sprang up and fled out to the street (this in thought, of course). What do
I need with others? I exclaimed--with others to help me dare? This has to
do with _me_! And it has to do with me _now_--with this moment!
Am I to give up and let myself go down for such a phantom as this! For such
a dread as that wooden-headed men and women will think me “queer”! Am I to
stay in a prison such as that--to be bound by a chain such as _that_?
I--I, who go about trying to persuade myself that this world is nothing
to me--that this world is nothing to any one--that it is a phantom--that
the soul is truth! When I say that the soul is truth, do I mean it? Do I
_mean_ it? And if I do mean it, will I act by it--will I act by it
now--_now_, while I see it? Will I fling off this nightmare, will I
tear my way through these wrappings that have choked me? Will I say, once
and for all time, that I will be myself--that I will live my life--and that
no man shall stop me--that no man shall make me afraid? Will I take the
battle upon me and win it--win it _now_--fling off the last rag of
it--put the world straight behind me--_now_--_here_? Spread the
wings of my soul and take my flight into the far spaces of myself! And
dwell there--stay there--hold to the task and give it not up though it kill
me--now--_now_!
These thoughts took hold of me--they made my brain reel--and I cried aloud
in excitement. I had not been so much awake since the day I came out of the
woods! I said the word--I said it--the mad word that I had not heard for
six long months--that I had not heard since I wrote the last lines of my
poem and came back to the haunts of men. And I clinched my hands, and
stamped upon the ground, and shouted: “Come on! Come on!”--to the legions
of my spirit. And it was like the taking flight of a great swarm of birds
within me--a rushing of wings and a surging upward, a singing for joy as
of a symphony. And there was singing in my soul, the surge of it caught
me--and I waved my arms and went striding on, shouting still, “Come on!
Come on!--
“Now! _now_! We will have it out with them--here--_here_! We will
fight our fight and win it, and they shall not turn us back--no, by God,
they shall not! And they may take it as they please--my soul is
free--_free_ once again! Away! _Away!_”
And I felt the breeze of the mountains about me, and heard the rushing
of the storm-wind and the trampling of the thunder. There awoke the old
rush in my heart, the old Valkyrie music that flies over the forests and
mountains. And I laughed as I sang it; I heard the war-horses neighing, and
yelled to them--faster and faster--higher and higher--away from earth and
all men!--
* * * * *
And then suddenly I felt some one seize me by the shoulder and shake me,
and heard a gruff voice say: “Here! Here! What's the matter with you?” And
I stared, half-dazed. It was a big policeman, and around me I saw a sea of
staring faces, wild-eyed children, women gazing in fright, boys jeering;
and the windows were filled with yet another crowd!
“What's the matter with you?” demanded the policeman again. “Are you drunk,
or crazy!”
And then I realized. But the fire was still blazing in me, and a wild rage
whirled over me. “Then it is by this that I am to be stopped!” I gasped.
“By _this_! It is not possible after all, it seems; and I'm to be
dragged back after all!--By Heaven, we'll see!”
And so I gave the cry again--the cry of the Valkyrs that is madness to me!
Do you not hear it?--and I was away again and free!
What does a man want for his soul, if it be not just to strive, and to be
resisted, and still to strive? What difference makes anything else--time,
place or conditions? I was myself again--and what else did I care about? I
felt the policeman take me by the collar and march me down the street; but
I hardly knew that--I was on the mountains, and I laughed and sang. The
very hatefulness of what was about me was my desperation--I would make head
against such things or I would die in the attempt! I would be free!--I
would live! I would live my life; and not the life of these people about
me! I would fight and win, I would hold fast my heart, I would be true
though the heavens fell! I would have it out, then and there, as I said--I
would not come back to earth until I was master of myself.
And so when I stood in the station-house and the sergeant asked me my name,
I said: “Desire is my name, and the soul is my home!” And then because they
shook me and worried me, I stretched forth my arms and cried out: “O God,
my Father--thou who art my help and my life--thou soul of my soul--shall I
go back for these things?--Shall I fear for these things? No, no--while I
have life I will not! I will live for the truth, I will be crushed no
longer!”
They led me to a cell, and when I heard the door shut I laughed like a
madman for joy. And then--ah, then--who can tell it? They came--all my
angels and all my demons! All my muses and all my nymphs! And the bases
of the earth rocked and the heavens danced and sang; and I mounted on the
wings of the ages, and saw the joys of the systems and the dancing of the
young suns. Until I could bear it no more, and fell down and sobbed, and
cried out to my soul that it was enough, enough!
* * * * *
And afterward I sat there on the stone floor, and ate bread and water and
ambrosial peace; and a doctor came in to see me, and asked me who I was.
And I laughed--oh, who ever laughed like that? And I said, _“I am the
author of The Captive!”_
He left me and I sat there, shaking my head and pounding the stone floor
for joy. And I sang again, and sang again. Yes, the author of The Captive!
And captive myself, and free at last!
It was far into the night when I stopped singing; and then I lay down and
never before had I known such peace; for I had found the way--I had seen
the light--I was delivered from all fear and dulness for the rest of my
days! I was so excited I could not sleep--when I fell asleep at last it was
from sheer exhaustion.
And when they roused me the next morning I bounded to my feet like a shot,
and shouted to my soul, and was up and away through the forest like a
startled deer again! They tried their very best to catch me, but they could
not. I had not lived in the woods for nothing, I knew the paths, I knew
where the mountains were. And when they thought they had me in court, I was
on the very summits--and laughing and drunk with the mountain air!
I have a keen sense of humor,--and of course I am never so drunk that I
do not know I'm drunk, and know just what I'm drunk about--else how could
I write poems about it? Do you think that when Shakespeare cried out his
“Blow ye winds and crack your cheeks!” he did not know just what he was
saying? Ah!--And when I saw all these queer little men about me, staring
and wondering--and so solemn!--I laughed the inextinguishable laughter of
Olympus, and shouted so that they dragged me out of court in a hurry.
* * * * *
And then there came the end! They took me to the insane asylum, and I sat
down on the floor of a cell and gazed at myself in amazement and panted: So
there _is_ a way you can live, after all! There _is_ a way you
can make them support you! There _is_ a way you can do all your work
in peace, and worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness! I could scarcely
believe it all--it took half an hour for me to realize it. And then I
shouted that I was saved!--and fell to work at shaping that mad Song of the
West Wind I had been so full of.
* * * * *
And then suddenly I heard a muffled voice say: “What in the dickens are you
making all that rumpus for?” And I stared about me and saw that I was still
crouching by the window in my room! And I shrank back and quivered with
rage, because I knew that I had been making a noise and that some one out
in the hall had been listening to me!
* * * * *
And that was the end of my long adventure.
* * * * *
December 30th.
“I am pleased to be able to tell you that your poem is a great deal better
than I expected to find it. I am forced to write briefly by reason of
pressure of business; but you have very considerable literary gifts. The
work is clearly made whole of sincerity; it shows a considerable command of
expression, and a considerable understanding of style. It has qualities of
imagination and of emotional insight, and is obviously the fruit of a wide
reading. But besides these things, it is exactly as I expected, and as I
told you--the work is very narrow in the range of its appeal; you can not
in the least blame the publishers for declining it, because it is true that
very few people would care for it. My own judgment is hardly capable in the
matter, because I myself am not an idealist. Recording my own opinion, I
found the poem monotonous, and not especially interesting; but then, I say
that of much that some other people consider great poetry.
“My advice to you is just what it was before--that you go out into the
world and become acquainted with life. Not knowing you personally, I could
not counsel you definitely, but I should think that what would benefit you
most would be a good stiff course in plain, every-day newspaper reporting.
Newspaper reporters have many deficiencies, but at least they learn to keep
in touch with their audiences, and to write in a way that takes hold of the
people. You may not welcome this advice--but we seldom welcome what is good
for us.”
* * * * *
I am not dead yet, and I have not lost the power of getting angry. Such
things as that do me good, they make me fight, they get all my soul in
arms. Great God, the blindness, the asininity of it!
It is enough if you can classify a man; give him a name--and then it's all
out of the way. If he have faith and fire and aspiration and worship--and
you have not--why, say that he is an idealist, and that you are something
else, and let it go at that.
* * * * *
December 31st.
The poem came back to-day, and I trudged off to another publisher's--the
sixth. I have no hope now, however; I send it as a matter of form.
I shudder at the prospect of to-morrow's coming; for it will be just a
month more to the time I said I should have to go to work!
And New Year's day--my soul, if I had foreseen this last New Year's! I
thank Heaven for that blessing, at least.
Who are these men that I should submit to their judgments? These men and
their commonplace lives--are they not that very world out of which I have
fought my way, by the toil of nights and days?--And now I must come back
and listen to their foolish judgments about my song!
--You felt what was in it, you poor, stupid man! But it did not take you
with it, for you are not a poet; you have not kept the holy fire burning,
you are not still “strenuous for the bright reward.” And so you found it
monotonous! Some men find nature monotonous. And some men find music
monotonous.
* * * * *
January 5th.
Two days ago I was reading Menschen und Werke, by Georg Brandes. I was
glancing over an essay on Friedrich Nietzsche, and I came upon some things
that made my heart throb:--
“This man [Nietzsche's ideal] takes willingly upon himself the sorrow
of speaking the truth. His chief thought is this: A happy life is an
impossibility; the highest that man can attain is a heroic life, a life in
which, amid the greatest difficulties, something is striven for which, in
one way or other, proves for the good of all. To what is truly human only
the true men can lift us, those who seem to have come into being through a
leap of nature, the thinkers and discoverers, the artists and producers,
and those who achieve more through their being than their doing; the noble,
the good in a great sense, those in whom the genius of the good works.
These men are the goal of history. Nietzsche formulates the sentence
'Humanity shall labor continually at this, to beget solitary great men--and
this and nothing else is its task.'--
“Here Nietzsche has reached the final answer to his question 'What is
Culture?' For upon this rest the fundamental principles of Culture, and the
duties which it imposes. It lays upon me the duty to place myself actively
in relation to the great human ideals. Its chief thought is this: To every
one who will look for it and partake of it, it sets the task; to labor in
himself and outside of himself at the begetting of the thinker and the
artist, the truth-loving and the beauty-loving man, the pure and good
personality--and therewith at the fulfilment of nature....
“In our day a so-called Culture institution signifies only too often an
arrangement by which the cultured, moving in closed ranks, force to one
side all those solitary and contrary ones whose striving is directed to
higher things. Also among the learned there is so far lacking, as a rule,
all sense for the genius that is coming into being, and every feeling for
the work of the contemporary and struggling soul. Therefore, in spite of
the irresistible and restless advance in all technical and specialized
fields, the conditions for the originating of the great are so little
improved that the opposition to the highly gifted has rather increased than
diminished.
“From the government the superior individuals can not expect much. It helps
them rarely when it takes them into its service, very certainly it will
help them only when it gives them full independence. Only true Culture can
prevent their early becoming weary or exhausted, and protect them from the
exasperating battle with Culture-philistinism.”
* * * * *
Those words made my blood tingle, they made me tremble. Alone, miserable,
helpless--here was a voice at last, a friend! I dropped the book and I went
to the library, and I was back with “Also sprach Zarathustra” in an hour.
