April 29th.
What counts in this thing is momentum--spiritual momentum. You are filled
with it all the time, it never leaves you; it drives behind you like a gale
of wind; it roars in your ears when you are awake, it rocks you to sleep
when you are weary; whenever you are dull or do not heed it, it nags at
you, it goads you, it beats into your face. Each day it is more, each day
it is harder, more unattainable; but only do not stop, it carries you with
it like a wave; you mount upon each day's achievement to reach the next,
you move with the power of all the days before. It is momentum that counts.
Do not stop!--I cry it all day--Do not stop!
* * * * *
April 30th.
It is weak of me, but sometimes I can not help but look ahead--and think
that it is done! I could not find any words to tell the joy that that will
be to me--to be free, after so long--to be free!
I do not care anything about the fame--it would not be anything to me to be
a great author. If it could be done, nothing would please me better than
to publish it anonymously--to let no one ever know that it was mine. If I
could only have the little that I need to be free, I would publish all that
I might ever write anonymously.
Yes, that is the thing that makes my blood bound. To be free! Let it only
be done--let it only be real, as it will be--and the naked force of it will
shake men to the depths of their souls. I could not write it, if I did not
believe that I was writing words that would grip the soul of any man--I
care not how dull or how coarse he might be.
* * * * *
I finished the first act just now.
* * * * *
May 1st.
I am wild to-day. Oh, how can I bear this--why should I have to contend
with such things as this! Is it not hard enough--the agony that I have to
bear, the task that takes all my strength and more? And must I be torn to
pieces by such hideous degradation as this? Oh, my God, if my life is not
soon clear of these things I shall die!
* * * * *
Oh, it is funny--yes, funny!--Let us laugh at it. The dance-hall musician
has brought home his 'cello! I heard him come bumping up the stairs with
it--God damn his soul! And there he sits, sawing away at some loathsome jig
tunes! And he has two friends in there--I listen to their wit between the
tunes.
Here I sit, like a wild beast pent in a cage. I tell you I can bear any
work in the world, but I can not bear things such as this. That I, who am
seeking a new faith for men--who am writing, or trying to write, what will
mean new life to millions--should have my soul ripped into pieces by such
loathsome, insulting indignities!
Oh, laugh!--but _I_ can't laugh--I sit here foaming at the lips, and
crying! And suppose he's lost his position, and does this every day!
Now every day I must lay aside what I am doing and sit and shudder when I
hear him coming up the steps--and wait for him to begin this! I tell you,
I demand to be free--I _demand_ it! I want nothing in this world but to
be let alone. I don't want anybody to wait on me.--_I don't want anything
from this hellish world but to be let alone!_
It is pouring rain outside, and my overcoat is thin; but I must go out and
pace the streets and wait until a filthy Dutchman gets through scraping
ragtime on a 'cello.
All day wasted! All day! Does it not seem that these things persecute you
by system? I came in, cold and wet, and got into bed, and then he began
again! And the friends came back and they had beer, and more music. And I
had to get up and put on the wet clothes once more.
* * * * *
May 2d.
I was crouching out on one of the docks last night. I had no place else to
go. I can think anywhere, if it is quiet.
A wonderful thing is the night. I bless Thee for the night, oh "_sГјsse,
heilige Natur_"!
It was a voice in my soul, as clear as could be.
--She can not bear too long the sight of men, sweet, holy Nature: the
swarming hives--the millions of tiny creatures, each drunk and blind with
his own selfishness; and so she lays her great hand upon it all, and hides
it out of her sight.
Once it was all silent, and formless as the desert; soon it shall all be
silent and formless again; and meanwhile--the night, the night!
* * * * *
Oh, I hunger for the desert! I do not care for beauty--I have no time for
beauty, I want the earth stern and forbidding. Give me some place where no
one else would want to go--an iron crag where the oceans beat--a
mountain-top where the lightning splinters on the rocks.
* * * * *
I go at it again. But I am nervous--these things get me into such a state
that I simply can not do anything. It was not merely yesterday--I have it
constantly. The dirty chambermaid singing, or yelling down to the landlady;
the drunken man swearing at his wife; the boys screaming in the street and
kicking a tomato-can about. When I think of how much beauty and power has
been shattered in my life by such things as these, it brings tears of
impotent rage into my eyes.
I must be free--oh, I must be free!
* * * * *
It comes strangely from the author of The Captive, does it not?
I give all my life to my work, and sometimes, when I am broken like this, I
wonder if I do not give too much. Once I climbed to a dizzy height, and I
cried out a dizzy truth:
"O God, how as nothing in Thy sight are my writings!"
I do not know if I shall ever reach that height again.
* * * * *
May 3d.
I have not one single beautiful memory in my life. I have nothing in my
life that, when I think of it, does not make me _writhe_.
To all that I have lived, and known, and seen, I have but one word, one
cry--Away! Away! Let me get away from it! Let me get away from cities, let
me get away from men, let me out of my cage! Let me go with my God, let
me forget it all--put it away forever and ever! Let me no longer have to
plot and plan, to cringe and whimper, to barter my vision and my hours for
bread!
Who knows what I suffer--who has any idea of it? To have a soul like a
burning fire, to be hungry and swift as the Autumn wind, to have a heart as
hot as the wild bird's, and wings as eager--and to be chained here in this
seething hell of selfishness, this orgy of folly.
