PART I. WRITING A POEM

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THE JOURNAL OF ARTHUR STIRLING

“THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW”

By Upton Sinclair

Revised And Condensed With An Introductory Sketch

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

The matter which is given to the public in this book will speak with a

voice of its own; it is necessary, however, to say a few words in advance

to inform the reader of its history.

The writer of the journal herein contained was not known, I believe,

to more than a dozen people in this huge city in which he lived. I am

quite certain that I and my wife were the only persons he ever called his

friends. I met him shortly after his graduation from college, and for the

past few years I knew, and I alone, of a life of artistic devotion of such

passionate fervor as I expect never to meet with again.

Arthur Stirling was entirely a self-educated man; he had worked at I know

not how many impossible occupations, and labored in the night-time like

the heroes one reads about. He taught himself to read five languages, and

at the time when I saw him last he knew more great poetry by heart than

any man of letters that I have ever met. He was the author of one book,

a tragedy in blank verse, called The Captive; that drama forms the chief

theme of this journal. For the rest, it seems to me enough to quote this

notice, which appeared in the New York Times for June 9, 1902.

STIRLING.--By suicide in the Hudson River, poet and

man of genius, in the 22d year of his age, only son of

Richard T. and Grace Stirling, deceased, of Chicago.

Chicago papers please copy.

Arthur Stirling was in appearance a tall, dark-haired boy--he was really

only a boy--with a singularly beautiful face, and a strange wistful

expression of the eyes that I think will haunt me as long as I live. I made

him, somewhat externally and feebly, I fear, one of the characters in a

recently published novel. That he was a lonely spirit will be plain enough

from his writings; he lived among the poverty-haunted thousands of this

city, without (so he once told me) ever speaking to a living soul for a

week. Pecuniarily I could not help him--for though he was poor, I was

scarcely less so. At the time of his frightful death I had not seen him for

nearly two months--owing to circumstances which were in no way my fault,

but for which I can nevertheless not forgive myself.

The writing of The Captive, as described in these papers, was begun in

April, 1901. I was myself at that time in the midst of a struggle to have

a book published. It was not really published until late in that year--at

which time The Captive was finished and already several times rejected.

It was an understood thing between us that should my book succeed it would

mean freedom for both of us, but that, unfortunately, was not to be.

Early in April of 1902 I had succeeded in laying by provisions enough to

last me while I wrote another book, and I fled away to put up my tent in

the wilderness. The last time that I ever saw Arthur Stirling was in his

room the night before I left. He smiled very bravely and said that he would

keep his courage up, that he was pretty sure he would come out all right.

I did not expect him to write often--I knew that he was too poor for that;

but after six weeks had passed and I had not heard from him at all, I

wrote to a friend to go and see him. It developed that he had moved. The

lodging-house keeper could only say that he had left her his baggage, being

unable to pay his rent; and that he “looked sick.” Where he went she did

not know, and all efforts of mine to find him were of no avail. The only

person that I knew of to ask was a certain young girl, a typewriter, who

had known him for years, and who had worshiped him with a strange and

terrible passion--who would have been his wife, or his slave, if he had not

been as iron in such things, a man so lost in his vision that I suppose he

always thought she was lost in it too. This girl had copied his manuscripts

for years, with the plea that he might pay her when he “succeeded”; and she

has all of his manuscripts now, except what I have, if she is alive. All

that we could learn was that she had “gone away”; I feel pretty certain

that she went in search of him.

In addition, all that I have to tell is that on Monday, June 9th last I

received a large express package from Arthur. It was sent from New York,

but marked as coming from another person--evidently to avoid giving an

address of his own. Upon opening it I found two packages, one of them

carefully sealed and marked upon the outside, The Captive; the other was

the manuscript of this journal, and upon the top of it was the following

letter:

MY DEAR ----: You have no doubt been wondering what has become

of me. I have been having a hard time of it. I wish I could

find some way to make this thing a little easier, but I can

not. When you read this letter I shall be dead. There is

nothing that I can tell you about it that you will not read in

the papers I send you. It is simply that I was born to be an

artist, and that as anything else I can not live. The burden

that has been laid upon me I can not bear another day. I have

told the whole story of it in this book--I have kept myself

alive for months, sick and weeping with agony, in order that I

might tear it out of my heart and get it written. It has been

my last prayer that the struggle my life has been may somehow

not be useless. There will come others after me--others perhaps

keener than I--and oh, the world must not kill them all!

You will take this manuscript, please, and go over it, and cut

out what you like to make it printable, and write a few words

to make people understand about it. And then see if any one

will publish it. You know more about all these things than I

do. If it should sell, keep part of the money for your own

work and give the rest to poor Ellen. As to The Captive--I

all but burned it, as you will read; but keep it, sealed as

I have sealed it, for two years, and then offer it to some

publishers--to others than the nine who have already rejected

it. If you can not find any one to take it, then burn it, or

keep it for love, I do not care which.

I am writing this on Thursday night, and I am almost dead. I

mean to get some money to-morrow, and then to buy a ticket for

as far up the Hudson as I can go. In the evening I mean to find

a steep bank, and, with a heavy dumb-bell I have bought, and

a strong rope, I think I can find the peace that I have been

seeking.

The first thing that I have to say to you about it is, that

when you get this letter it will be over and done, and that I

want you, for God's sake, not to make any fuss. No one will

find my body and no one will care about it. You need not think

it necessary to notify the newspapers--what I'm sending you

here is literature and not journalism. I have no earthly

belongings left except these MSS., upon which you will have to

pay the toll. I have written to M----, a man who once did some

typewriting for me, asking him to use a dollar he owes me in

putting a notice in one of the papers. I suppose I owe that to

the people out West.

I can't write you to-night--before God I can't; my head is going

like a steel-mill, and I'm _so_ sick. You will get over

this somehow, and go on and do your task and win. And if the

memory of my prayer can help you, that will be something. Do

the work of both of us if you can. Only, if you do pull through,

remember my last cry--remember the young artist! There is no

other fight so worth fighting--take it upon you--shout it day

and night at them--what things they do with their young artists!

God bless you, dear friend. Yours, ARTHUR.

The above is the only tidings of him, excepting the extended accounts of

his death which appeared in the New York Times and the New York World for

June 10 and 11, 1902, and several letters which he wrote to other people.

There remains only to say a few words as to the journal.

It is scrawled upon old note-books and loose sheets of paper. The matter,

although a diary, contains odd bits of his writings--one of two letters

to me which he had me send back, and some extracts from an essay which

a friend of mine was offering at that time to magazines in the hope of

placing it for him. There is a problem about the work which I leave

to others to solve--how much of it was written as dated, and how much

afterward, as a piece of art, as a testament of his sorrow. Parts of it

have struck me as having been composed in the latter way, and the last

pages, of course, imply as much.

Extraordinary pages they are to me. That a man who was about to take his

life should have written them is one of the strangest cases of artistic

absorption I know of in literature. But Arthur Stirling was a man lost in

his art just so--so full of it, so drunk with it, that nothing in life had

other meaning to him. To quote the words he loved, from the last of his

heroes, he longed for excellence “as the lion longs for his food.”

So he lived and so he worked; the world had no use for his work, and so he

died.

S.

NEW YORK, _November 15, 1902_.

READER:

I do not know if “The Valley of the Shadow” means to you what it means to

me; I do not know if it means anything at all to you. But I have sought

long and far for these words, to utter an all but unutterable thought.

When you walk in the forest you do not count the lives that you tread into

nothingness. When you rejoice with the springtime you do not hear the cries

of the young things that are choked and beaten down and dying. When you

watch the wild thing in your snare you do not know the meaning of the torn

limbs, and the throbbing heart, and the awful silence of the creature

trapped. When you go where the poor live, and see thin faces and hungry

eyes and crouching limbs, you do not think of these things either.

But I, reader--I dwell in the Valley of the Shadow.

Sometimes it is silent in my Valley, and the creatures sit in terror of

their own voices; sometimes there are screams that pierce the sky; but

there is never any answer in my Valley. There are quivering hands there,

and racked limbs, and aching hearts, and panting souls. There is gasping

struggle, glaring failure--maniac despair. For over my Valley rolls _The

Shadow_, a giant thing, moving with the weight of mountains. And you

stare at it, you feel it; you scream, you pray, you weep; you hold up your

hands to your God, you grow mad; but the Shadow moves like Time, like the

sun, and the planets in the sky. It rolls over you, and it rolls on; and

then you cry out no more.

It is that way in my Valley. The Shadow is the Shadow of Death.

CONTENTS

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

THE AUTHOR TO THE READER

PART I. WRITING A POEM

II. SEEKING A PUBLISHER

III. THE END

PART I. WRITING A POEM

The book! The book! This day, Saturday, the sixth day of April, 1901, I

begin the book!

I have never kept a journal--I have been too busy living; but to-day I

begin a journal. I am so built that I can do but one thing at a time. Now

that I have begun The Captive, I must be haunted with it all day; when I

am not writing it I must be dreaming it, or restless because I am not.

Therefore it occurred to me that in the hours of weariness I would write

about it what was in my mind--what fears and what hopes; why and how I

write it will be a story in itself, and some day I think it will be read.

* * * * *

I have come to the last stage of the fight, and I see the goal. I will tell

the story, and by and by wise editors can print it in the Appendix!

Yesterday I was a cable-car conductor, and to-day I am a poet!

I know of some immortal poems that were written by a druggist's clerk, and

some by a gager of liquid barrels, but none by a cable-car conductor. “It

sounds interesting, tell us about it!” says the reader. I shall, but not

to-day.

To-day I begin the book!

* * * * *

I did not write that on April 6th, I wrote it a month ago--one day when I

was thinking about this. I put it there now, because it will do to begin;

but I had no jests in my heart on April 6th.

* * * * *

April 10th.

I have been for four days in a kind of frenzy. I have come down like a

collapsed balloon, and I think I have had enough for once.

I have written the opening scene, but not finally; and then I got into the

middle--I could not help it. How in God's name I am ever to do this fearful

thing, I don't know; it frightens me, and sometimes I lose all heart.

* * * * *

I suppose I shall have to begin again tonight. I must eat something first,

though. That is one of my handicaps: I wear myself out and have to stop and

eat. Will anybody ever love me for this work, will anybody ever understand

it?

I suppose I can get back where I was yesterday, but always it grows harder,

and more stern. I set my teeth together.

* * * * *

It was like the bursting of an overstrained dam, these last four days. How

long I have been pent up--eighteen months! And eighteen months seems like a

lifetime to me. I have been a bloodhound in the leash, hungering--hungering

for this thing, and the longing has piled up in me day by day. Sometimes it

has been more than I could bear; and when the time was near, I was so wild

that I was sick. The book! The book! Freedom and the book!

And last Saturday I went out of the hell-house where I have been pent so

long, and I covered my face with my hands and fled away home--away to the

little corner that is mine. There I flung myself down and sobbed like a

child. It was relief--it was joy--it was fear! It was everything! The

book! The book! Then I got up--and the world seemed to go behind me, and

I was drunk. I heard a voice calling--it thundered in my ears--that I was

free--that my hour was come--that I might live--that I might live--live!

And I could have shouted it--I know that I laughed it aloud. Every time I

thought the thought it was like the throbbing of wings to me--“Free! Free!”

No one can understand this--no one who has not a demon in his soul. No one

who does not know how I have been choked--what horrors I have borne.

I am through with that--I did not think of that. I am free! They will never

have me back.

That motive alone would drive me to my work, would make me dare _anything_.

But I do not need that motive.

