"Man is a cord, tied between Beast and Over-man--a cord above an abyss.
"A perilous arriving, a perilous traveling, a perilous looking backward, a
perilous trembling and standing still.
"What is great in man is that he is a bridge, and no goal; what can be
loved in man is that he is a going-over and a going-under.
"I love them that know not how to live, be it even as those going under,
for such are those going across.
"I love them that are great in scorn, because these are they that are great
in reverence, and _arrows of longing toward the other shore!"_
* * * * *
And here ended the first speech of Zarathustra.
* * * * *
"The air thin and clear, the danger nigh, and the spirit filled with a
joyful mischief; these things go well together.
"I will have gnomes about me, for I am merry....
"I feel no more with you; these clouds which I see under me, these clouds
black and heavy over which I laugh--just these are your storm-clouds.
"You gaze upward if you long for exaltation. I gaze downward because I am
exalted.
"Who among you can both laugh and be exalted?
"Who climbs upon the highest mountains, he laughs at all sorrow-play and
sorrow-reality.
"Bold, untroubled, mocking, full of power--so will wisdom have us; she is a
woman and loves always but the warrior.
"You say to me: 'Life is hard to bear.' But for what had you your pride in
the morning, and in the evening your submission?...
"I would believe only in a god who knew how to dance.
"And when I saw my devil, I found him earnest, profound, deep, solemn; he
was the Spirit of Heaviness--through him fail all things.
"Not by anger, but by laughing, one kills. Up, let us kill the Spirit of
Heaviness!...
* * * * *
"Free dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thoughts will I hear, and not that
thou hast escaped a yoke.
"Art thou such a one that _can_ escape a yoke?
"Free from what? What is that to Zarathustra! Clear shall your eye tell me:
free _to_ what?
"Canst thou give to thyself thy good and thine evil, and hang thy will
above thee as thy law? Canst thou be thine own judge, and avenger of thy
law?
"Fearful it is to be alone with the judge and the avenger of thy law. So is
a stone flung out into empty space and into the icy breath of isolation.--
"Dost thou know truly, my brother, the word scorn? And the pain of thy
righteousness, to be just that which thou dost scorn?...
* * * * *
"As I lay in sleep a sheep ate up the ivy crown of my head--ate and then
said: 'Zarathustra is no more a scholar.'
"Said it and went strutting away, and proud. A child told it to me....
"This is the truth. I am gone out of the house of the scholars, and have
slammed to the door behind me....
"I am too hot, and burning with my own thoughts; oft will it take away my
breath. I must into the open and out of all dusty rooms.
"But they sit cool in cool shadows; they wish in all things to be but
spectators, and guard themselves lest they sit where the sun burns the
steps.
"Like those who stand upon the street and stare at the people who go by; so
they wait also and stare at the thoughts that others have thought.
"If one touches them with the hands, they make dust around them like
meal-sacks, and involuntarily; _but who could guess that their dust comes
from corn and the golden rapture of the summer fields?_
* * * * *
"Too far away into the future I flew; a horror overcame me. And as I looked
around me, there was Time my only companion.
"Then I flew backward, homeward--and ever faster: so I came to you, men of
the present, and to the Land of Culture.
"For the first time I brought an eye for you, and good wishes; truly, with
longing in my heart I came.
"And what happened to me? Frightened as I was--I had to laugh. Never had my
eyes seen anything so color-besprinkled!
"I laughed and laughed while my foot still trembled, and my heart too:
'Here is the home of all paint-pots!' said I.
"Painted over with fifty spots in face and limbs; so sat ye there, to my
amazement, ye men of the present!...
"Written all over with the signs of the past, and also these signs painted
over with new signs; so you have hidden yourself well from all
sign-readers!...
"All Times and Principles look piebald out of your coverings; all Customs
and Faiths speak piebald out of your features....
"How _could_ ye believe, ye color-besprinkled!--who are pictures of
everything that ever was believed!...
"Ah, whither shall I go now with my longing?"
* * * * *
"Who are pictures of everything that ever was believed! Who are pictures of
everything that ever was believed!" I read that and I slapped my knees and
I lay back and laughed like a very Falstaff. "Pictures of everything that
ever was believed!" Ho, ho, ho!
* * * * *
--That is some of Nietzsche!
* * * * *
January 8th.
To-day it snowed hard, and it occurred to me that I might add to my money.
I bought a second-hand shovel and went out to shovel snow. It is not so
bad, I said, you are out of doors, and also you can think of Nietzsche.
I made a dollar and a half, but I fear I did not think very much. My hands
were cold, for one thing, and my shoes thin, for another.
* * * * *
There is nothing that brings me down like physical toil. It is madness to
believe that you can do anything else--you drudge and drudge, and your mind
is an absolute blank while you do it. It is a thing that sets me wild with
nervousness and impatience. I hate it! I hate it!
And I find myself crying out and protesting against it; and then I see
other men not minding it, and I hear the words of my dear clergyman friend:
"The labor which all of us have to share." So I say to myself: Perhaps
I am really an idler then! A poor unhappy fool that can not face life's
sternness, that is crying out to escape his duty!