* * * * *
Ah, and then I shut my hands together. No, I am not weak, I do not spend my
time chafing thus! I have fought it out so far--
"I was ever a fighter, so one fight more!"
I will go back, and I will hammer and hammer again--grimly--savagely--day
by day. And out of the furnace of my soul I will forge a weapon that will
set me free in the end--I think.
* * * * *
May 4th.
I wrote a little poem once. I remembered two lines of it--a nature
description; they were not great lines, but there flashed over me to-day an
application of them that was a stroke of genius, I believe. I was passing
the Stock Exchange. It was a very busy day. I climbed one of the pillars,
in spirit, and wrote high above the portals:
Where savage beasts through forest midnight roam,
Seeking in sorrow for each other's joy.
* * * * *
May 5th.
A dreadful thing is unbelief! A dreadful thing it is to be an infidel!
--That is what all men cry nowadays--there is so much infidelity in the
world--it is the curse of our modern society--it is everywhere--it is
all-prevailing!
I had a strange experience to-day, Sunday. I went into a church, and high
up by the altar, dressed in solemn garb and offering prayers to God--I saw
an infidel!
He preached a sermon. The theme of his sermon was "Liberalism."
"These men," cried the preacher, "are blinding our eyes to our salvation,
they are undermining, day by day, our faith! They tell us that the sacred
word of God is 'literature'! And they show us more 'literature'; but oh, my
friends, what new _Bible_ have they shown us!"
As I got up and went out of that church, I whispered: "What a dreadful
thing it is to be an infidel!"
Oh Dante and Goethe and Shakespeare--oh Wordsworth and Shelley and Emerson!
Oh thrice-anointed and holy spirits! What a dreadful thing it is to be an
infidel!
What a dreadful thing it is to believe in a Bible, and not to believe in
literature--to believe in a Bible and not to believe in a God!
You think that this world lives upon the revelation of two thousand years
ago! Fool--this world lives as your body lives by the beating of its
heart--upon the revelation and the effort of each instant of its life. And
to-day or to-morrow the great Revealer might send to some lonely thinker in
his garret a new word that would scatter to dust and ashes all laws and all
duties that now are known to men.
* * * * *
There are many ways to look at the world, and always a deeper one. I see it
as a fearful thing, towering, expanding, upheld by the toil and the agony
of millions. Who will bring us the new hope, the new song of courage, that
it go not down into the dust to-day?
To do that there is the poet; to live and to die unheeded, and to feed for
ages upon ages the hungry souls of men--that is to be a poet. Therefore
will he sing, and sing ever, and die in the sweetness of his song.
When I think of that--not now as I write it here in bare words--but in
quivering reality, it is a hand upon my forehead, and a presence in the
room.
* * * * *
May 6th.
Chiefest of all I think of my country! Passionately, more than words can
utter, I love this land of mine. If I tear my heart till it bleeds and pour
out the tears of my spirit, it is for this consecration and this hope--it
is for this land of Washington and Lincoln. There never was any land like
it--there may never be any like it again; and Freedom watches from her
mountains, trembling.
--It is a song that it needs, a song and a singer; to point it to its high
design, to thrill it with the music of its message, to shake the heart of
every man in it, and make him burn and dare! For the first time there is
Liberty; for the first time there is Truth, and no shams and no lies,
enthroned. The news of it has gone forth like the sound of thunder, and has
shaken all the earth: that man at last may live, may do what he can and
will!
--And to what is it? Is it to the heaping up of ugly cities, the packing of
pork and the gathering of gold? That is the thing that I toil for--to tear
this land from the grasp of mean men and of merchants! To take the souls
of my countrymen into the high mountains with me, to thrill them with a
soaring, strong resolve! _Living things_ shall come from this land of
mine, living things before I die, for the hunger of it burns me, and will
not ever let me rest. Freedom! freedom! And stern justice and honor, and
knowledge and power, and a noonday blaze of light!
Arise in thy majesty, confronting the ages!
Stretch out thine arms to the millions that shall be!
Justice thine inheritance, God thy stay and sustenance,
My country, to thee!
Those are feeble words. If this were a book, I would tear it all up.
I wonder if any one will ever read this. As a matter of fact, I suppose ten
people will read gossip about the book for every one who reads the book.
* * * * *
This is just a month from the beginning. A month to-day! Yes--I have done
my share, I have done a third of it--a third!
But the end is so much harder!
* * * * *
May 9th.
I have been for two days in the mire. I was disturbed, and then I was
sluggish. Oh, the sluggishness of my nature!
If ever I am a great poet, I will have made myself that by the power of my
will; that is a fact. I am by nature a great clod--I feel nothing, I care
about nothing. I look at the flowers as a cow chewing its cud.--It is only
that I _will_ to do right.
Sometimes the sight of my dulness drives me wild. Then again I merely
gaze at it. I try time and again to get my mind on my work, and
something--anything, provided it is trivial enough--turns me aside. Just
now I saw a spider-web, and that made me think of Bruce, and thence I went
by way of Walter Scott to Palestine, and when I came to I was writing a
song for--who was the minstrel?--to sing outside of the prison of Coeur de
Lion.