* * * * *

I think only of the book. I thought of it last Saturday, and it swept me

away out of myself. I had planned the opening scene; but then the thought

of the triumph-song took hold of me, and it drove me mad. That song was

what I had thought I could never do--I had never dared to think of it.

And it came to me--it came! Wild, incoherent, overwhelming, it came, the

victorious hymn. I could not think of remembering it; it was not poetry--it

was reality. _I_ was the Captive, _I_ had won freedom--a faith and a

vision!

So it throbbed on and on, and I was choked, and my head on fire, and my

hands tingling, until I sank down from sheer exhaustion--laughing and

sobbing, and talking to God as if He were in the room. I never really

believe in God except at such times; I can go through this dreadful world

for months, and never think if there be a God.--Here I sit gossiping about

it.--But I am tired out.

* * * * *

The writing of a book is like the bearing of a child. But every birth-pang

of the former lasts for hours; and it is months before the labor is done.

It is not merely the vision, the hour of exultation; that is but the

setting of the task. Now you will take that ecstasy, and hold on to it,

hold on with soul and body; you will keep yourself at that height, you

will hold that flaming glory before your eyes, and you will hammer it

into words. Yes, that is the terror--into words--into words that leap the

hilltops, that bring the ends of existence together in a lightning flash.

You will take them as they come, white-hot, in wild tumult, and you will

forge them, and force them. You will seize them in your naked hands and

wrestle with them, and bend them to your will--all that is the making of

a poem. And last and worst of all, you will hold them in your memory, the

long, long surge of them; the torrent of whirling thought--you will hold it

in your memory! You are dazed with excitement, exhausted with your toil,

trembling with pain; but you have built a tower out of cards, and you have

mounted to the clouds upon it, and there you are poised. And anything

that happens--anything!--Ah, God, why can the poet not escape from his

senses?--a sound, a touch--and it is gone!

These things drive you mad.--

But meanwhile it is not gone yet. You have still a whole scene in your

consciousness--as if you were a juggler, tossing a score of golden balls.

And all the time, while you work, you learn it--you learn it! It is

endless, but you learn it. In the midst of it, perhaps, you come down of

sheer exhaustion; and you lie there, panting, shuddering, your hands moist;

you dare not think, you wait. And then by and by you begin again--if

it will not come, you _make_ it come, you lash yourself like a dumb

beast--up, up, to the mountain-tops again. And then once more the thing

comes back--you live the scene again, as an actor does, and you shape it

and you master it. And now in the midst of it, you find this highest of all

moments is gone! It is gone, and you can not find it! Those words that came

as a trumpet-clash, burning your very flesh--that melody that melted your

whole being to tears--they are gone--you can not find them! You search and

you search--but you can not find them. And so you stumble on, in despair

and agony; and still you dare not rest. You dare not ever rest in this

until the thing is done--done and over--until you have _nailed_ it

fast. So you go back again, though perhaps you are so tired that you are

fainting; but you fight yourself like a madman, you struggle until you feel

a thing at your heart like a wild beast; and you keep on, you hold it fast

and learn it, clinch it tight, and make it yours forever. I have done that

same thing five times to-day without a rest; and toiled for five hours in

that frenzy; and then lain down upon the ground, with my head on fire.

Afterward when you have recovered you sit down, and for two or three hours

you write; you have it whole in your memory now--you have but to put it

down. And this forlorn, wet, bedraggled thing--this miserable, stammering,

cringing thing--_this_ is your poem!

* * * * *

Some day the world will realize these things, and then they will present

their poor poets with diamonds and palaces, and other things that do not

help.

I wrote this, and then I leaned back, tired out. My thoughts turned to

Shakespeare, and while I was thinking of him--

But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,

Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill!

* * * * *

April 11th.

I have not done much to-day. I spent the morning brooding over the opening

speech. It is somber and terrible, but I have not gotten it right. It

must have a tread--a tread like an orchestra! Ah, how I wish I had an

orchestra!--I would soon do it then--_“So bist nun ewig du verdammt!”_

The secret of the thing is iteration. I must find a word that is like a

hammer-stroke. I have tried twenty, but I have not found the one.

* * * * *

--I spent the rest of the day thinking over the whole first act, mapping it

out, so to speak.

I have often fancied a resemblance between The Captive and the C-minor

symphony; I wonder if any one else would have thought of it. It is not

merely the opening--it is the whole content of the thing--the struggle of a

prisoned spirit. I would call The Captive a symphony, and print the C-minor

themes in it, only it would seem fanciful.--But it would not really be

fanciful to put the second theme opposite the thought of freedom--of the

blue sky and the dawning spring.

All except the scherzo. I couldn't find room for the scherzo. Men who have

wrestled with the demons of hell do not tumble around like elephants, no

matter how happy they are. I wish I could take out Beethoven's scherzos!

My heart leaps when I think of my one big step. I have put those pages

away--I shall not look at them again for a month. Then I can judge them.

* * * * *

April 13th.

A cable-car conductor and a poet! I think that will be a story worth

telling.

I have tried many and various occupations, but I have not found one so

favorable to the study of poetry as my last. I should have made out very

well--if I had not been haunted by The Captive.

With everything else you do you are more or less hampered by having to sell

your brain; and also by having to obey some one. But a cable-car is an

unlimited monarchy; and all you have to do is to collect fares and pull

the bell, both of which duties are quite mechanical. And besides that you

receive princely wages--and can live off one-third of them, if you know

how; and that means that you need only work one-third of the time, and can

write your poetry the rest of it!

This sounds like jesting, but it is not. I have only been a cable-car

conductor six months, but in that time I have taught myself to read Greek

with more than fluency. All you need is good health and spirits, a will of

iron, and a very tiny note-book in the palm of your hand, full of the words

you wish to learn. And then for ten or twelve hours a day you go about

running a car with your body--and with your mind--hammering, hammering!

It is excellent discipline--it is fighting all day, “_Pous, podos_,

the foot--_pous, podos_, the foot--34th Street, Crosstown East and

West--_pous, podos_, the foot!”

And then when you get home late at night, are there not the great masters

who love you?

* * * * *

April 15th.

Thou wouldst call thyself Artist; thou wouldst have the Eternal Presence to

dwell within thee, to fire thy heart with passion and dower thy lips with

song; canst thou go into thy closet, and alone with thy Maker, say these

words:

“O Thou Unthinkable, source of all light and life, Thou the great unselfish

One, the great Sufferer; Thou seest my heart this day, how in it dwells but

love of Thy truth and worship of Thy holiness. Thou seest that I seek not

wealth that men should serve me, nor fame that they should honor me, for

the glory that is Thine. Thou seest that I bring all my praise to Thy feet,

that I love all things that Thou hast made, that I envy no man Thy gifts,

that I rejoice when Thou sendest one stronger than I into the battle. And

when these things are not, may Thy power leave me; for I seek but to dwell

in Thy presence, and to speak Thy truth, which can not die.”

* * * * *

That prayer welled up in my heart to-day. There are times when I sit before

this thing in my soul, crouching and gazing at it in fear. Then I see

the naked horror of it, the shuddering reality of it. I see the Soul:

motionless, tense, quivering, wrestling in an agony with the powers of

destruction. It is so real to me that my body stiffens into stone, and I

sit with the sweat on my forehead. That happened to me to-day, and I wrote

a few lines of the poem that made my voice break--the passionate despairing

cry for deliverance, for rest from the terror.

But there is no rest. The mountain slope is so that there is no standing

upon it, and once you stop, it breaks your heart to begin again. And so you

go on--up--up--and there is not any summit.

It is that way when you write a book; and that way when you make a

symphony; and that way when you wage a war.

* * * * *

But my soul hungered for it. I have loved the great elemental

art-works--the art-works that were born of pure suffering. For months

before I began The Captive I read but three books--read them and brooded

over them, all day and all night. They were Prometheus Bound, Prometheus

Unbound, and Samson Agonistes.

You sit with these books, and time and space “to nothingness do sink.”

There looms up before you--like a bare mountain in its majesty--the great

elemental world-fact, the death-grapple of the will with circumstance.

You may build yourself any philosophy or any creed you please, but you

will never get away from the world-fact--the death-grapple of the soul

with circumstance. Æschylus has one creed, and Milton has another,

and Shelley has a third; but always it is the death-grapple. Chaos,

evil--circumstance--lies about you, binds you; and you grip it--you close

with it--all your days you toil with it, you shape it into systems, you

make it live and laugh and sing. And while you do that, there is in your

heart a thing that is joy and pain and terror mingled in one passion.

Who knows that passion? Who knows--

“With travail and heavy sorrow

The holy spirit of Man.”

Prometheus Bound, Prometheus Unbound, and Samson Agonistes! And now there

will be a fourth. It will be The Captive.

Am I a fool? I do not know--that is none of my business. It is my business

to do my best.

* * * * *

Horace bids you, if you would make him weep, to weep first yourself. I

understand by the writing of a poem just this: that the problem you put

there you discover for yourself; that the form you put it in you invent

for yourself; and, finally, that what you make it, from the first word to

the last word, from the lowest moment to the highest moment, you _live_;

that when a character in such a place acts thus, he acts thus because you,

in that place--not would have acted thus, but _did_ act thus; that the

words which are spoken in that moment of emotion are spoken because you,

in that moment of emotion--not would have spoken them, but _did_ speak

them. I propose that you search out the scenes that have stirred the hearts

of men in all times, and see if you can find one that was written thus--not

because the author had lived it thus, but because somebody else had lived

it thus, or because he wanted people to think he had lived it thus.

And now you are writing The Captive. You do not go into the dungeon in the

body, because you need all your strength; but in the spirit you have gone

into the dungeon, and the door has clanged, and it is black night--the

world is gone forever. And there you sit, while the years roll by, and

you front the naked fact. Six feet square of stone and an iron chain are

your portion--that is circumstance; and the will--_you_ are the will. And

you grip it--you close with it--all your days you toil with it; you shape

it into systems, make it live and laugh and sing. And while you do that

there is in your heart a thing that is joy and pain and terror mingled in

one passion.

* * * * *

Yes, sometimes I shrink from it; but I will do it--meaning what those words

mean. I will fight that fight, I will live that life--to the last gasp; and

it shall go forth into the world a living thing, a new well-spring of life.

It shall be--I don't know what you call the thing, but when you have hauled

your load halfway up the hill you put a block in the way to keep it from

sliding back. That same thing has to be done to society.

Man will never get behind the Declaration of Independence again, nor behind

the writings of Voltaire again. We let Catholicism run around loose now,

but that is because Voltaire cut its claws and pulled out all its teeth.

* * * * *

April 16th.

I was thinking to-day, that The Captive would be an interesting document

to students of style. Read it, and make up your mind about it; then I will

tell you--the first line of it is almost the first line of blank verse I

ever wrote in my life.

I have read about the French artists, the great masters of style, and

how they give ten years of their lives to writing things that are never

published. But I have noticed that when they are masters at last, and when

they do begin to publish--they very seldom have anything to say that I care

in the least to hear.

--My soul is centered upon _the thing_!

Let it be a test.

* * * * *

I am trying to be an artist; but I have never been able to study style. I

believe that the style of this great writer came from what he had to say.

You think about how he said it; but he thought about what he was saying.

It seemed strange to me when I thought of it. With all my trembling

eagerness, with all my preparation, such an idea as “practise” never came

to me. How could I cut the path until I had come to the forest?

All my soul has been centered upon _living_. Since this book first took

hold of me--eighteen months ago--I could not tell with what terrible

intensity I have lived it. They said to me, “You are a poet; why don't you

write verses for the magazines?” But I was not a writer of verses for the

magazines.

