My method did make it easier after all. The letter came this morning.
* * * * *
"We have read with care the manuscript of The Captive which you have
offered us. We are pleased to be able to tell you that we have found it
a very fine piece of work, but we are sorry to say that our previous
experience with publications of this character does not lead us to believe
that we could make a success of it.
"We are holding MS. subject to your order."
* * * * *
I did a desperate thing to-day--two of them. First I had to go and get the
manuscript, so I asked to see the publisher. I sat down and looked straight
into his face and said: "How is a man who is trying to write what is fine
to keep alive if the publishers won't publish what he writes?"
He was very kind--he seemed to be interested. He explained that a publisher
who published books that the public did not want would be driven out of
business in a year. Then he said he knew many who were facing the same
problem as I; that there was nothing to do but write for the magazines and
the papers, and that it was a bitter shame that society made no provision
for such men. "Your work is as noble and sincere as work can be," he said,
"but I do not believe that you will find a publisher in this country to
undertake it, unless there be one who feels wealthy enough to do it as a
service to literature and a labor of love."
* * * * *
That made me turn white. I got my manuscript and I went out on the street,
and the houses reeled about me. "So," I said, "and that settles it!"
As I walked along I stared into the future. It seemed very clear all of a
sudden.
I thought it all out. "No one will publish The Captive," I said, "and no
one would heed it if it were published. Therefore I have but one question
to face, Have I the strength to go on, living as I have lived, distracted
and tormented as I have been--and still piling up new emotions in my soul,
daring new efforts, reaching new heights, producing new books? I can have
no idea that my second work will be any more available than my first; on
the contrary, I know that it would be just what The Captive is, only more
so. Therefore, perhaps it will be ten years--perhaps it will be twenty
years--before men begin to pay any heed to what I have written! And so
there is the question, Have I the strength to go on in that way--have I the
strength to face that future?"
Then I grew faint and had to lean against a railing. _I knew that I could
not do that!_
* * * * *
It is no question of what I will do! It is a question of what I _can_
do! I am weakened and sick with the yearning that I have in me already. My
last "business" experience drove me mad. And I am to go on, I am to rouse
new hunger, new passion, new agony in my soul! Why, the work that I have
dreamed of next is so hard and so far-away that I hardly dared even whisper
it! It would take years and years of toiling! And I am to do it here in
this seething city--to do it while I sell wholesale-paper--to do it while
I am sick for lack of food! I can not do it! I _can_ not!
I went home, and I was crazy; so it was that I did my second desperate
thing.
I sat down and wrote a letter to Mr. ----. I wrote a letter--I can not
see how it could fail to stir the soul of any man. I told him how I had
toiled--I told him how for four long months I had waited in agony--I told
him what the publishers had said to me. I begged him--I implored him--for
the sake of the unuttered message that cried out day and night in my
soul--not to throw the letter aside--to read it--to give me a chance to
talk to him. I said: "I will live in a hut, I will cook my own food, I will
wear the clothes of a day laborer! If I can only be free--if I can only be
free to be an artist! I could do it, all of it, for two hundred dollars a
year; and I could win the battle, I know, if I had but three years. I am
desperate as I write to you--I look ahead and I can see only ruin; and not
ruin for myself--I do not mind that--but ruin for my art! I can tell you
what that means to me in but one way--I ask you to read my book. I have put
all my soul into that book--I will stake my all upon it. If you will only
read it, you will see what I mean--you will see why I have written you this
letter. You will see that it is not a beggar's letter, but a high challenge
from an artist's soul."
* * * * *
So there is one chance more. I do not see how he can refuse, and if he will
only read the manuscript, I will be safe, I think.
* * * * *
November 20th.
I have done nothing but wait for four days, but I have not heard from him
yet. To-day I made up my mind that I would take the manuscript to another
publisher's meanwhile. He is probably busy, and may not answer for a long
while; and I can get the manuscript from a publisher at any time.
* * * * *
November 24th.
Still I have not heard anything from Mr. ----. My soul was full of hope
again, but it is sinking down as before. Is he not going to answer me at
all?--Can it be that he has not even read my letter?
* * * * *
November 26th.
I wrote to him again to-day, inquiring. If he does not answer that, I shall
suppose his secretary threw it away.
There is nothing weakens my soul like this endless waiting. I wander around
desolate, helpless, I can not fix my mind on anything. Oh, the shame of it!
* * * * *
November 30th.
I could not give up that hope yet. It seemed to me so terrible that of all
the men of wealth in this city there should not be one willing to help me
save my message.--I wrote to-day the same letter to a clergyman who I know
is wealthy, and who I believe would be interested in my work.
* * * * *
December 2d.
"I have received your letter, and I regret very much that I can not grant
the request you make. The pressure upon my time is such that I can not
possibly undertake to read your book. There would be no use in my doing so,
anyhow, for I tell you frankly it seems to me the situation you are in is
just what you need. My advice to you is to be a man and face it. I do not
see any reason why one person should be set free from the labor which all
of us have to share; and I assure you that you are entirely mistaken if you
think that an artist has nothing to expect but ruin from contact with the
world, and with suffering and toiling humanity."