* * * * *
That I could say such a thing--O God, what sign is that of how far I have
fallen! Of how much I have yielded!--
A vapor, heavy, hueless, formless, cold!
Leave it to time! Leave it to time!
--I hear that, and I hear around me the laughter of mocking demons. It
startles my soul--but no longer to rage as it used to. I sit and stare at
it with a great, heavy numbness possessing me.
* * * * *
January 12th.
I am still reading Nietzsche. I think I shall read all that he has written.
I am always kept aware of the limitations, but he is a tremendous man. Can
you guess how this took hold of me?--
* * * * *
THE GRAVE-SONG
"There lies the island of graves, the silent; there are also the graves of
my youth. Thither will I carry an evergreen wreath of life."
Thus resolving in my heart, I went over the sea.--
Oh ye visions and apparitions of my youth! Oh all ye glances of love, ye
godlike moments! How swiftly you died in me! I remember you to-day as my
dead.
From you, my dearest dead, there comes to me a sweet odor, heart-melting,
tear-melting. Truly it shakes and melts the heart of the lonely seaman.
Still am I the richest and the most to be envied--I, the most lonely. For
I _had_ you, and you have me still; say, to whom fell, as to me, such
rose-apples from the trees?...
_Me_ to kill, they strangled you, you song-birds of my hopes. Yea, at
you, the dearest, shot wickedness its arrows--to strike my heart!...
This word will I speak to my enemies: "What is all murder of man beside
that which ye did to me?"
Thus, in the good hour, spake my purity: "Godlike shall all being be to
me."
Then ye fell upon me with your foul spirits; ah, whither now hath the good
hour fled?
"All days shall be holy to me"--so spake once the wisdom of my youth; truly
the speech of a happy wisdom.
But then you enemies stole away my nights and sold them to sleepless
torment; ah, whither now hath the happy wisdom fled?...
As a blind man once I went a blissful way; then you threw rubbish in the
blind man's way; and now he is weary of the old blind ascendings....
And once would I dance as never had I danced before; above all the heavens
away would I dance. And then you lured away my dearest singer!...
Only in the dance can I speak metaphors of the highest things:--and now my
highest metaphor remained unspoken in my limbs!
Unspoken and undelivered remained my highest hope! And there died all the
visions and solaces of my youth!
* * * * *
That thing brought the tears down my cheeks. It is what my soul has cried
all day and all night--that I see all my joy and all my beauty going!
It is the fearful, the agonizing _waiting_ that does it. I know it--I
put it down--there is nothing kills the soul in a man so much as that. When
you wait your life is outside of yourself; you hope,--you are at the mercy
of others--at the mercy of indifference and accident and God knows what.
But again I cry, "What can I do? If there is anything I have not done--tell
me! Tell me!"
Here I sit, and I have but seven dollars left to my name, including what I
made by the shoveling. And I sit and watch the day creep on me like a wild
beast on its prey--the day when I must go back into the world and toil
again! Oh, it will kill me--it will kill me!
* * * * *
I sit and wait and hang upon the faint chance of one publisher more. It is
my only chance,--and such a chance! I find myself calculating, wondering;
yes, famous books have been rejected often, and still found their mark. Can
I still believe that this book will shake men?
Ah, God, in my soul I do not believe it, because I have lost my
inspiration! I have let go of that fire that was to drive like a wind-storm
over the world.
* * * * *
Yes, I ask myself if such things can be! I ask myself if they were real,
all those fervors and all that boldness of mine! If it was natural, that
way that lived!
--Oh, and then I look back, and my heart grows sick within me.
* * * * *
So I spend my time, and when I turn and try to lose myself in Nietzsche,
his mercilessness flings me into new despair.
* * * * *
January 18th.
I have the terrible gift of insensibility; and I think my insensibility
torments me more than anything else in the world.
I have no life, no power, no feeling, naturally--it is all my will, it is
all effort. And now that I am not striving, I sink back into a state of
numbness, of dull, insensible despair. I no longer feel anything, I no
longer care about anything. I pass my time in helpless impotence--and day
by day I watch a thing creeping upon me as in a nightmare. I must go out
into the world again and slave for my bread!
--Oh, _then_ I will feel something, I think!
* * * * *
Another week and more is gone, and I have but a little over four dollars.
* * * * *
January 20th.
I have stopped reading Nietzsche. I could not stand any more of it. It does
not satisfy me.
It is not merely that I am so weak now, and that his mocking goads me. I
would have been through with him in any case. He is so narrow--so
one-sided.
It is reaction from the present, of course, that accounts for it. Too
much gazing upon the world, that has led him to believe that love of man
necessarily implies compromise.
There are two words that are absent from his writings--they are love and
humanity; and so it never satisfies you, you are always discontented, you
have always to correct and supply.
* * * * *
January 22d.
Oh why do those publishers take so long! I wait and yearn; I grow sick with
waiting and yearning.
I never allowed any weakness in my soul before; I never made any terms with
it. I blamed everything upon myself. And now that my whole life is weakness
and misery, I writhe and struggle--I turn back always on myself, suspecting
myself, blaming myself. I can not lay it to the world, I can not get into
the habit--it is such a miserable habit! How many millions there are of
them--poor, querulous wretches, blaming their fate, crying out against the
world's injustice and neglect--crying out against the need of working,
wishing for this and that--discontented, impotent, miserable! Oh my
God--and I am one of such!
