Listen to me now. I must soon get to the end of this. I mean to tell you
about it. I have spent yesterday and to-day going over this journal,
explaining things that I had written too briefly, putting in things that
ought to be there. I mean to tell everything.
When I began this journal it was with the idea that I should be famous,
and that then it would be published. Of late I have written it from habit,
mainly, never expecting that any one would see it. Now I write again for a
reader, _to_ a reader. I know that it will be published.
* * * * *
The night before last I went down by the river. As well as I can remember,
these were the thoughts that came to me.
* * * * *
It was a calm, still night, and I sat watching the lights on the water.
Then suddenly I recollected the night when the yacht had passed, and I had
heard the woman singing. It came back to me like an apparition, that voice
and that melody. I heard it again more plainly than words can tell, dying
away over the water; and a perfect sea of woe rolled over my soul.
I thought of that night, what I had been that night, what hopes I had had,
what fervor, what purpose, what faith. That was, you remember, just when I
was at the height of my work; and the memory came back to me, as it has
never come back to me since the day that I came out of the forest with my
book. It simply overwhelmed me, it shook me to the very depths of my being.
I buried my face and burst out sobbing. It shook away from me all the
hideous dulness that had mastered me. I saw myself as I was, ruined, lost.
I cried out: “Oh, my Father in heaven, it is gone! It is gone, and it will
never come back! I am a lost soul! I am a traitor, I am ruined!”
So I went on, feverishly, twisting my hands together. “I have given up the
fight! I have been beaten--oh, my God--beaten! Think of those raging hours
in the woods, those hours of defiance, of glory! I gazed at commonplaceness
and dulness--I mocked at it; and now it has conquered me! I am trampled
down, beaten! It is all gone out of me!” And then I cried out in despair
and terror: “Oh, no, it can't be! It _can't_ be!”
But even while I cried that, my thoughts fled back to the horror to which I
was tied, to the samples of soap and to the filthy hole next to a drunken
laborer. The thing overwhelmed me, even while I stood there trying to
resolve.
I was frenzied. “I have done everything,” I panted, “I have fought and
toiled and struggled--I have wept and prayed, and even begged. And yet I
have been beaten--I have gone down--down! And what more is there that I can
do? I shall be beaten down again! Oh, what shall I do? Is there any hope,
any new plan that I can try? Shall I go through the streets and shriek
it; shall I lay hold upon some man and _make_ him hear me? Is there
anything--_anything_?”
To make them understand what I have! To make them understand what they are
doing! God gave me a vision--it may not come again for a century, it can
never come again--it is mine--_mine only_! And they grind it into the
dust! This demon power that is in me--don't you suppose I know what it is?
This thing that roars like the wind upon the mountains, that runs like the
great billows on the sea!
I was pacing back and forth in the silent night. I had all the world about
me, I cried out to it, I gripped it, to make it hear me. “Fools! oh fools!”
I cried, “what is it that you _do_ believe in? Blind creatures that
you are, this raging faith of mine--this fervent ardor--you do not believe
in _that_! You do not believe in enthusiasm, you do not believe in
ecstasy, you do not believe in genius! You think that I am mad, poor raving
poet! You see me sick, haggard, dragging myself about.
“But I am caged, I tell you,--I am caged! You are killing me as you would
kill some animal; and I am never to sing that song--I am never to sing that
song!”
The thing was a madness to me. “No, no!” I rushed on, “I will! I will get
free--I say I will! If I must, I will go out and beg on the streets, before
I will let this thing die! Show me the vilest of you--I will get down upon
my knees before him--I will kiss his feet and beg him to let me live! There
is no degradation of my _self_ that I will not bear! I!--what am I?
I am a worm--I am filth--I am vanity and impertinence and delusion. But
_this_ thing--this is _God_! Oh you man with a carriage, will
_you_ not give me a little? For a hundred or two of dollars I can live
for a year! And you--why, see that ring on your finger! You would not think
twice if you lost it; and yet think what I could do with that bauble! Oh,
see how you abuse life--how you mock it, how you trample upon it--how you
trample upon _God_!
--“So I go about all day, haunted all the time, raging, lusting for my
task. And you who believe in genius in the past, and do not believe in it
in the present! Some of you had this faith when you were young; but I have
it always--it is _I_! I was born for that, I will die for that! It is
my love, my food, my health, my breath, my life! It comes to me wherever
I am--carrying trays in a restaurant--pacing back and forth by the
river--sitting here in my room and writing of it!”
* * * * *
So I thought, so I cried out; and each time as the thing surged in me, I
sank down and moaned and sobbed. “No, it is all lost. I am helpless. I am
beaten! I am walled in and tortured! I am a slave, I am a prisoner--I--”
--And so the torrent of my thoughts sped on, and so I rushed with
it--rushed to my fate. For suddenly I came to four words--four fearful
words that roared in my soul like the thunder!--
“I AM A CAPTIVE!”
It was like the falling of a bolt from the sky. It came with a sound that
stunned me, with a flash that lit in one instant the whole horizon of my
mind.
“I am a captive! I am _The_ Captive! Fool that I am,--pent here in
these prison-walls of tyranny, and beating out my brains against them!
Panting--praying--cursing--pining to be free! And I am The Captive!”
The thing struck terror into the last chambers of my soul. I stood stock
still; I felt my flesh quiver, I felt my very hair move. I saw a pair of
demon eyes glaring into mine--I saw all the wildness and the fearfulness
of life in that one instant.
“I wrote a book, I tried to make it true--and, oh, my God, how have I
succeeded!”
I do not know what I did, I was half-crazed, as in a nightmare. I fought
and struggled; but I was in the grip of a truth, and though it set my brain
on fire, I had to face it.
I was The Captive! I was The Captive! And I was crying out against
circumstances--I was crying out against my fate--and all the time there
it stood and faced me--the truth, the iron truth:
* * * * *
--_I was to die!_
* * * * *
A sudden fury swept over me--my whole being flamed with wrath. “What!” I
cried. “I shall go on in this servitude--in this degradation! I shall go
on playing the lackey to the filthy pleasures of men, cringing, crouching
before any insult--begging for my bread--begging to keep my miserable self
alive! And I shall see one by one my virtues die in me, my powers, my
consecrations! I shall sink into a beast of burden, into a clod of the
earth, into a tool of men!