Isn't that a slap in the face for you?
Great God, I think that is the most insulting thing that has ever happened
to me in all my days. "Set free from the labor which all of us have to
share!"--What do you think I am--a tramp, or a loafer, you hound!
"A high challenge from an artist's soul!"
I think I never had so much hatred in my heart in all my life as I have
to-day. Oh, my God, what a thing this world is! What stupid, blind
brutality, what hideous vulgarity! This man a _clergyman_! And this is
his faith, his nobility, his understanding!
Why, I came out of the forest with my naked heart in my hands! I came out
quivering with emotion, melting with love and with trust for all men! I
came all sensitive and raw--hungering for sympathy and kindness! And oh, my
soul!--my God!--you have beaten me and kicked me as if I were a filthy cur!
Had I not offered up my heart for a sacrifice? Had I not burned it with
fire? Had I not made all my being one consecration? And all for men, for
men! For men I had torn myself--lashed myself--killed myself--for men I
had forgotten what self was--yes, literally that--forgotten what self
was! So little self had I left that I was willing to ask favors! So much
consecration had I, so much trust, that I would beg! I had wept--I had
suffered--I had starved! I had dreamed and sung, toiled until I set fire to
my very brain! And you have beaten me and kicked me as if I were a filthy
cur!
Those thoughts turn my whole soul into one wild curse! Have done with
laying bare your heart to men, have done with telling your life to men! Why
should you go on trying to be a poet, go on putting your secret soul into
books, to be spurned at by the rabble? Your soul is your own--it is your
God's--and what have the rabble to do with it! And all its tenderness! all
its shrinking ecstasy! all its holiest consecration!--You will take them
out to sell them to the rabble!
When will you get back into yourself, you fool? When will you have learned
your lesson, and let this hellish world boot you out of its way no more?
Let ever any man know a gleam of your heart again!--see one trace of your
joy!
* * * * *
--And I came to it on my knees--to this world--crouching, cringing,
begging! Oh, oh!--I scream it--Oh!
--And after that I sank down by the bed and hid my face and sobbed: "Oh,
Shelley! Oh, my Shelley!"
* * * * *
December 3d.
--I saw myself a business man to-day, clearing a path for myself! But it
does not last--I am not that kind of a man. My folly is my being--rest
assured that I shall climb back to the heights again where I am willing to
bear any insult.
* * * * *
But it will be a long time before I write any more letters. I have come to
understand the world's point of view.
I suppose busy men get thousands of letters from cranks; they will get no
more from me.
* * * * *
December 5th.
I was reading an essay on Balzac to-day. I read about Balzac's fondness for
_things_; and I put the book down and spent an hour of perplexity. I
fear I am a very narrow person in my sympathies and understandings. Why
should a man care about _things_! About all sorts of houses and
furniture, and pictures, and clothes, and jewels!
I can understand a man's caring about love and joy and aspiration. But
_things_! I can understand a child's caring about things, or a fool's
caring; I see millions of such; but an artist? A thinker? A _man_?
* * * * *
I am reading novels nowadays--reading all sorts of things that
_entertain_. I have not read a poem for a long time, I have no
interest in reading unless I can _go_ with it.
I have been studying some of the French novelists--some of Maupassant
yesterday. What a strange creature is a Frenchman! A nervous, hysterical,
vain, diseased creature!
* * * * *
"The Gallic disease!" Let that be a phrase.
* * * * *
The Gallic disease is this: to see only one thing in life, to know only one
purpose, to understand only one pleasure; to have every road lead to that,
every thought, every phrase. To know that every character in a book is
thinking it; to know that every man who is introduced is looking for a
woman! And that as soon as he finds her, they must forthwith--whatever be
their age, rank, character, and position at the moment--begin to burn with
unclean desires!
That is what one might call the _convention_ of French fiction. It
gets very monotonous when you are used to it; it takes all of the interest
out of the story. For there is but one ending to such a story.
One's whole being is lowered by contact with that incessant animal appeal.
* * * * *
December 8th.
I have discovered another trouble--as if I did not have enough! I am to
suffer from indigestion! It plagues me continuously--I can not do anything
for an hour after a meal, no matter what simplest thing I have eaten.
And so all through my life I am to be hindered in my work by having to
wrestle with this handicap! Just as if I had not been a clean man, but some
vulgar _bon vivant_.
* * * * *
December 10th.
This is my fifth publisher. They said they thought it would take two weeks,
but it has been three already, and they have not even answered my letter of
inquiry. I see you can put no reliance on them in the matter of time.
* * * * *
December 11th.
In two days more it will be three months since I gave up my situation.
I count my little hoard day by day, as a castaway might, or a besieged
garrison. I have begun to try to get along on cheap foods again--(that is
the reason of my indigestion). Yesterday I burned a mess of oatmeal, and
now I shall live on burned oatmeal for I know not how long. I was cooking a
large quantity to save time.
* * * * *
I count my store. I have come the last month on eleven dollars! I have
been doing my own washing, and reading the newspapers at a library. I
buy nothing but food--chiefly bread and milk and cereals. Why is it that
everything that is cheap has no taste?
