# Tropic of Capricorn

The most difficult thing for me is to write this first line
--a piece of sincere insincerity//, a clue to my character, to
everything that follows. The hardest thing for me is to begin,
because I have never known a beginning nor an end. And if this,
which is neither a novel, nor a story, nor a slice of life, nor
a phantasy, if this which it pleases me so much to call "Tropic
of Capricorn" is most difficult to begin it is because it has
no own origin in point of time or space. This narrative then,
which is in my blood, which will be told whether you like it or
not, or what is more important, whether I like it or not, com-
mences at a point before the people concerned in it had ever
known each other, before they existed, as it were. But I am not
vitally disturbed about this; an insoluble problem which I leave
insoluble.

Actually I am not disturbed about anything, now that I have
begun. It is the third year of my stay in Paris, the fourth or
fifth year since I have begun to carry this story about in my
blood. It is usual to let things die before one writes about
them, and perhaps it was because I had not waited to give the
events recorded a decent funeral burial that I failed repeatedly
in telling of them. It is not all dead yet, my experience, but
I see now that it will never die altogether, and since the funeral
is always more important (to the living) than the death, I proceed.

2.

In the first place I must make it clear that I am not a Tony
Bring, which is the name of the hero in the novel I have just
written, the novel I have just destroyed. As for the others--
Vanya, Hildred, etc.-- what difference does it make what they are
called? I am the one who counts--it is my book, my life, my crea-
tion. If I was dissatisfied with my novel, my hero, it is because
I did not do justice to myself. As for the others--Vanya, Hild-
red, etc.-- I am not concerned with doing justice to them....I
would rather do them injustice. It is not an Olympian attitude
I am taking, not the cold, scientific analysis of the realist that
I would adopt. It is in my blood, as I said before, and not quite
dead. I do not look upon my blood as a conglomerate of chemical
entities; my blood is a part of me, nearly all of me, it is what I
live by, it feeds me hate and love. And my blood is turbulent--
it resists analysis, it still defies classification. The other
day, seated in a banker's office, I picked up a book called "Moby
Dick" and, glancing through the pages, my eye suddenly fell on that
chapter in which the author describes the whiteness of the whale.
At once I realized that I had a valuable document in my hands.
There is an insanity about this writing which a calm, collected
critic like John Erskine tries to dignify, to reduce to its chemical
components, by calling it noble writing--I am not sure whether this
is the term he used, but his intent was that. Mr. Erskine marshalled
some of his finest enthusiasms, but it was not the white enthusiasm
of the whale. The difference between "Moby Dick" and "Helen of Troy"
is the difference between blood and chemistry. I detest "Helen of
Troy" and "Adam and Eve" and "Unfinished Business"; by this token
I detest a host of others, some greater, some lesser, than Mr. John
Erskine & Co.

3.

Here I have only begun and there are elements creeping in which I am sure no editor would approve of. It is impossible for me to write even the most fantastic tale without mention of books and authors, without extraneous details, as it is called. Far from worrying me it is a comfort to me; books and authors are a vital part of me, they too are in my blood, carried along with my living, part of my hate and love. How was it, then, that in my novel I described a home without books? How was it that I was driven to a pitch of the finest frenzy in describing the walls of our home, the walls which Vanya, my rival and enemy, covered with frescoes? (As a matter of fact, this was a lie; it was I who invented the frescoes, not Vanya!) There were so many lies in my novel, almost all everything I wrote was a lie, an invention, an evasion. I do not say that I will not lie now, but if I do lie, and I most certainly will, they will be better lies, bigger lies, more monstrous lies. For a man is known as much by his lies as by his truths, better perhaps.

Consider, for instance, how much better is this beginning than the one in my novel--"remote and desolate corner of America. Vast mud-flats on which no flower, no living thing grows, Fissures radiating in all directions, losing themselves in the immensity of space...From the snow-capped mountains that shoulder the sky strong winds blow down. With twilight the thermometer drops like an anchor. Here and there buttes and mesas dotted with creasote bushes. Tranquil the earth beneath the moaning wind." Etc. Etc. Rubbish all that. A lie! A lie because, however true it is, it was taken from an encyclopaedia, and an encyclopaedia is a vast collection of lies.

4.

A worse lie because it was written with my wife standing over
my shoulder and my friends sitting around waiting for them me to toss
them a page. Still more of a fraud because my wife, arch-liar that
she is, guided my thoughts, arranged my lies skillfully, blew on them
with her foul, lying breath. And this too is interesting to
relate since, when I began the novel, my wife swore that she would
aid me by telling the truth about everything, everything that had
happened, that was past. Most interesting because it tells at once
what manner of individual I was, am, that I believed my lying wife.
I believed in her though I had found her nothing but deceit and
flasehood. I had to come to Paris to discover that I did not be-
lieve any more, even in her lies. Her lies too were false.

Furthermore, these opening lines of the novel--they were not
the real opening. There were several beginnings I had made previously,
each of them better than this, each of them vetoed by my wife, Hildred,
whose name had changed with each beginning. And so now I am come to
the last beginning, the definitive edition, as it were--unless my
wife arrives unexpectedly and destroys it.

But it is clear, I hope, that I was enmeshed in falsehood, that
I was a dead fly in this spider-web which they--my wife, Hildred, and
her friend, Vanya-- had woven about me. It was as though these two
great friends, these spiders, had hypnotized me and commanded me to
sing their praise before putting me to death. And that they did not
kill me is nothing less than a miracle, which is why I have emerged
from my struggles a deeply religious man, which is why (I said it in
my novel about my enemy, but it is I to whom it applies)"taken as I
am and as I shall always be, I feel that I am a force both of creation
and of dissolution, that I am a real value, and have a right, a place,

5.

a mission among men." The words are borrowed from Papini, a failure
like myself, one of those grand failures who inspire us more than
a dozen heroes or saints. There was lots I wanted to say in my
novel about Eam Papini, just as there is lots more I want to say in
my next book about Salavin, Eam Louis Salavin, but my thoughts about
Papini were vetoed--they were extraneous, I was told. It is all this
extraneous matter which was ruled out that I am going to crowd into
this book, my book, the book I am writing in my solitude, no wife
hanging over my shoulder, no friends sitting at my desk elbow. The
very flavor and quality of these lines summons up another writer,
another being to whom I am greatly indebted, whom I wish to pay
tribute to here and now whether it is out of place or not--Unamuno.
How ironical it is that lying before me is Unamuno's essay "How to
Write a Novel"! "My legend! My novel! That means the legend, the
novel of me, Migeul de Unamuno/, as he is known, which we have written
together, the others and me, my friends and my enemies, and my
friendly-me and my enemy-me......My novel! My legend! The Unamuno
of my legend, of my novel, the one whom we have fashioned together,
my friendly-me and my enemy-me, and the others, my friends and my
enemies---this Unamuno gives me life and death, creates me and destroys me, supports me and stifles me. It is my death-agony. Can I
be as I believe myself or as others believe me to be? Here is where
these lines become a confession in the presence of my unknown and
unknowable me, unknown and unknowable for myself. Here is where I
create the legend where I must bury myself....."

It is when I read such lines as these that I could cease writing forever. Therefore I am putting Papini and Unamuno aside--I will not let them stop me!

6.

How it was that my wife ever liberated me, how it was that
she sent me to Paris and thus permitted me to find my own salvation,
is a mystery to me. Was it that she had no use for a dead fly?
The novel was unfinished, I was still singing her praise, a peculiar
praise indeed if one were to examine it closely, and then suddenly
she came to me one day and asked me if I would not be happier in
Europe, in Paris? She was to follow me after certain arrangements
had been made, that is to say, after she had extracted a sum big
enough for us to live on for the rest of our lives from one called
Pop. It was difficult for her to work with Pop with me around: I
was undependable, given to fits of jealousy, I had a bad conscience,
I was too tender, etc. So it was not just to make me happier, but
to establish a clear field for her operations, that I was sent to
Europe. We were making sacrifices for each other, sacrifices which
we both wanted. In other words, quite in keeping with our mode of
life, we lied to each other when we wanted to arrive at a truth.
This departure for Paris is really the end of my story, except, as
I said before, that there has never been a beginning nor an end for
me. What happened after my arrival in Paris, though it is outside
the story, extraneous as it were, belongs to the story, is a vital
part of it.

Two stories always-- the one I was thinking about and writing,
and the other which I was living, which I am still living and writing.
Each of these stories comprises a thousand stories, a thousand lives
--there is not paper enough for me to tell it, nor time enough to
live it. If it is confusing it is that I myself am still confused,
always will be, that I prefer this confusion to any order or clarity
however great, however noble or convincing. I am a confused man
because my blood is thick, because I am nearly all blood.

Nor is this a pretentious, artificial, that is to say, artistic confusion, such as Andre Gide loves to give us in his meagre works. Astonishing that a man who could write so illuminatingly about the obscurity of Dostoievski should fail so miserably when he becomes, or tries to become, obscure. The obscurity lies in the individual, or the individual in it, and no work of art can render obscure that which is thin and clear. No, Monsieur Gide's double-entry bookkeeping (in the "Counterfeiters", for example) deceives no one, not even Monsieur Gide. It is a palpable as a woman standing at the window pulling down the blinds. I am mentioning Andre Gide because Dostoievski is important to me; had there been no Dostoievski I would not be what I am to-day, I would never have written these lines and all the lines to come. But I can very well imagine Andre Gide, despite all the chrysalises he sheds so artistically, remaining Andre Gide, Dostoievski or no Dostoievski. All that he has written, Andre Gide, is a refutation of his development; he is worth that has been born a butterfly again and again, he never metamorphoses into a bull or a lion.

There were huge blocks of my story which I scattered, wasted, in novelettes, in talk, in reminiscence, in dreams. There was never any time when I was living one life, the life of a husband, a lover, a friend. Wherever I was I was leading multiple lives; the drama I carried within me I projected; wherever I made a contact I created a new character for my drama. Thus, whatever it is that I might choose to regard as my story, is lost, drowned, indissolubly fused with others' lives, others' dramas, others' stories.

8.

Upon completing my novel I received a letter from a friend, urging me to eliminate all that was not strictly essential to my theme. I respect my friend's judgment—he is an artist whom I admire— but I am not going to follow his advice, or rather, I cannot. This essential theme which he speaks of—what is it but myself? How can I eliminate what is not essential to myself? Everything is essential to me, otherwise it would not be, would not happen. My friend has lost sight of me in a "situation", but I have not lost sight of myself. A "situation" well handled make what is called a good book but I do not care greatly whether I write a good book or not. For me the book is the man and my book is the man I am, the confused man, the negligent man, the reckless man, the lusty, obscene, boisterous, thoughtful, scrupulous, lying, truthful man which I am. That is why, perhaps, when I had finished the novel I gave it the title "Crazy Cock" and for forewrod I wrote "Apologies to my friend, and for preface "Good-bye to the novel, sanity and good health. Hello angels!" And why did I mention Louis Salavin before? Because people have recognized that I am a saint; some indeed are saying that I am a "flase" saint. But that there is something of the saint about me is indisputable. I repeat, I am a deeply religious man. I see this world of ours falling apart because there is nothing for men to hold on to; I see individuals disintegrating, losing their appetites, their fervor, their sex even, because their souls are not geared to anything—free wheels! I hold that more important than writing books is to restore men their souls, their faith, their dreams. I think it is a calamity that so many people can read and write. I think it is an evil that we are fed by all the competent writers who exist to-day, a shame that men are not stuttering more, that tongues are not paralyzed, that people are not going blind or becoming demented

9.

If you think that my book is something to titivate you, to give you
a catharsis even, you are mistaken. I want to bruise you and maim
you, I want you to realize your lethargy and ignominy.... I want to
leave a scar upon the world. For I am what you are, a man of this
age, a victim of the disintegration going on, a lost soul. But, my
God, I am still man enough to recognize what is happening, to want
to fight against it, to know in which direction to cast my eyes. My
failure, your failure, what might we not make of our failure? This
is an unheroic age--not a single great man in the world...not one!
This is the untragic age, the period wherein nothing happens, a time
in which we waste away. But this mould we are leaving behind--let
us make it a rich compost!