“And I, who wrote The Captive--my God, who wrote The Captive! I, who stood
upon that height, drank in that glory, sang with those angels and gods! I,
who was noble and high-born--pure and undefiled--seer and believer--I! I
walked with Truth--and now I am a slave; a whimpering, beaten hound! They
have made a eunuch of me, they have cut away my manhood! They have put me
with their swine, they have fed me upon husks, they have bid me drink their
swill! And I bear it, by God, I bear it! And why?--”
* * * * *
“_I bear it that I may live!_”
* * * * *
“Come here, come here! Look at this!” The thing seized me by the shoulders
and shook me, the thing with the fiery eyes. “Did you _mean_ it, all
that you wrote in that book--did you mean it, those vows that you swore
in the forest? Were they the truth of your soul as you faced your God--or
were they shams that you dallied with to please your vanity? Answer me!
_Answer_!”
* * * * *
I sank down upon the ground as I heard that voice. I was shuddering with
fear; and I moaned aloud: “I don't want to die! I want to live, I want to
do my work!”--And then I heard the voice say, “You hound!”
And so I shut my hands like a vise; and I panted: “No, no! Come! Take me!
I will go!” I think it must have been hours that I lay there, wrestling in
horrible agony. I cried again and again: “Yes, yes,--I will do it! I will
do it!” I fled on breathlessly, whispering, panting to myself. Before I
knew it I was saying part of The Captive--the first fearful lines of the
struggle:
Spirit or fiend that led me to this way!
Oh, tell me, was ever poet so taken at his word before?
I thought of that then, and I shook like a leaf with the pain of it. Again
and again I faced it, again and again I failed. It was physical pain, it
was a thing that I could feel like a clutch at my heart. Was it not tearing
out my very soul?
* * * * *
But the voice cried out to me: “You have been a slave to the world! You
have been a slave to life! You have been crucified upon the cross of
Art!”--Yes, and all things a man may sacrifice to Art but one thing; he may
not sacrifice his soul!
“What!” it rushed on. “Have you so much faith in your art, and no faith
in your God? Is it for _Him_ that you have so much need to fear, to
crouch and tremble, to plot and to plan--for _Him_? And when he made
you, when he gave you your inspiration--his soul was faint?”
“He that sendeth forth the surging springtime, and covereth all the earth
with new life! He that is the storm upon the sea, the wind upon the
mountains, the sun upon the meadows! He that poureth the races from his
lap! He that made the ages, the suns and the systems throughout all
space--he that maketh them forever and smiteth them into dust again for
play! He that is infinite, unthinkable, all-glorious, all-sufficient--_He
hath need of thee_!
“He hath need that thy wonderful books should be written, that mankind
should hear thy wonderful songs! Thy books, thy songs, that are to last
through the ages! And when this earth shall have withered, when the sun
shall have touched it with his fiery finger, when it shall roll through
space as silent and bare as the desert, when the comet shall have smitten
it and hurled it into dust, when the systems to which it belongs--the sun
into which it melted--shall be no more known to time--_where then will be
thy books and thy songs_? Where then will be these things for which thou
didst crouch and tremble, didst plot and plan? For which thou didst lick
the feet of vile men--_for which thou didst give up thy God_!”
And then I leaped up and stretched out my arms. “No! No!” I cried aloud:
“I have done with it! Have I not fought this fight once, and did I not win
it--this fight of The Captive? And can I not fight it and win it again?
Away, away with you, world, for I am a free man again, and no slave! Soul
am I, _will_ am I, unconquerable, all-defying! In His arms I lie, in
His breath I breathe, in His life I live--I am _He_! Fear I know not,
death I know not, slavery and sin and doubt and fear I will never know
again!”
Nay,--nay. Go thy road, proud world, and I go mine!--
In dem wogenden Schwall,
in dem tönenden Schall,
in des Welt-Athems
wehendem All!--
ertrinken--
versinken--
unbewusst--
höchste Lust!
Oh, think not of that poetry! Think of the music! The surging, drunken,
overwhelming waves of music! Do you not hear them--do you not hear them?--
Wie sie schwellen,
mich umrauschen!
Soll ich athmen,
soll ich lauschen!
So the thing went; and I panted and throbbed, and sank down upon the ground
for weakness. There came to me all that mad poetry that I had written
myself, all that victory that I had won, that freedom, that vision, that
glory! It came to me ten times over, for was it not everything to me now?
It was more than I could bear, it split my brain.
And it would not leave me. All through the long, long night I prayed and
wept with it; and in the morning I reeled through the street with it, and
men stared at me.
* * * * *
But here was one time when I did not fear men! I was free--I was a soul at
last. I had won the victory, I went my way as a god. I had renounced, I had
given up fear, I had given up my _self_. My mind was made up, and I
never change my mind. I had passed the death-sentence upon myself, I walked
through the streets as a disembodied soul--as the Captive dragged to the
banquet-hall.
But no, I went to my torture of myself.
* * * * *
I went to the store. It was early Sunday morning, and the place was just
open.--I got my papers and put them under my arm--my original draft of The
Captive, and all my journal. I went down the street and came to a place
where a man was burning some trash.
I was a demon in my strength just then; my head reeled, but I went with the
dancing step of new-born things. I stood upon the heights, I “laughed at
all Sorrow-play and Sorrow-reality”! “Ho, sir,” I cried, “I have things
here that will make a fire for you!”
And so I knelt down and unwrapped The Captive. “There is much fire in
this,” I said; “once I thought it would explode, I did. It was a shot that
would have been heard around the world, sir! Only I could not pull the
trigger.”
The man stared at me, and so I burned it, page by page, and laughed, and
sang a foolish song that I thought of: _Stride la vampa!_
And afterward I unwrapped the journal. I laughed at my journal--'tis a
foolish thing; but then all at once my conscience touched me. I said: “Is
it not a shame? Is it not small of you? They would not heed you!--fool,
what of it? Perhaps it is not their fault--certainly it is their sorrow.