Sometimes I am angry because I can not have anything good to eat, but I
only write my dignified sentiments here.
* * * * *
I am getting down to the limit again; I sit shuddering. I shall have to get
some work again; I can not bear to think of it! What shall I do? If I go to
that slavery again it will be the death of my soul, for I have no hope, and
I can not fight as I did before.
And I can only try one or two publishers more. Oh, take it! Take it!
* * * * *
December 14th.
I went down to see them to-day. The manuscript mislaid--very sorry--had
written readers to examine it at once--expecting report any instant--will
write me--etc.
And so I walked home again.
* * * * *
Yes, elegant ladies and gentlemen, I am a poor poet; and my overcoat is
out at one elbow, and I am sick. I look preoccupied, too; would you like,
perhaps, to know what is in my mind? I will tell you five minutes of it
to-day:
* * * * *
"Bang! Bang! Look out of the way there, you fool!--Use Casey's Corn
Cure!--Extry! Extry! Evening Slop-Bucket and Swill-Barrel, six o'clock
edition!--And it was at seventy-two and the market--Cab! Cab!--Try
Jones's Little Five-cent Cigars!--Brown's Г‰lite Tonsorial and Shaving
Parlors!--Have you seen Lucy Legs in the High Kicker? The Daily Hullabaloo
says--Shine, boss?--But she wouldn't cut it on the bias, because she
thought--Read the Evening Slop-Bucket! Five hundred million copies sold
every year! We rake all the mud-gutters and it only costs you one cent! The
Slop-Bucket is the paper of the people!--Move along, young man, don't block
up the passage! Bang! Bang! Hurry up there, if you want to get aboard--Come
along, my honey-baby girl! (hand-organ)--If you will try Superba
Soap--Simpkins's Whisky is all the rage!--Isaac Cohenstein's Cash Clothing
Store, Bargains in Gents' Fall Overcoats! Look at these! Walk in, sir!
Cash! Cash!--The most elegant topaz brooches, with little--Read the Daily
Swill-Barrel!--Extry! Extry! He Cut Her Throat with a Carving-Knife!--Bang!
Bang!--Toodles' Teething Sirup--Look at my elegant hat with the flamingo on
it!--O'Reilly's Restaurant--walk in and gorge yourself, if you can pay us.
Walk in!--Get out of the way there!--Have you read the Pirate's Pledge! The
Literary Sensation--Cash! Cash!--Just come and see our wonderful display of
newly imported--Smith and Robinson, Diamonds and Jewelry, latest and most
elegant--Use Tompkins's Tooth Powder! _Use Tompkins's Tooth Powder!!_
USE TOMPKINS'S--Read the Evening Slop-Bucket! We rake all the
mud-gutters!--Murphy's Wines and Liquors--Try Peerless Cocktails--Levy's
High-Class Clothing Emporium!--Come in and buy something--anything--we get
down on our knees--we beg you!--Cab, sir? Cab!--Bargains! Bargains!--Cash!
Cash!--_Yein, yein, yein_!"
* * * * *
So it keeps up for hours! And I put my fingers in my ears and run.
* * * * *
December 17th.
To-day I happened to read in one of the magazines an article on a literary
subject by a college professor of some reputation. It was a fine piece of
work, I thought, very true; and I got to thinking of him, wondering if
_he_ might not be the man.
I have no hope that these last publishers will take the book, and so I made
up my mind to write to him.
I wrote what I had written to all the others; I told him how I had
struggled, and how I was living. Perhaps he is less busy than the rest.
* * * * *
December 19th.
The manuscript came back to-day. The letter was simple--the old,
meaningless form. I am waiting to hear from the professor.
* * * * *
December 20th.
"I reply to your letter somewhat against my rule--chiefly because of what
you tell me about your circumstances. I will read your manuscript if you
still think it worth while to send it to me; but I must tell you at the
outset that I consider the chances very unfavorable, as regards my finding
the work what you believe it. I assure you that the literary situation
is not in the least what you picture it; the book-market was never more
wide-awake than it is now, the publishers are all as eager as possible
for the least sign of new power; and besides that, the magazines afford
outlet--not only for talent, but for mediocrity as well. You are entirely
mistaken in your idea that literary excellence is not equivalent to
commercial availability. If you could write one paragraph as noble as the
average of Dr. ----, or one stanza as excellent as the average of Professor
----, you would find an instant and hearty welcome.
"Moreover, I believe that you are entirely wrong in your ideas of what you
need. You will not make yourself a great artist by secluding yourself from
men--go out into the world, young man, go out into the world and see what
men are!
"As I say, it is not my rule to answer letters such as yours. The cry of
the suffering is in the air every instant, if we heeded it we should never
get our work done. But I am willing to read your poem, if this letter has
not chilled your ardor."
* * * * *
--Last night I read The Captive again, and it brought the tears into my
eyes; and so my ardor is not chilled, good professor--and I will send you
the poem.
* * * * *
--But as for going out into the world--I think I am learning what men are
pretty fast!
* * * * *
December 23d.