Do you think the men to come will be interested in Thomas Mann,
in Sinclair Lewis, in Andre Gide? Do you think they will reverence
Lenin, Wilson, Mussolini? For a time, yes, because the individual
is only slowly being killed off--there will be a long nightmare yet
of democracy, of food, of solidarity. But I am not thinking of these
immediate successors. I am thinking of that new Middle Age to come,
when God is born again, when men fight and kill for God, when work
is forgotten and books assume their true place in life. I am think-
ing that in that age to come I will not be overlooked. Then my his-
troy will become important, my scar will have significance. I can
not forget that I am making history, that I am history. I regard
myself not as a book, but as a history of our time. And history is
made, not written.

(space)

10.

"Ifx she does not come and destroy it!" Last night, after I had written these' pages, I went to a cafe and read her letters.
letters
Four mmxknm! All that she has written me in these three long years. One a year, you might say. And as I read them I wept; I would have given anything to have her here at my side, to have her destroy what I have begun, to make it impossible for me to write this book. She is not a writer, my Hildred. Her letters almost make me blush when I look at them, when I see that careless, almost illiterate scrawl. But these letters are more precious to me than any documents I possess. "As for my good spirits," she says writes, "how could you believe that? Don't you know that I drug myself, like your Russian friends, only in my case it is with youth and a willingness to commit robbery, murder, anything to make you happy and to be with you soon, not as the woman whom everyone knows, but as an insignificant little housewife, lover, friend to my....... Do you want to know why I am a great woman? Well, I'll let you in on a secret. I have had enough instinctive wisdom and a great love to discover the greatest, kindest, most sensitive human being in the entire universe. I have truly been blessed. I could say, if I were dying, kmam I have loved a man kmamwhom the world of women would give their life to know (if they were not blind)--thank God they are, or what chance would I have unless I believe that there is a magnetic force stronger than everything in the world which guides our love......It is you who have given me all--and that all is my love for you. If I am any one it is my love for you--I want to be only your woman--your love--your all. You beg me to believe in your tolerance. I don't want that. I want you to hold me, scold me, beat me, love me and never leave

11.

me again, no matter what I do or say. I am your woman, your friend, your lover, your own child. Nothing, no one means anything ever to me. I am nothing without you. I want nothing except to be with you. My bad temper has sprung from the devil itself. I would give my life to make up for how my past nonsense and silly ego......"

That's how she writes to me, my Hildred. That was her first letter. The others are the same-- nothing but humility, tenderness, devotion, worship. She calls me her God even, and I don't doubt but that she means it, while the pen is in her hand. I don't doubt but that she would lay down her life for me, in these moments of exaltation. On the other hand, when her ego is in full swing, when she wants something desperately, she could see me die without batting an eyelash. Splendid creature! Fine breed! If I did not feel such a need to live, what more wonderful than to let her kill me! On page 248 of Gide's "Dostoievski" I made this notation in the margin: "Rewrite novel with fine opposition between Vanya and Hildred. Hildred a female Stavrogin, Vanya a female Parsifal. The suggestibility of Vanya! Hildred's lack of direction, inability to distinguish between good and evil. Blind force. And Tony Bring is simply the arena--because he understands all." The notation xhanda is written beside this confession of Stavrogin:

"Dans ces experiences, dans toute ma vie precedente, je me suis revele immensement fort. Mais a quoi appliquer cette force? Voici ce que je n'ai jamais su, ce que je ne sais pas encore. Je puis, comme je l'ai toujours pu, eprouver le desir de faire une bonne action, et j'en ressens du plaisir. A cote de cela, je desire aussi faire le mal, et j'en ressens également de la satisfaction."

12.

This new personnage, says Gide, to which he is giving all his attention at present, is Stavrogin, the most strange perhaps and the most terrifying creation of Dostoievski. It is this strange and terrifying creation which I have for wife. Stavrogin has been born again a woman......

It is no mere coincidence that my Hildred speaks so frequently of Stavrogin, that of all the roles she has played, of all the roles she is capable of playing, this role of Stavrogin suits her best, is her most constant role. I have been reading lately Virginia Woolf's "Orlando", this strange character (not strange enough, unfortunately!) who lives through three centuries and in the middle of the book changes sex. The book begins, very significantly--"He--for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it--". But it is when I come to the following passage that I sit up in amazement, conscious of a deep truth, and to me a very personal, meaningful one:

"And, indeed, it cannot be denied that the most successful practitioners of the art of life, often unknown people by the way, somehow contrive to synchronize the sixty or seventy different times which beat simultaneously in every normal human system so that when eleven strikes, all the rest chime in unison, and the present is neither a violent disruption nor completely forgotten in the past. Of them we can justly say that they live precisely the sixty-eight of seventy-two years allotted them on the tomb-stone. Of the rest some we know to be dead though they walk among us; some are not yet born though they go through the forms of life; others are hundreds of years old though they call themselves thirty-six. The true length of a person's life, whatever the Dictionary of National

13.

Biography may say, is always a matter of dispute. For it is a difficult business--this time-keeping; nothing more quickly disorders it than contact with any of the arts......"

Now it is precisely this contact with the arts which is the germ and clue to Hildred's character. When I met her she was a "taxi" in a dance-hall, a quite ordinary individual, you would say, to glance at her, attractive, but not astonishingly so, her body rather heavy, her face too full, a sort of drugged, lethargic, dreamy, animal quality about her. Her most intimate friends were whores, drug addicts, drunkards; two of them, a mulatto and a tough little Irish girl, were decidedly nymphomaniac. Another called Julia, of Mayflower descent, was always losing her false teeth when she got drunk, and in the mornings when she came out of her torpor and rubbed her eyes she would look at the man beside her and say "How the hell did you get here?" And when I began to woo her with all the powers that were in me, never having received a "literary" letter before, she would greet me like this--- "Say, listen, what kind of dope do you take?" This was her milieu, her language, her stock of ideas. When I introduced her to my friends I had to stand over her with a whip and give it to her now and then so that she would not make an ass of herself, or of me, so that she would not say, as she did on one occasion-- "Sure I know Bernard Shaw; I heard him lecture a few weeks ago at Carnegie Hall". And like the Philippovna woman, in the "Possessed", who could never forgive her benefactor because he had taken her virginity, so it seems to me, Hildred has never forgiven me for robbing her of her innocence. Frankly, I think she could have gone on in that dreamy, vegetative way for a thousand years, could have been another slut like M Julia, a five-and-ten cent whore like her mulatto friend, Eve.

14.

I don't think it was I who changed her, except indirectly. What roused her from her sleep was her contact with books. For almost a solid year she scarcely left the house--she devoured my books. And soon thereafter, with the aggressiveness and assertiveness of her character, she was criticizing my opinions; she quoted my words when it served to make an impression, and she ridiculed them for the same reason. She must make an impression always! Ideas intoxicated her--if they could be worn like plumage. She had not yet succumbed to them, as she was to later...... And then Vanya came along--her great friend Vanya-- who was poet, sculptor, actor, lunatic. In short, Vanya was everything. "The collision with a star of this magnitude flung her out of her shallow orbit; whereas before she had existed in a nebulous state, the tail of a comet, as it were, now she became a sun whose inner chromosphere blazed with undying energy." In the novel, this passage I have just quoted, referred to Vanya--it was Vanya whom I depicted as a sun blazing with undying energy, not however, as a result of her contact with Hildred, but from her alliance with another woman, the Krupanowa woman, who, alas, never existed. Yes, Vanya did blaze up when she collided with that sun which Hildred was, but it was Hildred more than Vanya who caught fire, who blazed with undying energy. And though nothing of the sort happened, it was deeply true what I said of them then-- "A singular life they led together. Drugged by the ritual of the mass, they staggered to the slaughterhouse, thence to the lives of the Popes. They ran their fingers over the skins of crotins and elephants, they photographed jewels and artificial flowers and coolies stripped to the waist; they explored the pathologic monsters of the insect world and the still more pathologic monsters of Rome. At night they dreamt of the idols buried in the morain of Campeche and of bulls charging from the stockade to expire

15.

under straw hats."

But however true, in a pertinent way, may be these excerpts
from my novel, they are also terribly false, most false because
they give the illusion of truth. Except for certain passages which
I wrote in a trance the whole work was conceived in my head, it
was written with my hands, and my hands and brain were well coordi-
nated, though critics may object to the result of the coordination.
I was at work on it for four or five years (the time is blurred to
me), writing, rewriting, correcting, destroying, pasting it together;
basting it like a chicken, walking around it like a partly-finished
statue, spraying it with toilet water, taking it out for a walk,
dusting it, airing it--and all this labor for naught, all this to
discover that I had written nothing adequate, all this without
realizing who and what manner of people we were, thinking, thinking,
constantly thinking. Result-- a monstrous, useless edifice, a sky-
scraper without elevators, a tomb without a bone in it. In
criticizing this huge edifice which has been demolished, whose parts
are scattered now over the four continents (some to be preserved in
museums) I am pointing a finger at all that writing which goes by
the name of literature, I am levelling it, razing it to the ground.
Says Phillippe P. Datz - "I must confess that the great tenors leave
me cold, whether it is a case of Racine or of Rimbaud, I am inter-
ested only in "miss-fire" books. The others are works that are
placed." It may take me a thousand pages until I get to my "theme"
--and I may never get to it-- but this forest I am leading you
through is more important than any "theme", it is me in my immediacy,
in this present which is crumbling, me the present supported, raised
up, by the pressure of past and future, taking a last terrifying
look before I am dropped from the heights and engulfed......

16.

(space)

On looking over my old notes I am impressed by-- the quantity
and character of individuals who were in love with Hildred (I have
recorded forty-two men and sixteen women, all but about eight of
these dating from the period since I knew her); by the variety and
number of friends I was constantly surrounded by, and yet a very
lonely individual; by the staggering amount of books I read despite
the hectic quality of my life; by the positions I occupied in my
role of bread-winner; by the wonderful possibilities always open to
me, which I almost religiously evaded; by my capacity for inspiring
the most ardent hatred and the most tender, abject devotion, in men
and women alike; by my candor and sincerity, truly monstrous, and
my trueness, faithlessness, an almost god-like selfishness; by my
callousness and cruelty, especially to those who were dependent on
me spiritually or otherwise; by my great faith, my blindness, my
inability to learn from experience; by my humanity, which has per-
mitted me to enter so many hearts, which has deepened my cruelty,
my callousness, my faith, my love; by my incurable optimism that
permits me to embrace all forms of pessimism, that makes suicide
seem ridiculous and romantic, unless it be creative, unless it be
like Kirilov's in the "Possessed"; by the paralysis that gripped me
for thirty years, that led me to ask every day and all through the
day (even when I was on top of a woman)--"what do you want to be in
life?"; by my humility, even more insulting and outrageous than my
vanity, my humility which goaded me to wrong those who befriended me,
to despise those who trusted me, to betray those who loved me; by
my curiosity, so extravagant and unhampered that I committed crimes
in the name of it; by my instaialbleness, truly ferocious, truly in-

17.

human; by my deep ingratitude, my recklessness, my inexhaustible
hunger for life, a hunger that would destroy everything in order
that we might liye again--violently, passionately, unrooted in the
past, heedless of the future, beautiful, desperate ingrates, unmoral
in the highest sense, learned savages who have freed themselves from
the thrill dom of the intellect to enter upon an orgy of living.