But you will not get much higher than you are now by trampling upon them.”
And so I stopped; and I wrapped up my journal again. “You have fire enough
now, sir,” I said to the man. “I will keep this to build another fire
with.”
I went on. “Let them have it,” I said, “let them make what they can out of
it.” And then I laughed aloud: “And they will discuss it! And there will be
reviews of it! And wise articles about it! And learned scholars will write
tomes upon it, showing how many sentences there are in it ending with a
punctuation mark; and old ladies and Methodist ministers will shake their
heads over it and say: 'See what comes of not believing in Adam!'”
I walked on, singing the Ride of the Valkyries, the children staring at me,
going to Sunday-school.
* * * * *
But I was glad that there was another copy of The Captive left. I love even
that wicked editor now.
* * * * *
--All that was a day and a half ago. I am not so happy now, but I am very
calm. I have found my righteousness again, and I can take whatever comes.
And tasks in hours of insight willed
Can be in hours of gloom fulfilled!
* * * * *
June 3d.
I have now three days more to wait, to learn if The Captive is accepted.
I have money enough to last me till then. If it is not accepted I should
obviously have to starve, should I not? For I will never serve the world
again. And am I a sheep that must be driven? No, I shall find a quicker way
of dying than by starvation. In the meanwhile I live my life and say my
prayer.
* * * * *
I have thought a great deal about the thing, and it seems by no means best
for the world that it should treat all the men who have my gift as it has
treated me. Let the world take notice that I perish because I have not
cheap qualities. Because I was born to sing and to worship! Because I have
no alloy, because I will not compromise, because I do not understand the
world, and do not serve its uses! If I only knew all the book-gossip of the
hour, and all the platitudes of the reviews! If only I knew anything of all
the infinite frivolity and puerility that occupies the minds of men! But
I do not, and so I am an outcast, and must work as a day laborer for my
bread.
--The infinite irrationality of it seems to me notable. Why, upon the
men of genius of the _past_ you feed your lives, you blind and
foolish men! They are the bread and meat of your souls--they make your
civilizations--they mold your thoughts--they put into you all that little
life which you have. And your reviews have use enough for _them_! Your
publishers publish enough of _them_! _But what thoughts have you
about the NEW teacher, the NEW inspirer?_
The madness of the thing! I read books enough, it seems to me, telling of
the sufferings of the poets of a century ago!--of the indifference of the
critics, the blindness of the public, of a century ago. And those things
pain you all so cruelly! But the possibility of their happening to the
poets of the _present_--it never seems to enter into your heads! Why,
that very man who sent me back his curt refusal by his secretary--he writes
about the agonies of Shelley and Keats in a way that brings the tears into
your eyes! And that is only one example among thousands.
What do these men think? Is it their idea that the public and the critics
are now so true and so eager that the poets have nothing more to fear? That
stupidity and blindness and indifference are quite entirely gone out of the
world? That aspiration and fervor are now so much the rule that the least
penny-a-liner can judge the new poet?
And they think that the soul is dead then! And that God has stopped sending
into this world new messages and new faiths!
Oh you civilization! You society! You critics and lovers of books! Why,
that new message and that new faith ought to be the one thing in all this
world that you bend your faculties to save! It is that upon which all your
life is built--it is that by which this Republic, for one thing, is to be
made a factor in the history of mankind. But what do you do? What
_have_ you done? Here I am; and come now and tell me what it is that
you _think_ you have done. _For I have the message!--I have the
faith_! And you have starved me, and you have beaten me, until I am too
ill to drag myself about!
And what can I do? Where can I turn? What hope have I, except, as Swift's
phrase has it, to “die like a poisoned rat in a hole”? I could wish that
you would think over that phrase a little while, cultivated ladies and
gentlemen. It is not pleasant--to die like a poisoned rat in a hole.
* * * * *
You ask me to believe in your civilization; you ask me to believe in your
love of light! Let me tell you when I would believe in your civilization
and your love of light.
I say that the last and the highest thing in this world is _Genius_.
I say that Religion and Art and Progress and Enlightenment--that all
these things are made out of Genius; and that Genius is first and last,
highest, and best, and fundamental. And I say that when you recognize that
fact--when you believe in Genius--when you prepare the way for it and make
smooth the paths for it--I say that then and then alone may you tell me
that you are civilized.
The thing shrieks against heaven--your cruelty, your stupidity. Since ever
the first poet came into this world it has been the same story of agony,
indignity, and shame. _And what do you do?_
It is poverty that I talk about, poverty alone! The poet wants nothing in
this world but to be let alone to listen to the voices of his soul. He
wants nothing from you in all this world but that you give him food while
he does it--while he does it, miserable people--not for himself, but for
_you_.
This is the shame upon you--that you expect--that you always have
expected--that the poet, besides doing the fearful task his inspiration
lays upon him--that he shall go out into the coarse, ruthless world and
slave for his bread! That is the shame! That is the indignity, that is
the brutality, the stupidity, the infamy! Shame upon you, shame upon you,
world!
* * * * *
The poet! He comes with a heart trembling with gladness; he comes with
tears of rapture in his eyes! He comes with bosom heaving and throat
choking and heart breaking. He comes with tenderness and with trust, with
joy in the beauty that he beholds. He comes a minstrel, with a harp in his
hand--and you set your dogs upon him--you drive him torn and bleeding from
your gates!
* * * * *
The poet! You make him go out into the market and chaffer for his bread!
You subject him to the same law to which you subject your loafers and
your louts--that he who will not work can not eat! Your drones, and your
drunkards--and your poets! Every man must earn for himself, every man must
pay his way! No man must ask favors, no man must be helped, no man shall be
any different from other men! For shame! For shame!
* * * * *
And you love letters! You love poetry! You are civilized, you are liberal,
you are enlightened! You are fools!