My poem stirs me, but it does not last. My whole habit of mind seems to
me to be changed--a deep, settled melancholy has come over me; I go about
mournful, haunted. I read--but all the time I am as if I had forgotten
something, and as if half my mind were on that. I have lost all my ardor--I
look back at what I was, and it brings the tears into my eyes. It is gone!
It is gone! It will not ever come back!
And each day I am drawing nearer to the rapids--to the ghastly prospect of
having to drag myself back to work!
Oh my God, what shall I do?--tell me anything, and I will do it! Give me a
hope--any hope--even a little one!
* * * * *
The last day I can stretch my miserable pittance to is the first of
February.
* * * * *
December 25th.
Christmas Day--and I have no news, except that I am hungry, and that I am
sitting in my room with a blanket around me, and with a miserable cold in
my head.
* * * * *
It is the agony of an unheated room, an old acquaintance of mine, that
comes with each bitter winter. I live in a house full of noisy people and
foul odors; and so I keep my door shut while I try to read, and so my room
is like a barn.
I could not accomplish anything to-day--I could not read. I felt like a
little child. I wanted nothing but to hide my head on some one's shoulder
and sob out all my misery.
I am nothing but a forlorn child, anyway, lost in this great, cruel city.
--I am not much at pathos; but it was Christmas night, and I had one kind
of cold in my head, and another kind in my feet.
* * * * *
December 27th.
I tell you that my salvation was my impatience! My salvation was that I
wasted not an instant, that I fought--that I fought! And each hour that I
am forced to submit--that I am forced to endure and be still--that is an
hour of ruin! It was those fearful seven weeks that began it--and now I
shall have to go back to that again! Oh my God, how can I bear it? What can
I do? The pain of it heaps itself up in my soul--I am desperate--I will go
mad! Tell me what to do! Tell me what to do!
* * * * *
December 28th.
I had a strange adventure to-night, a long, long adventure. I was free for
once in my life! Free and glorious--and delivered from earth! It happened
all in a dream; I sat crouching in the corner, thinking.
* * * * *
I had been walking down the street during the day and had seen a flower in
a window, and had been made happy for a minute, thinking of last spring. My
step had grown light, and I had forgotten the street around me. But then I
had heard two little girls, sitting in a doorway, whisper excitedly: "Oh,
look--he's laughing!" And instantly all my soul had shrunk up, and my dream
had fled, and I had hurried past and turned the corner.
* * * * *
Is it not a strange thing? I mused--this as I sat by the window--that deep
instinct of secrecy--that cowardice! Why is it that I would die before I
would let any man see the life of my soul? What are these people to me?
I know them not at all, and never shall. But I crouch back--I put on a
mask--yes, think of it, I even _give_ up the life of my soul, rather
than that any man should see me acting differently than himself!
Somehow all at once that thought took hold of me with an overwhelming
power--I saw the truth as I had never seen it before in my life. I saw how
we live in society; and how social convention and triviality have us in
such a grasp that it never even dawns upon us that the laws it dictates
are not eternal and necessary! "You must be dignified, and calm, and
commonplace," say social convention and triviality.
--But I am _not_ dignified--I am _not_ calm!--I am _not_
commonplace!
Well, then, you must _seem_ so. You must walk quietly; you must gaze
around indifferently; you must keep a vacant face; you must try to look
innocent of a thought. If you can't manage that--if you really want to
think--why then you must flee away to the woods, where you are sure no one
will come upon you and find you out. And if you can't do that--why then
there's nothing for you to do but give up thinking, give up living, become
like everybody else!
* * * * *
That idea shook me all of a sudden, it made me quite wild--it made me dig
my nails into my hands. It was the truth--I saw that--it was the truth!
Here I was, a miserable, pining, starving wretch--and for no reason in
the world but that I was a coward, but that I was a coward--a blind fool!
Because I had not let the empty-headed and sodden, the placid and smug,
the fat and greasy citizens of our great metropolis, tell _me_--the
servant of the muses--how I ought to look, how I ought to act, what I ought
to be! The very breath of my body is prayer--is effort--is vision; to dwell
in my own light, to behold my own soul, to know my own truth--that is my
one business in this world! To assert my own force--to be what I like--that
is my duty, that is my hope, my one hope in all the world! And I do not, I
can not, I dare not do it! I am sick and starved and dying, and I crouch
in corners while I pray for help, and if a gleam of sunshine comes from a
flower to me, it goes because a child sees me laughing!
I sat burning with the rage of that. What am I to do? I cried. How is it to
be changed? Shall I live my life in spite of all men?
And then I heard one of my devils--my commonplace devil--say, "But people
would think you were crazy!"
"What do I care what people think?" I burst out.
Then came another of my devils--my facetious devil--and he made me laugh.
"By all means," said he, "let us get together a few eager poets, and
establish a Society for the Propagation of Lunacy. Let us break down these
conventions and confound the eyes of the fat and greasy citizens, and win
freedom for our souls at any price. Let us wear strange clothes, and recite
our poetry upon the streets. Let us--"
But I was not in a mood for my facetious devil--I flung him aside and
sprang up and fled out to the street (this in thought, of course). What do
I need with others? I exclaimed--with others to help me dare? This has to
do with _me_! And it has to do with me _now_--with this moment!