* * * * *
I have been reading it for two days--reading it in a state of excitement,
forgetting everything. Here is a man!--Here is a man! The first night that
I read it I kicked my heels together and laughed aloud in glee, like a
child. _Oh_, it was so fine! And to find things like this already
written, and in the world! Great heavens, it was like finding a gold mine
underneath my feet; and I have forgotten all my troubles again, forgotten
everything! I have found a man who understands me, a man to be my friend!
* * * * *
I do not know what the name Friedrich Nietzsche conveys to the average
cultured American. I can only judge by my own case--I have kept pace with
our literary movements and I have read the standard journals and reviews;
but I have never come upon even a reference to Friedrich Nietzsche, except
as a byword and a jest.
* * * * *
I had rather live my own life than any other man's life. My own vision is
my home. But every great man's inspiration is a challenge, and until you
have mastered it you can not go on.
I speak not of poets, nor of philosophers, but of religious teachers, of
prophets; and I speak but my opinion--let every man form his own. I say
that I have read all those that men honor, and that a greater prophet than
this man has not come upon the earth in centuries. I think of Emerson and
Carlyle as the religious teachers, the prophets, of this time; and beside
this mighty spirit Emerson is a child and Carlyle a man without a faith or
an idea. I call him the John Baptist of the new Dispensation, the first
high priest of the Religion of Evolution; and I bid the truth-seeker read
well his Bible, for in it lies the future of mankind for ages upon ages to
come.
* * * * *
Half that I love in my soul's life I owe to the prophet of Nazareth. The
other half I owe,--not to Nietzsche, but to the new Dispensation of which
he is a priest. Nietzsche will stand alone; but he is nevertheless the
child of his age--he sings what thousands feel.
* * * * *
It is a disadvantage to be the first man. If you are the first man you see
but half-truths and you hate your enemies. When you seek truth, truly, all
systems and all faiths of men--they are beautiful to you--born of sorrow,
and hallowed with love; but they will not satisfy you, and you put them by.
You do not let them influence you one way or the other; you can no more
find truth while you are bound to them by hatred than while you are bound
to them by love. There are dreary places in “Also sprach Zarathustra,”
narrownesses and weaknesses too; they come whenever the writer is thinking
of the evils of the hour, whenever he is gazing, not on the vision of his
soul, but on the half-truths of the men about him.
* * * * *
When I speak of Christ let no man think of Christianity. I speak of a
prince of the soul, the boldest, the freest, the noblest of men that I
know. With the thousand systems that mankind has made in his memory, I have
simply nothing in any way to do.
* * * * *
To me all morality is one. Morality is hunger and thirst after
righteousness. Morality is a quality of will. The differences that there
are between Christ and Nietzsche are differences of the intellect--where no
man is final.
The doctrine of each is a doctrine of sacrifice; with one it is a sacrifice
of love, with the other it is a sacrifice of labor. For myself, I care not
for the half-truths of any man. I said to my soul, “Shall I cast out love
for labor?” And my soul replied, “For what wilt thou labor but love?”
* * * * *
Moral sublimity lies in the escape from self. The doctrine of Christ is a
negation of life, that of Nietzsche an affirmation; it seems to me much
easier to attain to sublimity with the former.
It is easier to die for righteousness than to live for it. If you are to
die, you have but to fix your eyes upon your vision, and see that you do
not take them away. But the man who will _live_ for righteousness--he
must plant and reap, must gather fire-wood and establish a police-force;
and to do these things nobly is not easy; to do them sublimely seems hardly
possible at all.
* * * * *
Twenty centuries ago the Jewish world was a little plain, and God a loving
Father. He held you in his arms, he spoke to you in every dream, in every
fantasy, in every accident. Life was very short--but a little trial--you
had only to be patient, and nothing mattered. Society did not exist--only
your neighbor existed. Knowledge did not exist, nor was it needed--the
world was to end--perhaps to-night--and what difference made all the rest?
You took no heed for the morrow--for would not your Father send you bread?
You resisted not evil--for if you died, was not that all that you could
ask?
It was with such a sweet and simple faith as this that the victory of Jesus
Christ was won. These were his ideas, and as the soul was all-consuming
with him, he lived by them and died by them, and stands as the symbol of
faith.
* * * * *
And now twenty centuries have gone by. And a new teacher has come to whom
also the soul is all-consuming. What ideas has _he_? And what task
does he face?
* * * * *
I speak not to children. I speak to men seeking truth.
In twenty centuries we have learned that God is not a Father who answers
prayers and works miracles and holds out his arms at the goal. We have
come shuddering to the awful mystery of being; strange and terrible
words have been spoken--words never to be forgotten--“phenomenon,” and
“thing-in-itself”; not knowing what these words mean, you are ignorant and
recreant to the truth; _knowing_ what they mean, you tug no more at
the veil. Also we have learned that time and change are our portion, “the
plastic dance of circumstance”; we talk no more of immortality. We have
turned our hopes to the new birth of time, to the new goal of our labor,
the new parent of our love, that we name Society.
And likewise Evolution has come, which is the whole of knowledge. And we
have learned of starry systems, of the building of worlds, of the pageant
of history and the march of mind. Out of all these things has come a new
duty, which is not peace, but battle--which is not patience, but
will--which is not death, but life.
* * * * *
There is no room in the world of Evolution for the doctrine of
non-resistance to evil. Non-resistance to evil is the negation of life, and
the negation of life is the negation of faith. How shall you resist not
evil when life is action and not passion? When not a morsel of food can you
touch except by the right that you are more fitted to survive than that
morsel? How when you know that you rose from the beast by resistance? And
that you stay above the beast by resistance? Will you give up the farm land
to be jungle again? Or will you teach the beasts your non-resistance? And
the trees of the forest to crowd no more your land!
It is no longer possible to build a heaven and reject the earth. Such as
life is you have to take it.
* * * * *
And you have to live it. The huge machinery of Society is on your hands,
with all its infinite complications, its infinite possibilities of beauty
and joy. Your life is, as ever, a sacrifice; all life is, as ever, a
sacrifice; but it is a sacrifice to man--a sacrifice to the best. Once your
task was self-abnegation, and that was easy; now it is self-assertion, and
that is hard. Knowing what you are, you will dare to live, not for your own
sake, but that strength and beauty may be in the world. Knowing what you
might be, you choose infinite toil for your portion, and in the humility of
toil you find your holiest peace. Your enemy you resist with all your soul,
not for hatred of your enemy, but for love of the right. If he were not
evil he could not be your enemy; and being evil, he has no right to be.
Your conscience to you is no longer a shame, but a joy; you think no
more of infinite sin, but of infinite virtue.--And for the rest, you do
not attain perfection, and you are not worshiped as a god; you are much
troubled by trivialities, and the battle tries your soul. But you make no
truce with lies, and you never lay down your sword; you keep your eyes upon
a far goal, and you leave the world better than you found it. When you come
to die you have no fear, but a song; for you are master of yourself, and
you have learned to know that which you are.
* * * * *
--And there is only to add--that whether you believe these things or not,
they are what you actually _do_. It seems to me not desirable that
one's belief should be less than one's practise.
* * * * *
January 6th.
Has any one, at this end of the nineteenth century, a clear idea of what
the poets of the ages called _Inspiration_? If no one have, I will
describe it. With the least remainder of superstition in him a man would
scarcely be able to put aside the idea that he was merely the Incarnation,
the mouthpiece, the medium of overwhelming powers. The idea of Revelation
in the mind describes exactly the state of affairs--that suddenly, with
unspeakable certainty and fineness, something became visible and audible,
something that shakes and pervades one to the depths. One hears--he does
not seek; he takes--he does not ask who gives; like lightning gleams out
a thought, of necessity, formed without hesitation--I have never had a
choice. An ecstasy, whose colossal strain breaks in the middle with a
stream of tears, in the course of which the step becomes, involuntary, now
raging, now slow; a state in which one is completely beside himself, with
the distinctest consciousness of countless shudderings and quiverings, even
to the toes of his feet; a depth of joy in which all that is painful and
somber serves, not as a contrast, but as conditioned, as demanded, as a
necessary color in such an overflow of light; an instinct of rhythmic
relations which overleaps vast spaces of forms; all happening in the
highest degree involuntarily, but as if in a storm of sensations of
freedom, of infinity, of power, of divinity.--This is my experience of
Inspiration; I doubt not but that one must needs go back thousands of
years to find one who might say, “It is also mine.”
* * * * *
Do you think that _I_ wrote that--I, Arthur Stirling? No, I did not
write that. The man who wrote that is known to you as an atheist.
* * * * *
January 7th.
When Zarathustra came into the next city, which lay beside the forest, he
found in that place much people gathered together in the market; for they
had been called that they should see a rope-dancer. And Zarathustra spoke
thus unto the people:
_“I teach ye the Over-man._ The man is something who shall be
overcome. What have ye done to overcome him?
“All being before this made something beyond itself: and you will be the
ebb of this great flood, and rather go back to the beast than overcome the
man?
“What is the ape to the man? A mockery or a painful shame. And even so
shall man be to the Over-man: a mockery or a painful shame.
“Man is a cord, tied between Beast and Over-man--a cord above an abyss.
“A perilous arriving, a perilous traveling, a perilous looking backward, a
perilous trembling and standing still.
“What is great in man is that he is a bridge, and no goal; what can be
loved in man is that he is a going-over and a going-under.
“I love them that know not how to live, be it even as those going under,
for such are those going across.
“I love them that are great in scorn, because these are they that are great
in reverence, and _arrows of longing toward the other shore!”_
* * * * *
And here ended the first speech of Zarathustra.
* * * * *
“The air thin and clear, the danger nigh, and the spirit filled with a
joyful mischief; these things go well together.
“I will have gnomes about me, for I am merry....
“I feel no more with you; these clouds which I see under me, these clouds
black and heavy over which I laugh--just these are your storm-clouds.
“You gaze upward if you long for exaltation. I gaze downward because I am
exalted.
“Who among you can both laugh and be exalted?
“Who climbs upon the highest mountains, he laughs at all sorrow-play and
sorrow-reality.
“Bold, untroubled, mocking, full of power--so will wisdom have us; she is a
woman and loves always but the warrior.
“You say to me: 'Life is hard to bear.' But for what had you your pride in
the morning, and in the evening your submission?...
“I would believe only in a god who knew how to dance.
“And when I saw my devil, I found him earnest, profound, deep, solemn; he
was the Spirit of Heaviness--through him fail all things.
“Not by anger, but by laughing, one kills. Up, let us kill the Spirit of
Heaviness!...”
* * * * *
“Free dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thoughts will I hear, and not that
thou hast escaped a yoke.
“Art thou such a one that _can_ escape a yoke?
“Free from what? What is that to Zarathustra! Clear shall your eye tell me:
free _to_ what?
“Canst thou give to thyself thy good and thine evil, and hang thy will
above thee as thy law? Canst thou be thine own judge, and avenger of thy
law?
“Fearful it is to be alone with the judge and the avenger of thy law. So is
a stone flung out into empty space and into the icy breath of isolation.--
“Dost thou know truly, my brother, the word scorn? And the pain of thy
righteousness, to be just that which thou dost scorn?...”