* * * * *
I tell you the agony of this thing is in me yet--it has heaped itself up
in my soul all my days. It was my life, it was my _life_ that cried
out! And now that I can not save my own self--oh, let me at least save the
others! O God, let me not die till I have said one word that reaches their
hearts, till I have done something to change this ghastly thing! The voices
of the ages cry out to me. Not only the hundreds who have gone before--but
the hundreds and the thousands who are to come! What are _we_ to do?
they cry--who shall save _us_? Are we to share the same fate--are we
too to struggle and die in vain? And in this world that is civilized! In
this world that seeks progress! In this world that wants nothing but light!
Not to the mob I speak, not to those who once mocked me; if none but they
lived, I should hold my tongue and go. But you men who are leaders, you men
who stand upon the top, you men who see!--can I not find some word to reach
_you_? You men who really love books--who have money--who want nothing
but to put it to use!--can I not find some word to reach _you_?
O God! And it is all so simple.
* * * * *
I tell you this land will never be civilized, this land will never lead
mankind, it will never be anything but the torture-house that I have found
it, until it makes some provision for its men of _Genius_! Until this
simple fundamental thing be true--that a man may know that if he have
_Genius_--that the day he shows he has _Genius_--he will be
honored and protected by society and not trampled and kicked like a dog.
That he will not have to go out into the market-place and vend his wares!
That he will not have to make sick his soul haggling for his bread! That if
he turns his strength to higher things, and exposes himself to the world
thereby, he will not be trodden down in the struggle for existence! That
he will not have to bear indignities and insults; that he will not have to
write till he be ripe, or be stunted and deformed by early deprivation.
* * * * *
Genius. And am I not to die now?--And what matters the world?
Therefore let me write it: that I was a man of Genius. And that you have
trodden me down in the struggle for existence. That I saw things that no
other man has ever seen, I would have written things that no other man
can ever write. And that you have trodden me down in the struggle for
existence--that you have trodden me down because I could not earn my bread!
* * * * *
This is what I tell you--this is what I cry out to you, that the man of
Genius _can not_ earn his bread! That the work by which he develops
his power is something absolutely and utterly different from the work by
which he earns his bread! And that every hour which he gives to the one, he
lessens his power and his capacity for the other! Every hour that he gives
to the earning of his bread, he takes from his soul, he weakens his work,
he destroys beauty which never again can he know or dream!
And this again is what I tell you, this again is what I cry out to you:
that the power by which a man of Genius does his work, and the power by
which he earns his bread, are things so entirely distinct that _they may
not occur together at all_! The man may have both, but then again he may
only have the former.--And in that case he will die like a poisoned rat in
a hole.
* * * * *
What is the first principle of the democracy of which we boast, if
it be not that excellence, that power, that _Genius_, is not the
attribute of the rich or the noble, but that it may make its appearance
anywhere among men? And you who sigh for men of talent to raise American
letters--what do you _do_ about it? I will tell you something right
now, to begin with; it will startle you, perhaps, and you may not believe
it; but I mean to prove it later on. For the present I say this: that of
the seven poets who constitute the glory of the literature of England in
the nineteenth century, four of them were rich men, five of them were
independent, one of them was endowed when he was a youth, and the seventh,
the greatest of them all, died like a poisoned rat in a hole.
And what do you _do_ about it? What you do is to lean back in your
chair and say: “The literary market was never so wide-awake as it is now,
and the publishers never so anxious for new talent”!
* * * * *
Fools! And you think that the publishers are in business for the developing
of talent, and for the glory of literature! And that they care about
whether a man of Genius dies in the streets, or not! Why, have I not heard
them tell me, with their own lips, that “a publisher who published books
that the trade did not want would be driven out of business in a year”?
* * * * *
And you tell me that the author is an independent man nowadays! And can
earn his living with his books!
* * * * *
It is your privilege to think that, if you choose; but perhaps you will not
mind hearing what _I_ tell you--that the author can find no way to a
living more degrading to him than the earning of it with his books. I have
shoveled snow, and shoveled manure too, in the streets, and shoveled food
for swine in a restaurant. But I never did anything so degrading as I
should have had to do if I had tried to earn my living with my books.
* * * * *
Oh, the author may be independent, may he! And you will escape with that
fine platitude, and with that bitter mockery! And never think that the
author's independence is but the fine phrase for your own indifference!
Again it is your privilege to think what you choose; but again perhaps you
will not mind hearing what I tell you--that there can never be any man
in this world more dependent than an author, if he be a true author. A
true author is the singer and dreamer of society; and who is there more
dependent than the singer and the dreamer--who is there less powerful and
less cunning in the things of the body?
* * * * *
Why, the author gives up his whole life for your joy and help, he
consecrates himself, he lashes and burns and tortures himself--for your
sake! And you spurn him from you, and tell him he is “independent”!
Here is the truth, here is the crux, here is the whole thing in a sentence.
A publisher is not in business for the furtherance of Art, or for the
uplifting of humanity, or for the worship of God. He doesn't mind doing
these things incidentally, of course, when the fortunate occasion arises;
but do you think if he had his choice between publishing a new Paradise
Lost to be read fifty years from date, and publishing a biography of a
reigning prince, or a treatise on gastronomy, or a new dime novel by Marie
Corelli in a first edition of a hundred thousand copies--do you think he
would hesitate, now really?
* * * * *
You say that “literary excellence is identical with publishing
availability”! I tell you that they are as far apart--why, that they are
just exactly this far apart--as far as what mankind likes is from what
mankind ought to like.
* * * * *
And you ask the man of Genius to cringe and tremble before the standard
of what the reading public likes! You ask him to tame the frenzy of his
inspiration, to pull your pleasure-carriages with his wingèd steed! He
shall be no more the seer and the prophet and the leader--he shall be
mountebank and public-entertainer.
And you call yourself civilized! O God!