Am I to give up and let myself go down for such a phantom as this! For such
a dread as that wooden-headed men and women will think me "queer"! Am I to
stay in a prison such as that--to be bound by a chain such as _that_?
I--I, who go about trying to persuade myself that this world is nothing
to me--that this world is nothing to any one--that it is a phantom--that
the soul is truth! When I say that the soul is truth, do I mean it? Do I
_mean_ it? And if I do mean it, will I act by it--will I act by it
now--_now_, while I see it? Will I fling off this nightmare, will I
tear my way through these wrappings that have choked me? Will I say, once
and for all time, that I will be myself--that I will live my life--and that
no man shall stop me--that no man shall make me afraid? Will I take the
battle upon me and win it--win it _now_--fling off the last rag of
it--put the world straight behind me--_now_--_here_? Spread the
wings of my soul and take my flight into the far spaces of myself! And
dwell there--stay there--hold to the task and give it not up though it kill
me--now--_now_!
These thoughts took hold of me--they made my brain reel--and I cried aloud
in excitement. I had not been so much awake since the day I came out of the
woods! I said the word--I said it--the mad word that I had not heard for
six long months--that I had not heard since I wrote the last lines of my
poem and came back to the haunts of men. And I clinched my hands, and
stamped upon the ground, and shouted: "Come on! Come on!"--to the legions
of my spirit. And it was like the taking flight of a great swarm of birds
within me--a rushing of wings and a surging upward, a singing for joy as
of a symphony. And there was singing in my soul, the surge of it caught
me--and I waved my arms and went striding on, shouting still, "Come on!
Come on!--
"Now! _now_! We will have it out with them--here--_here_! We will
fight our fight and win it, and they shall not turn us back--no, by God,
they shall not! And they may take it as they please--my soul is
free--_free_ once again! Away! _Away!_"
And I felt the breeze of the mountains about me, and heard the rushing
of the storm-wind and the trampling of the thunder. There awoke the old
rush in my heart, the old Valkyrie music that flies over the forests and
mountains. And I laughed as I sang it; I heard the war-horses neighing, and
yelled to them--faster and faster--higher and higher--away from earth and
all men!--
* * * * *
And then suddenly I felt some one seize me by the shoulder and shake me,
and heard a gruff voice say: "Here! Here! What's the matter with you?" And
I stared, half-dazed. It was a big policeman, and around me I saw a sea of
staring faces, wild-eyed children, women gazing in fright, boys jeering;
and the windows were filled with yet another crowd!
"What's the matter with you?" demanded the policeman again. "Are you drunk,
or crazy!"
And then I realized. But the fire was still blazing in me, and a wild rage
whirled over me. "Then it is by this that I am to be stopped!" I gasped.
"By _this_! It is not possible after all, it seems; and I'm to be
dragged back after all!--By Heaven, we'll see!"
And so I gave the cry again--the cry of the Valkyrs that is madness to me!
Do you not hear it?--and I was away again and free!
What does a man want for his soul, if it be not just to strive, and to be
resisted, and still to strive? What difference makes anything else--time,
place or conditions? I was myself again--and what else did I care about? I
felt the policeman take me by the collar and march me down the street; but
I hardly knew that--I was on the mountains, and I laughed and sang. The
very hatefulness of what was about me was my desperation--I would make head
against such things or I would die in the attempt! I would be free!--I
would live! I would live my life; and not the life of these people about
me! I would fight and win, I would hold fast my heart, I would be true
though the heavens fell! I would have it out, then and there, as I said--I
would not come back to earth until I was master of myself.
And so when I stood in the station-house and the sergeant asked me my name,
I said: "Desire is my name, and the soul is my home!" And then because they
shook me and worried me, I stretched forth my arms and cried out: "O God,
my Father--thou who art my help and my life--thou soul of my soul--shall I
go back for these things?--Shall I fear for these things? No, no--while I
have life I will not! I will live for the truth, I will be crushed no
longer!"
They led me to a cell, and when I heard the door shut I laughed like a
madman for joy. And then--ah, then--who can tell it? They came--all my
angels and all my demons! All my muses and all my nymphs! And the bases
of the earth rocked and the heavens danced and sang; and I mounted on the
wings of the ages, and saw the joys of the systems and the dancing of the
young suns. Until I could bear it no more, and fell down and sobbed, and
cried out to my soul that it was enough, enough!
* * * * *
And afterward I sat there on the stone floor, and ate bread and water and
ambrosial peace; and a doctor came in to see me, and asked me who I was.
And I laughed--oh, who ever laughed like that? And I said, _"I am the
author of The Captive!"_
He left me and I sat there, shaking my head and pounding the stone floor
for joy. And I sang again, and sang again. Yes, the author of The Captive!
And captive myself, and free at last!
It was far into the night when I stopped singing; and then I lay down and
never before had I known such peace; for I had found the way--I had seen
the light--I was delivered from all fear and dulness for the rest of my
days! I was so excited I could not sleep--when I fell asleep at last it was
from sheer exhaustion.
