One of the rats of the laboratory Ratner one day didnt eat and began to show symptoms of an unknown disease. It sprang like crazy over the other rats, bit its keepers and rolled up its tail forming baroque figures. One week later, it showed signs of weakness and one of the assistants took it out of the cage to examine it. It seemed to sleep. He put it on his desk and, first with surprise and later with amazement, he saw it straighten up on its two hind legs, folding the forelegs and saying these unexpected words: “Vanity of vanities. All is vanity.” Speechless, he hurried to look for his colleagues who witnessed the rat performing its scene again. Willard, the laboratory’s director appeared very soon, attracted by the din of his employees. Nobody could explain the happened, in spite of the nature of the experiments with medicaments which were given to the animal. At once, a brilliant scholar brought the solution of the mystery. A paperback-edition of “ Eclesiastés” with its middle pages devoured. The plan of the experiment, following instructions of the director’s board, was changed immediately. Ratner’s rat was separated from its fellows and put into a spacious cage of glass with an extra ration of food and water. Every day, without following any strict criteria, the laboratory’s members gave the rat different books to obtain a similar result. The chaos of the books feeded to the rat made it often impossible to understand where the exact quote was from, which the rat proclaimed one after another time straightened up on its hind legs in front of its nonplussed scientific audience looking at it like at a fair attraction. “Remind the essential, the door is open, now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. Of earth, of smoke, of dust, of shadow, of nothing.”
The quotes of the metaphysical rat were followed by each other incessantly, as if they would have begun to dominate it, distinguishing it of its mephitic ancestors, while the books were accumulating around the cage awaiting their turn to be offered the greedy appetite of the rat.

“In the beginning, there was the word. In reality, we are only shadows. Incipit parodia”. Impatiently, the laboratory’s members were only waiting for the miracle promised from above, that would form the end and goal of the experience. In the background, they admired in the philosophical rat what they were unable to admire in themselves. The moment in which the animal would begin to speak its own words. The transcendental moment in which the rat would express the authentic amazement of being a rat and the revolutionary perspective of the rat on the speaking animals making it subject to these tortures.

With this objective, they increased the ration of lecture every hour that passed, desiring to complete an experiment they were beginning to be tired of and that the rat wanted to prolong because of the excellent living conditions it was conquering thanks to its unusual talent.

One day, though, the brilliant rodent straightened on its hind legs, curled the tail and kept silent. A creepy and sad silence. Another day it immediately vomited after having eaten the first page of “Josephine, the singer”. Later it repeated the same phrase (The me is an illusion. The people don’t exist. God neither.”) again and again, without altering its emphatic diction. Like drunken, it mixed and garbled the texts, apparently without any sense, following Willard, the laboratory’s director. “We see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Picnic, lightning. Lycaeides sublivens Nabokov”
Finally, after various failed and absurd foolhardy attempts to force its eloquence, it didn’t even want to leave its cage. It stopped eating and refused the books. It was sleeping all the time. As speculation about its unnatural behaviour, someone – maybe the hazy scholar –pointed at the rotten rests of a German edition of “Letter of Lord Chandos” hidden behind other works gnawed at random. Seeing it defeated and emaciated, other ambitious rats already began to run for substituting it in the luxury cage. Discouraged by its silence and passivity, the scientists stopped serving it books and food. Later they cut it the water. Shortly after this, Ratner’s rat died of weakness without having spoken again.

It wasn’t the first, as it was known later, but also not the last one. In some artists (Aaron Lloyd is one of the most brilliant ones) there is surviving the secret desire to have the rats transmitting their gaunt view of the human existence to them. As this hasn’t happened until now, they confine themselves to adopt, raising the tail and snarling, the point of view or the development of the rat.

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