And the poet! Again the poet! Is he not _vital_ to your society? Is
he not, in the last analysis, the lawmaker, the law-enforcer--this seeker,
this inspirer, this man with the new vision of right? I look at this
society--body enough I see, bone and muscle, and a good, large, capable
stomach. Brain enough I see, too, or nearly enough; but Soul? Soul? Who
will dare to tell me that there is Soul enough? And your poet--why,
_he_ is your Soul! He is the man who fills the millions with the
breath of life, who makes the whole vast machine a living, rejoicing,
beautiful thing. _He_--every noble impulse that you have has come
originally from him--the memory of his words thrill in the hearts
of men--pupils gather to study them--tired hearts seek them for
refreshment--they grow and they fill all the earth--and never through
the centuries do they die! They blossom into noble impulses, into new
movements,--into reforms that reach down to the lowest wretches of the
gutter, who never even heard of a poet. Why, they have reached to the very
dogs, that are beaten less than they were.
* * * * *
And what is it that makes civilization in the end? What is it that the
world really honors in the end? You Americans, you who love your country,
you who believe in your country's institutions, who believe that your
country holds in her womb the future of mankind! You who want the world to
believe that!--how are you going to _get_ the world to believe that?
Is it--poor, impotent, foolish creatures--by covering your land until it is
a maze of twenty-story office buildings? By lining it with railroads six
feet apart?--Do you not know that this very hour the reason why Europe does
not believe in America is that it has not a man to sing its Soul? That it
has been a century in the eyes of the world, and has not yet brought forth
one single poet or thinker of the first rank?
The poet! And I sought to be that man, my heart burned to sing that song!
And look at me!
* * * * *
Who will dare to say that I might not have sung it? What chance have I
had--have I not been handicapped and stunted, beaten and discouraged,
punished as if I had been a loafer--by _you_, the world? Here I am--I
am only a boy--and thrilling with unutterable things! And I am going down,
down to destruction! Why, for what I had to say I needed years and years to
ripen; and how can I tell now--how can any man tell now--what those things
would have been?
And I--what am I?--a worm, an atom! But what happens to me to-day may
happen to another to-morrow, and may happen to a hundred in a century. And
who knows?--who cares?
* * * * *
What do you do with your railroad presidents? You take good care that
_they_ get their work done, don't you? They have secretaries to catch
every word, they have private cars to carry them where they would go, men
to run and serve them, to make smooth their paths and save their every
instant for them! But your poet, your man of genius--who makes smooth
_his_ paths, who helps _him_? He needs nobody to run and serve
him--he needs no cars and no palaces, no gold and precious raiment--no, nor
even praise and honor! What he needs--I have said it once--he needs but to
be left alone, to listen to the voices of his soul, and to have some one
bring him food to keep him alive while he does it. That--only that!--think
of it--for the most precious things of this life, the things that alone
save this life from being a barren mockery and a grinning farce! And he can
not have them--and you, you enlightened society, you never care about it,
you never _think_ of it!
* * * * *
If he comes a master, he can force his way; or if he be rich, or if some
one honor him, then he can live his life and heed nothing. But when he is
poor! And when he is weak! And when he is young! God help him, God help
him!--for you, you great savage world, you _crush_ him.
* * * * *
You send him to the publishers! And he is young, and crude, and
inexperienced! He has not found himself, he has not found his voice, he
stammers, he falters, he is weak! And you send him to the publishers!
* * * * *
I have said it once, I say it again: that the publisher is part of the
world and his law is a law of iron--he publishes the books that will sell.
And this feeble voice, this young love, this tender aspiration, this holy
purpose--oh, it is a thing to make one shudder!
* * * * *
And these things higher yet, these things so precious that we dare not
whisper them--this new awe of righteousness--this new rage at what the
world loves best--this flash of insight that will astound a new age!
* * * * *
You send it all to the publisher!
* * * * *
But what _can_ you do? I will tell you what you can do--I will tell
you what you _will_ do when you come finally to honor what is truly
precious in this life--when you are really civilized and enlightened--when
you really believe in and value Genius.
* * * * *
You will provide it that your young poet, your young worshiper, come
elsewhere to receive a judgment than to the money-making publisher, and to
the staring, vulgar crowd. You will provide it that he does not measure his
voice against the big-drum thumping of the best-selling pomposities of the
hour. You will provide it that he come, with all honor and all dignity, to
the best and truest men that you can engage for the service; and that he
come to be judged by one standard, and that not the standard of sales.
Whether it be true, whether it be noble, whether it be sincere; whether
it show imagination, whether it have melody, beauty, love, aspiration,
knowledge; whether, in short, in those forms or in any other forms, it have
_power_! Whether the man who wrote it is a man worth training, whether
he will repay society for its trust, whether he will bring new beauty into
the world!--And then, if these things be true, so long as he works, and
grows, and proves his value, so long shall he have the pittance that he
needs until he be the master of his voice.
Yes, you never thought of that before! I read everything--everywhere--and
I never heard it before. And what does that tell about the poverty and
blindness and stupidity of this world? Are we not rich enough? Are we not
the richest nation in the world? Have we not railroads and houses, food and
clothing and bank-stocks enough to make the brain reel? And do we not call
ourselves a Christian land? And worship as divine the Teacher who said that
“man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out
of the mouth of God”?
* * * * *
Oh, you world!
* * * * *
And what would it do? What would it mean? I will tell you a few things that
it would mean.
First of all it would mean that the man who felt in him the voice of God
would know that there was a road he could travel, would know that there
was a home for him. He would no longer face the fearful alternative of
mediocrity or starvation. He would no longer be tempted, he would no longer
be forced to turn from his faith, and stunt his development, and wreck
his plans, by base attempts to compromise between his highest and what
the world will pay for. Can you have any idea what that would mean to an
artist? You say that you love art! Can you have any idea of the effect
which that would have upon art? Upon the art of your country--upon American
literature! To have a band of perhaps a hundred--perhaps a thousand, proved
and chosen--the best and strongest that could be found--and set free and
consecrated to the search for beauty! Try it for fifty years--try it for
ten years--try the method of raising your poets in your gardens instead of
flinging them into your weed-beds--and see what the result would be! See if
in fifty years American literature would not have done more than all the
rest of the world!