I can not bear the sound of my own voice when I complain! I hear the world
answering me--and I take the part of the world! "Why don't you be a man and
go out and earn your way? Why don't you face your fate? You prate about
your message--what business has a man with a message that is too much for
him? What business have you with weakness--what _excuse_ have you for
weakness?"
And so I came to see it. The world is right and I am all wrong! And the
truth of it burns me like an acid in my brain.
* * * * *
January 24th.
And all the time my whole being is still restless with the storms that
raged in it last spring! I have all those memories, all that poignancy.
I can not realize it--any of what I was and had--but I know it as a
_fact_, a memory, and I crouch and tremble, I grow sick with it.
* * * * *
Why don't they write to me? My money is going!
* * * * *
January 26th.
The reason that I shudder so at the prospect of having to face the world
again, is that I have no hope. _I have no hope!_ Once I could
go out into that hellish market. I could be any man's slave, do any
drudgery--because I saw a light ahead--I saw deliverance--I had a purpose!
And now what purpose have I--what hope have I? I tell you I am a man in a
trap! I can do nothing! I can do no more than if I were walled in with
iron!
I say that my business in this world is to be a poet! I say that there is
only one thing I can do--only one way that I can get free--and that is by
doing my work, by writing books. And I have done all that I can do, I have
earned my freedom--and no one will give it to me! Oh, I shall die if I am
penned here much longer!
* * * * *
I eat out my heart, I burn up my very entrails in my frenzies. Set me free!
_Set me free!_
* * * * *
I thought to-day if I only had a little money--if I could only publish that
book myself! I can not believe that men would not love it--I can not--no,
you may crush me all you please, but I can not! And I would take it and
shout it from the housetops--I would peddle it on the streets--I would
_make_ the world hear me!
--And then I sink back, and I hear the world say, "You poor fool!"
* * * * *
January 28th.
I have only a dollar and a half left! I have sat, shuddering and waiting,
all that I dare; the end is come now, I must look for work to-morrow. It is
like a death-sentence to me. I could do nothing to-night.
* * * * *
January 29th.
Providence came to help me to-night for once! It snowed to-day and I have
been hard at work again.
* * * * *
January 30th.
Some more snow. My hands were nearly frost-bitten, but I keep at it; for at
least it is out in the air, and it gives me a little longer respite.
In the afternoon I made up my mind to go and see the publishers and ask
them if they could not read the story at once--it has been a month. I saw
their literary manager; he said he was going to read it himself.
* * * * *
January 31st.
More snow again to-day. And I have made over five dollars. But I have come
out of it more dead than alive--dulled, dispirited, utterly worn out.
If I could only be an animal for a time. But each day of the drudgery only
makes me wilder with nervousness.
* * * * *
February 1st.
They regret, of course, and hold the MS. at my disposal. I went up to get
it this afternoon, and half by accident I met the man I had seen before. I
had a talk with him. He was a very curious personage.
He seemed to have been interested in The Captive. "I'll tell you," he said,
"you know there's really some extraordinary work in that poem. I believe
that you have it in you to make some literature before you get through, Mr.
Stirling."
"Do you?" I said.
"Yes," he replied, "I feel pretty sure of it. You ask me to tell you about
it--so you mustn't mind if I speak frankly. And of course it's very crude.
You haven't found your voice yet, you're seeking for mastery, and your work
is obviously young. Anybody can see in a few lines that it's young--it's
one of those things like Goetz von Berlichingen, or Die Räuber--you tear a
passion to tatters, you want to rip the universe up the back. But of course
that wears off by and by; it isn't well to take life too seriously, you
know, and I don't think it'll be long before you come to feel that The
Captive isn't natural or possible--or desirable either."
The publisher was smoking a cigar. He puffed for a moment and then he
asked, "What are you doing now?"
"Nothing just at present," said I.
"I should have supposed you'd be writing another poem," he
replied,--"though of course as a matter of fact the wisest thing you can do
is to wait and learn. Your next book will be entirely different, you can be
quite sure--you won't be so anxious to get hold of all the world and make
it go your way."
I smiled feebly. "Possibly not," I said.
"I'll tell you a story," said the publisher--"speaking about youthful
aspirations! I was talking to Mr. X---- last night, the author of ----.
[Footnote: The manuscript names an extremely popular historical novel.] You
wouldn't think X---- was the sort of man to be reforming the world, would
you? But he told me about his earliest work, that he said he had tucked
away in a drawer, and it turned out he was like all other authors. This
was a socialist story, it seems, and the hero delivered fiery speeches
six pages long. And X---- said that he had written it and taken it to a
publisher, expecting to upset the world a week after it appeared, but that
he never could get anybody to publish it, and gave it up finally and went
into journalism. The funny part of it was that he had sent it here, and
when he told me about it, I remembered looking it over and writing him just
about what I'm telling you."
