, in order to feed the lethargic belly of his ego. However, given that he had no great ideas and the few he had were plagiarized from philosophers and psychologists, he was forced to be a show off. At the moment of truth, when a specific issue was raised with him, he would beat around the bush with fear in order to not express an opinion because he did not have one to express. And it seems absurd that while wanting to talk about his flattery, which was one of his characteristics, I talk to you about other issues such as vanity. In reality, in truth, the essence of his character was being a flatterer, certainly very elegant, but many other things accompanied this essence. In nature there is always a multitude of strange things mixed with the essence of the truth. That is why art moves us, precisely because it is unpolluted by real life’s impurities.
He knew the subtleties of flattery to perfection. And I cannot call this art because this would unjustly insult art by mixing it with vileness, typical of weak men, as is flattery. And although it seems a serious contradiction, he was a pedant. Some he flattered to attain, with ease, his goals and, at the same time, so that the fools would get to know him and flatter him. Unfortunately for him, some of those he flattered had noticed how self-serving and lazy he was, and quite logically reacted by turning their backs on him. He could not stand these situations. At those times he chose to avenge the vile humiliation his eyes witnessed, or he appeared as the victim in order to then show his claws and execute his Machiavellian plans. He liked to get hard-working people in order to extract the greatest yield from them and then steal the credit for their effort. He was, in summary, a parasite. And when people distanced themselves from him for these reasons, and he found some interest before him, he rapidly, without much consideration or preamble, began to flatter. Such shamelessness. His image was a lie. He called himself Doctor and boasted of his good sentiments. He said he detested lies and hypocrisy and he, least of everyone, did not have the sufficient morals to admit it because these two were his faithful allies in his relationships. His life was continuous hypocrisy. He gradually lost friends because, after a while, they realized that the worst type of friend is a flatterer. There are those who recognized it from when they met him and said: it is an abject biped that lies to another man whom he despises. It is, as Aristotle said: “All flatterers are mercenaries and all men of mean spirit are flatterers.
It is better to fall into the talons of a vulture than the hands of a flatterer because the former only cause harm to the dead and the latter devour the living.