* * * * *
And what would it cost?--O God! Is there a railroad in this country
so small that its earnings would not pay for it--for the whole of the
thousand? Why, pay a poet five hundred dollars a year, and he is a rich
man; if he is not, he is no poet, but a knave.
* * * * *
And there would be waste?--Yes--where is there not waste? But grant that in
the whole thousand there is just _one_ who is a master mind; and that
him you set free and keep from defeat--that him with all his glory you make
yours--and then tell me if there be any other way in this world that you
could have done so much for man with your money!
* * * * *
--No, these are not your ways, oh you cruel world! You let every man go his
way--you let him starve, you let him die in any hole that he can find. The
poet--tenderest and most sensitive of all men! The poet--the master of the
arts of suffering! Exposed on every side, nervous, haunted, unused to the
world, knowing how to feel and knowing that alone! Is not his life an agony
under any conditions,--is he not tortured for you--the world? And you leave
him helpless, despairing!
What is the matter with you?--How can you be so blind? There are some of
you who really love books--look and see the story of genius--if it be not
a thing to make you shudder and turn sick. It has been so through all the
ages, and it will be so through all the ages to come, until society has
a conscience and a soul. Tell me if there is anything in this world more
frightful than the lot of the poets who have been born poor--of Marlowe and
Chatterton and Goldsmith, Johnson and Burns and Keats! And who can tell how
many were choked before even their first utterance?
* * * * *
I can not talk of that, for it makes me sick; but I will talk of the poets
who were born rich. Is it not singular--is it not terrible--how many of the
great stalwart ones were rich? To be educated, to own books, to hear music,
to dwell in the country, to be free from men and men's judgments! Oh, the
words break my heart!
* * * * *
--But was not Goethe rich, and did he not have these things? And was not
Hugo rich? And Milton? When he left college he spent five years at his
father's country place and wrote four poems that have done more to make men
happy than if they had cost many millions of dollars.
* * * * *
But let me come to what I spoke of before, the seven poets of this century
in England.
* * * * *
I name Wordsworth and Byron, Tennyson, Browning and Swinburne, Shelley and
Keats. I said that six of them were independent, and that the other--the
greatest--died like a dog.
* * * * *
Wordsworth came first; he was young and poor and struggling, and a friend
left him just such an independence as I have cried for; and he consecrated
himself to art, and he revolutionized English poetry, he breathed truth
into a whole nation again. And when he was clear and looked back, he made
such statements as these: that “a poet has to _create_ the taste by
which he is to be enjoyed,” and that “my poetry has never brought me enough
to pay for my shoe-strings.”
* * * * *
And see how the publishers and critics--how the literary world--received
him! How they jeered and jibed, and took fifty years to understand him! Oh
think of these things, think what they mean, you who love literature! Think
that the world owes its possession of Wordsworth's poetry to the accident
that a friend died and left him some money!
* * * * *
I name Byron; he was a rich man. I name Tennyson; he had a little
competence, and he gave up the idea of marriage and for ten years devoted
himself to art; and when he was thirty-two he published his work--and then
they gave him a pension!
* * * * *
I name Browning; Browning went his own way, heeding no man; and he never
had to think about money. I name Swinburne; and the same was true of him.
* * * * *
I name Shelley; and Shelley was wealthy. They kept him poor for a time, but
his poems do not date from then. When he wrote the poetry that has been the
spiritual food of the high souls of this century, he lived in a beautiful
villa in Italy, and wandered about the forest with his books. And oh, you
who love books, stop just a moment and listen: I am dying, and the cry
of all my soul is in this. Tell me, you who love Shelley--the “pardlike
spirit, beautiful and swift”--“thyself the wild west wind, oh boy
divine!”--tell me how much you think you'd have had of that glorious burst
of music--that golden rain of melody, of heavenly ecstasy--if the man who
wrote had been a wholesale-paper clerk or a cable-car conductor! How much
do you think you'd have had if when he'd torn himself free to write Queen
Mab--or even if he'd been ripe enough and written his Prometheus--if he'd
had to take them to publishers! If he had had to take them to the critics
and the literary world and say, “Here is my work, now set me free that I
may help mankind!”
* * * * *
--And when I wrote that I sank down and burst into tears. It can not be
helped. It is very hard for me.--
* * * * *
Oh, but come face this thing--you that are responsible!
* * * * *
--“But who is responsible?” I hear a voice. Every single man is
responsible--every single man who has money, who loves letters, and who
faces these facts--_you_--YOU--are responsible!
* * * * *
Perhaps you are weary of my pleading, you think that I perish of my own
weakness. But come and tell me, if you can, what it is that I have not
done? What expedient is there that I have not tried, what resource, what
hope? Have I not been true enough, have I not worked enough? Have I been
extravagant, have I been dissipated? Did I not make my work my best? Come
and reason with me--I shall be dead when you read this, but let us talk it
over calmly. Put yourself here in my place and tell me what you would do.
Have I not tried the publishers, the critics, the editors, the poets, the
clergymen, the professors? Have I not waited--until I am sick, crazy? Have
I not borne indignities enough? Have I not gotten myself kicked enough for
my efforts?
* * * * *
--But you say: “I know nothing about The Captive!” Yes--so it is--then
let us go back to Shelley. A fair test would be Queen Mab or The Revolt
of Islam--he was my age then; but I will go ten years later and take
Prometheus Bound. Would he have found any one to publish it? _Did_ he
find any one to _read_ it? Why, ten or twenty years after Shelley
died, Browning (then a boy) records that he searched all England for a
copy of that queer poet's works! Why, Shelley's poetry was a byword and a
mockery; and Shelley himself--first of all he was insane, of course, and
afterward he was exile, atheist, adulterer, and scoundrel. They took his
children away from him, because he was not fit to take care of them!
* * * * *
And he would not have been welcomed with open arms, I think! And he
wouldn't have been set free--consecrated soul that he was. And sensitive,
nervous, fragile, hysterical boy--do you think he would ever have written
his poems, that he would ever have uttered his message?
I have to make somebody understand this thing, somehow. I suggest that you
think what that would have meant to you--to you who love poetry. Think that
you would never have read:
Oh wild west wind, thou breath of Autumn's being!...