It is when I unroll this heavy scroll of experience that I feel
a pity for others, that I envy myself, my many past selves, that I
taste anew and relish with the utmost keenness my suffering, my
disillusionment, my wasted years; for if now, because the hard core
inside me has given way in places, if now, I say, I am able to let
myself flow, to express myself after a fashion, it is only, I realize
because I have arrested my living. And here, properly, I should, if
I were like others, register a sigh, a regret; but I am incapable of
that, I know too much about myself (without however any least ill-
usion of knowing enough). In a sense I am like those most intelli-
gent people who are "cured" by the psychoanalyst, who after being
made acquainted with the nature of their malady find themselves
sufficiently strong to live with their malady, to cultivate it, as
it were, and utilize it for bigger purposes. The thoughtcertainly
is not original with me, but it has impressed me, influenced me--
this idea, common to many great men before the learned jargon of
psychoanalysis ever existed, that in expressing one's self through
one's art one is effecting a cure, that is to say, one is getting
better acquainted with one's self, training one's self for greater
and more dangerous combats.

18.

But I will cease this language of "one's self", which is deeply
abhorrent to me; it is like Tony Bring again, he whom the novelist
recorded as "sitting alone in a furnished room overlooking the harbor".
I am far from being an anonymous individual, a character
in a novel; if for a moment I daily with the idea of being "cured",
if for the briefest interval I make use of that quixotic hocus-pocus
which the psychologists have dignified and erected into a formidable
pseudo-science, it is only because of my humanity again, my broad
tolerance, my curiosity, my hunger to partake of everything, even
that which is, or may be, harmful, false, poisonous. No, I am
singularly untouched by ideas: I do not live by them, I absorb them
rather, take them over, digest them, mutilate them, transmogrify
them, spit them out, sweat them out, evacuate them, redeposit them
in the soil, where they belong. I am not a slave to ideas; I am
an agronomist who uses them in the way they were intended to be used
--as fertilizers. And if we run short of fertilizers I do not
worry either: we can always fall back on the natural elements--the
earth will never go bankrupt.

It is here, in this manner of speaking, that I detect one of
who
the greatest defects in Hildred's character, Hildred is such a force;
she who lives like a volcano and with a pace I have never seen equal-
led before, she who is continually erupting and destroying, she will
burn out, become extinct, because she is not putting back that which
she is robbing from life. It is that which makes her so ugly and
fearsome to many, that which makes her so truly immoral, so inhuman,
albeit sublime and inspiring. It is that perhaps which led me, the
ardent explorer, to the tip of the crater, which held me fascinated
and terrified as I gazed into its bubbling depths. Who is more

19.

attracted by death, by the prospect of total annihilation, than he
who is all life, who devours and fecundates, whose hunger is but a
reflection of his desire to be exhausted, that is *drained*, that is
*extinguished*. When I first met her, as I said before, she was
rather an ordinary-looking individual, much like any other crater,
as it were. Her lethargy, her dream-like quality, her somnolence,
that inactive, vegetative quality I remarked on, that statue falling
asleep--I begin to perceive now why it attracted me. It was she who
gave me the first glance, it was she who nodded to me and beckoned me
to come. And instinctively I refused, or rather *not* instinctively,
but *wilfully* I refused. My going to the dance-hall that night was
precisely the act of a man who, against all warning, against all
advice, against his highest wisdom, ventures into an unknown and
dangerous realm. I remember so vividly how that evening, when I
left my office, I said to myself "adventure at all cost", that I
felt the money in my pocket (it was pay-day and it was a consider-
able sum for me) and I decided to spend it all, spend it on myself,
no matter how foolishly. I remember how, when I left her--it was
dawning and my pockets were empty-- I walked into my room where my
wife and child were sleeping and, looking at them, at the room where
I had struggled to write, seeing in them and in the room a reflection
of my death (though it was a death many would have envied), I re-
marked to myself that all this was finished, that I had entered upon
a new life and nothing would deter me, even if I had to murder them,
from living my own life, a life with Hildred. How my life blazed
up with this realization! How firmly and resolutely I carried through
in that ordeal that was to follow! If any one weakened it was Hild-
red. When she saw the havoc that had been wrought she wept. Imagine
the volcano weeping! Yet so it was. There was even a time when she

20.

tried to kill herself, when weary, was it, of spreading destruction,
she attempted to turn her powers upon herself. I must confess that
I was never very fearful of her succeeding; even then I must have
realized that she was attempting the impossible. Volcanoes do not
destroy themselves, they destroy others, beings, homes, country-
sides. When they die it is not death, as we know it, but a cessation
of will; they refuse to deal any longer in death, they go to sleep,
and it is the most terrifying sleep we know of because there is no
death in it; they do not dream, they haunt our dreams; there is no
future, no beyond; there is only a black scar upon the surface of the
earth. That awe-inspiring activity before which men prostrate them-
selves is equivalent in a way to the activity of microbes which, so
we believe, lie dormant for thousands of years, which deal in death,
know no other life than death.

It is with some such feeling about her as this that I can be-
lieve she is thousands of years old, that she never really died but
simply ceased living, went to sleep, a dreamless sleep. And since
volcanoes, like individuals, like nations, suddenly burst into un-
trollable activity, have their periods, as we say, for reasons un-
known to us; that we give names and known causes makes it only too
apparent that we are confronted with mystery. I have no more faith
in the great causes of science than I have in mythology--less, in fact.
If the language of science has become unreadable, except to a select
few, it is only a proof (let us rejoice because of it!) that knowledge
is becoming more and more restricted, that knowledge is breaking down
and proving of no avail. Instead of it being a deplorable sign that
man is becoming less and less able to assimilate his knowledge, it is

21.

on the contrary one of the most encouraging signs that we have. We
are preparing to accept once again the mystery of life. The savants,
with their heads crammed with knowledge, are beginning to appear in
the cruel and ridiculous light of what they are--sports, freaks,
monsters. They can do nothing for us, except to amuse us.

If all this seems tedious and out of place it is merely because
I have delayed coming to the point. The enigma which I have always
felt Hildred to be, the enigma with which I have wrestled and fought,
which I have tried to fasten down and read with the most delicate
instruments of science, this enigma I restore now proudly to its
own limbo. I am done with trying to read the inscrutable.

(space)

When therefore I congratulate myself upon my deliverance, when
from this hard rock which was me there spurts forth an uninterrupted
stream, when not wishing any longer to know my characters and,
ceasing my struggles, I envelop them in my spirit only to find that
they in turn are enveloping me, discovering that what was mysterious
in them has become mysterious in me, that it is in this dark, secret
essence of them and of me that everything bathes voluptuously, that
the dark places I feared, which I tried to seize and objectify, to
penetrate by will and knowledge, are now the sources of my joy, my
activity, then indeed, and not caring whether my words have signifi-
cance for any one but myself, I cry aloud and know my freedom. Now
it is that everything has new meaning for me, a meaning that I have
created, forged with my own experience. Therefore the *only* meaning,
the *true* meaning. Meaning and truth! Notice how we have shied away

22.

from these words, how we have hedged when we were obliged to use
very
them, how we apologized for the mention of them. With what force
these words of Dostoievski, written two years before his death,
greet me now: "Je constate souvent avec peine que je n'ai pas ex-
prime, litteralement, la vingtième partie de ce que j'aurais voulu,
et peut-être même pu exprimer. Ce qui me sauve, c'est l'espoir
habituel qu'un jour Dieu m'enverra tant de force et d'inspiration
que je m'exprimerai plus complètement, bref que je pourrai exposer
tout ce que je renferme dans mon cœur et dans ma fantasie." Adds
Gide:

"Il était de ces rares genies qui s'avancent d'oeuvre en œuvre,
par une sorte de progression continue, jusqu'à ce que la mort les
vienne brusquement interrompre."

Do you suppose that I blush a little when I make these frequent
references to Dostoievski, when I draw, as I shall more and more,
comparisons and parallelisms between myself and him? Do you think
this is a specimen of that vanity I referred to a while ago? Not at
all! I can afford to be humble here because I am sure of myself. I
can afford to introduce these digressions because they are not di-
gressions at all, because it is in this atmosphere which Dostoievski
created once and for all that I have actually lived all my life, be-
cause when I demanded more room, more adventure, more expression, I
was demanding that atmosphere which belonged to me, which was denied
me in America, which is denied me here even because nowhere in this
world to-day are there men with big souls big enough to thrive in this
atmosphere. I mean to say, with all the cheek in me, with a sneer
on my lips and a curse for your poverty, that within the four walls
of our home, within the pages of this book we lived, Hildred and I,

23.

there was a world founded which you have never entered; and I mean to
add, moreover, that I am not concerned whether you are convinced of
what I say. I am happy even if you drop me here, you xx who are
tried beyond your patience by my muttering and stammering; you will
not find me stammering in the manner of Joyce or Proust, nor using
an atomizer to spray you with the perfume of my cultural divagations.
I am telling you that when Vanya, my mortal enemy, and Hildred who
became my wife, when we three locked ourselves in a room, the things
that happened to us in that room were so tremendous that if I could
tell them smoothly and interestingly I would be ashamed of myself. I
do not wish to infer it, I say it bluntly, that however small America's
soul may be it is I who understand it better than writer living, and
that when I am through with what I have to say it will be recognized
that I am the only Dostoievski America could possibly have. And if I
render homage to any Americans at all it is only to two men-- Whitman
and Dreiser, the first because he marked the limits of the American
soul and the latter because he was the only one who effectively
attempted to explore its depths. In both cases you will remark what
I choose to call the muttering and stammering; in the case of Dreiser
there is not enough time elapsed (living and dying) for us to apprecia-
te his inglorious attempts. Only in an age of sterility, an age of
competent writing, would a man like Dreiser be denied his due. That
he has been given fame and money I do not call his due. I think that
was the most ignoble, the most insulting way to espouse this man's
cause. To pat him on the back, as he has been by big fellows and
little fellows, is to treat him like a dog. For America, considering
its enfeeblement, Dreiser was a magnificent mutterer. He was inart-
iculate in a big way, and not like Anderson, a clever little mounte-
bank who passed the hat around after he had shown us his deformities.

24.

What I am trying to say (to fall into one of Mr. Anderson's pet devices) is that the quality of Dreiser and the quality of Whitman was a high quality--I speak of Dreiser as dead already because artistically he is. We have to-day a lot of little dogs who have learned to stand on their hind legs and perform tricks; they are not even dogs of good breed. Just as the nation itself is mongrel so are its dogs. To expect a cultural renaissance of America is to expect the impossible; that is why a book like the "Rediscovery of America" makes me puke, why men like T. S. Eliot and Jean Cocteau, who are searching for God, appear to me to be sticking their noses into garbage cans. All these religionists of to-day are jugglers and acrobats, colossal frauds, though sincere enough at times. They are so glib, they know just where to search, they have maps even, and with every advance along the road they pause and give God a hand, whoop it up for Him, advertise Him, peddle Him, as it were.

I see no hope for America, none whatever! Unlike Dostoievski, I have no message for the outside world. I am not a Pan-American. I see America spreading disaster, a curse upon the world. I see a long night settling in and that mushroom which has poisoned the world withering at its roots. I feel myself drawn down in that defeat and so it is with a premonition of the end (be it to-morrow or five hundred years from now) that I write feverishly, pray that I may be spared to put it all down; so it is too that I find it more and more difficult to express *all* that I mean, that my thoughts sputter out now and then, that I rekindle the flame again and again, not with courage simply, but with desperation--for there is no one I can trust to say it for me. My faltering and groping, my search for any and every means of expression, is then a sort of divine stutter, a numbness, a paralysis, the last gush of emotion as the coffin is being lowered.

25.

(space)

Immediately after dinner every evening I take the garbage down to the court-yard. Coming up, I stand with the empty pail in my hand, and lean out the stair-case window to gaze at Sacre Coeur high up on the hill of Montmartre, resplendent in its whiteness. I was unaware, until I began taking the garbage down, that one could see Sacre Coeur from where we live; I would never even have thought to look for it. Similarly it was not until I was locked out one night and obliged to pace the streets until morning that I took the trouble to ascend the hill of Montmartre and make my pilgrimage to this shrine at the hour when it presents to us its most sublime aspect--dawn. Approaching it by that steep and twisting slope which brings you to the rear of the basilica I saw that a shack which I had passed time and time again without noticing it was marked "night-shelter". This fact, coupled with the associations which it gave rise to in my mind, created a feeling in me even more mysterious and touching than the living intimacy of Sacre Coeur itself. And as I turned to look back upon that sea of homes from which I had emerged I felt penitent, conscience-stricken, to think that it was only an accident which had led me to realize this magnificent moment, a moment I thought to myself which it was in my power to capture by a simple act of will, by less than that--by a mere wish. I must add, in all truthfulness (it is so human, so understandable) that it has never occurred to me since to resuscitate this moment.