It has been a shrine that I have kept in the corner of my heart, and tended

there. I have never gone near it, except upon my knees. There were days

when I did not go near it at all, when I was weak, or distraught. But I

knew that every day I was closer to the task, that every day my heart was

more full of it. It was like wild music--it came to a climax that swept me

away in spite of myself.

To get the mastery of your soul, to hold it here, in your hands, at your

bidding, to consecrate your life to that, to watch and pray and toil for

that, to rouse yourself and goad yourself day and night for that; to

thrill with the memory of great consecrations, of heroic sufferings and

aspirations; to have the power of the stars in your heart, of nature, of

history and the soul of man; _that_ is your “practise.”

* * * * *

April 17th.

It is true that my whole life has been a practise for the writing of

this book, that this book is the climax of my whole life. I have

toiled--learned--built up a mind--found a conviction; but I have never

written anything, or tried to write anything, to be published. I have said,

“Wait; it is not time.” And now it _is_ time. If there is anything of

use in all that I have done, it is in this book.

Yes; and also it is a climax in another way. It is my goal and my

salvation.--Ah, how I have toiled for it!

* * * * *

April 19th.

I saw my soul to-day. It was a bubble, blown large, palpitating, whirling

over a stormy sea; glorious with the rainbow hues it was, but perilous,

abandoned.--Do you catch the _feeling_ of my soul?

Something perilous--I do not much care what. A traveler scaling the

mountains, leaping upon dizzy heights; a gambler staking his fortune, his

freedom, his life--upon a cast!

I will tell you about it.

It began when I was fifteen. My great-uncle, my guardian, is a wholesale

grocer in Chicago; he has a large palace and a large waistcoat.

“Will you be a wholesale grocer?” said he.

“No,” said I, “I will not.”

I might have been a partner by this time, had I said Yes, and had a palace

and a large waistcoat too.

“Then what will you be?” asked the great-uncle.

“I will be a poet,” said I.

“You mean you will be a loafer?” said he.

“Yes,” said I--disliking argument--“I will be a loafer.”

And so I went away, and while I went I was thinking, far down in my soul.

And I said: “It must be everything or nothing; either I am a poet or I am

not. I will act as if I were; I will burn my bridges behind me. If I am, I

will win--for you can not kill a poet; and if I am not, I will die.”

Thus is it perilous.

I fight the fight with all my soul; I give every ounce of my strength, my

will, my hope, to the making of myself a poet. And when the time comes I

write my poem. Then if I win, I win empires; and if I lose--

“You put all your eggs into one basket,” some one once said to me.

“Yes,” I replied, “I put all my eggs into one basket--and then I carry the

basket myself.”

Now I have come to the last stage of the journey--the “one fight more, and

the last.” And can I give any idea of what is back of me, to nerve me to

that fight? I will try to tell you.

For seven years I have borne poverty and meanness, sickness, heat,

cold, toil--that I might make myself an artist. The indignities, the

degradations--I could not tell them, if I spent all the time I have in

writing a journal. I have lived in garrets--among dirty people--vulgar

people--vile people; I have worn rags and unclean things; I have lived upon

bread and water and things that I have cooked myself; I have seen my time

and my strength wasted by a thousand hateful impertinences--I have been

driven half mad with pain and rage; I have gone without friends--I have

been hated by every one; I have worked at all kinds of vile drudgery--or

starved myself sick that I might avoid working.

But I have said, “I will be an artist!”

Day and night I have dreamed it; day and night I have fought for it. I have

plotted and planned--I have plotted to save a minute. I have done menial

work that I might have my brain free--all the languages that I know I have

worked at at such times. I have calculated the cost of foods--I have lived

on a third of the pittance I earned, that I might save two-thirds of my

time. I once washed dishes in a filthy restaurant because that took only

two or three hours a day.

I have said, “I will be an artist! I will fix my eyes upon the goal; I

will watch and wait, and fight the fight day by day. And when at last I am

strong, and when my message is ripe, I will earn myself a free chance, and

then I will write a book. All the yearning, all the agony of this my life

I will put into it; every hour of trial, every burst of rage. I will make

it the hope of my life, I will write it with my blood--give every ounce of

strength that I have and every dollar that I own; and I will win--I will

win!

“So I will be free, and the horror will be over.”

I have done that--I am doing that now. I mean to finish it if it kills

me.--

But I was sitting on the edge of the bed to-night, and the tears came into

my eyes and I whispered: “But oh, you must not ask me to do anymore! I can

not do any more! It will leave me broken!”

Only so much weight can a man carry. The next pound breaks his back.

* * * * *

April 22d.

I am happy to-night; I am a little bit drunk.

To-day was one day in fifty. Why should it be? Sometimes I have but to

spread my wings to the wind. Yesterday I might have torn my hair out, and

that glory would not have come to me. But to-day I was filled with it--it

lived in me and burned in me--I had but to go on and go on.

The Captive! It was the burst of rage--the first glow in the ashes of

despair. I was walking up and down the room for an hour, thundering it to

myself. I have not gotten over the joy of it yet: _“Thou in thy mailèd

insolence!”_

I wonder if any one who reads those thirty lines will realize that they

meant eight hours of furious toil on my part!

* * * * *

Stone by stone I build it.

The whole possibility of a scene--that is what I pant for, always; that

it should be all there, and yet not a line to spare; compact, solid,

each phrase coming like a blow; and above all else, that it should be

inevitable! When you stand upon the height of your being, and behold the

thing with all your faculties--the thing and the phrase are one, and one to

all eternity.

* * * * *

April 24th.

I was looking at a literary journal to-day. Oh, my soul, it frightens me!

All these libraries of books--who reads them, what are they for? And each

one of them a hope! And I am to leap over them all--I--I? I dare not think

about it.

I have been helpless to-day. I can not find what I want--I struggled for

hours, I wore myself out with struggling. And I have torn up what I wrote.

Blank verse is such a--such a thing not to be spoken of! Is there anything

worse, except it be a sonnet? How many miles of it are ground out every

day--sometimes that kind comes to me to mock me--I could have written a

whole poem full of it this afternoon. If there are two lines of that sort

in The Captive, I'll burn it all.

An awful doubt came to me besides. Somebody had sown it long ago, and it

sprouted to-day. “Yes, but will it be _interesting_?”

Heaven help me, how am I to know if it will be interesting? The question

made me shudder; I have never thought anything about making it

interesting--I've been trying to make it true. Can it possibly be that the

ecstasy of one soul, the reality of one soul, the quivering, exulting life

of it--will not interest any other soul?

“How can you know that what you are doing is real, anyhow?” The devil would

plague me to death to-day. “But how many millions write poems and think

they are wonderful!”

--I do not believe in my soul to-day, because I have none.

* * * * *

April 25th.

Would you like to know where I am, and how I am doing all these things?

I am in a lodging-house. I have one of three hall rooms in a kind of top

half-story. There is room for me to take four steps; so it is that I “walk

up and down” when I am excited. I have tried--I have not kept count of

how many places--and this is the quietest. The landlady's husband has a

carpenter shop down-stairs, but he is always drunk and doesn't work; it has

also been providentially arranged that the daughter, who sings, is sick for

some time. Next door to me there is a man who plays the 'cello in a dance

hall until I know not what hour of the night. He keeps his 'cello at the

dance hall. Next to him is a pale woman who sits and sews all day and

waits for her drunken husband to come home. In front there is some kind of

foolish girl who leaves her door open in the hope that I'll look in at her,

and a couple of inoffensive people not worth describing.

I get up--I never know the time in the morning; and sometimes I lie without

moving for hours--thinking--thinking. Or sometimes I go out and roam around

the streets; or sit perfectly motionless, gazing at the wall. When it will

not come, I make it. I breakfast on bread and milk, and I eat bread and

milk at all hours of the day when I am hungry. For dinner I cook a piece of

meat on a little oil-stove, and for supper I eat bread and milk. The rest

of the time I am sitting on the floor by the window, writing; or perhaps

kneeling by the bed with my head buried in my arms, and thinking until the

room reels. When I am not doing that I wander around like a lost soul; I

can not think of anything else.--Sometimes when I am tired and must rest, I

force myself to sit down and write some of this.

I have just forty dollars now. It costs me three dollars a week, not

including paper and typewriting. Thus I have ten or twelve weeks in which

to finish The Captive--that many and no more.

If I am not finished by that time it will kill me; to try to work and earn

money in the state that I am in just at present would turn me into a

maniac--I should kill some one, I know.

I am quivering with nervous tension--every faculty strained to breaking;

the buzz of a fly is a roar to me. I build up these towering castles of

emotion in my soul, castles that shimmer in the sunlight:

Banners yellow, glorious, golden!

And then something happens, and they fall upon me with the weight of

mountains.

* * * * *

Ten weeks! And yet it is not that which goads me most.

What goads me most is that I am a captive in a dungeon, and am fighting for

the life of my soul.

I shall win, I do not fear--the fountains of my being will not fail me. I

saw my soul a second time to-day; it was no longer the bubble, blown large,

palpitating. It was a bird resting upon a bough. The bough was tossed and

flung about by a tempest; and a chasm yawned below; but the bough held, and

the bird was master of its wings, and sang.

The name of the bough was Faith.

* * * * *

April 27th.

I have read a great deal of historical romance, and a great deal of local

color fiction, and a great deal of original character-drawing--and I have

wished to get away from these things.

There is no local color, and no character-drawing, in The Captive. You do

not know the name of the hero; you do not know how old he is, or of what

rank he is, at what period or in what land he lives. He is described but

once. He is “A Man.”

My philosophy is a philosophy of will. All virtue that I know is

conditioned upon freedom. The object of all thinking and doing, as I see

it, is to set men free.

There is the tyranny of kings--the tyranny of force; there is the tyranny

of priests--the tyranny of ignorance; there is the tyranny of society--the

tyranny of selfishness and indolence; and above all, and including all, and

causing all--there is the tyranny of self--the tyranny of sin, the tyranny

of the body. So it is that I see the world.

So it is that I see history; I can see nothing else in history. The tyranny

of kings and nobles, the tyranny of the mass and the inquisition, the

tyranny of battle and murder and crime--how was a man to live in those

ages?

How is a man to live in _this_ age? The tyranny of kings and of

priests is gone, and from the tyranny of industrialism the individual can

escape. But the lightning--is not that an inquisition? And if it comes

after you, will it not find out all your secrets? And the tyranny of

hurricane and shipwreck, of accident, disease, and death? Any tyranny is

all tyranny, I say; and the existence of tyranny is its presence.

It is conceivable that some day the sovereign mind may shake off its

shackles, and the tyranny of matter be at an end. But that day is not yet;

and meanwhile, the thing existing, how shall a man be free? That has been

the matter of my deepest brooding.

This much I have learned:

The man may accept this life, if it please him, and its chances; but while

he does he can never be a soul. So long as he accepts this life and its

chances, he is the slave of tyranny. When the day comes that mind is

sovereign, I will give myself into the hands of this life. But meanwhile I

will know myself for what I am--a bubble upon the surface of a whirling

torrent, an insect borne aloft upon a flying wheel.

* * * * *

It is by your will that you are free; by your will you are one with the

infinite freedom, by your will you are master of time and your fate, lord

of the stars and the endless ages, thinker of all truth, hearer of all

music, beholder of all beauty, doer of all righteousness. That is the truth

which I have brought out of my deepest brooding.