I go wandering that way--sometimes I sit so for an hour; and then suddenly
I leap up with a cry. But I may try all I please--I don't care anything
about the work--it doesn't stir me--the verses I think of make me sick. And
then I remember that I have only so many weeks more; and what it will mean
to fail; and that makes me desperate, but doesn't help.
When I have stopped at some resting-place in the poem, I can get going
again. But now I have stopped in the middle of a climax; and the number
of times that I have read that last line, trying to find another--Great
heavens!
* * * * *
But I can not find another word. I am in despair.
I know perfectly well what I shall do, only I am a coward, and do not do
it. I shall stay in this state till my rage has heaped itself up enough and
breaks through everything at last. And then I shall begin to hammer myself!
to swear at myself in a way that would make a longshoreman turn white. And
I shall spend perhaps two or three hours--perhaps two or three days--doing
that, until I am quite in a white heat; and then--I shall go to my work.
That is the price I pay for being distracted.
* * * * *
May 11th.
I said to myself the day before yesterday--with a kind of a dry sob--"I
can't do it! I can't do it!"
Oh how tormented I am by noises--noises! What am I not tormented by? Some
days ago I was writing in a frenzy--and the landlady came for her rent. And
the horrible creature standing there, talking at me! "So lonely!--don't
ever see people! Mrs. Smithers was a-saying--" Oh, damn Mrs. Smithers!
I thought I could never do it--I was really about to give it up. I went out
on the street--I roamed about for hours, talking I don't know what nonsense
to myself. And then at last I came home, and I knelt down there at the
bedside and said: "Here you stay without anything to eat until you've
written ten lines of that poem!"
And that was how I did it. I stayed there, and I prayed. I don't often
pray, but that time I prayed like one possessed--I was so lonely and so
helpless--and the work was so beautiful. I stayed there for nine blessed
hours, and then the clock stopped and I couldn't count after that.
But the day came, and then the ten lines! And so I had my breakfast.
These things leave you weak, but a little less dull.
* * * * *
May 13th.
I have been working with a kind of wild desperation all day to-day. Oh it
hurts--it hurts--but I am doing it! Whenever I read some lines of it that
are real--whenever some great living phrase flashes over me--then I laugh
like a man in the midst of a battle.
I shall be just as a man who has been through a battle; haggard and wild
and desperate. Oh, I don't think I shall _ever_ have the courage to do
it again!
I did not know what it meant! I did not! It was giving myself into the
hands of a fiend!
All great books will be something different to me after this. Did
Shakespeare write thus with the blood of his soul? Or am I weak? Did he
ever cry out in pain, as I have?
* * * * *
May 14th.
Another day of raw torture. It is like toiling up a mountain side; and your
limbs are of lead. It is like struggling in a nightmare,--that is just what
it is like. It is sickening.
But then you dare not stop. It is hard to go on, but it is ten times as
hard to start if you stop.
I could hardly stand up this afternoon! but the thing was ringing in
my ears--it went on and on--I had to go after it! I was in the seventh
heaven--I could see anything, dare anything, do anything. It made no
difference how hard--it called to me--on--on! And I said: "Suppose I were
to be tortured--could I go then?" And so I went and went.
I haven't written it down yet; I felt sick. But I know it all.
Oh men--oh my brothers--will you love me for this thing?
* * * * *
May 16th.
I did no writing yesterday or to-day. I have been terribly frightened.
I wrote what I had to write the day before yesterday--I could not help it.
But when I stopped my head was literally on fire, and the strangest mad
throbbing in it--I stood still in fear, it felt so as if something were
going to burst--my head seemed to weigh a ton. I poured cold water over it,
but it made no difference--it stayed that way all night and all yesterday.
What am I to do? I dare not think--I took a long walk, and even now I find
myself thinking of the book without knowing it. Imagine me sitting on a
doorstep and playing for two hours with a kitten!
Why should I be handicapped in such a way as this? I had never thought of
such a thing.
* * * * *
I was thinking about The Captive--it is my own. Nobody has helped me--I
have told not one person of it. Everything in it has come out of my soul.
* * * * *
May 17th.
I feel better to-day, but I hardly know what to do.
Meantime I was happy!--Think of a poet's being happy with city flowers! of
a poet's being happy with store-flowers--prostitute-flowers--flowers for
sale!
It was all about a narcissus--"Very flower of youth, and morning's golden
hour!"--as I called it once. And it danced so! (It was out on the
curbstone)--and I went off happy.
Then I thought of a poem that is pure distilled ecstasy to my spirit. I
will write it, and be happy again:
Sit thee by the ingle, when
The sear faggot blazes bright;
Spirit of a winter's night!-- ...
Sit thee there, and send abroad,
With a mind self-overaw'd,
Fancy, high-commission'd:--send her!
She has vassals to attend her;
She will bring, in spite of frost,
Beauties that the earth hath lost;
She will bring thee, all together,
All delights of summer weather;
All the buds and bells of May,
From dewy sward or thorny spray;
All the heaped Autumn's wealth,
With a still, mysterious stealth;
She will mix those pleasures up,
Like three fit wines in a cup,
And thou shall quaff it!--
Ah! And so I went along, "sun, moon, and stars forgot"--laughing and half
dancing. People stared at me--and I laughed. And then I passed three pretty
girls, and I laughed, and they laughed too. I guess they thought I was
going to follow them.