The publisher smoked for a moment or two. "You see, Mr. Stirling," he said
at last, "he had to wait ten years before he 'arrived.' So you must not be
discouraged. Have you read his book?"
"No, I have not."
"It is a very pretty piece of work--it's been many months since it
came out, but they say it's still selling in the thousands. Don't get
discouraged, Mr. Stirling, keep at it, because you have real talent, I
assure you."
I rose to go, and he shook my hand. "Take my advice," he said, "and write
something more practicable than a tragedy. But of course don't forget in
any case that we shall always be very happy to read anything of yours at
any time."
--I walked down the street meditating. I will get over it again, of course;
but to-night I sat in the dark and the cold, shivering. And I asked myself
if it must not be so after all. "_Is_ it true, the thing that I did;
is it _natural_?" I said. "Or must it not be exaggerated and crude, as
they all tell me! And uninteresting!--What is the use of it? I tormented
myself that way and tore myself to pieces, but it does not stir any one
else."
Ah, of course it's all dead in me--and I'm prepared to believe anything
they tell me! It's overwrought, it's young, it's pitched in too high a key,
it's strained and unnatural, it takes life too seriously! Certainly at any
rate they are right that I shall never, never do the same thing again.
But unfortunately I don't feel like writing anything else. I don't know
anything about historical novels.
* * * * *
--I would have read some of the poem again to-night, but I'm too
discouraged. I am tired of it. I know it by heart, and it doesn't take hold
of me.
I have been too long among men, I groan. I see their point of view too
well!
Why, there are things in that book that when I read them now make me
shudder. I have hardly the courage to offer it to any one else to read. I
don't know any one to take it to, besides.
* * * * *
O God, I'm so unhappy!
* * * * *
February 3d.
To-day an idea occurred to me, one that should have occurred before. Once
upon a time I was introduced to the editor of the ----. Perhaps he will
not remember it, I said. But anyhow, why not try? I will take him The
Captive--perhaps he can use it in the magazine--who knows?
I knew nothing better to do, so I went there. He was very polite--he did
remember my face. He was fearfully busy, it seemed. He did not think there
was much likelihood of a magazine's publishing a blank-verse tragedy; but I
told him how I had worked, and he said he'd read it.
And so there's one chance more!
My poor, foolish heart is always ready to tremble with new hope. But faith
in that book was so _ground_ into it!
--I asked him to read it at once, I explained that I was in great haste. I
think he understood what I meant. My clothes show it.
I have been hoarding my money--counting every cent. I dread the world so!
Now that I am so broken, so laden with misery, it sounds about me as one
jeer of mockery. But I shall have to be hunting a place soon--you never can
tell how long it may take you, and the chances are so terrible.
I will not do anything until I hear from this one man, however. He promised
to let me know in a week.
* * * * *
I did not see him at the publisher's--he has another office besides. He had
huge piles of papers and books about him; he is an important man, I guess;
can it be that he will be the one to save me?
I think: "Oh if he knew, he would!" I find myself thinking that of all the
world--if I could only make them understand! Poor, impotent wretch, if I
could only find the _word_!
--Or is it simply my blind egotism that makes me think that?
* * * * *
February 6th.
I do not think that what I write can be of much interest. It must be
monotonous--all this despair, this endless crying out, this endless
repetition of the same words, the same thought.
Yet that is all that my life is! That is just what I do every day--whenever
I am not reading a book to forget myself.
It is all so simple, my situation! That is the most terrible thing about
it, it is the same thing always and forever.
* * * * *
I have lived so much agony through this thing--it would not startle me if
I saw that my hair had turned white. I know I feel like an old man. I am
settled down into mournfulness, into despair; I can do nothing but gaze
back--I have lived my life--I have spent my force--I am tired and sick.
I! I! I!--do you get tired of hearing it? It was not always like that; once
you read a little about a book.
* * * * *
February 8th.
This is the fifth day. I am counting the days, I have been counting the
very hours. He said he would be a week. And I--only think of it--I have but
two dollars and sixty cents left!
Hurry up! Hurry up!
--And then I say with considerable scorn in my voice: "Haven't you learned
enough about that manuscript yet? And about publishers yet?"
* * * * *
February 10th.
Just imagine! I went to see him to-day, and he stared at me. "Why, sure
enough, Mr. Stirling!--It had slipped my mind entirely!"
I have learned to bear things. I asked him calmly to let me know as soon
as possible. He said: "I am honestly so rushed that I do not know where to
turn. But I will do the best I possibly can."
I said--poor, pitiful cringing, is it not terrible?--that I'd be up his way
again in three days, and did he think he could have it read by then. He
said he was not sure, but that he'd try.
And so I went away. Now I have two dollars and twenty-three cents. I have
to pay my rent to-morrow, and that will leave me a dollar and a half. I
can make that do me seven or eight days--I have one or two things at home.
I'll wait the three days--and then I'll have to set out in earnest to find
something to do.
Oh, the horror of not knowing if you can pay your next week's room rent in
this fearful city!
* * * * *
February 11th.