Oh lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud,
I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed!
Think that you would never have read:
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know!
That you would never have read:
On a poet's lips I slept!
I repeat that I have to make somebody understand this thing. I try that
plan a little more. Listen to me now--think what it would have meant if
that wise friend had not died when he did; think that you would never have
read:
And then my heart with rapture fills,
And dances with the daffodils!
Think that you would never have read:
The light that never was on sea or land,
The consecration and the poet's dream!
Think that you would never have read:
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in world not realized;
High instincts before which our moral nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised!
That you would never have read:
Will no one tell me what she sings?
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things
And battles long ago.
I say a third time that I have to make somebody understand this thing. Let
us try it again now, just once again. Let us suppose that there had not
been any little independence or any pension. Who can think what it would
have meant to us? Who can think what it would mean never to have read
Ring out, wild bells,
or
When the war-drum throbs no longer,
or
Crossing the bar.
Never to have read
Blow, bugle, blow!
Never to have read
My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure!
* * * * *
Oh, think not of what these things are to _you_--think of what they
are to _men_! How many railroads would pay for them?--one, do you
think? The work of how many libraries have they done, do you think? _How
much money do you think could be raised in the world to-day to save
them?_
* * * * *
_And not one cent to create them!_
* * * * *
--I have saved the chief thing to the last. I have spoken of the six
fortunate ones who had money; I have not spoken of thee, oh my poor, poor
Keats! The hours that I have hungered with thee, the hours that I have wept
with thee, oh thou _my_ poet, oh thou _my_ Keats! Oh thou most
wretched, most miserable of poets, oh thou most beautiful, most exquisite,
most unthinkable of poets! Most inspired poet of England, since Milton
died!--It was given to others to be beautiful, it was given to thee alone
to be perfect! It was given to thee to be ecstasy incarnate, to be melody
too sweet to hear! It was given to thee, alone of all poets, to achieve by
mere _language_ a rapture that thrills the soul like the sound of an
organ. And they mocked thee, they spit upon thee, they cursed thee, oh my
poor, poor Keats! Thou, the hostler's son--thou, the apothecary's clerk!
Thou, sick and starved and helpless--thou, dying of disease and neglect and
despair:
Oh for a draft of vintage! That hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
Oh for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth;
That I might drink and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim!
“Go back to thy gallipots, Mr. Keats!” Think not of Gifford--poor fool--but
think of yourself, oh world! Think what you lost in that man! You killed
him, yes, you trampled him, and you throttled him! And he was only
twenty-five! And he had never finished _Hyperion_--because he had not
the heart!
* * * * *
--Come, now, all you who love books, come quickly, and let us take up a
subscription, _that we may save for men the rest of Hyperion_!
Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,
And feeds her grief with his remembered lay!
* * * * *
I have been sitting here from seven in the evening until three in the
morning, and I can not write any more.
* * * * *
Only--think about this thing. Look up the facts and see if they are not
true. These seven men _made_ England's poetry for a century; they made
England's _thought_ for a century--they make it to-day! They are the
inspiration of whole peoples, the sources of multitudes of noble deeds and
purposes. What do you think in money would be represented by the value of
these books alone? Enough to support ten thousand poets for a lifetime, do
you think? And how many hundreds of thousands of students are hearing about
them this day? How many young men and maidens are going out into the world
owing all that they have that is beautiful to them? And all these authors
of the day, all these critics and teachers, novelists and poets--how much
of what they have that is true do they not owe to these men? Go ask them,
go ask them!
* * * * *
--And you have it all because of the accident that these men were
independent! You have all from six of them for that, and from the seventh
you have nothing--yes, almost nothing--because he was poor! Because he was
a hostler's son, and not a gentleman's son; and you sent him back to his
gallipots and to his grave.
* * * * *
June 4th.
I wait to hear from the publisher merely as a matter of duty. I have never
had the least idea that he will take the book.
* * * * *
I have made up my mind to drown myself. There is no mess about it, and men
do not have to know of it.
* * * * *
I have often read of murder cases. They tie a rope around the body and a
stone to the rope; but the stone slips out, or the rope wears, and then
it is unpleasant. I used to say they were fools; why did they not get a
dumb-bell or something like that, and a small chain. Then there would have
been no trouble.
* * * * *
When I thought of that I smiled grimly. I am living on dry bread, and
saving my money to buy a dumb-bell and a chain on Friday.
* * * * *
I pray most of the time. I have no longer the old ecstasy--such things do
not come often in cities. But it will come once again before I die, that I
know.
* * * * *
I have a strange attitude toward death. To me it is nothing. There is, of
course, the pain of drowning--it probably hurts to be strangled, but I do
not think it will hurt as much as ten lines of The Captive hurt.
* * * * *
About the physical part of it, the “invisible corruption,” I never think;
it is enough that it will be invisible. And for the rest, death is nothing,
it is the end. I have never shrunk from the thought of it, it does not come
as a stranger to me now. I take it simply and naturally--it is the end. It
is the end that comes to all things in this phantom-dance of being; to
flowers and to music, to mountains and to planets, to histories, and to
universes, and to men.
* * * * *
I said: “It must come some day. It may come any day. Love not thy life too
much--know what thou art.”
* * * * *
God can spare me. He got along without me once, and doubtless he can do it
again. There are many things that I should like to see--I should like to
see all the ages; but that was not my fate.
* * * * *
When I was young they taught me to be orthodox. And I see them stare at me
now in horror. “Suicide!” they gasp. “Suicide!”
* * * * *
Yes!--Why not? Am I not the lord of mine own life, to end it as well as to
live it?
* * * * *
And the law! Prate not of laws, I know of no laws, either of man or God; my
law is the right and my holy will.
* * * * *
And the punishment! Well, and if your hell be a reality, why, it is my
home--it is the home of all true men. The sublime duty of being damned is
ever my reply to theological impertinences.
* * * * *
--No, the sight of death does not thrill me in the least--when I stand upon
the brink it will not thrill me. It is not fearful; what the weakest of men
have done, I can do. And it is not sublime. Life is sublime, life thrills
me; death is nothing.