--But that pleasure was not in my cup, dear girls.
* * * * *
Some of these days I hope to live in a beautiful world, where a man may
speak to a pretty girl on the street. Badness is its own punishment, let
the bad world observe.
I would rather look at a beautiful woman than do anything else I know of in
this world, except listen to music.
* * * * *
May 18th.
I often think how I shall spend my money after The Captive is done. I shall
take a band of chosen youths, seekers and worshipers, and we shall build a
house on a mountain-top and worship the Lord in the beauty of music!
I shall have to begin at the beginning--I have never had any one to teach
me music. But oh, if I did know!--And if I ever got hold of an
orchestra--_how_ I would make it go!
And in the middle of it the astonished orchestra would see the conductor
take wings unto himself and fly off through the roof.
A book that I mean to write some day will be called The Pleasures of Music,
and it will sing the joys of being clean and strong, of cold water and the
early morning and a free heart. It will show how all the unhappiness of men
is that they live in the body and in self, and how the world is to be saved
through music, which is not of the body, nor of self--which is free and
infinite, swift as the winds, vast as the oceans, endless as time, and
happy as whole meadows of flowers! The more who come to partake of it, the
better it is; for generous is "Frau Musika," her heart is made wholly of
love.
--And when I have shown all these things, Frau Musika, I shall tell of the
golden lands that I have visited upon the wings of thy spirit!--
What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain!
What fields or waves or mountains,
What shapes of sky or plain!
What love of thine own kind, what ignorance of pain!
* * * * *
May 20th.
I live among the poor people and that keeps me humble. There is not much
chance for freedom, I hear them say, there are not many who can dwell in
the forests. Prove your right to it--prove what you can do--the law is
stern. I am not afraid of the challenge; I will prove what I can do.
But I see one here and there with whom the law is not so strict, I think.
* * * * *
I met a merchant the other night. I dreamed of him. He said: "I buy such
goods as men need; I buy them as cheaply as I can, since life is grim. I
sell them as cheaply as I can, since men are poor and suffering. I make of
profit what I need to live humbly. I am not of the world's seekers; I am of
the finders."
* * * * *
I met also a guileless fool.
We passed a great mansion. "I should like to know the man who lives there,"
said the fool.
"Should you?" said I.
"Is he a hero?" asked the fool.
"No," said I.
"Is he a poet?" asked the fool.
"No," said I.
"Must he not be very beautiful," said the fool, "that men judge him worthy
of so much beauty?"
* * * * *
May 21st.
I must finish this thing this time! That cry rings in my ears night after
night. I am toiling upward--upward--I can see no sign of the end yet--but
I must finish this time! If I had to stop with this thing haunting me--if
I had to go out into that jungle of a world with this weight upon me--to
repress myself with this fire in my heart--I could not bear it--I could not
bear it!
And if I stopped and went out into that world again--how many weeks of
agony would it cost me to get back to where I am now!
I must finish this time!
* * * * *
May 22d.
"No, officer, I am neither a burglar nor a highwayman, nor anything else
worth bothering; I'm just a poet, and I'm crazy, to all practical purposes,
so please get used to me and let me wander about the streets at these
strange hours of the night without worrying!"
Poor, perplexed policeman! Poor, perplexed world! Poor, perplexed mothers
and fathers, sisters and cousins and aunts of poets!
Mit deinen schwarzbraunen Augen
Siehst du mich forschend an:
"Wer bist du, und was fehlt dir,
Du fremder, kranker Mann!"
Who does not love the poet Heine--melodious, beautiful, bitter soul? Is
there any other poet who can mingle, in one sentence, savage irony and
tenderness that brings tears into the eyes? Who can tell the secret of his
flower-like verses?
Ich bin ein deutscher Dichter,
Bekannt im deutschen Land;
Nennt man die besten Namen
So wird auch der meine genannt.
Und was mir fehlt, du Kleine,
Fehlt manchem im deutschen Land;
Nennt man die schlimmsten Schmerzen,
So wird auch die meine genannt!
I have never seen but one beautiful thing in New York, and that is its
mighty river in the night-time. I wander down to the docks when my work is
done, and when it is still; I sit and gaze at it until the city is quite
gone, and all its restlessness,--until there is but that grave presence,
rolling restlessly, silently, as it has rolled for ages. It makes no
comments; it has seen many things.
To-night I sat and watched it till a tangled forest sprang up about me, and
I saw a strange, high-bowed, storm-beaten craft glide past me, ghostly
white, its ghostly sailors gazing ahead and dreaming of spices and gold.
* * * * *
The old, old river--my only friend in a whole city! It goes its way--it is
not of the hour.
It fascinates me, and I sit and sit and wonder. I gaze into its black and
gurgling depths, and whisper what Shelley whispered: "If I should go down
there, I should _know_!"
* * * * *
But no, I should not know anything.
* * * * *
_The days when thou wert not, did they trouble thee? The days when thou
art not shall trouble thee as much._
* * * * *
May 24th.
AN ESSAY AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS
I write this to set forth a purpose which I have for over a year held
before me. I write it that it may serve me for a standard. I write it at
a time when my bank-account consists of twenty-five dollars, and I mean
to publish it at such a time as by the method of plain living and high
thinking, I shall have been able to increase it a hundredfold.