Something analogous to this has occurred several times in my life with Hildred. A much deeper feeling, naturally, since it was linked with my very salvation. I mean that after a scene,

26.

at that moment when I felt that she had wounded me most deeply,
immediately after the most violent antagonism and hatred, there
would come over me such a deep sense of forgiveness and with it
such serenity and calrity that I would pray for strength enough
to wound her, as she had me, in order that she might arrive at
and enjoy my serenity and calrity attitude. In such moments I would say to
myself "think how you would act if you knew that to-morrow you
were going to die", and accepting the thought as a fact I was
not only amazed that I could no longer feel resentment but I was
convinced that if, just for one moment, everybody in the world
could feel that way our life on this earth would be altered
instantly and forever.

I come back to Kirilov again, to that point in his conver-
sation which Gide quotes in order to explain his reason for wish-
ing to commit suicide; it has just been remarked that he, Kirilov,
appears extremely happy, although it was not such a long time
ago that he was in a very bad state of humor. The conversation
runs as follows:

"Hum, a present je ne gronde plus. Alors, je ne savais
pas que j'etais heureux....L'homme est malheureux parce qu'il
ne connait pas son bonheur, uniquement pour cela. Celui qui
saura qu'il est heureux deviendra tout de suite grand a l'instant
meme....Tout est bien; j'ai decouvert cela brusquement.

"Et si l'on meurt de faim; et si l'on viole une petite
fille, c'est bien aussi?

"Oui, tout est bien pour quiconque sait que tout est tel."

27.

And then comes this most remarkable utterance of Kirilov's:

"Ils ne sont pas bons, puisqu'ils ne savent pas qu'ils le sont.
Quand ils l'auront appris, ils ne violeront plus de petites
filles. Il faut qu'ils sachent qu'ils sont bons et, instant-
anement, ils le deviendront tous, jusqu'au dernier."

I wish to put beside this statement of Kirilov's the opinion
of a contemporary concerning the Surrealists:

"The revolution in which they are primarily interested, to tell the truth, appears to be a rather vague one--a spiritual, rather than a political revolution: an overturning of established modes of thought and feeling that will make possible a different life upon the earth, and, incidentally, a different art and literature."

"To tell the truth"--do I need to say it?--is the killing
phrase!

I speak of these sublime moments with Hildred because I know
whenever, so to speak, "I am taking down the garbage" I think
of myself standing out on a high hill, resplendent in whiteness,
the self which I ignore so persistently trembling there in the
cool, serene dawn. It is no Christ that inspires me--it is the
god in me that I am thinking of, something better than a Christ,
something bigger than a god, if only a man.

All this comes back to me forcibly as I relive the last mo-
ments we shared together here in Paris, my friend Boris and myself.

28.

In the realm of action he is a timid man, my friend Boris. (It is he who urged me to "stick to my central theme"). In running away from his wife and children he felt himself to be a coward-- so wrong, so utterly wrong, this! It might have been a heroic gesture--it should have been! All the right things he had done were wrong, and this one great wrong that he was inflicting upon them was the right thing, but alas, he was incapable of realizing it, or, if he were capable of realizing it, could not sustain the thought longer than an instant. And so, during the last few days wherein he wound up his affairs and made innumerable visits to his lawyers, arranging with them to transfer to his wife all his earthly, tangible possessions, I accompanied him and listened to him in amazement. For here was a man who for the first time in his life was doing the right thing and he was deriving nothing from it. He was tormented and perplexed, praising his actions when he should have been asahmed of them, apologizing for his behavior when he should have been boasting of it. How often, in alluding to his wife who at that moment was doubtless cursing him, he remarked "If she could only see me now! If she only realized what I am trying to do for her!" Poor wretch! He could no longer distinguish between the demon in himself and the angel. And all the while, as I ran beside him (he could not go fast enough for fear that he would renege) I kept saying to myself, for him, "Treasure this moment! Treasure it! Treasure it!" And he was saying to himself "What a fool I am! What a fool!" because he feared that she would not understand his gesture, or appreciate it, and because he regretted that he was doing what he was, yet felt himself incapable of doing otherwise. I recall now that once when I halted him to explain what it meant "if we were to die to-morrow"

29.

a group of workers who were standing at our elbow suddenly began to pound away with sledge-hammers--an ear-splitting racket that completely unnerved him. Whereas I waited smilingly for them to stop, and the din was soothing to me, my thoughts held firmly, indeed with each blow of the sledge-hammer it was as if I were spiking a thought, driving it deep within; and at the same time I was comparing this kind of noise with that excruciating, intolerable sort which only the other day I had heard when walking along the Grands Boulevards-- the noise of riveting machines, a noise that seems insane, fiendish, monstrous, compared with the furious, honest blows of men using a sledgehammer.

In this sudden, furious clatter which had upset my friend it seemed to me I could hear my wife's sobs when she had closed the door after her and left me utterly alone; I could picture what I had never stopped to think of before, in this situation--her anguish, her grief. Is it harder to run away than to remain? Harder to injure than to receive injury? We who are injured, do we think enough of the pain it costs the other? Alas, my friend Boris, he could not determine whether he was injuring or being injured, and the plight of him moved me deeply. I at least had known what it was to be injured and I had known also how to injure. And between the two there is no great difference that I can perceive, so long as the feeling is pure and fervid in either case. Between Hildred and myself there is a fine equivalence: when she adopts her role I know how to assume mine, and vice versa.

30.

When I look up from the machine my eyes confront the large, many-colored map of Europe which I have pinned to my wall; it is criss-crossed with rail and steamship lines, with national frontiers, with indelible prejudices and rivalries. And the very raggedness of its contours, the big gaps that indicate sea and lake, the broken links that are the islands--all this strain and erosion exemplifies, in my imagination, the conflict that has been going on between II.ildred and myself and of which this book is but a map. I am impressed, when I look at this map of Europe, that it is a much vaster continent than it seems, that in fact it is not a continent at all but part of a great continent that has been broken into by the sea. Gibraltar, the Channel, the Scandinavian peninsula--here at these weak points the earth gave way; and where the land held up, where it resisted the shock, notice how ridiculous are the formations it took. One would not have to know a word of geology to understand the vicissitudes which this continent of Europe, with its network of rivers, lakes and seas, has undergone. One can spot at a glance the titanic efforts that were made at different periods just as one can detect the abortive, frustrated efforts; one can actually feel the great changes in climate that followed upon the various upheavals. And if one looks at this map with the eye of a cartologist one can imagine further what it will look like fifty thousand, or a hundred thousand years from now, which is not long in the life of a continent.

So it is that looking at the sea and land which makes us the contours of our map I see certain ridiculous formations and that others again bear witness to heroic struggles. I can trace in

31.

the island growths and the monstrous peninsulas the record of
separatism and compromise, in the rugged Alpine chain the
history of internal conflicts, in the long, winding rivers the
gradual giving way, the slipping of faith, the loss of courage;
I can see that the frontiers are marked with heavy, natural
boundaries and with light, wavering lines variable as the wind;
I can feel just where the climate is going to change, feel how
inevitable it is that certain fertile regions will wither and
other barren places blossom; I am sure that in some quarters
the myth will come true, that the mythology of to-day will be
relived, that links will be found between the unknown men we
were and the unknown men we are, that the confusion which is
the past will be marked by a greater confusion to come, and
that it is only the tumult and confusion which is of importance
and that we must get down and worship it. It is in this sense
only that I am a cartologist, that in drawing a map of our
struggles I am not pointing to the result of the struggles but
to the existence and value of them. It is to recognize that
water and land are constantly changing places, that this con-
tinent we have charted out together as a life has no reality
as such, that if we decompose it or reintegrate it, atom by
atom, we understand even less, that finally we two beings,
Hildred and I, contain all the elements that make the earth,
its real substance and its myth, that we carry with us everywhere
our geography and our changing climate.

(space)

32.

I'm thinking of the sort of man I was before I met her--
that is, up to my thirtieth year. The most restless, dissatisfied,
despairing soul imaginable. Nothing but unhappy love
affairs, wandering from one job to another, running off to
Colorado, Alaska, California, Mexico in the hope of escaping
from myself, going through the most bitter sacrifices to make
a woman happy while all the time I was in love with another.
At sixteen, while I am still in High School (and the prize
pupil incidentally), getting a dose of clap from a French whoe,
and when I am cured falling in love with one of my teachers and
knocking her up. Taking my father's hard-earned money to go
to college and no more than I leave the house hot-foot it to
my mistress, a woman old enough to be my mother, and staying
with her for four years--four of the most precious years of my
life wasted! Continually surrounded by nobodies, by people who
talked brilliantly but did nothing. My most intimate friends
profligates and philanderers. Taking a job in the morning and
quitting it in the afternoon. Never a cent in my pocket--borrow-
rowing, borrowing all my life--and yet having a grand time.
The war breaks out and, hoping to avoid being drafted, I marry,
and from the very day that I marry it is one long, continuous
battle. My wife, who is capable of supporting me, gives up her
profession and lies back on her ass. Just when the child comes
along I realize that what I want to do in life is to write,
but I'm fucked and so, in desperation, I go out and I talk myself
into a big job. And by one of those miracles which are beyond
understanding I hold the job, I am even regarded as an exceptional

man. Who knows? In ten years I might have become a vice-
head
president. In twenty years I might have become president of
the Board of Directors and later President of the United
States. It makes no difference that while I was being praised
for the performance of my duties I was pilfering the cash-
drawer and sleeping with the women I employed, that I hired
insane people in order to bring them to the psychopathic ward
where my friend, the psychiatrist in charge, regaled me with
wine and cigars, that I consorted with the company's detectives
for the pleasure of aiding them in running down crooks and per-
verts, that I made friends of the humblest clerks in all the
branch offices so that I might drop in at any hour of the day
or night and borrow a five spot, that some of these clerks, who
later became my bosom friends, were henchmen of the most no-
torious politicians and gangsters in New York. The five years
that I put in as personnel director of this great public service
corporation were five full years replete with good deeds and
bad, invaluable to me because I had in my hands the destiny of
so many people, subnormals and abnormals, old and young, male
and female, representing never less than forty nationalities.

And all this time, though I was well paid for my services,
I had never a cent in my pocket that I could call my own. My
wife, who never entertained, who did not even dress well, had
nevertheless to keep a good home, a home with spare rooms that
made me think of a museum; and since that was all she demanded
of life, since moreover I was leading my own life, getting
everything I wanted on credit, as it were, I kept practically
nothing for myself--I pilfered the cash drawer, or I sponged on

34.

my low-brow friends who were only too pleased to have my company.
Or, as happened later, I promoted one of my mistresses to a
position as my secretary, got her a substantial raise and allowed
her to supply me with pocket money. Later still I demoted her
(after we had quarrelled) and substituted for her a rather ugly
mulatress whom no one would suspect me to be in love with. She
was capable and efficient, this Camilla, and she loved me deeply.
She was also a most passionate, savage creature, and devoted to
me, first because she was superior to me intellectually, and
secondly, because she was morbid about her negro blood. She was
both a slave and a tyrant. She had money too--it wasn't neces-
sary for her to earn a living; she worked merely because she was
afraid of going to pieces. Naturally my wife, who spent every-
thing on "her home", never had the money to pay for an abortion.
And she was the sort of woman who was always getting in the family
way, the sort, too, who when her belly swelled up a bit became
shame-faced and locked herself in the house. In these emergen-
cies I would turn to Camilla who was always ready to pay, and not
only to pay, but to nurse my wife and look after my child. My
wife thought a great deal of Camilla, as she did of any one who
would make sacrifices for her. Strange situation! While my wife
is having her womb scraped (on Camilla's money) Camilla is lying
on the dining room table with her legs wide apart and her tongue
hanging out. Stranger still-- a fact I didn't know until later--
is that Camilla, with her hungry, gnawing womb, Camilla who
couldn't wait to be thrown on the bed but insisted on using the
dining-room table, this same Camilla was at the same time keeping
a mistress, a white woman even more ugly than herself, a woman
with hairs on her chin and breasts that hung to her knees.