* * * * *
“As I lay in sleep a sheep ate up the ivy crown of my head--ate and then
said: 'Zarathustra is no more a scholar.'
“Said it and went strutting away, and proud. A child told it to me....
“This is the truth. I am gone out of the house of the scholars, and have
slammed to the door behind me....
“I am too hot, and burning with my own thoughts; oft will it take away my
breath. I must into the open and out of all dusty rooms.
“But they sit cool in cool shadows; they wish in all things to be but
spectators, and guard themselves lest they sit where the sun burns the
steps.
“Like those who stand upon the street and stare at the people who go by; so
they wait also and stare at the thoughts that others have thought.
“If one touches them with the hands, they make dust around them like
meal-sacks, and involuntarily; _but who could guess that their dust comes
from corn and the golden rapture of the summer fields?_”
* * * * *
“Too far away into the future I flew; a horror overcame me. And as I looked
around me, there was Time my only companion.
“Then I flew backward, homeward--and ever faster: so I came to you, men of
the present, and to the Land of Culture.
“For the first time I brought an eye for you, and good wishes; truly, with
longing in my heart I came.
“And what happened to me? Frightened as I was--I had to laugh. Never had my
eyes seen anything so color-besprinkled!
“I laughed and laughed while my foot still trembled, and my heart too:
'Here is the home of all paint-pots!' said I.
“Painted over with fifty spots in face and limbs; so sat ye there, to my
amazement, ye men of the present!...
“Written all over with the signs of the past, and also these signs painted
over with new signs; so you have hidden yourself well from all
sign-readers!...
“All Times and Principles look piebald out of your coverings; all Customs
and Faiths speak piebald out of your features....
“How _could_ ye believe, ye color-besprinkled!--who are pictures of
everything that ever was believed!...
“Ah, whither shall I go now with my longing?”
* * * * *
“Who are pictures of everything that ever was believed! Who are pictures of
everything that ever was believed!” I read that and I slapped my knees and
I lay back and laughed like a very Falstaff. “Pictures of everything that
ever was believed!” Ho, ho, ho!
* * * * *
--That is some of Nietzsche!
* * * * *
January 8th.
To-day it snowed hard, and it occurred to me that I might add to my money.
I bought a second-hand shovel and went out to shovel snow. It is not so
bad, I said, you are out of doors, and also you can think of Nietzsche.
I made a dollar and a half, but I fear I did not think very much. My hands
were cold, for one thing, and my shoes thin, for another.
* * * * *
There is nothing that brings me down like physical toil. It is madness to
believe that you can do anything else--you drudge and drudge, and your mind
is an absolute blank while you do it. It is a thing that sets me wild with
nervousness and impatience. I hate it! I hate it!
And I find myself crying out and protesting against it; and then I see
other men not minding it, and I hear the words of my dear clergyman friend:
“The labor which all of us have to share.” So I say to myself: Perhaps
I am really an idler then! A poor unhappy fool that can not face life's
sternness, that is crying out to escape his duty!
* * * * *
That I could say such a thing--O God, what sign is that of how far I have
fallen! Of how much I have yielded!--
A vapor, heavy, hueless, formless, cold!
Leave it to time! Leave it to time!
--I hear that, and I hear around me the laughter of mocking demons. It
startles my soul--but no longer to rage as it used to. I sit and stare at
it with a great, heavy numbness possessing me.
* * * * *
January 12th.
I am still reading Nietzsche. I think I shall read all that he has written.
I am always kept aware of the limitations, but he is a tremendous man. Can
you guess how this took hold of me?--
* * * * *
THE GRAVE-SONG
“There lies the island of graves, the silent; there are also the graves of
my youth. Thither will I carry an evergreen wreath of life.”
Thus resolving in my heart, I went over the sea.--
Oh ye visions and apparitions of my youth! Oh all ye glances of love, ye
godlike moments! How swiftly you died in me! I remember you to-day as my
dead.
From you, my dearest dead, there comes to me a sweet odor, heart-melting,
tear-melting. Truly it shakes and melts the heart of the lonely seaman.
Still am I the richest and the most to be envied--I, the most lonely. For
I _had_ you, and you have me still; say, to whom fell, as to me, such
rose-apples from the trees?...
_Me_ to kill, they strangled you, you song-birds of my hopes. Yea, at
you, the dearest, shot wickedness its arrows--to strike my heart!...
This word will I speak to my enemies: “What is all murder of man beside
that which ye did to me?”
Thus, in the good hour, spake my purity: “Godlike shall all being be to
me.”
Then ye fell upon me with your foul spirits; ah, whither now hath the good
hour fled?
“All days shall be holy to me”--so spake once the wisdom of my youth; truly
the speech of a happy wisdom.
But then you enemies stole away my nights and sold them to sleepless
torment; ah, whither now hath the happy wisdom fled?...
As a blind man once I went a blissful way; then you threw rubbish in the
blind man's way; and now he is weary of the old blind ascendings....
And once would I dance as never had I danced before; above all the heavens
away would I dance. And then you lured away my dearest singer!...
Only in the dance can I speak metaphors of the highest things:--and now my
highest metaphor remained unspoken in my limbs!
Unspoken and undelivered remained my highest hope! And there died all the
visions and solaces of my youth!
* * * * *
That thing brought the tears down my cheeks. It is what my soul has cried
all day and all night--that I see all my joy and all my beauty going!
It is the fearful, the agonizing _waiting_ that does it. I know it--I
put it down--there is nothing kills the soul in a man so much as that. When
you wait your life is outside of yourself; you hope,--you are at the mercy
of others--at the mercy of indifference and accident and God knows what.
But again I cry, “What can I do? If there is anything I have not done--tell
me! Tell me!”
Here I sit, and I have but seven dollars left to my name, including what I
made by the shoveling. And I sit and watch the day creep on me like a wild
beast on its prey--the day when I must go back into the world and toil
again! Oh, it will kill me--it will kill me!
* * * * *
I sit and wait and hang upon the faint chance of one publisher more. It is
my only chance,--and such a chance! I find myself calculating, wondering;
yes, famous books have been rejected often, and still found their mark. Can
I still believe that this book will shake men?
Ah, God, in my soul I do not believe it, because I have lost my
inspiration! I have let go of that fire that was to drive like a wind-storm
over the world.
* * * * *
Yes, I ask myself if such things can be! I ask myself if they were real,
all those fervors and all that boldness of mine! If it was natural, that
way that lived!
--Oh, and then I look back, and my heart grows sick within me.
* * * * *
So I spend my time, and when I turn and try to lose myself in Nietzsche,
his mercilessness flings me into new despair.
* * * * *
January 18th.
I have the terrible gift of insensibility; and I think my insensibility
torments me more than anything else in the world.
I have no life, no power, no feeling, naturally--it is all my will, it is
all effort. And now that I am not striving, I sink back into a state of
numbness, of dull, insensible despair. I no longer feel anything, I no
longer care about anything. I pass my time in helpless impotence--and day
by day I watch a thing creeping upon me as in a nightmare. I must go out
into the world again and slave for my bread!
--Oh, _then_ I will feel something, I think!
* * * * *
Another week and more is gone, and I have but a little over four dollars.
* * * * *
January 20th.
I have stopped reading Nietzsche. I could not stand any more of it. It does
not satisfy me.
It is not merely that I am so weak now, and that his mocking goads me. I
would have been through with him in any case. He is so narrow--so
one-sided.
It is reaction from the present, of course, that accounts for it. Too
much gazing upon the world, that has led him to believe that love of man
necessarily implies compromise.
There are two words that are absent from his writings--they are love and
humanity; and so it never satisfies you, you are always discontented, you
have always to correct and supply.
* * * * *
January 22d.
Oh why do those publishers take so long! I wait and yearn; I grow sick with
waiting and yearning.
I never allowed any weakness in my soul before; I never made any terms with
it. I blamed everything upon myself. And now that my whole life is weakness
and misery, I writhe and struggle--I turn back always on myself, suspecting
myself, blaming myself. I can not lay it to the world, I can not get into
the habit--it is such a miserable habit! How many millions there are of
them--poor, querulous wretches, blaming their fate, crying out against the
world's injustice and neglect--crying out against the need of working,
wishing for this and that--discontented, impotent, miserable! Oh my
God--and I am one of such!
I can not bear the sound of my own voice when I complain! I hear the world
answering me--and I take the part of the world! “Why don't you be a man and
go out and earn your way? Why don't you face your fate? You prate about
your message--what business has a man with a message that is too much for
him? What business have you with weakness--what _excuse_ have you for
weakness?”
And so I came to see it. The world is right and I am all wrong! And the
truth of it burns me like an acid in my brain.
* * * * *
January 24th.
And all the time my whole being is still restless with the storms that
raged in it last spring! I have all those memories, all that poignancy.
I can not realize it--any of what I was and had--but I know it as a
_fact_, a memory, and I crouch and tremble, I grow sick with it.
* * * * *
Why don't they write to me? My money is going!
* * * * *
January 26th.
The reason that I shudder so at the prospect of having to face the world
again, is that I have no hope. _I have no hope!_ Once I could
go out into that hellish market. I could be any man's slave, do any
drudgery--because I saw a light ahead--I saw deliverance--I had a purpose!
And now what purpose have I--what hope have I? I tell you I am a man in a
trap! I can do nothing! I can do no more than if I were walled in with
iron!
I say that my business in this world is to be a poet! I say that there is
only one thing I can do--only one way that I can get free--and that is by
doing my work, by writing books. And I have done all that I can do, I have
earned my freedom--and no one will give it to me! Oh, I shall die if I am
penned here much longer!
* * * * *
I eat out my heart, I burn up my very entrails in my frenzies. Set me free!
_Set me free!_
* * * * *
I thought to-day if I only had a little money--if I could only publish that
book myself! I can not believe that men would not love it--I can not--no,
you may crush me all you please, but I can not! And I would take it and
shout it from the housetops--I would peddle it on the streets--I would
_make_ the world hear me!
--And then I sink back, and I hear the world say, “You poor fool!”
* * * * *
January 28th.
I have only a dollar and a half left! I have sat, shuddering and waiting,
all that I dare; the end is come now, I must look for work to-morrow. It is
like a death-sentence to me. I could do nothing to-night.
* * * * *
January 29th.
Providence came to help me to-night for once! It snowed to-day and I have
been hard at work again.
* * * * *
January 30th.
Some more snow. My hands were nearly frost-bitten, but I keep at it; for at
least it is out in the air, and it gives me a little longer respite.
In the afternoon I made up my mind to go and see the publishers and ask
them if they could not read the story at once--it has been a month. I saw
their literary manager; he said he was going to read it himself.
* * * * *
January 31st.
More snow again to-day. And I have made over five dollars. But I have come
out of it more dead than alive--dulled, dispirited, utterly worn out.
If I could only be an animal for a time. But each day of the drudgery only
makes me wilder with nervousness.
* * * * *
February 1st.
They regret, of course, and hold the MS. at my disposal. I went up to get
it this afternoon, and half by accident I met the man I had seen before. I
had a talk with him. He was a very curious personage.