So long as your happiness is in anything about yourself--your wealth, or

your fame, or your life--you are not free. So long as your happiness is in

houses and lands, in sons and in daughters, you are not free. You give one

atom of your soul to these things at your own peril; for when your hour

comes you tear them from you, though they be as your eyes; and by your

_will_ you save your soul alive.

Therefore I write The Captive. I put aside childish things--I grip my hands

upon naked Reality.

* * * * *

There are nine characters in The Captive: a tyrant, two slaves, six guests,

and a man. There are two scenes--a dungeon, and a banquet-hall.

A tyrant: I understand by a tyrant a man whose happiness is the unhappiness

of others. I read of the discoverers of Mexico, and how they found a

pyramid of human skulls, raised as a monument; that has been to me, ever

since, the type of tyranny. The forms of tyranny vary through the ages, but

the principle is always the same; a tyrant is a man who is made great by

the toil and sorrow of others.

The slave also remains the same through all time; and likewise the guest.

The guest is the man who takes the world as he finds it, and likes a good

dinner. The population of society is made up of tyrants, slaves, and

guests.

The man is a character of my own imagining.

The first scene of The Captive is the dungeon. When I was very young I was

in Europe, and I was in a dungeon; I have never forgotten it. There enter

the tyrant and the two slaves with the man. They chain him to the wall, and

then the tyrant speaks. That first speech--I have written it now--I have

gotten the hammer-thuds! Tyranny is an iron thing--you had to feel the

tread of it, the words had to roll like thunder. It is an advantage to me

that I am full of Wagner; I always hear the music with my poetry. (I shall

be disappointed if some one does not make an opera out of The Captive.)

* * * * *

The man is there, and he is there forever. After that, once a day, bread

and water are shoved in through an opening. But the door of the dungeon

does not open again until the last act--when ten years have passed.

* * * * *

That is all. And now the man will battle with that problem. Will he go mad

with despair? Will he sink into a wild beast? Will he commit suicide? Or

what _will_ he do? Day by day he sinks back from the question, numb with

agony; day by day the grim hand of Fate drags him to it; and so, until from

the chaos of his soul he digs out, blow by blow, a faith.

Here there will be Reality; no shams and no lies will do here--here is iron

necessity, and cries out for iron truth. God--duty--will--virtue--let such

things no more be names, let us see what they _are_!

These are awful words. Sometimes I shrink from this thing as from fire,

sometimes I rush to it with a song; I am writing about it now because I am

worn out, and yet I can not think of anything else.

This man will find the truth; being delivered from the captivity of the

world and set free to be a soul. Superstition blinds him; doubt and despair

and weakness blind him; but still he gropes and strives, cries out and

battles for truth; until at last, shut up in his own being, he tears his

way out to the very source of it, and knows for himself what it is.

_Infinite it is, and unthinkable; glorious, all-consuming, all-sufficing;

food and drink, friendship and love, ambition and victory, joy, power,

and eternity it is to him who finds it; and all things in this world are

nothing to him who finds it._

* * * * *

And so comes the victory to this soul. Hour by hour he catches gleams of

the light; day by day he toils toward it, with fear and agony and prayer;

until at last he knows his salvation--to rest never, and to toil always,

and to dwell in this Presence of his God. In one desperate hour he flings

away the world and the hope of the world, and vows this consecration, and

lives.

* * * * *

He keeps the vow; it is iron necessity that drives him. He finds himself,

he finds his way--each day his step is surer.

Each day the channels of his being deepen. He lays broad plans for his

life--he gathers all knowledge, he solves all problems; lord of the

infinite mind, he ranges all existence, and beholds it as the symbol of

himself. Into the deeps and yawning spaces of it he plunges; blind, he sees

what men have never seen; deaf, he hears what men have never heard--singer

he is, prophet and poet and maker. New worlds leap into being in the

infinite fulness of his heart, visions of endless glory that make his

senses reel; as a column of incense towering to the sky is the ecstasy of

his adoration and his joy.

* * * * *

And so the long years roll by; and the unconquered spirit has left the

earth: left time and space and self, and dwells where never man has dwelt

before. And then one day the door of the dungeon is opened, and his chains

are shattered, and the slaves lead him up to the light of day.

It is the banquet-hall; and there is the tyrant, and there the

guests--there is the world.

* * * * *

He is aged, and weak, and white, and terrible. They stare at him; and he

stares at them, for he is dazed. They begin to mock at him, and then at

last he realizes, and he covers his face and weeps--beholding the world,

and the way that it must come. They jeer at him, they strike him; and when

he answers not, they call to the slaves to torture him.

* * * * *

This man has lived for ten years with _himself_. He is nothing but a

will. And now they will conquer him!

* * * * *

I recall the highest moment of my being. I saw that moment, and all the

others of my life. I saw them as something that I could not bear to see,

and I cried out that from that hour I would change them. I have not kept

the vow; there was no one to drive me.

But this man they drive; they pinch him and burn him and tear him; they

crush his limbs, they break his bones, they grind his flesh, they make his

brain a living fire of anguish. And he fights them.

Into the deep recesses of his being goes the cry--for all that he has--for

all that he is! For every ounce of his strength, for every throb of his

will, for every vision, every truth that he knows! To bear this, to save

him here! And so he wrestles, so he rises, so he gropes and gasps; and in

the moment of his fiercest straining, with the throb of all his being he

bursts the barrier, he rends the veil; and infinite passion rolls in in

floods upon him, he clutches all existence in his arms; and from his lips

there bursts a mad frenzied shout of rapture--that makes his torturers

stand transfixed, listening, trembling with terror.

And so they drag him back to his dungeon; and there, unable to move, he

lies upon the stones and pants out his ecstasy and his life.

That is The Captive.

* * * * *

April 29th.

What counts in this thing is momentum--spiritual momentum. You are filled

with it all the time, it never leaves you; it drives behind you like a gale

of wind; it roars in your ears when you are awake, it rocks you to sleep

when you are weary; whenever you are dull or do not heed it, it nags at

you, it goads you, it beats into your face. Each day it is more, each day

it is harder, more unattainable; but only do not stop, it carries you with

it like a wave; you mount upon each day's achievement to reach the next,

you move with the power of all the days before. It is momentum that counts.

Do not stop!--I cry it all day--Do not stop!

* * * * *

April 30th.

It is weak of me, but sometimes I can not help but look ahead--and think

that it is done! I could not find any words to tell the joy that that will

be to me--to be free, after so long--to be free!

I do not care anything about the fame--it would not be anything to me to be

a great author. If it could be done, nothing would please me better than

to publish it anonymously--to let no one ever know that it was mine. If I

could only have the little that I need to be free, I would publish all that

I might ever write anonymously.

Yes, that is the thing that makes my blood bound. To be free! Let it only

be done--let it only be real, as it will be--and the naked force of it will

shake men to the depths of their souls. I could not write it, if I did not

believe that I was writing words that would grip the soul of any man--I

care not how dull or how coarse he might be.

* * * * *

I finished the first act just now.

* * * * *

May 1st.

I am wild to-day. Oh, how can I bear this--why should I have to contend

with such things as this! Is it not hard enough--the agony that I have to

bear, the task that takes all my strength and more? And must I be torn to

pieces by such hideous degradation as this? Oh, my God, if my life is not

soon clear of these things I shall die!

* * * * *

Oh, it is funny--yes, funny!--Let us laugh at it. The dance-hall musician

has brought home his 'cello! I heard him come bumping up the stairs with

it--God damn his soul! And there he sits, sawing away at some loathsome jig

tunes! And he has two friends in there--I listen to their wit between the

tunes.

Here I sit, like a wild beast pent in a cage. I tell you I can bear any

work in the world, but I can not bear things such as this. That I, who am

seeking a new faith for men--who am writing, or trying to write, what will

mean new life to millions--should have my soul ripped into pieces by such

loathsome, insulting indignities!

Oh, laugh!--but _I_ can't laugh--I sit here foaming at the lips, and

crying! And suppose he's lost his position, and does this every day!

Now every day I must lay aside what I am doing and sit and shudder when I

hear him coming up the steps--and wait for him to begin this! I tell you,

I demand to be free--I _demand_ it! I want nothing in this world but to

be let alone. I don't want anybody to wait on me.--_I don't want anything

from this hellish world but to be let alone!_

It is pouring rain outside, and my overcoat is thin; but I must go out and

pace the streets and wait until a filthy Dutchman gets through scraping

ragtime on a 'cello.

All day wasted! All day! Does it not seem that these things persecute you

by system? I came in, cold and wet, and got into bed, and then he began

again! And the friends came back and they had beer, and more music. And I

had to get up and put on the wet clothes once more.

* * * * *

May 2d.

I was crouching out on one of the docks last night. I had no place else to

go. I can think anywhere, if it is quiet.

A wonderful thing is the night. I bless Thee for the night, oh “_süsse,

heilige Natur_”!

It was a voice in my soul, as clear as could be.

--She can not bear too long the sight of men, sweet, holy Nature: the

swarming hives--the millions of tiny creatures, each drunk and blind with

his own selfishness; and so she lays her great hand upon it all, and hides

it out of her sight.

Once it was all silent, and formless as the desert; soon it shall all be

silent and formless again; and meanwhile--the night, the night!

* * * * *

Oh, I hunger for the desert! I do not care for beauty--I have no time for

beauty, I want the earth stern and forbidding. Give me some place where no

one else would want to go--an iron crag where the oceans beat--a

mountain-top where the lightning splinters on the rocks.

* * * * *

I go at it again. But I am nervous--these things get me into such a state

that I simply can not do anything. It was not merely yesterday--I have it

constantly. The dirty chambermaid singing, or yelling down to the landlady;

the drunken man swearing at his wife; the boys screaming in the street and

kicking a tomato-can about. When I think of how much beauty and power has

been shattered in my life by such things as these, it brings tears of

impotent rage into my eyes.

I must be free--oh, I must be free!

* * * * *

It comes strangely from the author of The Captive, does it not?

I give all my life to my work, and sometimes, when I am broken like this, I

wonder if I do not give too much. Once I climbed to a dizzy height, and I

cried out a dizzy truth:

“O God, how as nothing in Thy sight are my writings!”

I do not know if I shall ever reach that height again.

* * * * *

May 3d.

I have not one single beautiful memory in my life. I have nothing in my

life that, when I think of it, does not make me _writhe_.

To all that I have lived, and known, and seen, I have but one word, one

cry--Away! Away! Let me get away from it! Let me get away from cities, let

me get away from men, let me out of my cage! Let me go with my God, let

me forget it all--put it away forever and ever! Let me no longer have to

plot and plan, to cringe and whimper, to barter my vision and my hours for

bread!

Who knows what I suffer--who has any idea of it? To have a soul like a

burning fire, to be hungry and swift as the Autumn wind, to have a heart as

hot as the wild bird's, and wings as eager--and to be chained here in this

seething hell of selfishness, this orgy of folly.

* * * * *

Ah, and then I shut my hands together. No, I am not weak, I do not spend my

time chafing thus! I have fought it out so far--

“I was ever a fighter, so one fight more!”

I will go back, and I will hammer and hammer again--grimly--savagely--day

by day. And out of the furnace of my soul I will forge a weapon that will

set me free in the end--I think.

* * * * *

May 4th.

I wrote a little poem once. I remembered two lines of it--a nature

description; they were not great lines, but there flashed over me to-day an

application of them that was a stroke of genius, I believe. I was passing

the Stock Exchange. It was a very busy day. I climbed one of the pillars,

in spirit, and wrote high above the portals:

Where savage beasts through forest midnight roam,

Seeking in sorrow for each other's joy.