I sat and looked at myself to-day. I said: "When a soul is crushed like
this, can it ever get up again? Can it ever be the same, no matter what
happens? Don't you see the fact, that you've been tamed and broken--that
you've _given in_! And how will you ever rise from the shame of it,
how will you ever forget it? All this skulking and trembling--how will you
ever dare look yourself in the face again! Will not it mock your every
effort? Why, you poor wretch, _you've got a broken back!"_
* * * * *
February 12th.
And to-morrow again I must go there, trembling and nervous, hanging on a
word!
There is not much sense in it, but I have learned to hate all men who have
ease and power.
* * * * *
February 13th.
I knew it! I could have told it beforehand. "I am awfully sorry, Mr.
Stirling, but it is no use talking, I simply can not! I will write you just
as soon as ever I get it read."
And so I came out. I had a dollar and twenty cents. My rent would be due in
four days again. So even if I got some work at once I should have to pawn
something.
--Thus I began my search for a situation. I could not choose--I was willing
to take anything.
I fear I look like a tramp; but I have several letters from places where I
have worked. Still, I could not find anything. I have tramped all day until
I could hardly move. I bought a paper, but everything advertised was gone
by that time.
If it would only snow again, so that I could shovel some more!
* * * * *
February 14th.
Again I have been pacing the streets the whole endless day, beaten back and
rebuffed at every turn. I have been drilled for this, this is the climax!
First take every gleam of heart out of me, and then set me to pacing the
streets in the cold, to be stared at and insulted by every kind of a man!
And still nothing to do.
* * * * *
February 15th.
I take my lunch with me--I have cut myself down to twenty cents a day for
food. I walk and walk, and I am so hungry I can not do on less than that. I
have but sixty cents left to-night. I failed again to-day.
* * * * *
February 16th.
It is not as desperate as it sounds, because I have a few books and things
that I can sell--I do not believe that I will actually starve--I have
always done my work well, and have gotten references. But O God, the shame
of it--the endless, heaped-up bitterness!
I have sunk into a beast of burden. I trudge on with my mind torpid--I take
whatever comes to me, and go on mechanically. Oh it cows me, it wears me
down! I have learned to bear anything--_anything_! A man might kick me
and I would not mind.
I think I went to fifty places yesterday. Nothing to do--nothing. To-day is
Sunday, but I tried even to-day. I came home to get some dinner.--I might
have been a porter in a hotel, and carried trunks--that was my one chance.
But I have not the physical power for that.
--And then after all--toward evening--when I was so tired I was almost
wild--I had an offer at last! And guess what it was--of all the things that
I had made up my mind I could not bear--to be a waiter!
It is, I believe, what a man should call a rare opportunity. It is a fairly
good restaurant just off Broadway; and I get ten dollars and tips. Poor me!
My heart bounded for a moment, and then I asked myself, And what do you
want with money any more? I took the place, and I am to begin the day after
to-morrow. I am so tired I can hardly move.
* * * * *
February 17th.
Was it not irony? I have watched day by day for snow; and now that I have
taken the other place--behold, to-day it snows a foot!
--I went to see the editor in the afternoon. I was desperate at the thought
of to-morrow. I said I would tell him!--But when I got there I only had the
courage to inquire about the poem. He had not read it. I feared he seemed
annoyed.
I shall not go there again for a week. I can not make him hurry.
* * * * *
February 18th.
To-day I had to begin by apologizing to my landlady, and begging her to let
me pay her a week later. I had to go into an elaborate explanation--she
wanted to know why I had not been working all these months, and so on. She
has a red face, and drinks, I think.
Then I had to take a load of my best books--my poor, few precious books
that I have loved--and sell them at a second-hand bookstore. When I had
sold them I had to hire a waiter's suit for a week, until I had money to
buy it. And then with that awful thing on I went down to the restaurant.
Can you imagine how a pure woman would feel if she had to go into a brothel
to live? That was just how I felt--just how! Oh my God, the indignity of
it! Is there _anything_ that I could do more humiliating?
--But I have lost the power of getting angry. Only my heart is one great
sob.
* * * * *
February 20th.
Oh, that hellish place! What is there in this whole city more brutal than
that restaurant?
Day and night, day and night, to see but one thing--to see flashy,
overdressed, fat and vulgar men and women gorging themselves! Oh, this will
teach me to feel--this at least! I go about with my whole being one curse
of rage--I could throttle them! And to bow and smirk and lackey them--all
day! All day! Oh, what shall I do--how shall I bear it?
They offer me tips. At first I thought I should refuse; but no, I dare not
do that, even if I wanted to. And since I have stooped to do it, I will
take all I can get. To get money is my one passion now. Oh my God, how can
I bear it!
* * * * *
February 21st.
I said to-day, I must fight this thing--I must, or it will kill me; I can
not let myself go to wreck in this fashion--_I've got to fight!_
And so I got my note-book; and I fell to work to drive myself as of old.
The effort that it cost me made me ill, but I did it. I shall keep on doing
it--I am like a man faced by a fiend--I _must_ keep on--I must!
But then, why do you want to have new languages? Do you not know enough now
to keep you in reading matter for all the time you are ever likely to have?
* * * * *
February 24th.