35.

And not only that--but corrupting my office boy, a lad of sixteen who up till then had never known a woman. Ah, Camilla!
What a life she had before her! What she wouldn't have done if she had had the strength to live! But that drop of negro blood --that terrified her. She was superior to any woman I had met before but she couldn't rise above this question of blood. If she were getting the better of me in an argument (as she invariably did) I had only to look at her a certain way and she was lost, she would come crawling to me like a dog and lick my hand, a trick that made me ashamed of myself and yet forced me to take advantage of her, ridicule her, and then later whip her back into a fighting mood so that she could be herself again.

Between times there were the women I employed: women who were hungry, women who were jilted, women who had come down in the world. I hired them right under Camilla's eyes, borrowed of Camilla to take them out to dinner or to go dancing with them, urged Camilla to look after them. And once there walked into the office a Lilliputian dressed as a boy, and when I had broken him down and discovered that he was a woman of twenty-five I turned him, her, it, over to Camilla and there was a beautiful affair which almost cost us our jobs. For Camilla could inspire passion even in Lilliputians and whether they were male or female seemed to be immaterial. All that she demanded was that they be white!

A gay, incongruous life! Interviewing such quantities and varieties of people that I had no more regard for a human being than I had for a fly; praying for "cases" rather than applicants; welcoming the criminal, the pervert, the dippy as a relief from

36.

the tedium of dealing with sane, normal, healthy, dull persons. When I did spend an evening at home, which was rare, falling asleep on the couch, or, coming home unexpectedly now and then with my cronies and making my wife cook for them, a thing she detested more than anything. Outraging her sense of hospitality, which was nil, by asking my guests to shell out for the food, criticizing her ideas, which were meagre, before the guests, airing our differences publicly because that was another thing she couldn't support. In other words, in return for "her home", which she got, I made her sweat blood. Toward the end I would even inform her when I had fallen in love with another woman and twitted her because she wouldn't release me. But she clung to me like a woman who refuses to be operated on even though she has a tumor inside her big as a melon.

Just when the child began to interest me --I had regarded it as an animal up till then-- my wife suddenly decided to leave me and ran off to another city to live with her parents. I abandoned the "home" we had established and set up quarters in a studio with my bosom pal whom I had made my assistant and whom I could rely upon to cover me when I wished to make myself scarce. The studio developed into a sort of combined laboratory andwhore-house: we kept women there and exchanged them, we brought employees there who were interesting because of their abnormalities and grilled them mercilessly, experimented upon them as if they were mice or guinea pigs. I began to write and became less and less interested in holding my job; would go on bats that lasted three and four days; would arrive at the office after being up all night and sleep the day out on a zinc-covered table

in the dressing-room; would growl at my good friend, Joe, because he couldn't handle both our jobs; fired him, in fact, because he wouldn't obey me implicitly and gave the job to a scurrilous little Jew who never resented anything I did and who was always able to dig up money for me when I needed it.

And then one day I put on my hat, walked out of the office without saying a word, and boarded the train. On the way I wired Sam, the little Jew, what to say regarding my absence. It was evening when I walked in on my wife. We had a touching scene in the bath-room and then, for three days and nights, we lay joined like a pair of snakes. The result, I knew in advance, would be another abortion. But whereas formerly she demanded this and that protection, would whimper and make the most agonizing gestures, and hang her head afterwards as if she had committed a sin, now she was absolutely abandoned, wept with joy, begged me to treat her tenderly. The morning after I arrived she had a surprise for me--she brought the child out and lo, the child *walked* and *talked*. What a moment that was! What a feeling it was to walk down the street with that little tot holding my hand, to hear her frail, quivering voice. My wife meant even less than before-- I didn't need her, but the child I felt I could never relinquish. I was proud of it and I saw nothing in the child but myself.

It is a Sunday morning and I am walking toward Ulmer Park. It is the third day since I have met Hildred and I have already written to her that if I can't have her I will commit suicide.

38.

I can repeat almost every word that she said to me--utterly
strange words in a language that no woman had ever used with
me. It was a torrent *em* that she poured over my head that
night--the force of it emanating not from her mind but from
her blood and her blood drugged, loaded with toxins. She has
my letter, I know, because I sent it by messenger boy--letter
saying "I can't live without you". I'm wondering how she w ell
look at me when she comes to the door, will she say, as I know
her to be capable of saying- " Please don't annoy me with your
silly ideas"- or will she have that quiet, melting expression,
that look in her eyes which seems to say "Strip me naked here
in front of my brothers and sisters...fuck me.....do what you
like...do anything....I'm all yours!" But I'm also disturbed
a little; why hadn't she given me her address, though she per-
mitted me to take her home in a taxi and at the very door of
her home, while the driver sat and watched the meter clicking,
she pulled up her dress and almost suffocated me with her em-
braces? Was that just her way with men who took her out, her
way of thanking them for a pleasant evening? How could a woman
talk the way she did and go mad that way if..... The sun is
blazing and nothing is carried through to the end. Sunday
morning and I've left the house before anyone was up. Only last
Sunday I was walking along with the little one and planning what
I would do for her when she grew up; I was letting her run
loose like a dog and when she was exhausted I picked her up and
carried her home to her hatchet-faced mother who didn't approve
of the way I handled my child. And what sort of child was I?
Did I run loose too? Were my parents too indulgent with me?

39.

The sun is baking me-- a sun I felt years and years ago when
they let me loose in the fields and I came running up to my
mother with tongue hanging out, panting like a dog. It's a sun
I remember when I walked quietly by my mother's side, holding
her hand, and even her green parasol didn't protect us. The
bright splashing sun dripping through the heavy foliage of
Summer, making the flies drowsy; a buzzing and droning, every-
thing new in the world, the only touch of sorrow being that
moment when you are ordered to go to bed. Suddenly the realiza-
tion that it was here in Ulmer Park when my mother had brought
me one Saturday afternoon and I see again a spacious open-air
theatre crowded with tables and the tables foaming with beer;
there must have been people, of course, but I don't remember
people at all, I remember only a young white card-board with the
letters PATTI which a boy in uniform carried across the
stage after the curtain had dropped, and I don't remember
Patti either, but I remember the applause and the tears in my
mother's eyes which bewildered me and the name PATTI was sunk
in my memory only to be resuscitated years and years afterwards
when I read about her in the newspapers. And when I thought
now of this name, of what it meant then, it seemed that I actual-
ly forced myself to recall the performers who had shared the pro-
gram with her--acrobats, jugglers, bicycle riders and yodellers
in Tyrolian costume. But it's the green of that day that per-
sists in my memory--the grass, the leaves, the benches, the table
tops--green that was so good for my sore eyes, green that I never
then connected with hope, green squeezed out of an inexhuastible
tube, that would remain bright and soft, bright and soft forever.

40.

It's that sun, that liquid, green, bright, refreshing world
that I'm walking through on the way to Hildred's home. There
are other qualities now in the green, I know the green doesn't
last, I've seen it turn yellow and then brown and then gray,
I've seen all varieties of green in a single living tree and just
green, the color, has intoxicated me; and I've appreciated green
when it wasn't there any longer, greeted it like a thirsty Bed-
ouin after a sojourn in the parched Far West. But now the green
is in me, part of me, a symbol that I've created, a piece of
that world outside which the child as he grows eats into, de-
vours and dies of. The green I am carrying in me will yellow--
that terrifying knowledge accompanies me, rings in my ears like
the 23rd Psalm, has the finality, the peace, the healing quality
which these words can never lose as long as we are born into a
Christian world. THE LORD IS MY SHEPERD; I SHALL NOT WANT. HE
MAKETH ME TO LIE DOWN IN GREEN PASTURES: HE LEADETH ME BESIDE
THE STILL WATERS. Golden, golden words--and I am saying them
who have mocked the Lord. I am running to Hildred with these
words on my lips, saying to her that we are born again, that
this bright, green world is ours. YEA, THOUGH I WALK THROUGH THE
VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH I WILL FEAR NO EVIL: FOR THOU ART
WITH ME; THY ROD AND THY STAFF THEY COMFORT ME.

Only once thereafter did I taste the verdant quality of
that Sunday morning and that was when I heard Pelleas and Meli-
sande for the first time. Same extraordinary sensation of a
vision on the road, voice commanding me to walk in the light,
feet not just touching the earth but drawing from it power,
radiance, the swiftness of light, joy too intense, too painful,

41.

to be called joy, the delirium rather of the martyr ascending
the stake.

And when I arrived at the door of Hildred's home there was
the cold, disapproving look of her brother, a vague, mysterious
response to my questions, a desire all too obvious to shut the
door in my face. The impression I had was that I had committed
an act of sacrilege..... On walking away I noticed a woman in
the garden hanging up clothes. She was short, dark, ugly-- a
Jewess without doubt.

I mentioned that at first glance she didn't interest me--
there was something too direct, too determined, in her manner.
It was only after I had watched her a while, noticed the way
she talked to her partners and the gravity with which they
listened to her that I felt curious about her. I remember the
firm way in which she laid her hand on me and the tremendous
surprise I received when I heard her voice. The others, I re-
member, had pulled me close immediately, I had felt their warm
vaginas beneath the flimsy costumes; there was one girl, I recall
now, whose pants were always wet--they made great sport of her.
But Hildred danced in order to talk: she used her voice in the
way the other girls used their vaginas, only more effectively.
And if you had the temerity to look into her eyes you were
hopelessly enslaved.

All my life I have been aware of one faculty which I poss-
ess to an extraordinary degree: the power to make people confess.

42.

It is a gift which has often proved annoying to me--what am I to do with all these secrets which have been loaded upon me without the asking? Perhaps it is this more than anything else which leads me to be candid and frank to the point of brutality; since I see nothing extraordinary in these dark secrets of others why should I be tender about my own? I have no secrets. I want none. When a woman says to me, just before she surrenders herself, "I feel that some day you're going to expose me", I feel like saying what Hamby said just before he was executed-- "I never killed a man without giving him a chance". They said that Hamby was a moral imbecile, that he killed in cold blood, but what Hamby says is "I never shot a man without first giving him a chance to throw up his hands".

The first thing I noticed about Hildred, when we sat down to talk, was that she wanted to confess. She even remarked that I exercised some strange influence over her. And so she began her confession which was mostly a tissue of lies. More remarkable still-- she has clung to these lies ever since though I have exposed them time and time again. She is simply incapable of telling the truth; when she is most sincere she is most false. Of course, I did not discover this immediately; in the first place, as I said before, because I am remarkably disinterested in people's secrets, and secondly because I am naif, trusting, also in a disinterested way. I mean to say that I am so indifferent to the other person's welfare that I am as ready to accept a lie as a truth. But when their lies touch my welfare-- ah, then it is a different story. Then I become profoundly interested, then I become a sleuth of the first order, a man

43.

without compunctions, without the least scruple, without a
conscience. I have been capable, in my zeal, of fabricating
the most scandalous stories in order to elicit a tiny grain of
truth. But when, as in Hildred's case, I had a liar on my hands
who lied for the sheer sake of lying, who lied even to her di-
gestive organs, as some one put it, what then was I to do? It
is not a question any more of her welfare or my welfare--it is
a problem for the clinic.