We are told that a man who would write a great poem must first make a poem
of his life. An artist, as I understand the word, is a man who has but one
joy and one purpose and one interest in life--the creating of beauty; he is
a man lifted above and set apart from all other motives of men; a man who
seeks not wealth nor comfort nor fame, nor values these things at all; a
man whose heart is forever lonely, whose life is an endless sorrow, and
whose excuse and whose spur and whose goal and whose consecration, is the
creating of beauty.
What power--be it talent or genius--God has given me, I can not tell; I
only know that an artist in that sense of the word I mean to be. I have
thought out a plan by which I shall make the publishing of my books, as
well as the writing of them, a thing of Art.
No one will read very far in what I shall write without perceiving there
a savage hatred of the spirit of the modern world of wealth; it is only
because I have faith in democracy and hope in the people of my country that
I do not go to worship my God on a desert island. The world which I see
about me at the present moment--the world of politics, of business, of
society--seems to me a thing demoniac in its hideousness; a world gone mad
with pride and selfish lust; a world of wild beasts writhing and grappling
in a pit.
I am but a voice crying in the wilderness, and these things must run their
course. But in the meantime there is one thing that I can do, and the doing
of that has become with me a passion--I can keep my own life pure; I can
see that there is one man amid all this madness whose life is untouched by
any stain of it; who lives not by bread alone, nor by jewelry and gold; who
lives not to be stared at and made drunk with pride, but to behold beauty
and dwell in love; who labors day and night to keep a heart full of worship
and to sing of faith to suffering men; who takes of the reward of that
singing just what food and shelter his body needs; and who shrinks from
wealth and luxury as he would from the mouth of hell.
To live humbly and in oblivion would be my choice, but it will be my duty
to do differently. I know enough about the human heart to know that the
presence of one righteous man makes ten thousand unrighteous men angry and
uncomfortable. And therefore, for the help of any whom it may comfort, and
for the damnation of all the rest, I shall choose that the life I live and
the thing I do shall be public; I shall choose that the millions in our
country who are wearing out their frantic lives in the pursuit of the
dollar, and the few who are squandering their treasures in drunken pomp,
shall know that there is one man who laughs at them--whom all the millions
of all of them could not buy--and who dwells in joy and worship in a heaven
of which they can not even know. In other words, it is my idea not merely
to make a poem of my life, but to publish the poem.
I shall have other, and deeper, and kinder reasons also, for what I shall
do. What I write in my books must be from my deepest heart, the confession
of those moments of which I would speak to no living soul; it must be all
my tenderness, and all my rapture, and all my prayer; and do you think it
will come easily to me to put that out before the rough world to be stared
at, to be bound up in a book and hawked about by commercial people?...
(Here follows in the manuscript the outline of a
plan for publishing the writer's works at cost.)
* * * * *
Would it not be interesting to me, if I could but pierce the future once,
and see how long it is destined to be before I do so publish a book! I
would do my work better, I fancy, for that.--But let it lie. I shall
publish it some day surely, that I know at least.
* * * * *
Sometimes I can hardly realize what it will be to me when I have really won
fame, when I can speak the things that so need speaking--and be heard.
* * * * *
May 25th.
Line by line, page by page, I do it. I am counting the days now,
wondering--longing.
It is not merely the writing of it, it is the seeing of it--the planning
and designing. Sometimes I brood over it for hours--I can not find what
I want; and then suddenly a phrase flashes over me and like a train of
gunpowder my thought goes running on--leaping, flying; and then the whole
thing is plain as day. And I hold it all living in my hands.
I am blessed with a good memory. In times of excitement such as that I
seize all the best phrases and carry them away, and bury them out of sight,
like a miser. They are my nuggets of gold.
And sometimes I am a greedy miser, and stand perplexed; shall I go on and
gather more, or shall I make off with the armful that I have?
* * * * *
May 26th.
My religion is my Art. I have no prayer but my work.
Sometimes that is a glory, and sometimes again that is an agony. To have no
duty outside of yourself; to have no inspiration outside of yourself; to
have no routine to help you, no voice to cry out when your conscience goes
to sleep, no place of refuge in your weakness!--
All that is but the reason why I dare not be weak. I have chosen to lead
and not to follow; therefore I have no rest, and may not look behind me,
and can think of nothing but the way.
To be the maker of a religion is to sweat blood in the night-time.
* * * * *
There is but one way that I may live--to take every impulse that comes--to
be watching, watching--to dare always and instantly, to hesitate, to put
off never, to seize the skirt of my muse whenever it shimmers before me. So
I make myself a habit, a routine, a discipline; and so each day I have new
power. So each day I feel myself, I bare my arms, I walk erect, exulting--I
laugh--I am a god!
--And as I write that a feeling takes rise in me, and my heart beats
faster; but I am tired, I sink back, I do not take the gift that is
offered; and then my conscience gives a growl, and in a flash I see what
I have done, and feel a throb of rage and leap up.
* * * * *
One of my perils is that when I am strong I feel that I must always be so.
This truth that is so obvious, these words that flow so swift--what need is
there to fear for them, to write them now?--And so they are never written.
* * * * *
May 27th.
Will you imagine me to-day, kneeling by the bedside, shuddering; my face
hidden, the tears streaming down my cheeks--and I crying aloud: "I
will--oh, I will!"