Oh, one can get used to even a flashy restaurant! It is your fate--you
take it. This is how I pass all my time there. I struggle to resist the
deadening of it, and the horror of it; while I am going about the loathsome
grind I try to think--try to have some idea in my head. And something
comes to me--something beautiful, perhaps; and then in a few moments, in
the clatter and confusion, I lose it; and after that I go about haunted,
restless, feeling that I have lost something, that I ought to be doing
something. What the thing is, I do not even know--but so it drives me and
drives me!
I spend literally hours that way.
* * * * *
February 25th.
When are you going to read that poem--_when_? The week was gone
yesterday--but I will not trouble you, even now! I wait, I wait!
* * * * *
February 27th.
There is another torment about this fearful place that I am in, one that
you could not imagine. I had thought that it would be a pleasure, but it
tears my soul. They have music in the evening; and fancy a person in my
state listening to a violin!
Chiefly, of course, they play trash; but sometimes there comes something
beautiful, perhaps only a phrase. But it takes hold of my soul, it makes my
eyes grow dim, it makes me shudder. It is all my pent-up agony, it is all
my sleeping passion--why, it overwhelms me! And I am helpless--I can not
get away from it!
Remember that I have not heard any music for a year. It is like the voice
of a dead love to me. I thought to-night that I could not bear it.
* * * * *
March 1st.
To-day I had a day off, and I went to see the editor. I have been waiting,
day by day, for a letter; it has been a month since I left it with him, and
I found that he had not read it yet!
"Mr. Stirling," he said, "it is not my fault, it has simply been
impossible. Now I will tell you what to do. I am going out of the city
Sunday week, and I shall have a little leisure then. I do not see how I can
get to it before that, so you take it and see if you can find some one else
to read it meanwhile. If you will bring it to me Saturday, a week from
to-day, I will promise you faithfully to read it on Sunday."
So I took the manuscript. I tried four publishing houses, but I could not
find one that would read it in a week. I had to take the manuscript home.
* * * * *
March 3d.
To-morrow ends my second week at the restaurant. It took me five days to
find that place, but I am going to give it up to-morrow. I could not bear
it, if it were to save my life. I can not bear the noise and the grease and
the dirt, and the endless, endless vulgarity; but above all I can not bear
the music.
I can bear almost any degradation, I have found; but not when I have to
listen to music!
Besides, I can afford to give it up. I have made a fortune. I shall have
over thirty dollars when I leave!
* * * * *
I have always been paid, I find, in proportion to the indignities I
bore--in proportion to the amount I humiliated myself before the rich and
the vulgar. These vile, bejeweled, befeathered women, these loathsome,
swinish men--_these_ are the people who have money to spend. They go
through the world scattering their largess with royal hand; and you can get
down and gather it up out of the mud beneath their feet.
* * * * *
I come home at night worn out and weak, sometimes almost in a stupor; but I
am never too ill to brood over that hideous state of affairs. I gaze at it
and I wring my hands, and I cry: Oh my Father in heaven, will it always be
like this?
Think of it--this money that these people squander--do you know what it is?
It is the toil of society! That is what it is,--it is _my_ toil--it is
the toil of the millions that swarm in the tenements where I live--it is
the toil of the laborers, the beasts of burden of society, in the cities
and in the country.
Think about it, I cry, think about it!--Can I not find any word, is there
nothing I can do or say now or at any time, to make men see it? Why, you
take it for granted--_I_ have taken it for granted all my days--that
money should belong to the brutal rich to squander in whatever inanity may
please them! But it never dawns upon you that this money is _the toil
of the human race_! Money is the representation of all that human toil
creates--of all _value_; it is houses that laborers build, it is grain
that farmers raise, it is books that poets write! And see what becomes of
it--see! _see_! Or are you blind or mad, that you _will_ not see?
Have you no more faith in man, no more care about the soul?
* * * * *
You think that I have been made sick by my work in that one haunt of vice.
But it is not only that, it is not only that fever district where all the
diseases of a city gather. I have been all _over_ the city, and it is
everywhere the same. Go to the opera-house any night and you may see
blasphemous vanity enough to feed the starving of this city for a year.
Walk up Fifth Avenue and see them driving; or go to Newport and see them
there. Why, I read in the papers once of a woman who gave a ball--and the
little fact has stuck in my mind ever since that she wore a dress trimmed
with lace that cost a thousand dollars a meter! I do not speak of the
infinite vulgarity of the thing--it is the monstrous _crime_ of it
that cries to me. These people--why, they have society by the
_throat_!
* * * * *
I bury my face in my pillow and sob; but then I look up and pray for faith.
I say we are only at the beginning of civilization, we can see but the
first gleams of a social conscience; but it will come--it must come! Am I
to believe that mankind will always submit to toil and pant to make lace at
a thousand dollars a meter to cover the pride-swollen carcase of a society
dame?
* * * * *
How is it to be managed? I do not know. I am not a political economist--I
am a seeker after righteousness. But as a poet, and as a clear-eyed soul, I
stand upon the heights and I cry out for it, I demand it. I demand that
society shall come to its own, I demand that there shall be intelligence in
the world! I demand that the toil of the millions shall not be for the
pride of the few! I demand that it shall not be to buy diamonds and dresses
and banquets, horses and carriages, palaces and yachts! I demand that it
shall be for the making of knowledge and power, of beauty and light and
love!