He seemed to have been interested in The Captive. “I'll tell you,” he said,
“you know there's really some extraordinary work in that poem. I believe
that you have it in you to make some literature before you get through, Mr.
Stirling.”
“Do you?” I said.
“Yes,” he replied, “I feel pretty sure of it. You ask me to tell you about
it--so you mustn't mind if I speak frankly. And of course it's very crude.
You haven't found your voice yet, you're seeking for mastery, and your work
is obviously young. Anybody can see in a few lines that it's young--it's
one of those things like Goetz von Berlichingen, or Die Räuber--you tear a
passion to tatters, you want to rip the universe up the back. But of course
that wears off by and by; it isn't well to take life too seriously, you
know, and I don't think it'll be long before you come to feel that The
Captive isn't natural or possible--or desirable either.”
The publisher was smoking a cigar. He puffed for a moment and then he
asked, “What are you doing now?”
“Nothing just at present,” said I.
“I should have supposed you'd be writing another poem,” he
replied,--“though of course as a matter of fact the wisest thing you can do
is to wait and learn. Your next book will be entirely different, you can be
quite sure--you won't be so anxious to get hold of all the world and make
it go your way.”
I smiled feebly. “Possibly not,” I said.
“I'll tell you a story,” said the publisher--“speaking about youthful
aspirations! I was talking to Mr. X---- last night, the author of ----.
[Footnote: The manuscript names an extremely popular historical novel.] You
wouldn't think X---- was the sort of man to be reforming the world, would
you? But he told me about his earliest work, that he said he had tucked
away in a drawer, and it turned out he was like all other authors. This
was a socialist story, it seems, and the hero delivered fiery speeches
six pages long. And X---- said that he had written it and taken it to a
publisher, expecting to upset the world a week after it appeared, but that
he never could get anybody to publish it, and gave it up finally and went
into journalism. The funny part of it was that he had sent it here, and
when he told me about it, I remembered looking it over and writing him just
about what I'm telling you.”
The publisher smoked for a moment or two. “You see, Mr. Stirling,” he said
at last, “he had to wait ten years before he 'arrived.' So you must not be
discouraged. Have you read his book?”
“No, I have not.”
“It is a very pretty piece of work--it's been many months since it
came out, but they say it's still selling in the thousands. Don't get
discouraged, Mr. Stirling, keep at it, because you have real talent, I
assure you.”
I rose to go, and he shook my hand. “Take my advice,” he said, “and write
something more practicable than a tragedy. But of course don't forget in
any case that we shall always be very happy to read anything of yours at
any time.”
--I walked down the street meditating. I will get over it again, of course;
but to-night I sat in the dark and the cold, shivering. And I asked myself
if it must not be so after all. “_Is_ it true, the thing that I did;
is it _natural_?” I said. “Or must it not be exaggerated and crude, as
they all tell me! And uninteresting!--What is the use of it? I tormented
myself that way and tore myself to pieces, but it does not stir any one
else.”
Ah, of course it's all dead in me--and I'm prepared to believe anything
they tell me! It's overwrought, it's young, it's pitched in too high a key,
it's strained and unnatural, it takes life too seriously! Certainly at any
rate they are right that I shall never, never do the same thing again.
But unfortunately I don't feel like writing anything else. I don't know
anything about historical novels.
* * * * *
--I would have read some of the poem again to-night, but I'm too
discouraged. I am tired of it. I know it by heart, and it doesn't take hold
of me.
I have been too long among men, I groan. I see their point of view too
well!
Why, there are things in that book that when I read them now make me
shudder. I have hardly the courage to offer it to any one else to read. I
don't know any one to take it to, besides.
* * * * *
O God, I'm so unhappy!
* * * * *
February 3d.
To-day an idea occurred to me, one that should have occurred before. Once
upon a time I was introduced to the editor of the ----. Perhaps he will
not remember it, I said. But anyhow, why not try? I will take him The
Captive--perhaps he can use it in the magazine--who knows?
I knew nothing better to do, so I went there. He was very polite--he did
remember my face. He was fearfully busy, it seemed. He did not think there
was much likelihood of a magazine's publishing a blank-verse tragedy; but I
told him how I had worked, and he said he'd read it.
And so there's one chance more!
My poor, foolish heart is always ready to tremble with new hope. But faith
in that book was so _ground_ into it!
--I asked him to read it at once, I explained that I was in great haste. I
think he understood what I meant. My clothes show it.
I have been hoarding my money--counting every cent. I dread the world so!
Now that I am so broken, so laden with misery, it sounds about me as one
jeer of mockery. But I shall have to be hunting a place soon--you never can
tell how long it may take you, and the chances are so terrible.
I will not do anything until I hear from this one man, however. He promised
to let me know in a week.
* * * * *
I did not see him at the publisher's--he has another office besides. He had
huge piles of papers and books about him; he is an important man, I guess;
can it be that he will be the one to save me?
I think: “Oh if he knew, he would!” I find myself thinking that of all the
world--if I could only make them understand! Poor, impotent wretch, if I
could only find the _word_!
--Or is it simply my blind egotism that makes me think that?
* * * * *
February 6th.
I do not think that what I write can be of much interest. It must be
monotonous--all this despair, this endless crying out, this endless
repetition of the same words, the same thought.
Yet that is all that my life is! That is just what I do every day--whenever
I am not reading a book to forget myself.
It is all so simple, my situation! That is the most terrible thing about
it, it is the same thing always and forever.
* * * * *
I have lived so much agony through this thing--it would not startle me if
I saw that my hair had turned white. I know I feel like an old man. I am
settled down into mournfulness, into despair; I can do nothing but gaze
back--I have lived my life--I have spent my force--I am tired and sick.
I! I! I!--do you get tired of hearing it? It was not always like that; once
you read a little about a book.
* * * * *
February 8th.
This is the fifth day. I am counting the days, I have been counting the
very hours. He said he would be a week. And I--only think of it--I have but
two dollars and sixty cents left!
Hurry up! Hurry up!
--And then I say with considerable scorn in my voice: “Haven't you learned
enough about that manuscript yet? And about publishers yet?”
* * * * *
February 10th.
Just imagine! I went to see him to-day, and he stared at me. “Why, sure
enough, Mr. Stirling!--It had slipped my mind entirely!”
I have learned to bear things. I asked him calmly to let me know as soon
as possible. He said: “I am honestly so rushed that I do not know where to
turn. But I will do the best I possibly can.”
I said--poor, pitiful cringing, is it not terrible?--that I'd be up his way
again in three days, and did he think he could have it read by then. He
said he was not sure, but that he'd try.
And so I went away. Now I have two dollars and twenty-three cents. I have
to pay my rent to-morrow, and that will leave me a dollar and a half. I
can make that do me seven or eight days--I have one or two things at home.
I'll wait the three days--and then I'll have to set out in earnest to find
something to do.
Oh, the horror of not knowing if you can pay your next week's room rent in
this fearful city!
* * * * *
February 11th.
I sat and looked at myself to-day. I said: “When a soul is crushed like
this, can it ever get up again? Can it ever be the same, no matter what
happens? Don't you see the fact, that you've been tamed and broken--that
you've _given in_! And how will you ever rise from the shame of it,
how will you ever forget it? All this skulking and trembling--how will you
ever dare look yourself in the face again! Will not it mock your every
effort? Why, you poor wretch, _you've got a broken back!”_
* * * * *
February 12th.
And to-morrow again I must go there, trembling and nervous, hanging on a
word!
There is not much sense in it, but I have learned to hate all men who have
ease and power.
* * * * *
February 13th.
I knew it! I could have told it beforehand. “I am awfully sorry, Mr.
Stirling, but it is no use talking, I simply can not! I will write you just
as soon as ever I get it read.”
And so I came out. I had a dollar and twenty cents. My rent would be due in
four days again. So even if I got some work at once I should have to pawn
something.
--Thus I began my search for a situation. I could not choose--I was willing
to take anything.
I fear I look like a tramp; but I have several letters from places where I
have worked. Still, I could not find anything. I have tramped all day until
I could hardly move. I bought a paper, but everything advertised was gone
by that time.
If it would only snow again, so that I could shovel some more!
* * * * *
February 14th.
Again I have been pacing the streets the whole endless day, beaten back and
rebuffed at every turn. I have been drilled for this, this is the climax!
First take every gleam of heart out of me, and then set me to pacing the
streets in the cold, to be stared at and insulted by every kind of a man!
And still nothing to do.
* * * * *
February 15th.
I take my lunch with me--I have cut myself down to twenty cents a day for
food. I walk and walk, and I am so hungry I can not do on less than that. I
have but sixty cents left to-night. I failed again to-day.
* * * * *
February 16th.
It is not as desperate as it sounds, because I have a few books and things
that I can sell--I do not believe that I will actually starve--I have
always done my work well, and have gotten references. But O God, the shame
of it--the endless, heaped-up bitterness!
I have sunk into a beast of burden. I trudge on with my mind torpid--I take
whatever comes to me, and go on mechanically. Oh it cows me, it wears me
down! I have learned to bear anything--_anything_! A man might kick me
and I would not mind.
I think I went to fifty places yesterday. Nothing to do--nothing. To-day is
Sunday, but I tried even to-day. I came home to get some dinner.--I might
have been a porter in a hotel, and carried trunks--that was my one chance.
But I have not the physical power for that.
--And then after all--toward evening--when I was so tired I was almost
wild--I had an offer at last! And guess what it was--of all the things that
I had made up my mind I could not bear--to be a waiter!
It is, I believe, what a man should call a rare opportunity. It is a fairly
good restaurant just off Broadway; and I get ten dollars and tips. Poor me!
My heart bounded for a moment, and then I asked myself, And what do you
want with money any more? I took the place, and I am to begin the day after
to-morrow. I am so tired I can hardly move.
* * * * *
February 17th.
Was it not irony? I have watched day by day for snow; and now that I have
taken the other place--behold, to-day it snows a foot!
--I went to see the editor in the afternoon. I was desperate at the thought
of to-morrow. I said I would tell him!--But when I got there I only had the
courage to inquire about the poem. He had not read it. I feared he seemed
annoyed.
I shall not go there again for a week. I can not make him hurry.
* * * * *
February 18th.
To-day I had to begin by apologizing to my landlady, and begging her to let
me pay her a week later. I had to go into an elaborate explanation--she
wanted to know why I had not been working all these months, and so on. She
has a red face, and drinks, I think.
Then I had to take a load of my best books--my poor, few precious books
that I have loved--and sell them at a second-hand bookstore. When I had
sold them I had to hire a waiter's suit for a week, until I had money to
buy it. And then with that awful thing on I went down to the restaurant.
Can you imagine how a pure woman would feel if she had to go into a brothel
to live? That was just how I felt--just how! Oh my God, the indignity of
it! Is there _anything_ that I could do more humiliating?
--But I have lost the power of getting angry. Only my heart is one great
sob.
* * * * *
February 20th.
Oh, that hellish place! What is there in this whole city more brutal than
that restaurant?
Day and night, day and night, to see but one thing--to see flashy,
overdressed, fat and vulgar men and women gorging themselves! Oh, this will
teach me to feel--this at least! I go about with my whole being one curse
of rage--I could throttle them! And to bow and smirk and lackey them--all
day! All day! Oh, what shall I do--how shall I bear it?