But all this only seeped in on me gradually. When, for
instance, she told me that first night that she was a bastard,
that her real mother, a gyspy, died of childbirth, that she
was born in Sherwood Forest, that her father had kept a string
of racing stables in his youth but had since lost his fortune,
was lying ill in a sanatorium, that he was a great friend of
Caruso's, and so forth and so on, I saw no reason on the face of
it to doubt her words. It was colorful and romantic, perhaps
a little exaggerated, but why not? And all this was sandwiched
in between other subjects equally interesting, equally romantic.
I saw a very young girl before me who was obviously out of place
in her environment, who spoke an English that seemed perfection
itself, who might have been born a gypsy or a princess, who had
already, at this early age, experienced the most startling ad-
ventures. I saw nothing strange in her hatred for her aunt,
who was her guardian, in her worship for her father, whose life
had been so picaresque; I was not even amazed that she should
identify herself with a character of Strindberg's (Henriette,
I believe it was) because she seemed so essentially good, so
sterling, so brave, that she might well have wished herself to

44.

be the opposite; I could understand why a woman who inspired
worship and devotion in men would ardently wish them to detest
her, why when they forgave her for her injuries she only despised
them more and not only wreaked her vengeance on them but on
others who were innocent. Nor was I disappointed when I learned
that her lovers included the most incongruous assortment of
types--artists, pugilists, financiers, gigolos, roues: the variety
of instruments only testified to her versatility. But when it
came to the theme of "insult and injury", which she dealt with
so extravagantly, with such refinements of cruelty and malice,
with such passion as to completely change her personality, I
did prick up my ears. It was then I saw her emerging into that
Henriette which her imagination had played with, and as she re-
lated one harrowing experience after another, her face growing
more and more distorted, it was easy for me to believe that
this woman was capable of anything. I believed her to be
making the most extreme sacrifice-- for this aunt whom she
hated with all her blood, and I saw likewise that she could be
malevolent to an insane degree where only a petty injury,
a slight, you might say, had been done her. Did she hate her
aunt because she had made such sacrifices for her or did she
make these sacrifices because she hated her, to show her supreme
contempt, as it were? I could not decide. I did not know
then that her aunt was really her mother, that her mother was
a Jewess and not a gyspy; nor did I know then that when she
allowed herself to be deflowered by a repulsive old man it was not to bring the money to her aunt (so that their home would not be taken from them) but to squander it on a girl friend whom she was keeping, an insipid little stenographer

45.

named Maureen whose one great urge, as I learned later, was to empty her bladder frequently. And how was I to know then that her father had never been in England in his life, that he had never been on a horse, that if he knew Caruso at all it was through the back door, in a thoroughly professional way, that is, as old clothes' dealer. Why did she adore her father whom she represented as an angel to her when it was her father who gave her the beatings, her father who drove her out of the house and called her a little slut?

Did I mention her enthusiasm on the subject of drugs? That's another beautiful tale, the truth of which remains unsolved to this day. There she was, lying on her back with appendicitis, and refusing to be operated on. Even the ice-bags wouldn't still the pain. And so, the doctor who was in love with her administered drugs (through the rectum--she emphasized this several times), and when she finally recovered she took on weight amazingly, due to the action of the drugs. But when she spoke about the drugs she had the manner of a person who, in confessing to some horrible deed, appears grateful for the opportunity of being thrilled by his narration and totally oblivious of any feeling of repentance or any desire to be absolved of guilt. On the other hand she had the most convincing air of guilt when she spoke of redressing a wrong that had been done her--it was as though she wickedly enjoyed her guiltiness. And what was the wrong that had been done her? A mere trifle. A man had taken her home one night, and as they stood on the back porch, saying good-night, he had attempted to lift her dress. She had since made the poor devil a helpless victim: she made demands on him which she knew he couldn't satisfy, she made him desert his wife and children, she made

46.

him steal for her, made him crawl on hands and knees to beg her hand in marriage, all of which, of course, she treated ridiculously. She was not finished with him yet, the poor worm: she would drive him to suicide. And here, where one might expect her to be fantastic, she was absolutely truthful. The man did commit suicide later--he was not the first.

And the one who had deflowered her--did she bear him any malice? None that I could detect. She spoke of it as one would speak of a rather painful operation. It was a contract which she had entered into with her own free will and, in the spirit of a contract, she carried out her part to the letter. But is this story true? Was she one to lose her virginity in that cold, calculating way? Is it not more likely that she had thrown it away on some worthless scamp, that when later she was obliged to sell herself to some repulsive old geezer she inserted the xmagmm virginity theme to glorify herself? Why, for instance, did she dwell on the gruesome details? Why tell me that it took days for the old geezer to break her hymen unless it was to show me how courageous she could be?

And perhaps, you may be thinking, all these stories were handed me to whet my appetite--because it is true, now that I look back upon that khant scene, that I displayed little sexual ardor. There was one moment, I must admit-- I was standing in the street waiting for her to leave the dance hall (she had requested me to do that); my head was somewhat in a whirl, but there was no deep feeling of need for her, no worship yet, just a fateful desire to know her, to satisfy my curiosity. I was standing at the corner, some few feet away from the entrance. Suddenly I saw

47.

her coming toward me, suddenly I felt my guts twisted into a knot and I was trembling all over. And in those few seconds that it took for her to reach my side her walk, her head held high and proud, her fearless look, her dignity and animal poise, the ripple of her loins, all that sunk into me agonizingly. I said to myself "she is magnificent" as I would say it of a fine-bred horse. And when she stood close to me I noticed that she was taller than my wife, that she was as tall as I, and I felt in my penis that she was built right and for one burning moment she tempted me to lift up her dress, there on Broadway, and sock it into her.

All this fell away immediately when she opened her mouth. I was interested again in her soul. And as we walked into the traffic I noticed that she had not the least sensation of fear, that she was coolly reckless, scornful of danger.

When I stepped out of the taxi in front of my home that night I knew there was nothing to be done but give myself to her; if one had said to me you will be miserable all your life, if I had been permitted even to look into the future and see what was in store for me, not even then could I have resisted her. As a matter of fact, one of the last things my wife said to me when we were separating, was: "I feel truly sorry for you. You don't know what you are walking into." And she said it without bitterness, as though it were the last honest thing between us. Since then I have heard others use almost exactly the same words. No one knows better than I the meaning of these words, but no one regrets less than I all that is bound up in the truth of them.

51.

troia was in my blood, I looked for her in the street, I talked
to her alone in my room......

Sunday morning. I am returning from my trip to Ulmer Park.
Victoria in my blood. I walk in and there is the little one,
propped up at the table, and Blanche is feeding her. I sit down
in a daze. What I have to do now is cruel, but I must do it!
I begin to talk, slowly, gently, but with such earnestness, such
conviction that even a monster must be moved by my words. "Blanche,
I want to be free...." Oh, I had said it before, but my words
must have lacked conviction. Now the words are scarcely out of
my mouth when I see a round, nameless fear on her face, a look
such as a person might have if you stood over him with an axe
he
and they were absolutely defenceless. The words go on flowing
out of me and the child is hysterical with fear seeing her mother
weep so bitterly. This is a naked, shameless grief--I have never
seen anything like it. It's not a human grief, it's not me that's
responsible for it, it's not a woman who's weeping.... I can only
say that it seems as if we were depersonalized, that it is not
our private tragedy which we are enacting but the world's....MAN
confronted with FATE.

What happened to the child during this scene? I am trying to
think what we did with her--it baffles me that this should have
escaped my memory so completely. I remember simply that the
whole room seemed to be swimming in tears, that there were no
sounds of voices but these awful, gasping sobs, that the house
seemed to be rocking on its foundations, and that the objects in
the room--the furniture, the clock, the dishes on the table-- all
seemed ridiculous, mad inventions that were too difficult to grasp

48.

When I think of that event which has so profoundly altered
the course of my life I think of it as a sublime conjunction.
The others who feel sorry for me never realize a conjunction:
their loves and friendships are based on meetings, there is
nothing catastrophic about their coming together with another,
nothing of the divine hasard, of the glorious accident which
changes the face of the world, swings the stars out of their
orbits. That there are so few fatalities in the lives of the
great mass is not surprising: one has to take one's destiny in
one's own hands.

(space)

At this point where I left off writing I happen to pick
up an old manuscript dealing with this period just before I
took up with Hildred and what amazes me now is how I sensed
everything that was going to befall me, how I was, in a way,
preparing myself for the event. I note even that I was in-
trigued with that expression "a grand conjunction", and how
I wrote in the margin beside it "the confluence of the light
and dark". And on almost the last page I see this passage--
"This world is my world, my stamping ground. I must run free,
mad-hearted, bellowing with pain and ecstasy, charging with
lowered horns, ripping up the barricades that hem me in and
stifle me. I must have room to expand...."

But what tears me apart is a letter which I quoted from
"Victoria", a letter which Hildred might have written word for
word, which it seems more true to say --Hamsun actually stole

on the subject."

152.

Now by Hildred's interest in the stuff of "Scarface" I mean something much broader--her interest in all the putrid, morbid, dying character of America, the violence of her language when she speaks against D. H. Lawrence (Lady Chatterley's Lover especially), saying that the excerpts I made from it are "vile"---because he reveals his homosexual qualities, the accurateness and the fund of information she brings to me about new "homos" she has learned of, her fanatical adoration of Greta Garbo...... In a day she discusses a thousand different subjects. Discusses them? No, it is a monologue, an inundation, a flow of lava that cools even as it destroys. It is in this eruption that levels everything that I can feel the vitality of America, but it is not a creative vitality, not the vitality of a giant Titan--it is a vitality that flows out in every direction without aim or control, a vitality that levels things, a vitality that produces exhaustion, sterility, death.

Her "interest", then, whether it is concealed or admitted, whether direct or distorted, is what rouses my antagonism. I am bound to fight when these things come up because it is a question always of life or death. To ask me to be tolerant, wise, broadminded, is absurd. These are vital issues and I must meet them, combat them, with all my strength--or perish.

She confesses now that she is my enemy, my sworn enemy, that her mission henceforth is to destroy me. "Do you know something," she says, when we are in the midst of a dispute about the interpretation of a passage from a book--"you are the greatest enemy I have!" I tell her that I understand, I agree with her..."but you ought to be proud of it", I add.

153.

To this she gives a hoarse laugh and then her mouth twists
with pain and the tears come to her eyes and in her voice there
are curses and maledictions as of the Hebrew prophets. "When I
glanced at your other book, the last time I was here, it nearly
killed me. I've been going around dead all this time. You killed
me with your hatred, but this time--huh, it's funny, this time I
am not even angry. I don't recognize myself in your book. You
know less about me than a dozen men I could name. You know what
your book reveals? Your own distorted, diseased, petty mind.
You're not a great man as I once thought...you're not a great
writer either. I'm glad now that your book is going to be publish-
ed; I want it to appear just as it is so that people can see what
sort of man you are." Her words create no anger in me. I am
really hurt that I must pain her. I wish she really understood
better so that she could enjoy this warfare, as I do now. I am
even more hurt because I have an advantage over her: I have words
against her deeds--more, the sphere of her activity is too limited
to give to her deeds and gestures the proper value; if it were not
that I am immortalizing her now she would pass out unknown, un-
recognized. I am creating the legend of her, furnishing her the
weapons with which to slay me, resisting her so that she may
find unknown sources of strength and courage. I am as fair to
her as one enemy can be to another.