And when they roused me the next morning I bounded to my feet like a shot,
and shouted to my soul, and was up and away through the forest like a
startled deer again! They tried their very best to catch me, but they could
not. I had not lived in the woods for nothing, I knew the paths, I knew
where the mountains were. And when they thought they had me in court, I was
on the very summits--and laughing and drunk with the mountain air!
I have a keen sense of humor,--and of course I am never so drunk that I
do not know I'm drunk, and know just what I'm drunk about--else how could
I write poems about it? Do you think that when Shakespeare cried out his
"Blow ye winds and crack your cheeks!" he did not know just what he was
saying? Ah!--And when I saw all these queer little men about me, staring
and wondering--and so solemn!--I laughed the inextinguishable laughter of
Olympus, and shouted so that they dragged me out of court in a hurry.
* * * * *
And then there came the end! They took me to the insane asylum, and I sat
down on the floor of a cell and gazed at myself in amazement and panted: So
there _is_ a way you can live, after all! There _is_ a way you
can make them support you! There _is_ a way you can do all your work
in peace, and worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness! I could scarcely
believe it all--it took half an hour for me to realize it. And then I
shouted that I was saved!--and fell to work at shaping that mad Song of the
West Wind I had been so full of.
* * * * *
And then suddenly I heard a muffled voice say: "What in the dickens are you
making all that rumpus for?" And I stared about me and saw that I was still
crouching by the window in my room! And I shrank back and quivered with
rage, because I knew that I had been making a noise and that some one out
in the hall had been listening to me!
* * * * *
And that was the end of my long adventure.
* * * * *
December 30th.
"I am pleased to be able to tell you that your poem is a great deal better
than I expected to find it. I am forced to write briefly by reason of
pressure of business; but you have very considerable literary gifts. The
work is clearly made whole of sincerity; it shows a considerable command of
expression, and a considerable understanding of style. It has qualities of
imagination and of emotional insight, and is obviously the fruit of a wide
reading. But besides these things, it is exactly as I expected, and as I
told you--the work is very narrow in the range of its appeal; you can not
in the least blame the publishers for declining it, because it is true that
very few people would care for it. My own judgment is hardly capable in the
matter, because I myself am not an idealist. Recording my own opinion, I
found the poem monotonous, and not especially interesting; but then, I say
that of much that some other people consider great poetry.
"My advice to you is just what it was before--that you go out into the
world and become acquainted with life. Not knowing you personally, I could
not counsel you definitely, but I should think that what would benefit you
most would be a good stiff course in plain, every-day newspaper reporting.
Newspaper reporters have many deficiencies, but at least they learn to keep
in touch with their audiences, and to write in a way that takes hold of the
people. You may not welcome this advice--but we seldom welcome what is good
for us."
* * * * *
I am not dead yet, and I have not lost the power of getting angry. Such
things as that do me good, they make me fight, they get all my soul in
arms. Great God, the blindness, the asininity of it!
It is enough if you can classify a man; give him a name--and then it's all
out of the way. If he have faith and fire and aspiration and worship--and
you have not--why, say that he is an idealist, and that you are something
else, and let it go at that.
* * * * *
December 31st.
The poem came back to-day, and I trudged off to another publisher's--the
sixth. I have no hope now, however; I send it as a matter of form.
I shudder at the prospect of to-morrow's coming; for it will be just a
month more to the time I said I should have to go to work!
And New Year's day--my soul, if I had foreseen this last New Year's! I
thank Heaven for that blessing, at least.
Who are these men that I should submit to their judgments? These men and
their commonplace lives--are they not that very world out of which I have
fought my way, by the toil of nights and days?--And now I must come back
and listen to their foolish judgments about my song!
--You felt what was in it, you poor, stupid man! But it did not take you
with it, for you are not a poet; you have not kept the holy fire burning,
you are not still "strenuous for the bright reward." And so you found it
monotonous! Some men find nature monotonous. And some men find music
monotonous.
* * * * *
January 5th.
Two days ago I was reading Menschen und Werke, by Georg Brandes. I was
glancing over an essay on Friedrich Nietzsche, and I came upon some things
that made my heart throb:--
"This man [Nietzsche's ideal] takes willingly upon himself the sorrow
of speaking the truth. His chief thought is this: A happy life is an
impossibility; the highest that man can attain is a heroic life, a life in
which, amid the greatest difficulties, something is striven for which, in
one way or other, proves for the good of all. To what is truly human only
the true men can lift us, those who seem to have come into being through a
leap of nature, the thinkers and discoverers, the artists and producers,
and those who achieve more through their being than their doing; the noble,
the good in a great sense, those in whom the genius of the good works.
These men are the goal of history. Nietzsche formulates the sentence
'Humanity shall labor continually at this, to beget solitary great men--and
this and nothing else is its task.'--
"Here Nietzsche has reached the final answer to his question 'What is
Culture?' For upon this rest the fundamental principles of Culture, and the
duties which it imposes. It lays upon me the duty to place myself actively
in relation to the great human ideals. Its chief thought is this: To every
one who will look for it and partake of it, it sets the task; to labor in
himself and outside of himself at the begetting of the thinker and the
artist, the truth-loving and the beauty-loving man, the pure and good
personality--and therewith at the fulfilment of nature....