They offer me tips. At first I thought I should refuse; but no, I dare not
do that, even if I wanted to. And since I have stooped to do it, I will
take all I can get. To get money is my one passion now. Oh my God, how can
I bear it!
* * * * *
February 21st.
I said to-day, I must fight this thing--I must, or it will kill me; I can
not let myself go to wreck in this fashion--_I've got to fight!_
And so I got my note-book; and I fell to work to drive myself as of old.
The effort that it cost me made me ill, but I did it. I shall keep on doing
it--I am like a man faced by a fiend--I _must_ keep on--I must!
But then, why do you want to have new languages? Do you not know enough now
to keep you in reading matter for all the time you are ever likely to have?
* * * * *
February 24th.
Oh, one can get used to even a flashy restaurant! It is your fate--you
take it. This is how I pass all my time there. I struggle to resist the
deadening of it, and the horror of it; while I am going about the loathsome
grind I try to think--try to have some idea in my head. And something
comes to me--something beautiful, perhaps; and then in a few moments, in
the clatter and confusion, I lose it; and after that I go about haunted,
restless, feeling that I have lost something, that I ought to be doing
something. What the thing is, I do not even know--but so it drives me and
drives me!
I spend literally hours that way.
* * * * *
February 25th.
When are you going to read that poem--_when_? The week was gone
yesterday--but I will not trouble you, even now! I wait, I wait!
* * * * *
February 27th.
There is another torment about this fearful place that I am in, one that
you could not imagine. I had thought that it would be a pleasure, but it
tears my soul. They have music in the evening; and fancy a person in my
state listening to a violin!
Chiefly, of course, they play trash; but sometimes there comes something
beautiful, perhaps only a phrase. But it takes hold of my soul, it makes my
eyes grow dim, it makes me shudder. It is all my pent-up agony, it is all
my sleeping passion--why, it overwhelms me! And I am helpless--I can not
get away from it!
Remember that I have not heard any music for a year. It is like the voice
of a dead love to me. I thought to-night that I could not bear it.
* * * * *
March 1st.
To-day I had a day off, and I went to see the editor. I have been waiting,
day by day, for a letter; it has been a month since I left it with him, and
I found that he had not read it yet!
“Mr. Stirling,” he said, “it is not my fault, it has simply been
impossible. Now I will tell you what to do. I am going out of the city
Sunday week, and I shall have a little leisure then. I do not see how I can
get to it before that, so you take it and see if you can find some one else
to read it meanwhile. If you will bring it to me Saturday, a week from
to-day, I will promise you faithfully to read it on Sunday.”
So I took the manuscript. I tried four publishing houses, but I could not
find one that would read it in a week. I had to take the manuscript home.
* * * * *
March 3d.
To-morrow ends my second week at the restaurant. It took me five days to
find that place, but I am going to give it up to-morrow. I could not bear
it, if it were to save my life. I can not bear the noise and the grease and
the dirt, and the endless, endless vulgarity; but above all I can not bear
the music.
I can bear almost any degradation, I have found; but not when I have to
listen to music!
Besides, I can afford to give it up. I have made a fortune. I shall have
over thirty dollars when I leave!
* * * * *
I have always been paid, I find, in proportion to the indignities I
bore--in proportion to the amount I humiliated myself before the rich and
the vulgar. These vile, bejeweled, befeathered women, these loathsome,
swinish men--_these_ are the people who have money to spend. They go
through the world scattering their largess with royal hand; and you can get
down and gather it up out of the mud beneath their feet.
* * * * *
I come home at night worn out and weak, sometimes almost in a stupor; but I
am never too ill to brood over that hideous state of affairs. I gaze at it
and I wring my hands, and I cry: Oh my Father in heaven, will it always be
like this?
Think of it--this money that these people squander--do you know what it is?
It is the toil of society! That is what it is,--it is _my_ toil--it is
the toil of the millions that swarm in the tenements where I live--it is
the toil of the laborers, the beasts of burden of society, in the cities
and in the country.
Think about it, I cry, think about it!--Can I not find any word, is there
nothing I can do or say now or at any time, to make men see it? Why, you
take it for granted--_I_ have taken it for granted all my days--that
money should belong to the brutal rich to squander in whatever inanity may
please them! But it never dawns upon you that this money is _the toil
of the human race_! Money is the representation of all that human toil
creates--of all _value_; it is houses that laborers build, it is grain
that farmers raise, it is books that poets write! And see what becomes of
it--see! _see_! Or are you blind or mad, that you _will_ not see?
Have you no more faith in man, no more care about the soul?
* * * * *
You think that I have been made sick by my work in that one haunt of vice.
But it is not only that, it is not only that fever district where all the
diseases of a city gather. I have been all _over_ the city, and it is
everywhere the same. Go to the opera-house any night and you may see
blasphemous vanity enough to feed the starving of this city for a year.
Walk up Fifth Avenue and see them driving; or go to Newport and see them
there. Why, I read in the papers once of a woman who gave a ball--and the
little fact has stuck in my mind ever since that she wore a dress trimmed
with lace that cost a thousand dollars a meter! I do not speak of the
infinite vulgarity of the thing--it is the monstrous _crime_ of it
that cries to me. These people--why, they have society by the
_throat_!
* * * * *
I bury my face in my pillow and sob; but then I look up and pray for faith.
I say we are only at the beginning of civilization, we can see but the
first gleams of a social conscience; but it will come--it must come! Am I
to believe that mankind will always submit to toil and pant to make lace at
a thousand dollars a meter to cover the pride-swollen carcase of a society
dame?
* * * * *
How is it to be managed? I do not know. I am not a political economist--I
am a seeker after righteousness. But as a poet, and as a clear-eyed soul, I
stand upon the heights and I cry out for it, I demand it. I demand that
society shall come to its own, I demand that there shall be intelligence in
the world! I demand that the toil of the millions shall not be for the
pride of the few! I demand that it shall not be to buy diamonds and dresses
and banquets, horses and carriages, palaces and yachts! I demand that it
shall be for the making of knowledge and power, of beauty and light and
love!
* * * * *
Oh, thou black jungle of a world!--What know you of knowledge and power, of
beauty and light and love? What do you dream of these things? The end of
man as you know it is to fight and struggle like a maniac, and grab for his
own all that he can lay his claws upon. And what is your social ideal--but
to lavish, each man upon himself, all that he can lavish before he dies?
And whom do you honor save him who succeeds in that? And whom do you scorn
save him who fails?
* * * * *
Oh thou black jungle of a world!--I cry it once again--
Where savage beasts through forest midnight roam,
Seeking in sorrow for each other's joy!
I sit alone and think of these things, until my breath comes hard with
rage. I say: “It is these that I serve--it is these who own the fruits of
my toil--it is these for whom I am starved and crushed--it is these by whom
my God-given power is trampled into annihilation!”
* * * * *
March 4th.
I gave the place up this morning. I have thirty-one dollars. I think such a
sum of money never made me less happy.
I have nothing to do but drag myself back to my room and wait there until
the eighth, to take back my manuscript. It will be five weeks that he has
kept me--I suppose that is not his fault.
And then I say: “Fool, to torment yourself with such hopes! Don't you
_know_ that he will say what all the rest have said? He is a clever
man, and he knows everything; but what use is he going to have for your
poetry?”
* * * * *
I wandered about almost all of to-day, or sat stupid in my room. I have
lost all my habits of effort--I have forgotten all that I ever knew, all my
hopes, all my plans. I said: “I will study!” But then I added: “Why should
I? Shall I not only make myself miserable, get myself full of emotion, and
to no purpose but the carrying of dishes?”
* * * * *
It is terrible to me to have to acknowledge any change in my way of
living--I never did that before. Compromises! Concessions!
Surrenders!--words such as those set me mad. But what am I to do? What
_can_ I do? I writhe and twist, but there is no escape. I struggle
upward, but I am only beaten back and back? How should I not stop striving?
* * * * *
Circumstances made no difference to a man. So I used to prate!
No difference! Why, I was a giant in my soul, swift and terrible as the
lion. I leaped upon my task, I seized upon everything that came my way. I
passed whole classes of men at a bound, I saw, I felt--I bore the world in
my soul. I would dare everything, learn everything, live everything--take
it all into myself. And every day I was stronger, every day I was more!--
And now see me! You have penned me here, you have starved me, stunted me,
crushed me--I sit shivering and staring at my own piteousness! Why, I can
not even be angry any more--I am too shrunken, too impotent for that! And
was it my fault? Have I not fought till I was ill?
--But never did I put forth a hope that it was not withered in the bud!
My every enthusiasm you stamped into the ground; every advance that I
made--why you smote me in the face! And all my ardor, my confidence, my
trust--has it ever met with anything but jeers?
* * * * *
--Yes, and now you turn away--this revolts you! This is bare, painful
egotism--this is whining--this is querulous misery. It offends you like the
sight of raw flesh!
--It is my raw soul. My poor little naked, pitiful, beaten
soul!--groveling, and begging, too!
* * * * *
--But whose fault is it--merciful Heaven, whose fault is it? It is my
nature to live in myself--to live from myself. And this that is unbearable
egotism, why, it would have been exulting power! Joy in a vision! Mastery
of a life and an art!
But here you shut me up! You crush me down! I try to escape--I cry out: “I
am _not_ an egotist--I am a worshiper! I want nothing in the world so
much as to forget myself--my rights, my claims, my powers, my talents! I
want to think of God! Only give me a chance--only give me a chance to do
that, and I care not what you do with me! Here I stand with my poor little
work, begging, pleading for some one to heed it! Thinking of it only,
living for it only, insisting upon it day and night! But do you think that
I do that of choice? My God, no--you are mad--I only want to go on! Give me
but the chance to go on--and do you think that I would care whether any man
admired my work?”
--Why, I would not even know it--I would be out in the mountains alone!
* * * * *
“But for what had you your pride in the morning, and in the evening your
submission?”
Can you guess how that jeer rings in my ears, how it goads me?
* * * * *
March 5th.
Sinking down! Sinking down! To see yourself one of the losing creatures, to
know that there is no help for you in this world--that no one will heed
you, no one will stretch out a hand! To see yourself with every weakness,
to see yourself as everything that you hate--to be mad with rage against
yourself, and still to be able to do nothing!
* * * * *
--Understand what I mean--poor fools, do not think it is for myself that I
fear. If I wanted to fight a way for myself--I could do it yet--never fear.
But ah, you will save the mother and not her child! What I weep for, what I
die for, is my ART!
My vision, my life, my joy, my fire! These are the things that are dying!
And when the soul is dead do you think that I shall care about the body? Do
you think that I will stay in this world a shell, a mockery, a corpse? Stay
either to putrefy with pleasure or to be embalmed in dulness? Nay, you do
not know me!
* * * * *
--I said to myself to-night, “If I perish in this world it will be because
I was too far ahead of my environment--that and that only. It will be
because I was pure, single-hearted, consecrated, and because of such you
neither know nor care.” Do I fear to say that? I am done with shame--I
think that I am dying--let me speak the truth.