* * * * *

May 5th.

A dreadful thing is unbelief! A dreadful thing it is to be an infidel!

--That is what all men cry nowadays--there is so much infidelity in the

world--it is the curse of our modern society--it is everywhere--it is

all-prevailing!

I had a strange experience to-day, Sunday. I went into a church, and high

up by the altar, dressed in solemn garb and offering prayers to God--I saw

an infidel!

He preached a sermon. The theme of his sermon was “Liberalism.”

“These men,” cried the preacher, “are blinding our eyes to our salvation,

they are undermining, day by day, our faith! They tell us that the sacred

word of God is 'literature'! And they show us more 'literature'; but oh, my

friends, what new _Bible_ have they shown us!”

As I got up and went out of that church, I whispered: “What a dreadful

thing it is to be an infidel!”

Oh Dante and Goethe and Shakespeare--oh Wordsworth and Shelley and Emerson!

Oh thrice-anointed and holy spirits! What a dreadful thing it is to be an

infidel!

What a dreadful thing it is to believe in a Bible, and not to believe in

literature--to believe in a Bible and not to believe in a God!

You think that this world lives upon the revelation of two thousand years

ago! Fool--this world lives as your body lives by the beating of its

heart--upon the revelation and the effort of each instant of its life. And

to-day or to-morrow the great Revealer might send to some lonely thinker in

his garret a new word that would scatter to dust and ashes all laws and all

duties that now are known to men.

* * * * *

There are many ways to look at the world, and always a deeper one. I see it

as a fearful thing, towering, expanding, upheld by the toil and the agony

of millions. Who will bring us the new hope, the new song of courage, that

it go not down into the dust to-day?

To do that there is the poet; to live and to die unheeded, and to feed for

ages upon ages the hungry souls of men--that is to be a poet. Therefore

will he sing, and sing ever, and die in the sweetness of his song.

When I think of that--not now as I write it here in bare words--but in

quivering reality, it is a hand upon my forehead, and a presence in the

room.

* * * * *

May 6th.

Chiefest of all I think of my country! Passionately, more than words can

utter, I love this land of mine. If I tear my heart till it bleeds and pour

out the tears of my spirit, it is for this consecration and this hope--it

is for this land of Washington and Lincoln. There never was any land like

it--there may never be any like it again; and Freedom watches from her

mountains, trembling.

--It is a song that it needs, a song and a singer; to point it to its high

design, to thrill it with the music of its message, to shake the heart of

every man in it, and make him burn and dare! For the first time there is

Liberty; for the first time there is Truth, and no shams and no lies,

enthroned. The news of it has gone forth like the sound of thunder, and has

shaken all the earth: that man at last may live, may do what he can and

will!

--And to what is it? Is it to the heaping up of ugly cities, the packing of

pork and the gathering of gold? That is the thing that I toil for--to tear

this land from the grasp of mean men and of merchants! To take the souls

of my countrymen into the high mountains with me, to thrill them with a

soaring, strong resolve! _Living things_ shall come from this land of

mine, living things before I die, for the hunger of it burns me, and will

not ever let me rest. Freedom! freedom! And stern justice and honor, and

knowledge and power, and a noonday blaze of light!

Arise in thy majesty, confronting the ages!

Stretch out thine arms to the millions that shall be!

Justice thine inheritance, God thy stay and sustenance,

My country, to thee!

Those are feeble words. If this were a book, I would tear it all up.

I wonder if any one will ever read this. As a matter of fact, I suppose ten

people will read gossip about the book for every one who reads the book.

* * * * *

This is just a month from the beginning. A month to-day! Yes--I have done

my share, I have done a third of it--a third!

But the end is so much harder!

* * * * *

May 9th.

I have been for two days in the mire. I was disturbed, and then I was

sluggish. Oh, the sluggishness of my nature!

If ever I am a great poet, I will have made myself that by the power of my

will; that is a fact. I am by nature a great clod--I feel nothing, I care

about nothing. I look at the flowers as a cow chewing its cud.--It is only

that I _will_ to do right.

Sometimes the sight of my dulness drives me wild. Then again I merely

gaze at it. I try time and again to get my mind on my work, and

something--anything, provided it is trivial enough--turns me aside. Just

now I saw a spider-web, and that made me think of Bruce, and thence I went

by way of Walter Scott to Palestine, and when I came to I was writing a

song for--who was the minstrel?--to sing outside of the prison of Coeur de

Lion.

I go wandering that way--sometimes I sit so for an hour; and then suddenly

I leap up with a cry. But I may try all I please--I don't care anything

about the work--it doesn't stir me--the verses I think of make me sick. And

then I remember that I have only so many weeks more; and what it will mean

to fail; and that makes me desperate, but doesn't help.

When I have stopped at some resting-place in the poem, I can get going

again. But now I have stopped in the middle of a climax; and the number

of times that I have read that last line, trying to find another--Great

heavens!

* * * * *

But I can not find another word. I am in despair.

I know perfectly well what I shall do, only I am a coward, and do not do

it. I shall stay in this state till my rage has heaped itself up enough and

breaks through everything at last. And then I shall begin to hammer myself!

to swear at myself in a way that would make a longshoreman turn white. And

I shall spend perhaps two or three hours--perhaps two or three days--doing

that, until I am quite in a white heat; and then--I shall go to my work.

That is the price I pay for being distracted.

* * * * *

May 11th.

I said to myself the day before yesterday--with a kind of a dry sob--“I

can't do it! I can't do it!”

Oh how tormented I am by noises--noises! What am I not tormented by? Some

days ago I was writing in a frenzy--and the landlady came for her rent. And

the horrible creature standing there, talking at me! “So lonely!--don't

ever see people! Mrs. Smithers was a-saying--” Oh, damn Mrs. Smithers!

I thought I could never do it--I was really about to give it up. I went out

on the street--I roamed about for hours, talking I don't know what nonsense

to myself. And then at last I came home, and I knelt down there at the

bedside and said: “Here you stay without anything to eat until you've

written ten lines of that poem!”

And that was how I did it. I stayed there, and I prayed. I don't often

pray, but that time I prayed like one possessed--I was so lonely and so

helpless--and the work was so beautiful. I stayed there for nine blessed

hours, and then the clock stopped and I couldn't count after that.

But the day came, and then the ten lines! And so I had my breakfast.

These things leave you weak, but a little less dull.

* * * * *

May 13th.

I have been working with a kind of wild desperation all day to-day. Oh it

hurts--it hurts--but I am doing it! Whenever I read some lines of it that

are real--whenever some great living phrase flashes over me--then I laugh

like a man in the midst of a battle.

I shall be just as a man who has been through a battle; haggard and wild

and desperate. Oh, I don't think I shall _ever_ have the courage to do

it again!

I did not know what it meant! I did not! It was giving myself into the

hands of a fiend!

All great books will be something different to me after this. Did

Shakespeare write thus with the blood of his soul? Or am I weak? Did he

ever cry out in pain, as I have?

* * * * *

May 14th.

Another day of raw torture. It is like toiling up a mountain side; and your

limbs are of lead. It is like struggling in a nightmare,--that is just what

it is like. It is sickening.

But then you dare not stop. It is hard to go on, but it is ten times as

hard to start if you stop.

I could hardly stand up this afternoon! but the thing was ringing in

my ears--it went on and on--I had to go after it! I was in the seventh

heaven--I could see anything, dare anything, do anything. It made no

difference how hard--it called to me--on--on! And I said: “Suppose I were

to be tortured--could I go then?” And so I went and went.

I haven't written it down yet; I felt sick. But I know it all.

Oh men--oh my brothers--will you love me for this thing?

* * * * *

May 16th.

I did no writing yesterday or to-day. I have been terribly frightened.

I wrote what I had to write the day before yesterday--I could not help it.

But when I stopped my head was literally on fire, and the strangest mad

throbbing in it--I stood still in fear, it felt so as if something were

going to burst--my head seemed to weigh a ton. I poured cold water over it,

but it made no difference--it stayed that way all night and all yesterday.

What am I to do? I dare not think--I took a long walk, and even now I find

myself thinking of the book without knowing it. Imagine me sitting on a

doorstep and playing for two hours with a kitten!

Why should I be handicapped in such a way as this? I had never thought of

such a thing.

* * * * *

I was thinking about The Captive--it is my own. Nobody has helped me--I

have told not one person of it. Everything in it has come out of my soul.

* * * * *

May 17th.

I feel better to-day, but I hardly know what to do.

Meantime I was happy!--Think of a poet's being happy with city flowers! of

a poet's being happy with store-flowers--prostitute-flowers--flowers for

sale!

It was all about a narcissus--“Very flower of youth, and morning's golden

hour!”--as I called it once. And it danced so! (It was out on the

curbstone)--and I went off happy.

Then I thought of a poem that is pure distilled ecstasy to my spirit. I

will write it, and be happy again:

Sit thee by the ingle, when

The sear faggot blazes bright;

Spirit of a winter's night!-- ...

Sit thee there, and send abroad,

With a mind self-overaw'd,

Fancy, high-commission'd:--send her!

She has vassals to attend her;

She will bring, in spite of frost,

Beauties that the earth hath lost;

She will bring thee, all together,

All delights of summer weather;

All the buds and bells of May,

From dewy sward or thorny spray;

All the heaped Autumn's wealth,

With a still, mysterious stealth;

She will mix those pleasures up,

Like three fit wines in a cup,

And thou shall quaff it!--

Ah! And so I went along, “sun, moon, and stars forgot”--laughing and half

dancing. People stared at me--and I laughed. And then I passed three pretty

girls, and I laughed, and they laughed too. I guess they thought I was

going to follow them.

--But that pleasure was not in my cup, dear girls.

* * * * *

Some of these days I hope to live in a beautiful world, where a man may

speak to a pretty girl on the street. Badness is its own punishment, let

the bad world observe.

I would rather look at a beautiful woman than do anything else I know of in

this world, except listen to music.

* * * * *

May 18th.

I often think how I shall spend my money after The Captive is done. I shall

take a band of chosen youths, seekers and worshipers, and we shall build a

house on a mountain-top and worship the Lord in the beauty of music!

I shall have to begin at the beginning--I have never had any one to teach

me music. But oh, if I did know!--And if I ever got hold of an

orchestra--_how_ I would make it go!

And in the middle of it the astonished orchestra would see the conductor

take wings unto himself and fly off through the roof.

A book that I mean to write some day will be called The Pleasures of Music,

and it will sing the joys of being clean and strong, of cold water and the

early morning and a free heart. It will show how all the unhappiness of men

is that they live in the body and in self, and how the world is to be saved

through music, which is not of the body, nor of self--which is free and

infinite, swift as the winds, vast as the oceans, endless as time, and

happy as whole meadows of flowers! The more who come to partake of it, the

better it is; for generous is “Frau Musika,” her heart is made wholly of

love.

--And when I have shown all these things, Frau Musika, I shall tell of the

golden lands that I have visited upon the wings of thy spirit!--

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain!

What fields or waves or mountains,

What shapes of sky or plain!

What love of thine own kind, what ignorance of pain!

* * * * *

May 20th.

I live among the poor people and that keeps me humble. There is not much

chance for freedom, I hear them say, there are not many who can dwell in

the forests. Prove your right to it--prove what you can do--the law is

stern. I am not afraid of the challenge; I will prove what I can do.

But I see one here and there with whom the law is not so strict, I think.

* * * * *

I met a merchant the other night. I dreamed of him. He said: “I buy such

goods as men need; I buy them as cheaply as I can, since life is grim. I

sell them as cheaply as I can, since men are poor and suffering. I make of

profit what I need to live humbly. I am not of the world's seekers; I am of

the finders.”