"In our day a so-called Culture institution signifies only too often an
arrangement by which the cultured, moving in closed ranks, force to one
side all those solitary and contrary ones whose striving is directed to
higher things. Also among the learned there is so far lacking, as a rule,
all sense for the genius that is coming into being, and every feeling for
the work of the contemporary and struggling soul. Therefore, in spite of
the irresistible and restless advance in all technical and specialized
fields, the conditions for the originating of the great are so little
improved that the opposition to the highly gifted has rather increased than
diminished.
"From the government the superior individuals can not expect much. It helps
them rarely when it takes them into its service, very certainly it will
help them only when it gives them full independence. Only true Culture can
prevent their early becoming weary or exhausted, and protect them from the
exasperating battle with Culture-philistinism."
* * * * *
Those words made my blood tingle, they made me tremble. Alone, miserable,
helpless--here was a voice at last, a friend! I dropped the book and I went
to the library, and I was back with "Also sprach Zarathustra" in an hour.
* * * * *
I have been reading it for two days--reading it in a state of excitement,
forgetting everything. Here is a man!--Here is a man! The first night that
I read it I kicked my heels together and laughed aloud in glee, like a
child. _Oh_, it was so fine! And to find things like this already
written, and in the world! Great heavens, it was like finding a gold mine
underneath my feet; and I have forgotten all my troubles again, forgotten
everything! I have found a man who understands me, a man to be my friend!
* * * * *
I do not know what the name Friedrich Nietzsche conveys to the average
cultured American. I can only judge by my own case--I have kept pace with
our literary movements and I have read the standard journals and reviews;
but I have never come upon even a reference to Friedrich Nietzsche, except
as a byword and a jest.
* * * * *
I had rather live my own life than any other man's life. My own vision is
my home. But every great man's inspiration is a challenge, and until you
have mastered it you can not go on.
I speak not of poets, nor of philosophers, but of religious teachers, of
prophets; and I speak but my opinion--let every man form his own. I say
that I have read all those that men honor, and that a greater prophet than
this man has not come upon the earth in centuries. I think of Emerson and
Carlyle as the religious teachers, the prophets, of this time; and beside
this mighty spirit Emerson is a child and Carlyle a man without a faith or
an idea. I call him the John Baptist of the new Dispensation, the first
high priest of the Religion of Evolution; and I bid the truth-seeker read
well his Bible, for in it lies the future of mankind for ages upon ages to
come.
* * * * *
Half that I love in my soul's life I owe to the prophet of Nazareth. The
other half I owe,--not to Nietzsche, but to the new Dispensation of which
he is a priest. Nietzsche will stand alone; but he is nevertheless the
child of his age--he sings what thousands feel.
* * * * *
It is a disadvantage to be the first man. If you are the first man you see
but half-truths and you hate your enemies. When you seek truth, truly, all
systems and all faiths of men--they are beautiful to you--born of sorrow,
and hallowed with love; but they will not satisfy you, and you put them by.
You do not let them influence you one way or the other; you can no more
find truth while you are bound to them by hatred than while you are bound
to them by love. There are dreary places in "Also sprach Zarathustra,"
narrownesses and weaknesses too; they come whenever the writer is thinking
of the evils of the hour, whenever he is gazing, not on the vision of his
soul, but on the half-truths of the men about him.
* * * * *
When I speak of Christ let no man think of Christianity. I speak of a
prince of the soul, the boldest, the freest, the noblest of men that I
know. With the thousand systems that mankind has made in his memory, I have
simply nothing in any way to do.
* * * * *
To me all morality is one. Morality is hunger and thirst after
righteousness. Morality is a quality of will. The differences that there
are between Christ and Nietzsche are differences of the intellect--where no
man is final.
The doctrine of each is a doctrine of sacrifice; with one it is a sacrifice
of love, with the other it is a sacrifice of labor. For myself, I care not
for the half-truths of any man. I said to my soul, "Shall I cast out love
for labor?" And my soul replied, "For what wilt thou labor but love?"
* * * * *
Moral sublimity lies in the escape from self. The doctrine of Christ is a
negation of life, that of Nietzsche an affirmation; it seems to me much
easier to attain to sublimity with the former.
It is easier to die for righteousness than to live for it. If you are to
die, you have but to fix your eyes upon your vision, and see that you do
not take them away. But the man who will _live_ for righteousness--he
must plant and reap, must gather fire-wood and establish a police-force;
and to do these things nobly is not easy; to do them sublimely seems hardly
possible at all.
* * * * *
Twenty centuries ago the Jewish world was a little plain, and God a loving
Father. He held you in his arms, he spoke to you in every dream, in every
fantasy, in every accident. Life was very short--but a little trial--you
had only to be patient, and nothing mattered. Society did not exist--only
your neighbor existed. Knowledge did not exist, nor was it needed--the
world was to end--perhaps to-night--and what difference made all the rest?
You took no heed for the morrow--for would not your Father send you bread?
You resisted not evil--for if you died, was not that all that you could
ask?