I can not tell any more.
* * * * *
May 29th.
I am coming to the last scenes. I hear them rumbling in my soul--far, far
off--like a distant surf on a windless night.
I am coming, step by step: I mean to fight it out on this line.
I know a man who always rose to the occasion. Never was he challenged that
he did not dare and triumph. Oh, if instead of being hungry and pining, I
had but the music of that divine inspirer!--
Heller schallend,
mich umwallend,
sind es Wellen
sanfter LГјfte?
Sind es Wogen
wonniger DГјfte?
Wie sie schwellen,
mich umrauschen,
soll ich athmen,
soll ich lauschen?
Soll ich schlГјrfen,
untertauchen,
sГјss in DГјften
mich verhauchen?
* * * * *
May 30th.
To-day. I had a spiritual experience--a revelation; to-day, in a flash of
insight, I understood an age--whole centuries of time, whole nations of
men.
I had been writing one of the great hymns, one of the great victories; and
I had been drunk with it, it had come with a surge and a sweep, it had set
everything about me in motion--huge phantom shapes--all life and all being
gone mad.
And then, when I had written it, I went out into the dark night; I walked
and walked, not knowing where, still tingling with excitement. And,
suddenly, I stood spellbound--the cathedral!
There it was--there it was! I saw it, alive and real before me--all of
it--all that I had seen and known! I cried out for joy, I stretched out my
arms to it--the great, dark surging presence; and all my soul went with it,
singing, singing--up into the misty night!
* * * * *
June 1st.
I sat to-night by the river again. It was moonlight, and the water lay
shimmering. A little yacht, gleaming with lights, sped by; it was very
close, and I saw a group of people on it, I heard them laughing; and one
of them--a woman--was singing.
O God, what a voice! So rich, so exquisite! It soared upward and died
again, quivering like the reflection of the stars on the water. It went
in--in to the very depths of my soul; it loosed all the woe of my spirit,
it made the tears gush into my eyes. And then it died away, away in the
distance; and I sat with my hands clasped.
Sail on--sail on--oh heavenly voice! Far-off vision of brightness and
beauty! Your lot is not my lot.
* * * * *
--There is something within me that weeps yet, at the echo of that music.
Oh, what would I not give for music! How much of my bitterness, how many of
my sorrows have melted into tears at one strain!
And I can not have it! Oh, you who do have it, do you know what you have?
Oh beautiful voice, do you hear yourself?
All things else I can make for myself--friendship and love--nature and
books and prayer; all things but music!
* * * * *
Can you not hear that voice dying--dying--"over the rolling waters"?
* * * * *
June 2d.
I shall come out of this a man--a man! I shall know how to live all my
days! I shall have memories that will always haunt me, memories that I can
build the years by!
* * * * *
June 3d.
From the time that I began The Captive it has been almost two months; it is
just six weeks from the day I wrote that I had ten or twelve weeks in which
to finish. I have done well financially--I have twenty-one dollars left,
and I have paid for my typewriting.
It is not a fortune. But enough is as good as a fortune.
And I am coming on! I have been counting the scenes--I am really within
sight of the end.
--That day when I crouched by the bed I saw all of the end. I have seen the
whole thing. It will leave me a wreck, but I can do it. And it will take me
about three weeks.
Think of my being able to say that!--Five or six hundred lines at least
I shall have to do, and still I dare to say that. But I am full of this
thing, I mount with it all the time. I am finding my wings.
Nothing can stop me now; I feel that I shall hold myself to it. I become
more grim every day.
* * * * *
No one can guess what it means to me to find that I have hold of the whole
of this thing! It is like strong wine to me--I scarcely know where I am.
* * * * *
June 4th.
I am sitting down by the window, and first I kick my heels against my old
trunk, and then I write this. Hi! Hi! I think of a poem that I used to
recite about Santa Claus--"Ho, Castor! ho, Pollux!"--and then ho a lot of
other things--a Donner and a Blitzen I remember in particular. I want a
reindeer--a Pegasus--a Valkyrie--an anything--to carry me away up into the
air where I can exult without impropriety!
Come blow your horn, hunter,
Come blow your horn on high!
In yonder room there lieth a 'cello player,
And now he's going to move away!
Come blow your horn--
That's an old Elizabethan song. I heard them come up for his trunk just
now, and they've dragged it down-stairs, and I hear the landlady fuming
because they are tearing the wall paper. I have never loved the sound of
the landlady's voice before.
* * * * *
--The world is divinely arranged, there is no question about it.
* * * * *
June 5th.
Deep in my soul I was convinced that the room would be let to something
worse. But now it appears that the landlady's sister is to occupy it.
--So now I will get to work!
--Moving is noisy; I can't complain. I have been walking about the streets.
I am hungry for the work; but still, I had much to think of. It is a
wonderful thing--a glorious thing, this story--it will make men's hearts
leap.
* * * * *
June 6th.
I have plenty of time to write journals, if I feel like it. There is the
sister, and there is the landlady, and there is another woman, and they
have been jabbering about dresses all of the morning. I have been like a
crazy man--I was all on fire this morning, too! O God, it is too cruel!
I could dress those three hags with broomsticks.