* * * * *
Oh, thou black jungle of a world!--What know you of knowledge and power, of
beauty and light and love? What do you dream of these things? The end of
man as you know it is to fight and struggle like a maniac, and grab for his
own all that he can lay his claws upon. And what is your social ideal--but
to lavish, each man upon himself, all that he can lavish before he dies?
And whom do you honor save him who succeeds in that? And whom do you scorn
save him who fails?
* * * * *
Oh thou black jungle of a world!--I cry it once again--
Where savage beasts through forest midnight roam,
Seeking in sorrow for each other's joy!
I sit alone and think of these things, until my breath comes hard with
rage. I say: "It is these that I serve--it is these who own the fruits of
my toil--it is these for whom I am starved and crushed--it is these by whom
my God-given power is trampled into annihilation!"
* * * * *
March 4th.
I gave the place up this morning. I have thirty-one dollars. I think such a
sum of money never made me less happy.
I have nothing to do but drag myself back to my room and wait there until
the eighth, to take back my manuscript. It will be five weeks that he has
kept me--I suppose that is not his fault.
And then I say: "Fool, to torment yourself with such hopes! Don't you
_know_ that he will say what all the rest have said? He is a clever
man, and he knows everything; but what use is he going to have for your
poetry?"
* * * * *
I wandered about almost all of to-day, or sat stupid in my room. I have
lost all my habits of effort--I have forgotten all that I ever knew, all my
hopes, all my plans. I said: "I will study!" But then I added: "Why should
I? Shall I not only make myself miserable, get myself full of emotion, and
to no purpose but the carrying of dishes?"
* * * * *
It is terrible to me to have to acknowledge any change in my way of
living--I never did that before. Compromises! Concessions!
Surrenders!--words such as those set me mad. But what am I to do? What
_can_ I do? I writhe and twist, but there is no escape. I struggle
upward, but I am only beaten back and back? How should I not stop striving?
* * * * *
Circumstances made no difference to a man. So I used to prate!
No difference! Why, I was a giant in my soul, swift and terrible as the
lion. I leaped upon my task, I seized upon everything that came my way. I
passed whole classes of men at a bound, I saw, I felt--I bore the world in
my soul. I would dare everything, learn everything, live everything--take
it all into myself. And every day I was stronger, every day I was more!--
And now see me! You have penned me here, you have starved me, stunted me,
crushed me--I sit shivering and staring at my own piteousness! Why, I can
not even be angry any more--I am too shrunken, too impotent for that! And
was it my fault? Have I not fought till I was ill?
--But never did I put forth a hope that it was not withered in the bud!
My every enthusiasm you stamped into the ground; every advance that I
made--why you smote me in the face! And all my ardor, my confidence, my
trust--has it ever met with anything but jeers?
* * * * *
--Yes, and now you turn away--this revolts you! This is bare, painful
egotism--this is whining--this is querulous misery. It offends you like the
sight of raw flesh!
--It is my raw soul. My poor little naked, pitiful, beaten
soul!--groveling, and begging, too!
* * * * *
--But whose fault is it--merciful Heaven, whose fault is it? It is my
nature to live in myself--to live from myself. And this that is unbearable
egotism, why, it would have been exulting power! Joy in a vision! Mastery
of a life and an art!
But here you shut me up! You crush me down! I try to escape--I cry out: "I
am _not_ an egotist--I am a worshiper! I want nothing in the world so
much as to forget myself--my rights, my claims, my powers, my talents! I
want to think of God! Only give me a chance--only give me a chance to do
that, and I care not what you do with me! Here I stand with my poor little
work, begging, pleading for some one to heed it! Thinking of it only,
living for it only, insisting upon it day and night! But do you think that
I do that of choice? My God, no--you are mad--I only want to go on! Give me
but the chance to go on--and do you think that I would care whether any man
admired my work?"
--Why, I would not even know it--I would be out in the mountains alone!
* * * * *
"But for what had you your pride in the morning, and in the evening your
submission?"
Can you guess how that jeer rings in my ears, how it goads me?
* * * * *
March 5th.
Sinking down! Sinking down! To see yourself one of the losing creatures, to
know that there is no help for you in this world--that no one will heed
you, no one will stretch out a hand! To see yourself with every weakness,
to see yourself as everything that you hate--to be mad with rage against
yourself, and still to be able to do nothing!
* * * * *
--Understand what I mean--poor fools, do not think it is for myself that I
fear. If I wanted to fight a way for myself--I could do it yet--never fear.
But ah, you will save the mother and not her child! What I weep for, what I
die for, is my ART!
My vision, my life, my joy, my fire! These are the things that are dying!
And when the soul is dead do you think that I shall care about the body? Do
you think that I will stay in this world a shell, a mockery, a corpse? Stay
either to putrefy with pleasure or to be embalmed in dulness? Nay, you do
not know me!
* * * * *
--I said to myself to-night, "If I perish in this world it will be because
I was too far ahead of my environment--that and that only. It will be
because I was pure, single-hearted, consecrated, and because of such you
neither know nor care." Do I fear to say that? I am done with shame--I
think that I am dying--let me speak the truth.