* * * * *
June 5th.
To-day I wished that it were winter. A wonderful idea came to me--I am
almost tempted to live and wait for winter. I said: I would choose one
place where the money-blind and the folly-mad assemble--where I have seen
them and had my eyes burned by the sight. I would go to the opera-house
on the opening night! I would go to the top gallery, and I would put my
journal, my story, under my coat; and in the midst of the thing I would
give one cry, to startle them; and I would dash down that long flight of
steps, and shoot over the railing headfirst.
--Ha! That would make them think! They might read the book, then.
What place could be more fitted? In an opera-house meet, as nowhere else in
this world that I know of, the two extremes of life--God and the devil. I
mean on a Wagner night! Here is the inspiration of a sainted poet, here is
ecstasy unthinkable, flung wide and glorious as the dawn; and here is all
the sodden and brutal vulgarity of wealth, deaf, blind, and strutting in
its insolent pomposity.
* * * * *
--I am very ill to-day--I have a splitting headache and I am weak. It
is from trying to save too much money for the dumb-bell, I fear. But I
laugh--what care I? My body is going to wreck--but what care I? Ah, it is a
fine thing to be death-devoted, and freed from all the ills that flesh is
heir to! I go my way--do what I please--hammer on and on, and let happen
what will. What, old head!--wilt ache? I guess I can stop thy aching
before long! And all ye mechanical miscellaneities--stomachs and what not!
_Thou_ wilt trouble me too? Do thy pleasure, go thy way--I go mine!
* * * * *
There is a kind of intoxication in it. I climb upon all these ills that
used to frighten me--I mock at them, I am a god. I smite my head--I say, “I
am done with thee, old head! I have thought with thee all the thoughts I
have to think!”
* * * * *
I have made me right drunk upon life, yes, that is the truth; and now the
feast is over, and I will smash the crockery! Come, boys, come!--Away with
it! Through the window here with the head--look out of the way below there
for the stomach--ha, ha!
--Is not that Shakespearian humor for you? Such a thing it is to be
death-devoted!
* * * * *
--But there is a deeper side to this wonderful thing--this prospect of
peace--this end of pain. All these solemn realities that were so much to
thee--this “world” and all its ways--its conventions and proprieties, its
duties and its trials; how now, do they seem so much to thee after all?
Cynical relative that wouldst “leave it to time”--was I so wrong, that I
would not hear thy wisdom? Suppose thou wert coming with me to-morrow--hey?
And to leave all thy clothes and thy clubs, thy bank-account, and thy
reputation, and thy stories! Ah, thou canst not come with me, but thou wilt
come after me some day, never fear. This is a journey that each man goes
alone.
Oh, it is easy to be a man when you are sentenced to die. Then all things
slip into their places, power and pride, wealth and fame--what strange
fantasies they seem! What tales I could tell the world at this minute, of
how their ways seem to me!--Oh, take my advice, good friend, and pray thy
God for one hour in which thou mayst see the truth of all those foolish
great things of thy life!
* * * * *
I read Alastor this afternoon. What a strange vision it is! And I, too, in
awe and mystery shall journey away unto a high mountain to die.
* * * * *
--And then later I went out into the Park. I saw a flower; and suddenly the
wild ecstasy flashed over me, and I sank down upon a seat, and hid my face
in my hands, and everything swirled black about me. I cried: “I do not
want to die! Why, I am only a boy! I love the flowers--I want to see the
springtime!”
And then I felt some one take me by the shoulder, and heard a grim voice
within me say, “Come! Come!”
* * * * *
Oh, it will be all right, never fear! Never yet have I failed to do what I
resolved to do. And thou world, thou wouldst have me thy slave; but I am no
man's slave--not I!
* * * * *
My death-warrant is ready. I go for it to-morrow.
* * * * *
June 6th.
Last night I knelt by the bedside, far into the deep hours, far into the
dawn. The whole drama of my life rolled out before me, I saw it all, I
lived it all again; and Him in whose arms I lay--I blessed Him for the
whole of it. Now that the pain is gone I see that it was beautiful, that
flower of my life. Other flowers the plant might have borne; but this
flower was beautiful; and each flower is for itself.
I stretch out my arms, I float upon a tide, back, back, into the rolling
source of things. Weep not for me, you who may love me; I can not die,
for I never was; that which I am, I was always, and shall be ever; I am
_He_. Go out into the world, you who may love me, and say, “This
flower is he, this sunset cloud is he; this wind is his breath, this song
is his spirit.”
* * * * *
What is my faith, the faith in which I die? It is the faith of modern
thought; it is the faith of the ages. It is a spiritual Pantheism, an
impassioned Agnosticism.
* * * * *
A Presence am I; what is my source I know not, nor can I ever know. The
moral fact I know, my will; and I take it as I find it, and rejoice in the
making of beauty.
* * * * *
Do I believe that I ever shall live again? I know that I shall not. I do
not insult His perfection and my faith, with the wish that such as I should
be immortal. What I have He gave me; it is His, and He will take it. I
have no rights, and I have no claims. I see not why He should give me ages
because He has given me an hour. He never turns back, He never makes over
again--that I know.
* * * * *
--And neither do I ask rewards; my life was beautiful, I bless Him for
every prayer. I ask Him not that He cover the fair painting with whitewash.
* * * * *
I have no fear of Oblivion. I have no thoughts about it. There are no
thoughts in Oblivion.
_The days when thou wert not, did they trouble thee? The days when thou
art not shall trouble thee as much_.
* * * * *
--I have made up my mind that I will get some work this morning, or sell my
coat, or something. I will go out into the country, I will be alone with
Him to-night. I will fling off every chain that has bound me. I will fling
off the world, I will fling off pain, I will fling off health. I will say,
“Burst thyself, brain! Rend thyself, body, as thou wilt!--but I will see my
God to-night before I die!”
* * * * *
I have been to the publishers. They gave me back The Captive. “It is done.”
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Journal of Arthur Stirling, by Upton Sinclair