* * * * *

I met also a guileless fool.

We passed a great mansion. “I should like to know the man who lives there,”

said the fool.

“Should you?” said I.

“Is he a hero?” asked the fool.

“No,” said I.

“Is he a poet?” asked the fool.

“No,” said I.

“Must he not be very beautiful,” said the fool, “that men judge him worthy

of so much beauty?”

* * * * *

May 21st.

I must finish this thing this time! That cry rings in my ears night after

night. I am toiling upward--upward--I can see no sign of the end yet--but

I must finish this time! If I had to stop with this thing haunting me--if

I had to go out into that jungle of a world with this weight upon me--to

repress myself with this fire in my heart--I could not bear it--I could not

bear it!

And if I stopped and went out into that world again--how many weeks of

agony would it cost me to get back to where I am now!

I must finish this time!

* * * * *

May 22d.

“No, officer, I am neither a burglar nor a highwayman, nor anything else

worth bothering; I'm just a poet, and I'm crazy, to all practical purposes,

so please get used to me and let me wander about the streets at these

strange hours of the night without worrying!”

Poor, perplexed policeman! Poor, perplexed world! Poor, perplexed mothers

and fathers, sisters and cousins and aunts of poets!

Mit deinen schwarzbraunen Augen

Siehst du mich forschend an:

“Wer bist du, und was fehlt dir,

Du fremder, kranker Mann!”

Who does not love the poet Heine--melodious, beautiful, bitter soul? Is

there any other poet who can mingle, in one sentence, savage irony and

tenderness that brings tears into the eyes? Who can tell the secret of his

flower-like verses?

Ich bin ein deutscher Dichter,

Bekannt im deutschen Land;

Nennt man die besten Namen

So wird auch der meine genannt.

Und was mir fehlt, du Kleine,

Fehlt manchem im deutschen Land;

Nennt man die schlimmsten Schmerzen,

So wird auch die meine genannt!

I have never seen but one beautiful thing in New York, and that is its

mighty river in the night-time. I wander down to the docks when my work is

done, and when it is still; I sit and gaze at it until the city is quite

gone, and all its restlessness,--until there is but that grave presence,

rolling restlessly, silently, as it has rolled for ages. It makes no

comments; it has seen many things.

To-night I sat and watched it till a tangled forest sprang up about me, and

I saw a strange, high-bowed, storm-beaten craft glide past me, ghostly

white, its ghostly sailors gazing ahead and dreaming of spices and gold.

* * * * *

The old, old river--my only friend in a whole city! It goes its way--it is

not of the hour.

It fascinates me, and I sit and sit and wonder. I gaze into its black and

gurgling depths, and whisper what Shelley whispered: “If I should go down

there, I should _know_!”

* * * * *

But no, I should not know anything.

* * * * *

_The days when thou wert not, did they trouble thee? The days when thou

art not shall trouble thee as much._

* * * * *

May 24th.

AN ESSAY AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS

I write this to set forth a purpose which I have for over a year held

before me. I write it that it may serve me for a standard. I write it at

a time when my bank-account consists of twenty-five dollars, and I mean

to publish it at such a time as by the method of plain living and high

thinking, I shall have been able to increase it a hundredfold.

We are told that a man who would write a great poem must first make a poem

of his life. An artist, as I understand the word, is a man who has but one

joy and one purpose and one interest in life--the creating of beauty; he is

a man lifted above and set apart from all other motives of men; a man who

seeks not wealth nor comfort nor fame, nor values these things at all; a

man whose heart is forever lonely, whose life is an endless sorrow, and

whose excuse and whose spur and whose goal and whose consecration, is the

creating of beauty.

What power--be it talent or genius--God has given me, I can not tell; I

only know that an artist in that sense of the word I mean to be. I have

thought out a plan by which I shall make the publishing of my books, as

well as the writing of them, a thing of Art.

No one will read very far in what I shall write without perceiving there

a savage hatred of the spirit of the modern world of wealth; it is only

because I have faith in democracy and hope in the people of my country that

I do not go to worship my God on a desert island. The world which I see

about me at the present moment--the world of politics, of business, of

society--seems to me a thing demoniac in its hideousness; a world gone mad

with pride and selfish lust; a world of wild beasts writhing and grappling

in a pit.

I am but a voice crying in the wilderness, and these things must run their

course. But in the meantime there is one thing that I can do, and the doing

of that has become with me a passion--I can keep my own life pure; I can

see that there is one man amid all this madness whose life is untouched by

any stain of it; who lives not by bread alone, nor by jewelry and gold; who

lives not to be stared at and made drunk with pride, but to behold beauty

and dwell in love; who labors day and night to keep a heart full of worship

and to sing of faith to suffering men; who takes of the reward of that

singing just what food and shelter his body needs; and who shrinks from

wealth and luxury as he would from the mouth of hell.

To live humbly and in oblivion would be my choice, but it will be my duty

to do differently. I know enough about the human heart to know that the

presence of one righteous man makes ten thousand unrighteous men angry and

uncomfortable. And therefore, for the help of any whom it may comfort, and

for the damnation of all the rest, I shall choose that the life I live and

the thing I do shall be public; I shall choose that the millions in our

country who are wearing out their frantic lives in the pursuit of the

dollar, and the few who are squandering their treasures in drunken pomp,

shall know that there is one man who laughs at them--whom all the millions

of all of them could not buy--and who dwells in joy and worship in a heaven

of which they can not even know. In other words, it is my idea not merely

to make a poem of my life, but to publish the poem.

I shall have other, and deeper, and kinder reasons also, for what I shall

do. What I write in my books must be from my deepest heart, the confession

of those moments of which I would speak to no living soul; it must be all

my tenderness, and all my rapture, and all my prayer; and do you think it

will come easily to me to put that out before the rough world to be stared

at, to be bound up in a book and hawked about by commercial people?...

(Here follows in the manuscript the outline of a

plan for publishing the writer's works at cost.)

* * * * *

Would it not be interesting to me, if I could but pierce the future once,

and see how long it is destined to be before I do so publish a book! I

would do my work better, I fancy, for that.--But let it lie. I shall

publish it some day surely, that I know at least.

* * * * *

Sometimes I can hardly realize what it will be to me when I have really won

fame, when I can speak the things that so need speaking--and be heard.

* * * * *

May 25th.

Line by line, page by page, I do it. I am counting the days now,

wondering--longing.

It is not merely the writing of it, it is the seeing of it--the planning

and designing. Sometimes I brood over it for hours--I can not find what

I want; and then suddenly a phrase flashes over me and like a train of

gunpowder my thought goes running on--leaping, flying; and then the whole

thing is plain as day. And I hold it all living in my hands.

I am blessed with a good memory. In times of excitement such as that I

seize all the best phrases and carry them away, and bury them out of sight,

like a miser. They are my nuggets of gold.

And sometimes I am a greedy miser, and stand perplexed; shall I go on and

gather more, or shall I make off with the armful that I have?

* * * * *

May 26th.

My religion is my Art. I have no prayer but my work.

Sometimes that is a glory, and sometimes again that is an agony. To have no

duty outside of yourself; to have no inspiration outside of yourself; to

have no routine to help you, no voice to cry out when your conscience goes

to sleep, no place of refuge in your weakness!--

All that is but the reason why I dare not be weak. I have chosen to lead

and not to follow; therefore I have no rest, and may not look behind me,

and can think of nothing but the way.

To be the maker of a religion is to sweat blood in the night-time.

* * * * *

There is but one way that I may live--to take every impulse that comes--to

be watching, watching--to dare always and instantly, to hesitate, to put

off never, to seize the skirt of my muse whenever it shimmers before me. So

I make myself a habit, a routine, a discipline; and so each day I have new

power. So each day I feel myself, I bare my arms, I walk erect, exulting--I

laugh--I am a god!

--And as I write that a feeling takes rise in me, and my heart beats

faster; but I am tired, I sink back, I do not take the gift that is

offered; and then my conscience gives a growl, and in a flash I see what

I have done, and feel a throb of rage and leap up.

* * * * *

One of my perils is that when I am strong I feel that I must always be so.

This truth that is so obvious, these words that flow so swift--what need is

there to fear for them, to write them now?--And so they are never written.

* * * * *

May 27th.

Will you imagine me to-day, kneeling by the bedside, shuddering; my face

hidden, the tears streaming down my cheeks--and I crying aloud: “I

will--oh, I will!”

I can not tell any more.

* * * * *

May 29th.

I am coming to the last scenes. I hear them rumbling in my soul--far, far

off--like a distant surf on a windless night.

I am coming, step by step: I mean to fight it out on this line.

I know a man who always rose to the occasion. Never was he challenged that

he did not dare and triumph. Oh, if instead of being hungry and pining, I

had but the music of that divine inspirer!--

Heller schallend,

mich umwallend,

sind es Wellen

sanfter Lüfte?

Sind es Wogen

wonniger Düfte?

Wie sie schwellen,

mich umrauschen,

soll ich athmen,

soll ich lauschen?

Soll ich schlürfen,

untertauchen,

süss in Düften

mich verhauchen?

* * * * *

May 30th.

To-day. I had a spiritual experience--a revelation; to-day, in a flash of

insight, I understood an age--whole centuries of time, whole nations of

men.

I had been writing one of the great hymns, one of the great victories; and

I had been drunk with it, it had come with a surge and a sweep, it had set

everything about me in motion--huge phantom shapes--all life and all being

gone mad.

And then, when I had written it, I went out into the dark night; I walked

and walked, not knowing where, still tingling with excitement. And,

suddenly, I stood spellbound--the cathedral!

There it was--there it was! I saw it, alive and real before me--all of

it--all that I had seen and known! I cried out for joy, I stretched out my

arms to it--the great, dark surging presence; and all my soul went with it,

singing, singing--up into the misty night!

* * * * *

June 1st.

I sat to-night by the river again. It was moonlight, and the water lay

shimmering. A little yacht, gleaming with lights, sped by; it was very

close, and I saw a group of people on it, I heard them laughing; and one

of them--a woman--was singing.

O God, what a voice! So rich, so exquisite! It soared upward and died

again, quivering like the reflection of the stars on the water. It went

in--in to the very depths of my soul; it loosed all the woe of my spirit,

it made the tears gush into my eyes. And then it died away, away in the

distance; and I sat with my hands clasped.

Sail on--sail on--oh heavenly voice! Far-off vision of brightness and

beauty! Your lot is not my lot.

* * * * *

--There is something within me that weeps yet, at the echo of that music.

Oh, what would I not give for music! How much of my bitterness, how many of

my sorrows have melted into tears at one strain!

And I can not have it! Oh, you who do have it, do you know what you have?

Oh beautiful voice, do you hear yourself?

All things else I can make for myself--friendship and love--nature and

books and prayer; all things but music!

* * * * *

Can you not hear that voice dying--dying--“over the rolling waters”?

* * * * *

June 2d.

I shall come out of this a man--a man! I shall know how to live all my

days! I shall have memories that will always haunt me, memories that I can

build the years by!

* * * * *

June 3d.

From the time that I began The Captive it has been almost two months; it is

just six weeks from the day I wrote that I had ten or twelve weeks in which

to finish. I have done well financially--I have twenty-one dollars left,

and I have paid for my typewriting.

It is not a fortune. But enough is as good as a fortune.

And I am coming on! I have been counting the scenes--I am really within

sight of the end.