* * * * *
--And I have really said the word then--the word that can not be
recalled--that my hope is dead, that I give up--that I can not live my
life? Nay--I do not have to say the word, the word says itself.
* * * * *
March 6th.
To-day I shook myself together. I could not stand such wretchedness. I
said, I will get a novel, and I will put myself into it--grimly--I will
read in spite of everything.
* * * * *
And such a book as I lighted on by chance!--Once I had whole yawning vistas
of books toward which I stretched out my arms; but somehow I had forgotten
them all to-day. I could do no better than pick up a book by chance.--
I picked up Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and I found myself in the midst of
the same misery that haunts me here. I read it, but it did not help me.
* * * * *
--It is strange what poverty has ground into my soul. I find myself reading
such a book with but one feeling, one idea crying out in me. I discover
that my whole being is reduced to the great elemental, primitive instinct
of self-preservation. Love is dead in me, generosity, humanity, imagination
is dead,--everything but one wild-beast passion; and I find myself panting
as I read: "Get some money! Get some money! Hold on to it!"
* * * * *
--After a while I think suddenly: "And I am a poet!" That brings a moan
from me and I sit shuddering.
* * * * *
March 7th.
Tess of the D'Urbervilles is one of the most unconvincing books I ever
read. I neither believed in it nor cared about it in the slightest.
I am shown a "pure woman," and by and by I learn, to my perplexity, that
she has been seduced; after which she continues the "pure woman" again, and
I am asked to agonize over her troubles! But all the time I keep saying,
"This is not a woman that you are showing me at all--a woman with a soul;
it is a puppet figure that you suppose 'seduced' for the sake of the
story."
It is our absurd English ideas of "propriety" that make possible such
things. If the author had had to show the seduction of "Tess" the weakness
of the thing would have been plain in an instant. That he did not show it
was his lack of conscience. There is no propriety in art but truth.
* * * * *
March 8th.
I took the manuscript to the editor again to-day. He told me to come in on
Monday.
Deep in my soul I can have no more disappointments about it. I take it
about from habit. I sat and looked it over last night, but one can not read
emotional things in cold blood. I said, Is this true? Is it natural? Is
there any _use_ in it?
I was tempted to cut out one or two things; but I decided to let it stay as
it was.
* * * * *
March 10th.
I have been sitting to-night in my room, half-dazed, or pacing about the
streets talking to myself in a frenzy. I can hardly believe that it is
true, I can hardly realize it! I laugh with excitement, and then I cry.
* * * * *
I went to-day to get back my manuscript. And the editor said: "Mr.
Stirling, it is a most extraordinary piece of work. It is a most
interesting thing, I like it very much."
I stared at him gasping. Then I waited to hear him say--"But I regret"--But
he didn't!
"I can't tell you anything definite about it," he said. "I want to submit
it to the firm. I wouldn't undertake to accept any such unusual thing for
the magazine without consulting them, and especially seeing if they will
bring it out afterward--"
"You are thinking of using it in the magazine!" I cried.
"As I tell you, I can't say positively. I can only tell you what I think of
it. I will have them read it at once--"
"I will take it to them to-day!" I put in.
"No," he said, "you need not, for I am going there this afternoon, and I
will take it, and ask them to read it immediately."
I can't remember what else he said. I was deaf, crazy! I rushed home,
talking to myself incoherently. I remember sitting here in a chair and
saying aloud, "Oh, it can't be! It is impossible! That it should be good
enough to publish in a magazine like that! It is some mistake--it will all
come to nothing. It's absurd!"
* * * * *
So I sat, and I thought what such a thing would mean to me--it would make
my reputation in a day--I should be free--_free_! But I thought of it
and it did not make me happy; I only sat staring at myself, shuddering. The
endless mournfulness that is in my heart surged up in me like a tide, and
suddenly I began to cry like a child.
"It has come to me too late," I exclaimed, "too late! I can't believe
it--it doesn't mean anything to me. I don't care anything about it--I mean
the poem! _I don't believe in it myself_!"
God, do you know I said that, and _meant_ it? I said more--I sat and
whispered it to myself: "Let them take it, yes, let them! I don't care--it
will set me free--I shall have some money! But they're fools to do it,
they're fools!"
* * * * *
March 11th.
I tremble with excitement all the day, dreaming about that thing. I go
about half-mad. "Oh, just think of it," I whisper, "just think of it!"
I linger about it hungrily! He spoke as if he really meant to make them
take it.
* * * * *
March 13th.
I went to see him to-day to ask. No, they had not let him know yet, but
they had the manuscript. He would write me.
I made up my mind that I would not bother him again. I will wait, hard as
it is.
* * * * *
I sat asking myself to-day, "Do you really mean that you believe that poem
is going to stir the world--this huge, heedless world you see about you?
Have you truly that blind, unreasoning faith that you try to persuade
yourself you have?"
* * * * *
Ah, I don't know what I believe now. Only, once I had my young courage,--I
feared not the world, I could do anything. Now I am but one among a
million.
* * * * *
March 16th.