It was with such a sweet and simple faith as this that the victory of Jesus
Christ was won. These were his ideas, and as the soul was all-consuming
with him, he lived by them and died by them, and stands as the symbol of
faith.
* * * * *
And now twenty centuries have gone by. And a new teacher has come to whom
also the soul is all-consuming. What ideas has _he_? And what task
does he face?
* * * * *
I speak not to children. I speak to men seeking truth.
In twenty centuries we have learned that God is not a Father who answers
prayers and works miracles and holds out his arms at the goal. We have
come shuddering to the awful mystery of being; strange and terrible
words have been spoken--words never to be forgotten--"phenomenon," and
"thing-in-itself"; not knowing what these words mean, you are ignorant and
recreant to the truth; _knowing_ what they mean, you tug no more at
the veil. Also we have learned that time and change are our portion, "the
plastic dance of circumstance"; we talk no more of immortality. We have
turned our hopes to the new birth of time, to the new goal of our labor,
the new parent of our love, that we name Society.
And likewise Evolution has come, which is the whole of knowledge. And we
have learned of starry systems, of the building of worlds, of the pageant
of history and the march of mind. Out of all these things has come a new
duty, which is not peace, but battle--which is not patience, but
will--which is not death, but life.
* * * * *
There is no room in the world of Evolution for the doctrine of
non-resistance to evil. Non-resistance to evil is the negation of life, and
the negation of life is the negation of faith. How shall you resist not
evil when life is action and not passion? When not a morsel of food can you
touch except by the right that you are more fitted to survive than that
morsel? How when you know that you rose from the beast by resistance? And
that you stay above the beast by resistance? Will you give up the farm land
to be jungle again? Or will you teach the beasts your non-resistance? And
the trees of the forest to crowd no more your land!
It is no longer possible to build a heaven and reject the earth. Such as
life is you have to take it.
* * * * *
And you have to live it. The huge machinery of Society is on your hands,
with all its infinite complications, its infinite possibilities of beauty
and joy. Your life is, as ever, a sacrifice; all life is, as ever, a
sacrifice; but it is a sacrifice to man--a sacrifice to the best. Once your
task was self-abnegation, and that was easy; now it is self-assertion, and
that is hard. Knowing what you are, you will dare to live, not for your own
sake, but that strength and beauty may be in the world. Knowing what you
might be, you choose infinite toil for your portion, and in the humility of
toil you find your holiest peace. Your enemy you resist with all your soul,
not for hatred of your enemy, but for love of the right. If he were not
evil he could not be your enemy; and being evil, he has no right to be.
Your conscience to you is no longer a shame, but a joy; you think no
more of infinite sin, but of infinite virtue.--And for the rest, you do
not attain perfection, and you are not worshiped as a god; you are much
troubled by trivialities, and the battle tries your soul. But you make no
truce with lies, and you never lay down your sword; you keep your eyes upon
a far goal, and you leave the world better than you found it. When you come
to die you have no fear, but a song; for you are master of yourself, and
you have learned to know that which you are.
* * * * *
--And there is only to add--that whether you believe these things or not,
they are what you actually _do_. It seems to me not desirable that
one's belief should be less than one's practise.
* * * * *
January 6th.
Has any one, at this end of the nineteenth century, a clear idea of what
the poets of the ages called _Inspiration_? If no one have, I will
describe it. With the least remainder of superstition in him a man would
scarcely be able to put aside the idea that he was merely the Incarnation,
the mouthpiece, the medium of overwhelming powers. The idea of Revelation
in the mind describes exactly the state of affairs--that suddenly, with
unspeakable certainty and fineness, something became visible and audible,
something that shakes and pervades one to the depths. One hears--he does
not seek; he takes--he does not ask who gives; like lightning gleams out
a thought, of necessity, formed without hesitation--I have never had a
choice. An ecstasy, whose colossal strain breaks in the middle with a
stream of tears, in the course of which the step becomes, involuntary, now
raging, now slow; a state in which one is completely beside himself, with
the distinctest consciousness of countless shudderings and quiverings, even
to the toes of his feet; a depth of joy in which all that is painful and
somber serves, not as a contrast, but as conditioned, as demanded, as a
necessary color in such an overflow of light; an instinct of rhythmic
relations which overleaps vast spaces of forms; all happening in the
highest degree involuntarily, but as if in a storm of sensations of
freedom, of infinity, of power, of divinity.--This is my experience of
Inspiration; I doubt not but that one must needs go back thousands of
years to find one who might say, "It is also mine."
* * * * *
Do you think that _I_ wrote that--I, Arthur Stirling? No, I did not
write that. The man who wrote that is known to you as an atheist.
* * * * *
January 7th.
When Zarathustra came into the next city, which lay beside the forest, he
found in that place much people gathered together in the market; for they
had been called that they should see a rope-dancer. And Zarathustra spoke
thus unto the people:
_"I teach ye the Over-man._ The man is something who shall be
overcome. What have ye done to overcome him?
"All being before this made something beyond itself: and you will be the
ebb of this great flood, and rather go back to the beast than overcome the
man?
"What is the ape to the man? A mockery or a painful shame. And even so
shall man be to the Over-man: a mockery or a painful shame.