In bed she began to pour out her wrath, in that cruel, low
voice which is beyond human rage or pain. "You took a miserable
little incident, which caused you suffering, and you have magnified
it to such monstrous proportions....." Stop, I say to myself,
and I listen with only one ear. That miserable little incident
is the stuff of all I have written so far; it is that canker in-

154.

side me which I am pulling out with my own hands; I am not going
about it professionally, like a cool, sure surgeon, but with my
own hands, I say, and with it I am pulling out the nerves and
fibres and tissues...it is my own blood I am spilling. "Magnifying it!" Not if I were to write all my life long, not if I were to fill a library, could I magnify this "little incident" sufficiently. The suffering that you have inflicted upon me has raised me to the heights, opened my eyes, made me love life, taught me to estimate the full value of love. If I do nothing more than to record my suffering, and my triumph--or failure-- I will have accomplished a miracle. You say that I have understood nothing, that I have failed ignominiously (albeit you read only a few pages); you say that it is myself I am recording, not you. You have said the most profound things to me--but without knowing it. I accept your criticism gratefully, humbly. Nobody understands better than I the obstacles to be overcome. I have almost gone insane in my attempts to nail you down, to crucify you. You tell me that once you loved me so much, once I was such a god to you that you would have torn the stars out of the sky for me--there was no sacrifice too great for you to make. And now you say--but you are not cold enough about it!-- that *you* were the god, that the horrible truth of it is you could never have imagined me to be so small, so blind, so worthless. And in your malevolence, in your blind, abortive fury, you add that the truth is *you* *never were* interested in either the man or the writer--you were interested in something else. I laugh quietly to myself when you say such things; I am exultant that I should have read you so deeply, so accurately. But you don't know yet what it was that you were interested in. You have a blind mouth; you utter the most sublime truths without deriving

155.

either wisdom or joy from them. Do you think, if it were possible to aid you, that I would not gladly open your eyes? I fear you no longer. You are dethroned..... And I would be generous to you now. A moment ago you said "I am going to kill you" and I heard it without emotion, unless it was sympathy, kindness, understanding. When you say "kill me" I know that you do not mean with dagger or poison. You said that you realized now that I was less the man and more the artist, though a *poor* artist, a *vile* one, a *cheap* one. I ask myself how is it possible for you to kill me? With what weapons? There is nothing in your arsenal any longer which I fear. Your greatest weapon was mystery--and I am embracing that now. Do you think I am proud or exultant because I recognize my strength? No. While I am crucifying you I look with longing toward those who will come after me and preach your glory. But I know it is my business to crucify you, and I will let nothing interfere with me.

For a moment you made me violently happy. It was when you saw Elie Faure's book in my hands and you said that you had read it with such joy, that you had gotten so much out of it, that it was all so clear to you and so true! But how could you say these things and be the person you are? Either I am wrong or Faure is wrong, or we are both wrong. Listen, I want to quote from this Bible which you say you appreciate so profoundly. I want to incorporate it here for fear that it may die out. I want not only you to understand it, but the men of two thousand years from now, who will have need for it then just as we have need for it now....

156.

"......it appears to me more and more clearly that in order to liberate men it is necessary to the mechanism of society itself and of intelligence, that there should be slaves. Believe me, all is well, the passions and those whom passion kills, those whom the exercise of passion enlightens, and those who do not give in, and he who sneers every time an idea appears, and he who sacrifices himself that an idea may live, and he who, in order that his idea may live, sacrifices millions."

"Themyth is the necessary illusion which we imagine each time to be the supreme truth, and which is only each time a fleeting and temporary aspedt of that supreme truth which we cannot grasp without condemning ourselves to death......We have been witnesses of the cruelty of scientific myths--'the survival of the fittest'; for example. But pacific myths, such as that of Jesus, for instance are not less murderous. More murderous perhaps because they impose upon the spirit the greatest sum total of illusion, the illusion to which we cling the longest, because it is the most consoling, and which we attempt to propagate, to impose, to defend with the most fanatic passion."

"There are certain wars which make fruitful and others which destroy the soul."

"But war is always unjust for him who is conquered. War is always just for him who conquers. Except for the power of effort which victory makes sure, war can never be just. If that power is present it is never unjust......Because the whole world, always, is responsible for warfare. But he is rare who consents to take this responsibility!"

"And if you can learn why morality sinks in the course of

157.

revolution or of war, you will learn also why the spirit increases like a flame which embraces and enlightens all."

"Art is the spiritual transpoistion of love, which is already war, and which war exalts violently. The artist is the actual summing-up of the eternal tragedy."

"The hero is the artist, is he who makes no choice. Whom do I mean he who does not make a sentimental choice. Who will penetrate up to the heart into the influence of tragedy upon the artist, when the artist is tragedy itself, because the artist is the man who wishes to conquer, aloof from parties, aloof from systems, aloof from interests and contingencies of an hour, an unstable and dynamic equilibrium in the midst of the conflicts of sentiments which agitate and surround him, face to face with the terrible and clear vision which he has of final nothingness?"

"The pure being, because he is pure, is the stirrer, up of strife. The just man is the irony of God."

"Man wishes to fly from the horror of life, that is all. And to live, for whoever begins to think, is horrible; while for him who persists in thinking, it is sublime."

"Whenever a just man is a great poet, he does not deceive himself. He knows that he is bringing war. He knows that he is upsetting hearts, breaking up homes, dividing peoples and races, exasperating religions. 'I do not come to bring peace, but a sword--my kingdom is not of this world. That which I dream cannot be realized. But you shall follow me all the same, and you shall abandon father and mother and wife and children and country. All this in order to obey me. Because I am a just man. Because I am

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I

the just man. Because I am an artist......Because I am the only one who has the right and those alone have the power to realize a portion of the God that I perceive who have the innocence to believe, without looking elsewhere than in me, that it is I alone who have the right. Because I am a monster. A monster, you understand? A necessary monster. A divine monster. A hero. A conqueror. A holy destroyer. A destroyer of dying rhythms. A maker of living rhythms. Because those who obey are the depositaries of force and I am the stronger.'"

"The most direct affirmation is the most sure mistress of the heart. 'Do this. Do this, and you will not suffer.' One does it, and one does not suffer, even if in order to do it it is necessary to tear out one's own entrails and bury the steel in the heart of a friend. The word alone delivers and creates. It is in the beginning. It is also in any fresh beginning....."

"Religion does not create art. It is art which creates religion, by incarnating into its images our desire to overcome life, to affirm ourselves, to spread ourselves, and impose upon our external universe the form even of our dreams, which torment us up to the moment in which we have formulated them. Art is identical with love, which is, in each of us, a need existing before the meeting with the man or woman with whom it becomes identified for a day, a month, or a year, and which survives this meeting to wander, unsatisfied and miserable, up to the hour that the meeting with another woman or man excites its resurrection. Religions are the crises of love of human societies, and the forms which they leave after their passage are nothing else than the images of the object of that love. Incomparable images, but also transitory, alas! of

the rapturous and despairing moment which we cannot keep."

"You look upon Bibles and religions as divine--and I say that they are divine. And I say that they all come from you, can come again from you, and that it is not they who give life, but you who give life.' Precisely! And I know now what the Holy Spirit means, that invisible force which descended from God into our hearts to give them the power to raise ourselves up to Him. I tell you truly, the Holy Spirit is art itself tending to realize itself, amalgamating in the humble instincts of common aspirations and inquietudes to form a religion which should favor its flight, amalgamating all religions, in higher consciences in order to favor the hope always deceived, yet never discouraged, of its conquest. God is, I do not doubt any more. But He is blind and deaf. Man is the only one in the universe who in flashes sees and understands. The Holy Spirit does not descend from God to animate the heart of man; the Holy Spirit arises from man to animate the heart of God."

********

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"Yours is the triumph!" Those were the words that kept repeat-
ing themselves in my head as we were taking a last leave of
each other. And a few days later --"how to distinguish between
incident and destiny". Because now it comes over me again
that as I stepped on the boat to sail for Europe it seemed to me
that I was performing an act of destiny, that it was fateful,
ordained, irrevocable. And though I have said good-bye to her
many times I knew the other day that this last good-bye was the
last. And strange it is too that she should leave x in my memory
the most beautiful picture of herself; when I returned, knowing
that she would be gone, her picture was missing from the wall,
and though at first I regretted that she had done this, soon I
realized how well she had acted: I would have nothing henceforth
but the memory of her face as she lifted it to mine to say good-
bye. And that image, she well knows, will haunt me always.

It seems to me now that everything I write henceforth will
be only a sort of requiem; there is a great void and all my words
seem to be falling into space. Now that the fierce antagonism
which kept us apart has given way, now that we are no longer
constrained to move and speak and act in a prescribed way, now
that there is no longer either hatred or love, that the orbits
in which we moved have been shifted and our axes too have shifted,
there is this feeling of falling into space, of falling, falling,
falling. And this is worse than tears, deeper than regret:.
this is like the abyss into which Satan was plunged, Satan who
was so human, all-too-human.

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I had to wait until she left before I could resume these pages—with the proper tenderness and longing. Because only now do I comprehend what the struggle for the unattainable means; only now do I fully understand the significance of Emerson's words when he said "if only a man knew how to choose among what he calls his experiences that which is really his experience....how to record truth truly." Almost immediately after she arrived I laid aside this work; almost immediately I began another book, and with such fierce energy and concentration as to make me smile now that I know the reason for it. The night before she arrived I was reading Elie Faure, and all that language about the monster, the just man, the hero, the myth, appealed to me inordinately. She was hardly here twenty-four hours before the word "monster" had become as common in our mouths as bread or milk; she recognized the monster in me only too clearly. And that inhuman aspect of myself was a true one; it was my only defence against defeat. I began another book, as I say, to defend my attitude toward life; the urge to write it was given me by a simple, thoughtless utterance. A man said to me "do this for me, you haven't very much to do now, have you?" And that thoughtless utterance sunk into me so deeply that I doubt if I can ever explain it rightly. "You haven't very much to do now!" This at a moment when it seemed to me that the problem of the world was resting on my shoulders, when if I were to do nothing but give up day and night to the problem before me I would be doing the impossible. And so I plunged into the book, with an enthusiasm born of outraged vanity, with an overwhelming urge to assert my ego, so that no man would

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ever again have the temerity to say to me--"you have nothing much to do, have you?" And as I progressed with the work I began to formulate another reason for my enthusiasm: I was going to prove to the world that I am a thinker! Such a silly idea! Either one is or one isn't a thinker. And as I worked on I began to realize more and more how strange a book was my "Tropic of Cancer", what a distorted, vengeful thing it is, written in pain, with malice and hate, with poison. In giving it a final review, before consigning it to the press, I was impressed by how much I had left out of it. I wanted to insert another huge portion about M ona and, in fact, I did conceive a splendid idea for this insertion; but the hatred was lacking, the pain and malice which had once consumed me was gone. The pages I essayed to write refuse to be wedded to the book; they stand apart, like an apocryphal writing.

The one thing she had observed clearly toward the last was that I was kind to her. That killed her!

I am falling into space, falling, falling. For seven years I went through about, day and night, with only one thing in my mind--her. Were there a Christian so faithful to his God, his Saviour, as I was to her, we would be living in a different world to-day. We would all be Gods. Day and night I thought of her, even when I was deceiving her. And now that she is gone I think of all the things that might have been; and that huge void in my book, it is that I am going to fill in here. That which life cheated us of I am going to restore in its integrity. That Inferno which Paris has ever been for the madmen, that Paris which I am no longer aware of to-day because now it

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is just another city, like New York or Berlin to me--that in-
fernal Paris belongs here, side by side with that other New
York I knew, with Vienna, Budapest, Prague and that little cor-
ner of Bukowina which is like some mythic fragment of a dream,
an operetta written without music.