* * * * *
--How long is this to continue, I want to know. Here it is afternoon and
they are still chattering. Every time I have tried to compose my thoughts
they have come back and begun chattering again. And so I can only pace
about, and then rush out into the street--and wear myself sick. I call
this simply monstrous. That my soul should be tied down to such vulgarity
as this--is it not maddening? Here I am--with all my load of woe--at
this fearful crisis! And I am to be shattered and wrecked and ruined by
_this_! Just as long as they choose to sit there, just so long I am
helpless. Was it for this that I have borne all the pain?
* * * * *
It seems to me that I hear jeering laughter around me from a swarm of
little demons. I hide my face and flee, but they follow me.
* * * * *
But what can you expect? Have they not a right to talk?--Yes--all the world
has a right to be as hideous as it can. And I have no right but to suffer
and to choke in my rage.
Three vile, ignorant serving-women! Serving-women--ah yes, and if they were
_my_ servants! If I could pay them!--But who serves me! Of what consequence
am I!
* * * * *
These things goad me, they are like poisoned thorns in my flesh. The
infinite degradation of it all, the shame, the outrage!
It has burned a brand deep into my flesh, and never while I live will it
come out. Ah, you rich men! You who rule us, who own the treasures, the
opportunities, the joys! You who trample the fair gardens of life like
great blind beasts!
Do you think it is nothing to me that the inspiration and the glory of my
whole lifetime is to be trampled into nothingness for lack of what others
spend upon one dress? Yes, of my whole lifetime! My whole lifetime! Give me
but what another will spend upon one foolish gimcrack that he never looks
at again, and I will live for a whole lifetime! And I will write such
music--Bah! What am I doing?
* * * * *
--Sometimes when I think of these things a black shadow stalks over my
heart. I hear a voice, "Fool, and do you still think that you are ever
to escape from this? Do you not perceive that this sordid shame is your
_lot_? Do you not perceive that you may writhe and twist, struggle and
pant, toil and serve, till you foam at the lips? Who will heed you! Who
will hear you! Who cares anything about you!--Who wants your Art! Who wants
your work! Who wants your _life_!--Fool!"
* * * * *
--Of course this thing could not go on. And so of course,--stammering and
writhing, as I always do when I have my nose pushed into this kind of
filth--I had to speak to the landlady about it to-night.--
And of course the landlady was astonished. "Why, Mr. Stirling, can't a body
talk in a body's own room?" Yes, a body can talk, but then other bodies
have to move away.
Now she's going to speak to her sister about it. And here I sit, writhing
and trembling. Oh my God, suppose I have to move! Oh merciful Father, have
pity on me--I can't bear much of this! To go tramping around this hot and
horrible city, to go into some new and perhaps yet more dirty place! And
oh, the agony, the shame--suppose _that_ will not do, and I have to
keep on searching! Dragging this fearful burden with me! And I have only
eighteen dollars left!
* * * * *
If I think of it any longer I shall scream with nervousness.
* * * * *
June 7th.
And now it is all settled. A body has to talk in a body's own room, and a
body's nose has to turn up with indignation as a body announces the fact.
And so here I sit, waiting for the expressman to come for my trunk.
Now that it is over it does not seem so bad. I am like a snail--once back
in my shell, I do not care what happens. I have given up trying to write
The Captive, and so nothing bothers me any more.--I have forgotten all
about it now, it is years behind me.
But I have seen it all; I can get it back in good time. I do not fear.
I have rolled up a little bundle, a tooth-brush and some manuscripts
principally; and I send the rest to a friend's house. I have had an
inspiration. Why should I stay in this hot and steaming place?--Why should
I be "barricaded evermore within the walls of cities?" _Ich will ins
Land!_
Why did I not think of this in the beginning? I am going now to see the
springtime!--"the only pretty ring time, when birds do sing--hey
ding-a-ding!"
That was a real idea. I do not know where I am going; but I will walk and
get somewhere--there will be woods. I'll sleep in hay-ricks if it can't be
managed any other way.
Away, away from men and towns,
To the wildwood and the downs!
I could have been through in three weeks now, I believe. But it was not to
be. We have to take what comes to us--
Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate.
I'm glad I don't have to write poetry like _that_!
* * * * *
June 8th.
Howdy-do, Brother Bobolink! How in the world did you guess I was coming
this way?
--Es ist nun einmal so.
Kein Dichter reist incognito!
Ah, to be out in the open air again, to see the world green and beautiful;
to run with the wind and look at the flowers and listen to the birds! I am
sitting by a spring; I have eaten my dinner.
I turned my steps Jerseyward.
* * * * *
--I have been walking all day. I must find some place to stop very soon.
I can not think of the country with this burden on me. I am like a sick
animal--I seek a hiding-place. I fancied I might think of my work on the
way, but I can not. The world is happy; my work is not happy.
My hope is all in the end of the journey, and the walking is drudgery. And
then, my money is going! I must find some sort of a hut--a tumble-down
house, an old barn--anything.
I shall trudge one more day's journey. Then I think I shall be far enough
from New York.
* * * * *
--I passed a tramp to-day; and while we walked together I composed an
address:
"My brother--for are we not brothers, thou and I?
"Have we not fled from the sleek man, thou and I? And is it not we alone
that know Truth?
"Thy clothing is ragged, and there is hunger in thine eyes; it is so also
with me.
"It is thy fate to wander; it is my fate to wander too. And with restless
eyes to look out upon the world, to meet with distrust from men.