* * * * *
--And I have really said the word then--the word that can not be
recalled--that my hope is dead, that I give up--that I can not live my
life? Nay--I do not have to say the word, the word says itself.
* * * * *
March 6th.
To-day I shook myself together. I could not stand such wretchedness. I
said, I will get a novel, and I will put myself into it--grimly--I will
read in spite of everything.
* * * * *
And such a book as I lighted on by chance!--Once I had whole yawning vistas
of books toward which I stretched out my arms; but somehow I had forgotten
them all to-day. I could do no better than pick up a book by chance.--
I picked up Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and I found myself in the midst of
the same misery that haunts me here. I read it, but it did not help me.
* * * * *
--It is strange what poverty has ground into my soul. I find myself reading
such a book with but one feeling, one idea crying out in me. I discover
that my whole being is reduced to the great elemental, primitive instinct
of self-preservation. Love is dead in me, generosity, humanity, imagination
is dead,--everything but one wild-beast passion; and I find myself panting
as I read: “Get some money! Get some money! Hold on to it!”
* * * * *
--After a while I think suddenly: “And I am a poet!” That brings a moan
from me and I sit shuddering.
* * * * *
March 7th.
Tess of the D'Urbervilles is one of the most unconvincing books I ever
read. I neither believed in it nor cared about it in the slightest.
I am shown a “pure woman,” and by and by I learn, to my perplexity, that
she has been seduced; after which she continues the “pure woman” again, and
I am asked to agonize over her troubles! But all the time I keep saying,
“This is not a woman that you are showing me at all--a woman with a soul;
it is a puppet figure that you suppose 'seduced' for the sake of the
story.”
It is our absurd English ideas of “propriety” that make possible such
things. If the author had had to show the seduction of “Tess” the weakness
of the thing would have been plain in an instant. That he did not show it
was his lack of conscience. There is no propriety in art but truth.
* * * * *
March 8th.
I took the manuscript to the editor again to-day. He told me to come in on
Monday.
Deep in my soul I can have no more disappointments about it. I take it
about from habit. I sat and looked it over last night, but one can not read
emotional things in cold blood. I said, Is this true? Is it natural? Is
there any _use_ in it?
I was tempted to cut out one or two things; but I decided to let it stay as
it was.
* * * * *
March 10th.
I have been sitting to-night in my room, half-dazed, or pacing about the
streets talking to myself in a frenzy. I can hardly believe that it is
true, I can hardly realize it! I laugh with excitement, and then I cry.
* * * * *
I went to-day to get back my manuscript. And the editor said: “Mr.
Stirling, it is a most extraordinary piece of work. It is a most
interesting thing, I like it very much.”
I stared at him gasping. Then I waited to hear him say--“But I regret”--But
he didn't!
“I can't tell you anything definite about it,” he said. “I want to submit
it to the firm. I wouldn't undertake to accept any such unusual thing for
the magazine without consulting them, and especially seeing if they will
bring it out afterward--”
“You are thinking of using it in the magazine!” I cried.
“As I tell you, I can't say positively. I can only tell you what I think of
it. I will have them read it at once--”
“I will take it to them to-day!” I put in.
“No,” he said, “you need not, for I am going there this afternoon, and I
will take it, and ask them to read it immediately.”
I can't remember what else he said. I was deaf, crazy! I rushed home,
talking to myself incoherently. I remember sitting here in a chair and
saying aloud, “Oh, it can't be! It is impossible! That it should be good
enough to publish in a magazine like that! It is some mistake--it will all
come to nothing. It's absurd!”
* * * * *
So I sat, and I thought what such a thing would mean to me--it would make
my reputation in a day--I should be free--_free_! But I thought of it
and it did not make me happy; I only sat staring at myself, shuddering. The
endless mournfulness that is in my heart surged up in me like a tide, and
suddenly I began to cry like a child.
“It has come to me too late,” I exclaimed, “too late! I can't believe
it--it doesn't mean anything to me. I don't care anything about it--I mean
the poem! _I don't believe in it myself_!”
God, do you know I said that, and _meant_ it? I said more--I sat and
whispered it to myself: “Let them take it, yes, let them! I don't care--it
will set me free--I shall have some money! But they're fools to do it,
they're fools!”
* * * * *
March 11th.
I tremble with excitement all the day, dreaming about that thing. I go
about half-mad. “Oh, just think of it,” I whisper, “just think of it!”
I linger about it hungrily! He spoke as if he really meant to make them
take it.
* * * * *
March 13th.
I went to see him to-day to ask. No, they had not let him know yet, but
they had the manuscript. He would write me.
I made up my mind that I would not bother him again. I will wait, hard as
it is.
* * * * *
I sat asking myself to-day, “Do you really mean that you believe that poem
is going to stir the world--this huge, heedless world you see about you?
Have you truly that blind, unreasoning faith that you try to persuade
yourself you have?”
* * * * *
Ah, I don't know what I believe now. Only, once I had my young courage,--I
feared not the world, I could do anything. Now I am but one among a
million.
* * * * *
March 16th.
I force myself to read these things that half-interest me; but I think I
spend a quarter of my time wandering about whispering that they are going
to publish it. I cry out, “Oh, they must!” I go into the library and stare
at the magazine and think of it there. I walk past the publishers', and
think of it there! I have been inquiring all about publishing, about terms
and all that sort of thing. It makes my brain reel--why, they might pay me
five hundred dollars for it! Think of it--five hundred dollars!--I could go
crazy with such a thought as that.
And then I think what the reviews will say of it, and I cry, “Oh, no, it
can't be true!”
Again I find myself saying, “Only let them take it! I don't care about the
rest, whether it succeeds or not--let them take it!”
* * * * *
March 18th.
I walked past the editor's office to-day. It took just every bit of will
that I had, not to go in. I said: “He might know even now, and I wouldn't
hear till to-morrow!”
But I didn't do it. I said I would wait a week, anyhow.
* * * * *
March 20th.
I don't know what in the world to make of it.
The week ended to-day, and nothing yet; and I hit upon another scheme, I
went to the publishers. I said: “I will ask them, and he needn't know
anything about it and it won't bother him.” So I went in and they referred
me to the manuscript clerk. She said she had never heard of The Captive.
“But it's here somewhere,” I said, “the editor brought it here.”
“There is no manuscript ever comes here,” she answered, “that is not
entered on my books.”
“But,” I said, “some member of the firm must have it.”
“If any member of the firm got it,” she said, smiling, “the first thing he
would do would be to bring it to me to enter in the books.”
I insisted. I wanted to see somebody in the firm, but she answered me there
was no use. Finally she suggested that they might know something about it
up in the offices of the magazine. I went there, but no, no one had ever
heard of it there.
I came home dazed. I don't know what in the world to make of it. He
certainly said that the firm was reading it. I wrote to-night to ask him
about it.
* * * * *
March 23d.
I have waited day by day in the utmost perplexity to hear from him about
that. I should have heard from him yesterday. I don't know what in the
world to make of it. Can he have gone in to them privately? Or can he have
forgotten it--he is so busy!
I dread the latter circumstance--but I dread as much to anger him in the
other case.
* * * * *
March 27th.
I waited four days more. I went up to see him. Just as I feared. I have
annoyed him. I could see it. I know he must be tired of seeing my face.
“Mr. Stirling,” he said, “I have told you that the poem is being read by
the firm, and that I will let you know the moment I hear from them.”
“I only came,” I said, “because the clerk told me--”
“There are some things clerks don't know,” he put in.
I tremble at the thought of making him angry. I will not go near him again.
* * * * *
March 30th.
I am doing my best to keep my mind on some reading, so as not to make the
agony unbearable. But it is very hard--the mails disturb you. I can only
read in the middle of the day, and at night. In the morning I expect the
first mail, trembling; but after that I know a city letter can't come till
afternoon, so I can read. Then again at night I know it can't come.
* * * * *
--I am reading The Ring and the Book. I have always found that it doesn't
do to take vulgar opinions. I had supposed I should find The Ring and the
Book hard reading.
It _is_ skippable--the consequence of having a foolish scheme to fill
out. But the story of Pompilia and Giuseppi is one of the finest things I
know of anywhere.
* * * * *
April 3d.
It has been another week. I could not stand it any more. I am going over to
the publishers' again this afternoon.
--What in Heaven's name does this thing mean? I met the satisfied smile of
the clerk again. “We have never seen the manuscript, Mr. Stirling!”
If you could only see how positive she is! “I don't know anything about
what the editor told you, I can only tell you positively that he has never
submitted any such manuscript to the firm, or to anybody connected with the
firm.”
That thing drove me wild. I don't know what to make of it. Surely he's
given it to some one, for he told me so.
I went up to the magazine rooms, and he was in his office; but he had left
word that he would not see any one, and they would not even take in my
name.
* * * * *
April 4th.
I can do nothing but haunt that place till I find out what it means! It
has been three weeks and a half since he gave it to them, and he said I
would hear at once. What in the world does he think it means to me? Can't
I presume the slightest gleam of interest, of care, on his part?
* * * * *
April 5th.
To-day I could not stand it any longer. I went to the place again. I saw
the manuscript clerk once more--the same answer. I went upstairs; he was
there again, but busy. I wrote a note and left it. I explained that I did
not in the least wish to trouble him, but that the thing meant a great
deal to me, and that I had the utmost need of promptness; that it had been
almost four weeks since he gave it to the firm, and that nobody there
seemed to know anything about it.
* * * * *
April 7th.
He did not answer my letter! I thought I should hear to-day. O God, this is
the most tormenting thing! Think what it means! And what in Heaven's name
has he done? Surely some one--he must have given it to some one!
Only why in the world doesn't he understand my perplexity and explain?
* * * * *
April 9th.
No letter yet. I went back to the publishers' again this morning. I have
been wandering by the place every day since. They had not seen it yet. She
said she'd have the firm inquire, but I said not to, as it might annoy him.
“He surely has given it to some one, you know.”--She laughed at me.
I went up to the magazine office again. He was not there, but I saw his
associate. The associate did not know anything about it either.
* * * * *
April 10th.
I waited one day more and no answer. I wrote to him again to-night, begging
him to please reply.
* * * * *
--I have begun several novels, but I can't get interested in them. I am
simply sick. I came out of that horrible restaurant with money enough to do
me for ten weeks, and here are over five of them gone in this hideous way.
Oh, it is monstrous!
It has been nine weeks and a half since I gave him that poem in the
beginning! I never spent nine such weeks of horror in my life.
* * * * *
April 12th.
“In answer to your letter I beg to inform you that the manuscript of The
Captive is now in the hands of the firm, and that you may expect a decision
in about a week.”
So! It is a relief at any rate to know that the thing is all right. I can
wait a little better now.
Of course I knew it must be there. A plague on that foolish clerk!
* * * * *
April 14th.
All the while that I am writing about this thing I keep up my courage by
thinking what it will mean to me. It is something so immense that I can
hardly realize it. I shall be famous!--And he really liked it, there can be
no doubt about that! He was too busy to talk much, but he showed he liked
it.
* * * * *
April 17th.
Oh my soul, I think this is the most frightful thing--is it not simply a
nightmare? I have been pacing the floor to-night in an agony. _They have
never seen that manuscript_!