--That day when I crouched by the bed I saw all of the end. I have seen the

whole thing. It will leave me a wreck, but I can do it. And it will take me

about three weeks.

Think of my being able to say that!--Five or six hundred lines at least

I shall have to do, and still I dare to say that. But I am full of this

thing, I mount with it all the time. I am finding my wings.

Nothing can stop me now; I feel that I shall hold myself to it. I become

more grim every day.

* * * * *

No one can guess what it means to me to find that I have hold of the whole

of this thing! It is like strong wine to me--I scarcely know where I am.

* * * * *

June 4th.

I am sitting down by the window, and first I kick my heels against my old

trunk, and then I write this. Hi! Hi! I think of a poem that I used to

recite about Santa Claus--“Ho, Castor! ho, Pollux!”--and then ho a lot of

other things--a Donner and a Blitzen I remember in particular. I want a

reindeer--a Pegasus--a Valkyrie--an anything--to carry me away up into the

air where I can exult without impropriety!

Come blow your horn, hunter,

Come blow your horn on high!

In yonder room there lieth a 'cello player,

And now he's going to move away!

Come blow your horn--

That's an old Elizabethan song. I heard them come up for his trunk just

now, and they've dragged it down-stairs, and I hear the landlady fuming

because they are tearing the wall paper. I have never loved the sound of

the landlady's voice before.

* * * * *

--The world is divinely arranged, there is no question about it.

* * * * *

June 5th.

Deep in my soul I was convinced that the room would be let to something

worse. But now it appears that the landlady's sister is to occupy it.

--So now I will get to work!

--Moving is noisy; I can't complain. I have been walking about the streets.

I am hungry for the work; but still, I had much to think of. It is a

wonderful thing--a glorious thing, this story--it will make men's hearts

leap.

* * * * *

June 6th.

I have plenty of time to write journals, if I feel like it. There is the

sister, and there is the landlady, and there is another woman, and they

have been jabbering about dresses all of the morning. I have been like a

crazy man--I was all on fire this morning, too! O God, it is too cruel!

I could dress those three hags with broomsticks.

* * * * *

--How long is this to continue, I want to know. Here it is afternoon and

they are still chattering. Every time I have tried to compose my thoughts

they have come back and begun chattering again. And so I can only pace

about, and then rush out into the street--and wear myself sick. I call

this simply monstrous. That my soul should be tied down to such vulgarity

as this--is it not maddening? Here I am--with all my load of woe--at

this fearful crisis! And I am to be shattered and wrecked and ruined by

_this_! Just as long as they choose to sit there, just so long I am

helpless. Was it for this that I have borne all the pain?

* * * * *

It seems to me that I hear jeering laughter around me from a swarm of

little demons. I hide my face and flee, but they follow me.

* * * * *

But what can you expect? Have they not a right to talk?--Yes--all the world

has a right to be as hideous as it can. And I have no right but to suffer

and to choke in my rage.

Three vile, ignorant serving-women! Serving-women--ah yes, and if they were

_my_ servants! If I could pay them!--But who serves me! Of what consequence

am I!

* * * * *

These things goad me, they are like poisoned thorns in my flesh. The

infinite degradation of it all, the shame, the outrage!

It has burned a brand deep into my flesh, and never while I live will it

come out. Ah, you rich men! You who rule us, who own the treasures, the

opportunities, the joys! You who trample the fair gardens of life like

great blind beasts!

Do you think it is nothing to me that the inspiration and the glory of my

whole lifetime is to be trampled into nothingness for lack of what others

spend upon one dress? Yes, of my whole lifetime! My whole lifetime! Give me

but what another will spend upon one foolish gimcrack that he never looks

at again, and I will live for a whole lifetime! And I will write such

music--Bah! What am I doing?

* * * * *

--Sometimes when I think of these things a black shadow stalks over my

heart. I hear a voice, “Fool, and do you still think that you are ever

to escape from this? Do you not perceive that this sordid shame is your

_lot_? Do you not perceive that you may writhe and twist, struggle and

pant, toil and serve, till you foam at the lips? Who will heed you! Who

will hear you! Who cares anything about you!--Who wants your Art! Who wants

your work! Who wants your _life_!--Fool!”

* * * * *

--Of course this thing could not go on. And so of course,--stammering and

writhing, as I always do when I have my nose pushed into this kind of

filth--I had to speak to the landlady about it to-night.--

And of course the landlady was astonished. “Why, Mr. Stirling, can't a body

talk in a body's own room?” Yes, a body can talk, but then other bodies

have to move away.

Now she's going to speak to her sister about it. And here I sit, writhing

and trembling. Oh my God, suppose I have to move! Oh merciful Father, have

pity on me--I can't bear much of this! To go tramping around this hot and

horrible city, to go into some new and perhaps yet more dirty place! And

oh, the agony, the shame--suppose _that_ will not do, and I have to

keep on searching! Dragging this fearful burden with me! And I have only

eighteen dollars left!

* * * * *

If I think of it any longer I shall scream with nervousness.

* * * * *

June 7th.

And now it is all settled. A body has to talk in a body's own room, and a

body's nose has to turn up with indignation as a body announces the fact.

And so here I sit, waiting for the expressman to come for my trunk.

Now that it is over it does not seem so bad. I am like a snail--once back

in my shell, I do not care what happens. I have given up trying to write

The Captive, and so nothing bothers me any more.--I have forgotten all

about it now, it is years behind me.

But I have seen it all; I can get it back in good time. I do not fear.

I have rolled up a little bundle, a tooth-brush and some manuscripts

principally; and I send the rest to a friend's house. I have had an

inspiration. Why should I stay in this hot and steaming place?--Why should

I be “barricaded evermore within the walls of cities?” _Ich will ins

Land!_

Why did I not think of this in the beginning? I am going now to see the

springtime!--“the only pretty ring time, when birds do sing--hey

ding-a-ding!”

That was a real idea. I do not know where I am going; but I will walk and

get somewhere--there will be woods. I'll sleep in hay-ricks if it can't be

managed any other way.

Away, away from men and towns,

To the wildwood and the downs!

I could have been through in three weeks now, I believe. But it was not to

be. We have to take what comes to us--

Let us then be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate.

I'm glad I don't have to write poetry like _that_!

* * * * *

June 8th.

Howdy-do, Brother Bobolink! How in the world did you guess I was coming

this way?

--Es ist nun einmal so.

Kein Dichter reist incognito!

Ah, to be out in the open air again, to see the world green and beautiful;

to run with the wind and look at the flowers and listen to the birds! I am

sitting by a spring; I have eaten my dinner.

I turned my steps Jerseyward.

* * * * *

--I have been walking all day. I must find some place to stop very soon.

I can not think of the country with this burden on me. I am like a sick

animal--I seek a hiding-place. I fancied I might think of my work on the

way, but I can not. The world is happy; my work is not happy.

My hope is all in the end of the journey, and the walking is drudgery. And

then, my money is going! I must find some sort of a hut--a tumble-down

house, an old barn--anything.

I shall trudge one more day's journey. Then I think I shall be far enough

from New York.

* * * * *

--I passed a tramp to-day; and while we walked together I composed an

address:

“My brother--for are we not brothers, thou and I?

“Have we not fled from the sleek man, thou and I? And is it not we alone

that know Truth?

“Thy clothing is ragged, and there is hunger in thine eyes; it is so also

with me.

“It is thy fate to wander; it is my fate to wander too. And with restless

eyes to look out upon the world, to meet with distrust from men.

“Yet not for that am I sad, nay, not for that, but for a deeper sorrow;

because I was sent out into the world with a curse upon me, because I was

sent out into the world a Drunkard.

“Yea, so it is, my brother.

“And that for which I thirst is not easy to find; and when I have found it

I am not content, but must seek more; and so I have only desolation.

“Who laid this curse upon us, my brother?

“That we should dwell in sorrow and unrest?

“That no man should heed our voice, and that we should grow weak and faint?

“That we should die, and be forgotten--thou and I?

“Oh, tell us wherefore--ye wise men.”

* * * * *

June 9th.

I have walked another day. I am beginning to get away from the suburban

towns, and into the real country. I knew that it would cost me a good deal

to go to a hotel last night, and it was warm, so I slept in a hay-stack!

It was quite an adventure. Now I've got my pockets stuffed full of rolls,

Benjamin Franklin style.

--My mind is like the ocean after a storm.

The great waves come rolling over it still; it is all restless, tossing.

But it is sinking, sinking to rest!--Heaven grant that I may find my place

of refuge before it is quite calm.

It is everything or nothing with me; I am made that way. Either I give

every instant of my time, every thought, every effort to my work, or else I

close up like a flower and wait. I can not write poetry and hunt a lodging

too.

So I am waiting--waiting.--

* * * * *

June 10th.

I began inquiring to-day--a shanty, a barn--anything. Every one thinks it

necessary to be very much puzzled about what I want it for. My clothes

are still fairly respectable, and so they tell me about pretty summer

cottages--only so much per month!

* * * * *

June 12th.

I have been tramping on and on for two more days. I do not believe I shall

ever find what I want. Nothing but one old musty place in ruins, so far!

And my money is going, and I am wild with anxiety! I am almost tempted to

turn back to the ruin.

* * * * *

June 13th.

I am sitting in a room in a dirty hotel. It was raining to-day and I had to

come here. I shall probably have to pay fifty cents too. I won't stay to

breakfast.

Oh what will I do if my money gives out? I saw a cottage to-day, that a man

said I could have for ten dollars a month. I was tempted to spend nearly

all I had and take it, and live on bread and water. I am desperate.

* * * * *

June 14th.

“Perhaps maybe you'd like 'Oaklands,'” said the farmer, laughing.

“Oaklands” turned out to be the home of a millionaire “dry-goods man” who

was in Europe. I did not want “Oaklands.”

“I don't know of anything else,” said the farmer, scratching his head. Then

he added with a grin, “unless it be the cook-house.”

“What's the cook-house?” I asked, suspiciously.

“Oh, it's a kind of a little place they've got 'way out in the woods,” said

the farmer. “It's where they goes when they goes picnicking.”

My heart gave a jump. “What sort of a place?” I asked.

“They've got a big platform chiefly, where they put up a tent. The

cook-house ain't nothin' but a little two by four shanty, with a big stove

in it.”

“How big is it?” I cried.

“It's about half o' this here room, I reckon.”

(“This here room” was about six of my rooms in New York!)

“And where is it?” I cried. “How can I get there?”

“Oh, you don't want to go to no sech place ez that!” said the farmer.

“There ain't no bed nor nothin' in it! An' it's two mile out there in the

woods!”

Let anybody imagine how my heart was going! “Who can show it to me?” I

panted.

“Why,” said he, “I'm the man that's in charge of it; but I--”

“And can you rent it to me for a month?”

“Why, I don't know any reason why I can't rent it to you for a year--only

it ain't worth nothin', an'--”

“Then rent it to me! The less it is worth the better it will suit me. But

come, show me where it is!”

“I reckon I can show you,” said the man, looking perplexed. “But what in

the world do you want to go into that lonesome place for? Why, boy, nobody

goes there in a month! An' what you goin' to do for somethin' to eat, an'

some place to sleep, an'--”

* * * * *

I managed to get him started at last. And now, oh just look at me! I've

been roaming around staring at it--inside and outside. The gods love me

after all.

The infinite relief that it is! The infinite exultation that it is! And

all to myself--not a soul near me! And out in the woods! _And mine for

a month!_ Oh blessed 'cello player that moved away; blessed landlady's

sister that talked--!