"Yet not for that am I sad, nay, not for that, but for a deeper sorrow;
because I was sent out into the world with a curse upon me, because I was
sent out into the world a Drunkard.
"Yea, so it is, my brother.
"And that for which I thirst is not easy to find; and when I have found it
I am not content, but must seek more; and so I have only desolation.
"Who laid this curse upon us, my brother?
"That we should dwell in sorrow and unrest?
"That no man should heed our voice, and that we should grow weak and faint?
"That we should die, and be forgotten--thou and I?
"Oh, tell us wherefore--ye wise men."
* * * * *
June 9th.
I have walked another day. I am beginning to get away from the suburban
towns, and into the real country. I knew that it would cost me a good deal
to go to a hotel last night, and it was warm, so I slept in a hay-stack!
It was quite an adventure. Now I've got my pockets stuffed full of rolls,
Benjamin Franklin style.
--My mind is like the ocean after a storm.
The great waves come rolling over it still; it is all restless, tossing.
But it is sinking, sinking to rest!--Heaven grant that I may find my place
of refuge before it is quite calm.
It is everything or nothing with me; I am made that way. Either I give
every instant of my time, every thought, every effort to my work, or else I
close up like a flower and wait. I can not write poetry and hunt a lodging
too.
So I am waiting--waiting.--
* * * * *
June 10th.
I began inquiring to-day--a shanty, a barn--anything. Every one thinks it
necessary to be very much puzzled about what I want it for. My clothes
are still fairly respectable, and so they tell me about pretty summer
cottages--only so much per month!
* * * * *
June 12th.
I have been tramping on and on for two more days. I do not believe I shall
ever find what I want. Nothing but one old musty place in ruins, so far!
And my money is going, and I am wild with anxiety! I am almost tempted to
turn back to the ruin.
* * * * *
June 13th.
I am sitting in a room in a dirty hotel. It was raining to-day and I had to
come here. I shall probably have to pay fifty cents too. I won't stay to
breakfast.
Oh what will I do if my money gives out? I saw a cottage to-day, that a man
said I could have for ten dollars a month. I was tempted to spend nearly
all I had and take it, and live on bread and water. I am desperate.
* * * * *
June 14th.
"Perhaps maybe you'd like 'Oaklands,'" said the farmer, laughing.
"Oaklands" turned out to be the home of a millionaire "dry-goods man" who
was in Europe. I did not want "Oaklands."
"I don't know of anything else," said the farmer, scratching his head. Then
he added with a grin, "unless it be the cook-house."
"What's the cook-house?" I asked, suspiciously.
"Oh, it's a kind of a little place they've got 'way out in the woods," said
the farmer. "It's where they goes when they goes picnicking."
My heart gave a jump. "What sort of a place?" I asked.
"They've got a big platform chiefly, where they put up a. tent. The
cook-house ain't nothin' but a little two by four shanty, with a big stove
in it."
"How big is it?" I cried.
"It's about half o' this here room, I reckon."
("This here room" was about six of my rooms in New York!)
"And where is it?" I cried. "How can I get there?"
"Oh, you don't want to go to no sech place ez that!" said the farmer.
"There ain't no bed nor nothin' in it! An' it's two mile out there in the
woods!"
Let anybody imagine how my heart was going! "Who can show it to me?" I
panted.
"Why," said he, "I'm the man that's in charge of it; but I--"
"And can you rent it to me for a month?"
"Why, I don't know any reason why I can't rent it to you for a year--only
it ain't worth nothin', an'--"
"Then rent it to me! The less it is worth the better it will suit me. But
come, show me where it is!"
"I reckon I can show you," said the man, looking perplexed. "But what in
the world do you want to go into that lonesome place for? Why, boy, nobody
goes there in a month! An' what you goin' to do for somethin' to eat, an'
some place to sleep, an'--"
* * * * *
I managed to get him started at last. And now, oh just look at me! I've
been roaming around staring at it--inside and outside. The gods love me
after all.
The infinite relief that it is! The infinite exultation that it is! And
all to myself--not a soul near me! And out in the woods! _And mine for
a month!_ Oh blessed 'cello player that moved away; blessed landlady's
sister that talked--!
And oh blessed cook-house! We will make thee a consecrated cook-house
before we get through--we will! We will cook a dish in thee that will warm
the hearts of a goodly company--oh blessed cook-house!
--And outside a great white moon streaming through the forest trees!
* * * * *
The "cook-house" is about ten feet square. It is about one-third stove, now
covered with a newspaper and serving as a table. Besides that there is one
chair, for which I have just improvised a leg, with the help of my knife.
Besides the knife I have a fork, a plate, a cup, and a spoon--borrowed from
the farmer. I have a blanket and a bed consisting of an old carriage robe,
rented from the farmer. I have a lamp and a kerosene-can--ditto. I have a
frying-pan--ditto. But I haven't my little oil-stove, so I fear I shall eat
mostly cold things. I have a pail of milk, a loaf of bread, a ginger-cake,
some butter, some eggs, some bacon, some apples and some radishes; also a
tooth-brush, a comb, a change of clothing, two handkerchiefs, some pencils
and paper, Prometheus Bound, Prometheus Unbound, Samson Agonistes, faith,
hope, and charity!