I was going by there to-day, and I couldn't withstand the temptation; the
week was not up, but I said: “If I inquire, there's no reason why he should
know about it.” I went in.
And that terrible clerk--she smiled at me still! The more I talked, the
more she shook her head. “There's no such manuscript ever been seen here,”
she said. I showed her the letter, and that decided her to go in and see
the firm. They sent out word that neither they nor their readers had ever
heard of it, but that they would write to the editor at once.
* * * * *
Oh, I think this is horrible--horrible! And then just guess what I did! I
couldn't bear the agony--I went to the other place, and he wasn't there,
and so at last I went to his club.
He wasn't at the club, but they told me where he was; and I spent ten cents
telephoning him. At this place they said he had an engagement to be there
later, so I spent another ten cents, and that time I found him. I told him
who I was. “The week isn't up yet,” I said, “but the firm say they have
never received the manuscript.”
“So?” he said; his voice sounded hard, I thought, and it made me shudder.
“You come up to see me the day after to-morrow at ten o'clock, and you'll
hear about your manuscript.”
And that is all. And I walked out of the great, rich club, and I have been
pacing up and down in my own garret ever since. I am almost too ill with
anxiety to stand.
* * * * *
April 18th.
And to-day I can only wait. Once I lay down upon the bed and cried.
* * * * *
April 19th.
I don't know how to tell this thing. I am simply dazed. I had an experience
to-day--the most hideous thing that I think ever happened to me in my life.
Oh, I have been like a madman ever since--I lost my head--I did not know
what I was doing. I was really crazy--it is three o'clock in the morning,
now, but I shall write it down--I can not sleep.
* * * * *
To-day I went up to see that man as he told me to. I went trembling with
suspense--just think, it has been eleven weeks since this agony began. And
I went into his office--he was alone; and when he saw me he sprang to his
feet--my soul, he looked like a tiger. He stood there in the middle of the
room fairly gasping with rage.
“So,” he cried, “you've come, have you! I tell you, young man, I have never
been subjected to such an outrage as this in my life! I would not read
another manuscript for you--why, I wouldn't stand for such an imposition
from Balzac or Thackeray--no, sir, I wouldn't!”
I stared at the man simply speechless with astonishment. “Why,” I panted,
“what do you mean?”
“What do I mean? Why, you have hounded me about this city until I'm crazy.
There's no place I can go to escape you. You come to my office, you come
here, you come to my club! You have made yourself a perfect pest at the
publishers to every one! Why--”
He stopped out of breath. Of course I have no courage or head with men--I
was ready to grovel at his feet. “My dear sir,” I pleaded, “I assure you
I didn't mean to do anything of the kind--it was only that the clerk kept
telling me--”
“I don't care what the clerk kept telling you! I tell you that that
manuscript has been in the hands of the company since the day I told you I
would leave it there. Of course there have been delays, there is all sorts
of routine to go through with; but suppose all our contributors did the
same thing--what would we do?”
He was talking at me as if expecting a reply. Fortunately the right words
came to my lips--I was really ready to cry with shame and perplexity.
“I don't think it is quite the same with all your contributors,” I said,
with a trembling voice. “While I have been waiting I have been simply
starving.”
It seemed to clear the atmosphere. He stared at me, and then he sat down.
He was ashamed of himself, I could see. “Why,” he said, “you couldn't have
been paid anything for months.”
“I didn't know,” I said, “I didn't know anything about it. But I have been
starving.”
He spoke more quietly. “Mr. Stirling,” he said, “I'm very sorry about this,
the whole thing has been unfortunate. Excuse me that I spoke angrily; let
us not think any more about it.”
I stood there, feeling almost like crying, I was so nervous.
“Now, about that manuscript,” he went on, “I'm doing what I can to learn
about it. It's been there all along, as I told you, and you will hear about
it soon. Why, Mr. Stirling, I even took the trouble to send my secretary
down there yesterday to make sure that it was all right.”
“I did not want you to go to any such trouble,” I stammered.
“That's all right,” he said, “don't mention it. Now they will have decided
in a few days, and I will write you--”
“No, please do not,” I said, still with my abject humility. “Don't take any
more trouble--let me go there and find out--”
“By no means!” said he. “Take my advice and don't go near there again under
any circumstances. You can't tell how much an author hurts himself by
troubling a publisher as you have done. Don't go near there--let me write
to you.”
I promised that I would; and then with more abjectness I got myself out of
that room, and I went out and sat down upon a step near by, simply shaking
like a leaf.
“Oh, heavens!” I gasped. “That was horrible! Horrible!”
* * * * *
I sat dazed--thinking about it--thinking it over and over--I couldn't
understand it, try as I might. Why should he have been so angry _that_
day--had he not told me to come there? And had he not said I should have a
report?
* * * * *
--And then suddenly something flashed over me that made me leap! That
firm had written him a letter the day before yesterday asking about the
manuscript, and _that_ was why he was angry! And he had sent his
secretary down to inquire!--But why in Heaven's name should he send his
secretary down to inquire _when he had a telephone connecting with the
firm right there in his office_!
And so I saw it--all in one instant the thing flashed over me!
I was so wild I paid a car-fare--I rode straight as a die down to that
place, and I went in and saw the clerk.
“He has sent the manuscript now,” I said, “hasn't he?”
“Yes,” she said.
“He sent it in yesterday?” I said.
“Yes.”
“He sent it by his secretary, didn't he?”
“Yes,” she said again.
“Thank you,” I answered, and went out.
* * * * *
Is not that simply monstrous, simply awful beyond words? I have been beside
myself tonight with rage, with amazement, with perplexity. Oh, think
what I have suffered at the hands of that frightful man! And what have I
_done_ to him--why should he have treated me so? What does it mean? I
am baffled every way I turn.
The thing is like flame in my blood--like acid in my veins. It makes me
hysterical with pain. I cry aloud.
* * * * *
--What do you mean by it, you monster, you wretch? Why, here for eleven
weeks I have been hanging upon your every word--eleven weeks of my life
spent in torment--absolutely flung away! _Eleven weeks!_ And you have
lied to me--and you have kicked me about like a dog!
What do you mean? What do you mean? Tell me, above all, _why_ you did
it! Were you torturing me on purpose? Or did you simply forget it? But
then, how could you forget it when you had to tell me all those miserable
falsehoods? And when you had to write me those letters?
And then to-day!
That is the thing that goads me most--to-day! I stood there cringed before
you like a beaten cur--you kicked me--you spit upon me! And it was every
bit of it a lie! That insolent rage of yours--why, it wasn't even genuine!
You weren't even angry--you knew that you had no reason to be angry--that
you had treated me as if I were a worm to tread on! And yet you stood there
and abused me!
Oh--why, the thing is madness to think of! It is more madness the more you
realize it! I have never known anything like it before in my life.
Yes--actually--it is something quite new to me. I have met blind
people--people who would not heed me--but a really evil person I have never
known before! A person who has no respect for another's rights--who would
trample upon another! Oh, you miserable wretch--and the lies--the lies! The
hateful sneaking of it--you black-hearted, insolent man! The manuscript had
been there all the time! _The delays, the routine_! And you had sent
your secretary down to inquire! And above all--oh, above all--the prince of
them--I must not go near there lest I should injure myself! I must not go
near them--they were so weary of seeing me! And I never saw a single soul
there in my life but one clerk!
I never suffered such a thing as this before in all my days--deliberate,
brutal injustice! And that I should be so placed as to be a victim of such
a thing--that I should have to hang upon your words and to be at your mercy
for eleven weeks of agony! You are a great editor, a clubman, a rich man!
You have fame and power and wealth--and you stand up there and scald me
with your rage--and with your heart a mess of lies all the time!
* * * * *
--But _why_ did you do it? That is the thing I ask myself in
consternation. Why? _Why?_--Were you not interested in my work? If you
weren't--why didn't you give it back to me, and let me go my way? And if
you were--if you had any idea of publishing it--then why did you use me in
this way? Where was the manuscript all this time? What did you mean to do
with it? How long did you expect me to wait? And what object did you have
in telling me untruths about it meanwhile?
--The whole thing is as blank to me as night. That a man should have in him
so much infinite indifference about another as to leave that manuscript in
a drawer, and write me that I was to “have a report on it within a week”!
Why, it is something of which I can not even think. And then to get out of
it by that sham anger and that sneaking!--
* * * * *
April 20th.
I have done absolutely nothing but brood over this thing and rage all day.
What am I to do?--I sat and wondered if there was anything I could do but
go and shoot that man. And I asked myself: Ought I not at least to go and
get the manuscript from that accursed place this instant? Ought I not to
have taken it then and there? But see the utter misery of my situation, the
abject shame of it--suppose they were to take the thing! It is my one hope
in this world--I dare not lose it--I have to leave it there!
* * * * *
But then, what hope is there now? I ask. Why, he was going to urge it upon
them! And now, of course, he's simply sent it in there without a word!
Don't you see what it was--it was that letter of inquiry they wrote him! He
paid no more attention to me than if I were a hound; but he had to send it
when they wrote! And perhaps they said something about carelessness and
that made him wild.
Oh, the thing is an endless spring of gall to me! I am all raw with it--I
have to rush out on the street and walk away my passion. I never saw
my situation so plainly--the horrible impotence of it! Just see what I
struggle against, the utter insane futility of everything I do! Why, I beat
my wings in a void, I hammer my head against a wall!
* * * * *
--And now I must wait for that thing to come back--don't I know that it
will come back? And don't I know that that will be the end of me?
A black, horrible gloom has settled down upon me. I am utterly lost in
despair.
* * * * *
April 21st.
I will write no more about that man--my whole being is turned to
bitterness. I wonder at myself--I have no longer one feeling left in this
world except a black brooding hatred of him!
* * * * *
--And all the time the thing haunts me like a detective story--I can't find
the solution! What does it mean? Why did he do it? It is so irrational--so
impossible--so utterly incomprehensible! And shall I _never_ know the
truth about it?
* * * * *
April 24th.
“We regret that we are not advised to undertake the publication of The
Captive. We return the manuscript by express.”
* * * * *
There it is! I read that thing, and I felt my whole being sinking down as
if into hell. There it is! And that is the end of it all! Oh, merciful
Providence, is it not simply too cruel to be believed! Eleven weeks!
_Eleven weeks_!
* * * * *
--I can do no more--I do not know where to turn. I believe I shall go mad
with my misery.
* * * * *
April 25th.
To-day I thought I would go up and see him--I thought I could not live
until I knew what this thing meant. I heard myself saying, “I _demand_
to know why you treated me thus? I say I demand it! Before God, how
_dared_ you--or don't you believe in a God?”
* * * * *
--Then again I thought, I will plead with him. It must be some mistake--I
can't believe that it is all over. Why, he liked it! And now perhaps it was
only looked over by some careless reader and flung aside!
But no--I could not go near the place! I could not face that man again. The
memory of his look as he stood there in his insolence is so hateful to me
that it makes me tremble.
* * * * *
April 26th.
I see myself crying this out from the housetops. I even wrote a letter to a
newspaper, but I did not send it.