And oh blessed cook-house! We will make thee a consecrated cook-house

before we get through--we will! We will cook a dish in thee that will warm

the hearts of a goodly company--oh blessed cook-house!

--And outside a great white moon streaming through the forest trees!

* * * * *

The “cook-house” is about ten feet square. It is about one-third stove, now

covered with a newspaper and serving as a table. Besides that there is one

chair, for which I have just improvised a leg, with the help of my knife.

Besides the knife I have a fork, a plate, a cup, and a spoon--borrowed from

the farmer. I have a blanket and a bed consisting of an old carriage robe,

rented from the farmer. I have a lamp and a kerosene-can--ditto. I have a

frying-pan--ditto. But I haven't my little oil-stove, so I fear I shall eat

mostly cold things. I have a pail of milk, a loaf of bread, a ginger-cake,

some butter, some eggs, some bacon, some apples and some radishes; also a

tooth-brush, a comb, a change of clothing, two handkerchiefs, some pencils

and paper, Prometheus Bound, Prometheus Unbound, Samson Agonistes, faith,

hope, and charity!

--I believe I have named all the necessaries of life.

* * * * *

June 15th.

I have scooped myself out a bathtub below the spring. I forgot towels in

my list of necessaries! I fear it will be inconvenient on rainy days. I am

like a child with a new toy, in my wonderful home. I was too excited to

think of working. I fried an egg over a little fire, and then I roamed all

about the woods. I don't remember ever having been so happy before. I had

forgotten there was anything beautiful in the world.--

* * * * *

--I spent the whole of the afternoon dreaming a dream. When I have finished

The Captive and gotten some money, I am going to have a little house in the

woods! I have just had it before my eyes--and I laughed with delight like a

boy.

It will be a fine big house--it will cost about fifty dollars; and there

will be a table and a chair, and a cot, and such things. It will stand by a

lake, a wild lake far out in the mountains! I have vowed to find a lake at

least five miles from anything; and once a week I will have somebody bring

me provisions.

* * * * *

--That is the way I shall spend next summer!--Up, up! Get to work!--

* * * * *

June 17th.

I have done nothing for two days but wander around and stare at things. It

is all gone, every gleam of it! And I can not bring it back--I know not

what to do, where to turn. I stopped in one of the hardest parts of the

whole thing--in the very midst of it; and how in the world am I to begin? I

walk around, I sit down, I get up again; I try to put my thoughts upon it,

I bring them back again and again. But I can not do it--I have let every

thread of it go. What has tramping over the country and delight in houses

got to do with my work?

I have nothing to write--the whole thing is a blank to me. And here I am,

eating up my provisions!--This shows me what I am--what a child.

--But how am I to get up on those fearful heights again? How am I to take

the first step toward those fearful heights again? I cry that all day!

* * * * *

June 20th.

Oh, the joy of being out in the woods! I never knew of it before--I never

dreamed it!

It is better than an orchestra. To be able to stretch your arms! To have a

place to walk! To be able to talk aloud!--to laugh--to shout--to do what

you please!--to be free from all men, and the thought of all men!

And to hear your own poetry aloud!--I cried out to-day that I would go back

and do the whole of The Captive over again, so that I could hear it out

loud. It made me quite wild yesterday when I first realized that I was

_alone_!

--Last night there was a gale, and the clouds sped over the moon, and the

wind roared in the trees--and I roared too!

--“For I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set!”

* * * * *

June 21st.

I did just as I have always done before. I got desperate enough, and then

I went to work. I said “I will! and I will! and I will!” I think I said

nothing else for twenty-four hours.

And so the storm again, and the great waves speeding!

* * * * *

Is there any one who has ever watched the great waves?--How they go! They

take you right with them. My verses shall be waves.

I am tired out again; but oh, I am filled with my music! There was never

any poetry like it in the world!

* * * * *

And at the height of it I cry out: “I am free! I am free!

“I won't have to stop again!

“I can go to the very end of it!

“And I don't care who hears me!

“I am free!”

* * * * *

June 23d.

I ate a raw egg this morning. For yesterday I let the fire go out five

times, and gave up my breakfast rather than start a sixth.

I wanted to save time--I thought it would be egg just the same; but I

record it for future generations of poets, that the experiment is not a

success. You taste raw egg all day.

I shall have them all hard-boiled in the farmhouse after this.

--Twenty-eight lines to-day! I had more, but I lost them, and then I fell

down.

--There is always a new height, but there are not always new words. My

verse grows more and more incoherent, and more and more daring. I can feel

the difference of a whole lifetime between it now, and what I wrote ten

weeks ago.

* * * * *

--That is as it should be, of course. One does not reckon by days in a

dungeon.

I notice also that the periods get longer; it has more sweep--it leaps

wider spaces--it is less easy to follow.

* * * * *

--Oh, let not any man read what I wrote this morning, except he stand upon

the heights!

* * * * *

I have worn a path in the woods, deep and wide, pacing back and forth,

back and forth, all day. Any one who saw me would think that I was mad.

Fighting--fighting--all the time fighting! Sometimes I run--sometimes I

don't know what I do. Last night I know that it grew dark, and that I was

still lying flat on the dead leaves, striking my hands, that were numb with

excitement. I was too weak to move--but I remember panting out, “There is

nothing like that in _King Lear_!”

* * * * *

I brought about twenty phrases out of that, and one or two sentences. They

will fall into the verse the next time it comes.

* * * * *

June 24th.

--Listen to me, oh thou world--I will tell you something! You may take a

century to understand those phrases--to stop laughing at them, perhaps--who

knows? But those sentences are _real_; and they will last as long as

there is a man alive to read them!

When I let anything make me cease to believe in that scene, may I die!

--I will shout it aloud on the streets; they are _real_!

* * * * *

And there has been nothing like them done for some years, either.

* * * * *

June 25th.

To-day you may imagine me frantically throwing stones at a squirrel. I

said: “If I get him I won't have to go to the farmhouse to-morrow.”

I had had nothing to eat but bread and apples for two meals, and I couldn't

stand that again.

I had fried squirrel and fried apples for supper. It was a very curious

repast.

And I was hungry, and I ate too much! That made me wild, of course, and I

flung all my apples away into the woods. May they feed new squirrels!

* * * * *

June 26th.

I get up every morning like--like the sun! I overflow with

laughter--nothing frightens me now. I never knew what was the matter with

me before--it was simply that I could not fight as I chose. If ever I go

back again to have my soul pent up in the cities of men!

I am full of it--full of it! I grapple with it all the day, I can not get

enough of it. I do crazy things.

And the harder it is the faster I go! This thing has been my torturing--it

has made me fight and live. That is really the truth.

* * * * *

And I am coming to the end--really to the end!

* * * * *

June 27th.

A rainy day! And no glass in my house--only a board cover to the window. I

made myself a nest on the sheltered side.

Nearer! Nearer!

* * * * *

June 29th.

Wandering through the woods dreaming of a banquet-hall.--The guests are

witty.

* * * * *

I have put into the mouths of the guests all that the world has said to me,

since first I went poetical.

* * * * *

June 30th.

To-day I got a big stock of things to eat. I count my time not by days, but

by loaves of bread and dozens of hard-boiled eggs.

* * * * *

--This book goes out into the world, not to be judged, but to judge!

* * * * *

July 1st.

You do not hear much from a man in a battle, just now and then a cry.

I have gone in to seek out my last enemy--the last demon who has defied me.

I shall close with him--I shall have the thing over with--I will no longer

be haunted and made sick.

--I believe I shall do it all in one day. I don't think I can lay it aside.

* * * * *

July 3d.

It is done!--

I wrote that at three o'clock this morning, and then I lay back and laughed

and sobbed, and in the end I fell asleep in the chair.

I was not ill--my relief was so great. I was only happy. I lay back and

closed my eyes. I have born my child.

It is done! It is done! I realize it, and then I am like a crazy person. I

do not know what I am doing--I only wander around and sit down in the woods

and laugh and talk to myself. O God, I am so happy!

I have only to write the end--the last scene in the dungeon. And that is

nothing. “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course!”

* * * * *

July 4th.

I have only to write the echoes that are in my heart, the stammering words

of thanksgiving. It is nothing--I have been over them. My whole being is

melted with the woe of them--but I can do them anywhere--anyhow.

--And a sudden wild longing has come over me for the city. I must take all

the world into my arms--I am so happy--I love it so!

Ah, I have done it! I have done it! I am free! _Free!_ FREE!

I must get this thing typewritten--I must get rid of it--it must be

published. How long does it take to get a book published?

* * * * *

July 5th.

I fought a fight with myself yesterday, and won it. The last of my

weaknesses! I wanted to pack up my things and go home! And finish my poem

on the train! I was that hungry for the goal! But I am still here--doing

the last scene. I shall stay until it is done. I can not stay after that.

* * * * *

Let me hear how your voice trembles as you sing the last strains of your

song, and I will tell you how great an artist you are.

Good night, sweet prince,

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

* * * * *

July 6th.

Five in the afternoon! And the wind was howling in turret and tree, and all

the forest was an organ chant. So I packed up my belongings, and laid my

poem in next to my heart--the last words written: “It is done!”

And I went out and stood and gazed at my little home. Farewell, farewell,

little home! Perhaps I shall never see you again; but ever you will live

in my fancy as my heaven upon earth. They built thee for picnic parties!

And I wonder what proud prince had built for his pleasures--the Garden of

Gethsemane!

* * * * *

And now I go forth like a bridegroom out of my chamber, rejoicing as a

strong man to run a race. And all the world dances around me, and I stretch

out my arms and sing!

Come, come, my foes, where are ye now? What foes shall I be afraid of now!

Is it the world and its trials? Come!

* * * * *

I go back to conquer--I have forged my weapon! I have bared my arm! Where

are those foes of mine?

* * * * *

There is nothing so commonplace that it does not sing to me. I walk with a

springing step, I laugh, I exult. Birds, flowers, men--I love them all; I

get into the train, and the going of it is drunkenness. I have won! I have

won!

I go back to the world. Come, world! I have but four dollars left--four

dollars!--and The Captive!

* * * * *

It is not strange that a man should be made drunk with happiness by the

writing of a tragedy! That is the great insincerity of the artist. “That

cry of agony!--what a triumph of genius was that my cry of agony!”

* * * * *

--It is not the sorrow, it is the struggle; so I read the tragedy. This man

is dead, but God lives, and Art lives.

I will go back, I will do anything now--I will empty ash-cans, and find

it a joy. The book is done--safe in next to my heart!--And now it will be

printed, and not fire nor earthquake can destroy it after that. Free! Free!

* * * * *

I am writing on the train. I write commonplaces. That is because I can not

shout.

But back there, coming out of the woods, I shouted--and not commonplaces

either!

Coming out of the forest--forest-drunk! Now I know all about Pan and his

creatures!

* * * * *

I write carelessly. But in my heart I sit shuddering before that fearful

glory. O God, my Father, let me not forget this awful week, and I will live

in Truth all my days.

* * * * *

July 7th. [Footnote: Possibly an error in the date, as the day was Sunday.]

Wandering all day about the streets of the hot city, seeing it not, hearing

it not--waiting for the last lines of the poem to be copied! I could not do

anything until that was done, and at a publisher's. I got it and fled home,

and spent the night correcting the copy.

Ah, God, what a thing it is! How it roars, how it thunders, how it surges!

How infinite, how terrible! Stern, throbbing--is there anything like it in

the world?

* * * * *

Ten lines of it make my blood tingle--an act of it makes me bury my face in

my pillow and laugh and sob for five minutes.

* * * * *

Go forth, oh my perfect song!