I went to a lawyer, a man I used to know. I told him I had no money--I
asked him to help me. But I can not sue him--he was under no obligations,
it seems; and I can not prove that the manuscript was injured in value by
the delay.
So there is nothing that I can do. He will go his way--he will never think
of me again. He is rich and famous.--
* * * * *
--I have just nine dollars left of my money. I can not possibly make it do
more than three or four weeks; and meanwhile I sit and brood and watch them
go by in blank despair.
* * * * *
April 28th.
I fight with myself--I must get that hellish thing out of my head! I went
to a publisher's to-day--I didn't have the heart to go in, but I gave it to
the clerk.
It will take two or three weeks. This will be the eighth publisher.
* * * * *
I said to-day: “I will force myself to read, I will get myself together; I
will not let myself be stamped to the mud by this man.”
* * * * *
There is nothing I can do about it--I only poison my whole soul thinking of
it. I must put it out of my mind--I must work!
* * * * *
May 1st.
I said to myself to-day: “Do you really believe that the world would heed
that poem? Do you think that if any publisher published it, he could sell
it?” I answered, “No, I do not.”
If one took it I should think I was making a fool of him. I offer it on
that chance!
--What am I going to do? I do not know. I must try to find some work that
does not tear me to pieces; and then perhaps some day I shall be able to
write something different.
* * * * *
May 3d.
My whole soul is in a turmoil these days. I struggle,--I can not give
up while I live; but for what do I struggle? I am a man journeying in a
thicket; I can not see one step before me.
--I try to forget myself--I try to get interested in a book. But I never
had but one kind of interest. I can not get used to living without a
purpose, without enthusiasm, without morality.
* * * * *
I have no ideas any more. My whole life is shrunken and contracted. It is
all stagnant--the garden of my soul is full of weeds. The broad fields that
I used to cover, the far-off things I used to strive for--what have they to
do with me now?
* * * * *
--I heard a gull to-day--far, far up--a mere speck in the sky. I started,
as I watched him vanish. Then I said: “But you, too, will have to come down
and mingle in the turmoil and the danger!”
* * * * *
May 6th.
I go over into the Park--the springtime is in full glory, all the sights
that used to thrill my heart are there; the splendor of new verdure and
young flowers, the birds that I love rioting in song. But it moves me not
in the least, it only makes me ten times more mournful. I turn away.
Why, once an apple spray in blossom was to me a drunken ecstasy.
--Shall I ever know what it is to be generous, and rich and royal in my
heart again? To know that surging fulness of emotion that makes you think
of gold and purple and regal pomp?
I tell you the whole thing is a question of money with me. I have come down
to the bare bed-rock of sordidness--I must have money--_money!_--It is
everything in this world to me. I can never think of anything else again
until I have it.
* * * * *
I see myself going out into the world and fighting as other men fight, and
making a place in it for myself.
* * * * *
May 8th.
I am getting down again; my poor hoard is going! I sit and count it--I
calculate it--I lay out my bill of fare. Oh, where shall I go, what
_can_ I do? Can I write anything? I ask. I have nothing in me but
a naked, shivering longing.
I dread to be in the desperate fix I was the last time I could find no
work. And yet I can not make up my mind to do anything until I hear from
this one publisher more.
* * * * *
May 9th.
I walked over there to-day to save a postage-stamp. They had not heard from
the reader yet.
* * * * *
--I sit down and try to study. Then I get up and say I ought not to put it
off any longer. Then again I think: “Wait until to-morrow, at any rate.”
* * * * *
May 10th.
I was looking at that man's magazine to-day. What thoughts it brought to
me--what agonies, what longings, what despair! And, above all, what
ocean-floods of bitterness!
* * * * *
I walked all the way down to the wholesale-paper store. I thought I would
prefer that to evils that I know not of. I have almost a terror of having
to come into contact with new people.
But my place was filled. I trudged home again. I went to the publisher's
too; nothing yet. The three weeks were up to-day.
* * * * *
May 12th.
I dared not wait any more to-day. I had just three dollars and ten cents
left. And my rent is due the day after to-morrow. I have answered every
sort of advertisement, from dishwashing to tutoring a boy. I guess I looked
too seedy for the latter.
* * * * *
--Sometimes when I am wandering around in all this misery, still yearning
for what I might have been, the thought comes across my mind: “And in this
huge world there might yet be some one who would understand the thing!
Some one who would help me! Some one by whom it would be an honor to be
helped--if I could only find him.”
And here I am, having my life beaten out of me, spark by spark,--and I
can't find him--I _can't_!
* * * * *
I cry out for money--for money!
* * * * *
But no, it is others who have it.--And the way that they use it--O God, the
way that they use it!
If all the world were poor, it would not be so bad; but the sight of
wealth--of infinite oceans of it squandered in perfect frenzies of
ostentation! The sight of this “world”--this world, which they take quite
as a matter of course!
* * * * *
I have seen a good deal of this world myself, and I at least do not take
it thus. I gaze upon the men and women who do take it thus, and I say,
“Are you men and women really? Or are you not some strange, un-Godmade
creatures, without ever a thought about justice, without ever a gleam of
reason or purpose or sense?”
* * * * *
May 14th.
I have tramped the streets for two days more. I was made so ill by my
anxiety last time that I made up my mind I would not risk it again. I asked
my landlady to-night to wait a while, as I was looking for some work. She
was ungracious enough, but I have no longer any sensibilities--I only want
to be safe. She can wait--she has my trunk, as I told her.
* * * * *
Probably she wouldn't even be as willing, if she could see what is in it! I
have no longer anything to sell. I had to exchange my waiter's costume for
a pair of trousers, for mine were all in rags.
I have two dollars and seventy cents. I imagine that is a safe margin.
There are no words that can tell what an absolutely deadening thing it is
to be wandering about the city looking for work. It turns you into a log
of wood--you not only no longer have an idea, you have not a thought of an
idea. You simply drag on and on until the thing becomes a habit, and you go
without even thinking of that.
* * * * *
May 15th.
“Our readers have examined with a great deal of interest the unusual piece
of work which you have sent us. But it has been our experience that poetry
proves such a distressing adventure commercially, that we are forced to
decline the offer which you have so kindly made us. We wish, however, to
assure you of our desire to see anything else which you may have on hand,
or may have at any time in future.”
That is about the way the letter ran--I tore it up. I did not read it but
once. I took the thing to another firm--it can't do any harm.
I have not been able to find anything to-day.
* * * * *
May 16th.
So long as I have thoughts I can write a journal; but while my life is that
of an animal, it doesn't seem very necessary. I have always felt myself an
outcast--a poet has to be that; but I never felt it quite so much as at
present. I wander around from door to door; and those who have homes and
money and power--they simply order me out of the way.
* * * * *
May 18th.
I do not think I can stand this much longer. I never had such a time before
finding anything. I think my state must be written in my face--men no
longer have any use for me.
I fear my coat is seedy. And I know my collar is soiled; but the two I left
at the laundry won't be done till to-morrow.
I have broken my last two-dollar bill. I watch in terror for the next
week--I can not face that woman again. I must save enough for that.
* * * * *
May 19th.
I applied for a position as office-boy to-day--I was desperate. I have not
enough to last me through a week, if I pay the woman anything.
But they said I was too old.
My feet are most horribly sore. I can hardly walk. And I have the strangest
ringing in my head. I could not eat any supper--and the milk won't keep in
this warm weather, either.
* * * * *
May 22d.
The day before yesterday, when I woke up in the morning, I could hardly
stand. My head was on fire, and I do not think I have ever been so sick
before. I got around to a drug-store--the man said he would give me some
powders; he said they were forty cents, but I dared not pay it. He gave
them to me for a quarter. He said I should have a tonic, but I haven't had
it.
I was too ill to move all day yesterday. I am better to-day, but still I
daren't go out. I have only eighty-five cents left.
* * * * *
I must manage to get out and get some work to-morrow, or I shall go mad.
* * * * *
I had a scene with that horrible creature yesterday. It was the second
week--she thought I was shamming, I know. She said she never allowed her
“roomers” to get behindhand--it was her invariable rule. O God, I was so
sick I could scarcely see--I did not care what she did. I told her that I
had no money; that I was waiting to get some work; that I would pay her the
first moment I could.
“Why don't you keep work when you get it?” she demanded. “You have been
idle nearly all the whole time you've been here.”
I could not argue with her; she can turn me out when she likes.
* * * * *
May 24th.
I dragged myself out to-day. I feel better except for the blisters on my
feet. But nothing to do! Nothing to do! Oh, I am half mad.
I thought to-day I would call upon some of my relatives. But I bit my lips
together--no, I will not ever do that!
* * * * *
It is the ghastly heat that kills me. Yesterday was almost stifling, I
thought I could not bear it. I never knew it to be so hot so early.
* * * * *
May 26th.
I have got but thirty-five cents, and to-day I was so tired I had to rest
for two hours nevertheless. Oh, merciful heavens, but this is fiery
torture!
* * * * *
It is half a week again. I know she will not let me stay another week. I
did a strange thing--I wrapped up all my papers and carried them out under
my coat. She can keep everything else I have, but my papers are mine. I
took them to the grocery-store where I buy things and asked the man to keep
them for me.
* * * * *
May 27th.
What does a man do when he wants to work and can't find anything? Does he
really starve? Or does he get locked up? Or what?
I said to-day: I will eat nothing but bread and oatmeal till I get
something to do.
* * * * *
May 29th.
It was just as I thought. She has demanded her money--and I have but
fifteen cents! I helped a man up with a trunk and got ten.--She told me
that I would have to get out. It is clear to-night. I shall sleep somewhere
in the Park. I can not write any more.
* * * * *
May 31st.
I got some work to do after all--at the height of my despair. I am giving
out samples of a hitherto unequaled brand of soap.
It was yesterday morning, I met one of the men and asked him where he got
the job. He said they wanted more men, so I got on a car and rode down
there in haste. I made fifty cents yesterday, for half a day, and a dollar
to-day. Thank God!
I spent the night before last in the Park, and last night in the room where
I am writing. It is in a tenement-house. I paid fifty cents a week for it,
and there is a drunken man snoring on the other side of a board partition.
I sha'n't go back to the other place, of course, until I get more money.
Besides, she has probably rented the room.
* * * * *
I am so relieved at having gotten something to do. I believe I am even
proud of the soap.
I am getting used to walking all day; anything so long as one doesn't have
the agonizing worry about starvation. I am ill, but I shall keep at it, and
answer advertisements meanwhile by mail, till I get something better.
I am going out to sit by the river. I can not stand the heat and stench in
this room. To-morrow is Sunday. I shall have a long rest.
* * * * *
June 2d.
I did not go back to distribute soap to-day. I have given up the work. I
have just seventy cents left in my pocket. The rent of this room is up on
June 6th, and the money will last me until then.
On June 6th I am going to die.
* * * * *
--To-day I went to the publisher's. I said: “On June 6th I am going out
of town. (Grim humor, that!) On June 6th you will have had the manuscript
three weeks and more. I shall have to ask you to have a report by that
date, or to return it to me now.” He said: “You shall have the report.”
If they will publish the poem, I shall wait. If not, I shall die on June
6th. That is settled.