The moment I left here and was in the street a great lump
came to my throat. I remembered how often I had walked down
this street wondering would the day ever come when she would
walk by my side, all those yearning looks I bestwoed on the
buildings seeming to be a part of them now, so saturated with
her that she must feel them as she passes them now for the last
time. And I remembered too how when we did walk side by side,
through these very streets that were saturated with my thoughts
of her, she observed nothing, felt nothing--they were streets
like any other streets, a little more sordid perhaps, that is
all. I thought of my lonely walks at night through Paris,
the exaltation I felt when the image of her by my side would
come to mind, and as I walked away from the house, after saying
good-bye to her, the thought of one street in particular came
to mind--the Rue Lhomond. Whether it was that I had so often
walked this street in great anguish, or whether it was the
remembrance of her saying to me wistfully one night--"Show me
that Paris you have written about"--I do not know; I know that
when she said this to me I realized the utter impossibility of
ever showing her that Paris I had written about. That Paris
never existed, except in my mind, except in loneliness, except
in yearning for her. And that Paris was so huge! I felt it
would take a life-time to explore it again, because it could

164.

not lend itself to a tour--it was a Paris that one had to live
through as I had lived through it and my experience was unique,
no one could live it again. I remembered then, with what a
weight of significance, my early days here when, stirred by
some recollection of her, I visited one day the Pension Orfila
and was shown the room that Strindberg had occupied. And they
were offering me the very same room! Nothing very terrible had
happened to me yet, though I had lost all my possessions, had
been hungry many times, had wandered the streets in misery,
had searched hungrily for some sympathetic soul to whom I might
attach myself. But in reality, nothing very terrible had yet
happened to me here in this Inferno of Paris. I walked away
from the place with an ironic smile, as though to say to myself,
"not yet, the Pension Orfila!" And now I have created my own
Pension Orfila--not one, but several! There are no ready-made
Pension Orfilas for the tormented; each one creates his own.
That was something I had to learn. And I have learned it since.
Now from the grave, as it were, I can see those plaques which
will ornament the buildings fifty years from hence: Ici mourut
Henry Miller, ecrivain. I can see those loving eyes wandering
from the plaque to the neighboring scene, trying in vain to
restore the picture of another time, exclaiming as we all do:
"What a different Paris that was!" Which is so true and yet
false. Because Paris does not consist in a collection of bricks
and mortar, of famous statues and museums. Whatever Paris is re-
mains eternal and the eternal can always be grasped by those
who have the vision to see. I feel this keenly on days when
my heart is open and looking about me lovingly I do not ask for

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a thing to be changed; everything I accept, the ugly with the beautiful, the commonplace with the rare.

"There are in Paris," wrote Balzac, "certain streets as dishonorable as can be any man convicted of infamy; then there are noble streets, also streets that are simply honest, also young streets concerning whose morality the public has not yet formed any opinion; then there are murderous streets, streets older than the oldest possible dowagers, estimable streets, streets that are always clean, streets that are always dirty, workingman's streets, students' streets, and new mercantile streets. In short, the streets of Paris have human qualities, an impress us by their physiognomy with certain ideas against which we are defenceless."

When I had copied this into my note-book I added below: "For 24 Rue Tournefort go behind Pantheon along Rue de L'Espaceade (Cocteau!) until it comes to an abrupt end in a triangle. Turn to the right." It is when I think of this little note, of all that lies connected with it, that I believe truly that the greatest book ever written will some day be done by a man describing what happened to him as he crossed a street. The history of a soul's voyage! The saga of the Unconscious crystallized in a moment of time!

Often I went behind the Pantheon, felt my way along those sagging, twisting, crumbling walls; sometimes to look at that other Pension, the Pension Vauquer of "Pere Coriot", sometimes just for the pleasure of walking along a street called the Rue Pot au Fer, sometimes for the exquisite melange of sensations

166.

sure to be produced in me by tumbling into the Rue Mouffetard,
such sensations as could only be produced in the mind of one
about to embark on an unknown voyage. And whenever I went be-
hind the Pantheon and came upon the Place L'Astrapade I was
sure to think of certain lines from "Le Grand Ecart" which had
an ugly connotation, of my first great joy when I discovered
this setting, of the Rue Daubigny which, by the law of pairs,
always sprang to mind, a street which I have never come across.

And just as Strindberg in his madness recognized omens and portents in the very flagging of his Pension Orfila so, as I wandered about aimlessly, did certain words and signs fill my mind with dire forebodings. Wandering about the Abattoir de Vaugnard one Sunday morning I came upon a curious little street called the Rue des Perichaux which was stained with blood; it was a beautiful Sunday morning and there were birds in the windows and heavy peasant women leaning out with that sulmberous, semi-murderous air of Italians, the hens were cackling, and there were children playing in the yards such as I had never imagined to exist outside of literature; a little later I was walking beyond the Porte de Vanves and there I saw an immense deserted farm-yard which it seemed to me must belong to little Kai Molln, that wistful child in "Buddenbrooks" whom I was reading about at night in my garret. It seemed natural to me then to be walking all day through the streets of Paris; I had the miserable garret which I speak of but I was afraid to return to it until after midnight for fear of meeting the patron. The streets were my refuge. And no man can understand the glamour of streets until he is obliged to take refuge in them; then it is that his thoughts invest them with a quality which can never

167.

be removed--shall we call is *history*? One passes along a street
on a wintry day, looking at dogs for sale, and one is moved to
tears. And the next moment one sees in huge letters "Hotel de
Tombeau des Lapins" and one laughs hysterically. Or "Hotel de
l'Avenir". So many hotels of the future! No hotels in the past
participle, no subjunctive signs. "La Madone des Sandwiches"
playing at a cinema, or "Mon Amant L'Assassin". After walking
through the Place Violet, a dream which will never fit into
reality, beautiful mauve and delicate tints, a slate sky, sienna
walls and low doorways and beyond the gorgeous songs of Felix
Faure hideous xgasomnambules gas tanks and chimneys belching pure
coke. Why do I remember the Passage des Thermopyles? Because
that day a woman was speaking to a puppy scarcely a month old,
and the puppy seemed to understand her, and I was a grown-up man,
wrestling manfully with dictionary and grammar every day, yet
unable to make out a word she said. How that oppressed me! And
what oppressed me more, on the Rue Brancion, was not the sight
of those pathetic dogs who were being sold, but the huge railing,
those great iron spikes which seemed to be standing between me
and my rightful life. And those blood-stains on the cobble-
stones in the Rue des Perichaux--it was not the blood of the
slain which saddened me, but the thought of my own blood being
spilled, the weary, blood-stained road I was travelling for
reasons unfathomable to me. My world of human beings had per-
ished; I was alone in the world and for friends I had the streets
and the streets spoke to me in that sad, bitter language com-
pounded of human misery, of wistfulness, yearning, regret,
failure, wasted effort. It is after midnight and I am walking

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along without thought of direction, talking to a friend whom
my wife has sent to me. The last thing that stands out object-
ively, as we plunge into talk, is the remembrance of passing the
Closerie des Lilas. After that it is a blind, aimless walk, no
consciousness left of the streets through which we pass. The
talk is about my wife, of her struggles in New York, of her long-
ing to return to me, of the desperate efforts she has made to
join me, etc. The talk is blinding me to everything; every-
thing is concentrating in me to a point of unbearable anguish,
when suddenly I am aware of what street we are on; suddenly I
remember that we, Hildred and I, walked this street one night,
not knowing where we were, intimidated by the squalor and
gloom. It was the Rue Broca, that section of it where it dives
under the Boulevard Port-Royal. And at this moment when I re-
call the past my friend is telling me that my wife is ill and
starving; if I had known when once we walked the Rue Broca that
she would ever be ill and starving would I have let her go? Now
the hopelessness of it all grips me; three thousand miles of
water between us and no matter how desperate my longing, how
fervent my wish, there she will stay and starve and here I will
walk with hot tears scalding my face. That sort of cruelty
is embedded in the streets; it is that which stares out from
the walls and terrifies us when suddenly we respond to a name-
less fear, when we have a sickening panic in our souls; it is
that which gives the lamp-posts their queer, gnomish twists,
gives them that lure of beckoning to us, of offering their
cold iron bars so that we may strangle ourselves; it is that
which makes certain houses appear like the relics of secret
crimes, their shuttered windows like eyes that have been gouged

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out. It is that sort of thing, written into the streets, which
makes me flee when suddenly I look up and see "Impasse Satan".
Such things which drove me to put down such a note as this:
"the spider that found many cockroaches under the king's hearth-
stone". To remember what Eugene said to me after the patron
of the cafe had greeted me: "His wife says he smiles in his
sleep-- it is necessary for his business!" To remember that
at one of the entrances to the Mosque it is written "Mondays
and Thursday Tuberculosis; Wedensdays and Fridays Syphilis".
That everywhere in Paris there are grinning skulls over which
are written the words: "Defendez-vous contre la Syphilis!"
Syphilis everywhere--in the glasses we touch, in the urinoirs,
in the eyes of whores, on the walls of the mosque. Syphilis
written in the sky. Syphilis in the brain of Meryon, in those
etchings which are being torn down now in the Marais Quarter,
syphilis written in the words "Hotel de l'Eopque". Wherever I
walk in Paris I see the process of decomposition, the syphilis
that is eating out our souls. If I walk along the Boulevard St.
Germain, where other people notice shops and resturants, I notice
only this, an advertisement announcing that "The Moon is Dead".
If I look at paintings I notice only these: "The Cosmos on the
Flat", or "Bigarre mais Silencieux". If I look in the window
of a bookshop I see "Rien Que Ton Corps", or "Une Femme a Sa
& Fenetre". And the cinema I was most fond of was called "L'Oeil
de Paris" where, can I ever forget it, I saw "La Souriante Mme.
Beudet".

"Stand in front of #8 Rue des Jardins! Perhaps here Rabe-
lais lived and croaked." That is another note. Where people

170.

lived and died! Obsession for the past, for great names, for
tragedies. The street names haunt me because they are links
with the past--Rue du Roi de Sicile, Rue des Lombards, Rue
Charlemagne, Rue des Lions, Rue Quicampoix, Rue du Verdingetorix,
Place des Juives, Rue Francois Villon. There are other streets
which haunt me for more obscure reasons--Rue Mademoiselle, Rue
des Entrepreneurs, Passage des Patriarches, Rue Cervantes, Rue
de la Tombe Issoire, Place Pasdeloup, Rue Maison Dieu, Rue Rem-
brandt, Rue Moulin de Beurre, Boulevard Beaumarchais, etc. etc.

When I write Beaumarchais I recall, as if it were incredible now,
how in the evening I would lie to the Place Bastille and walk
down that Boulevard with *xxx* a sense of its former significance,
how the little tabac "L'Elephant" would lure me night after night
because there it was that Germaine kept her rendezvous, the
pleasure I received in watching Germaine stroll in with her
trollopes and, not knowing that I was there, stand at the bar
and reveal her coarseness, her real whore's heart. And when the
madame had tipped her off, *xxx* she would turn round with such
a gracious air, attempting *xxx* moment to remove from her face
all *xxx* traces of vulgarity--it was so pathetic *xxx* to observe
her trying to act the lady all of a sudden, a pose that lasted
only from the bar to the table, because immediately she sat down
beside me she was rubbing my legs and trying to get me interested.
But that was only while she still regarded me as prey. Once she
knew my real circumstances she became a friend, she would meet
me with the most serious expression, most concerned about my
welfare, would sit there and wonder what she could do for me.
She even excused herself for not lending me money--for reasons

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which we both understood. Somewhere I once wrote that Germaine
did more for me, when she showed me her little pussy, than all
the writings of Freud, Stekel, Jung, etc. Perhaps that is not
clear. Certainly I was not suffering from any sex complex at
the time. When I met Germaine--it was a Sunday afternoon and I
was leisurely strolling the Boulevard Beaumarchais-- I needed a
woman. That was all. We stood in front of a jewelry shop and
talked a symbolic language. In a few minutes we were in a very
sordid five franc room on that narrow, queer-looking street just
behind the Boulevard. Germaine wanted to show me that she was a
good reliable whore, I suppose; she went to the sink and began to
soap herself and suddenly, while she was rubbing her pussy, she
advanced toward me and thrusting her self toward me, her
hand caressing it now affectionately, she began to speak about it,
not as if it were a part of her but as if it were some object
which she prized, whose value she recognized. Her words imparted
to it a life and fragrance, a wholesome, carnal vitality; it was
no longer just her private organ, the shameful hidden thing which
women make of their sex, but a treasure, a magic, potent treasure,
a God-given thing, and none the less so for being traded for a
few pieces of silver. "This thing," she seemed to say," as she
flung herself on the bed, holding it now with her two hands as
though it were a divine chalice, "this thing can be used for a
multitude of purposes, and for you I am making it a thing of joy."
And it was good, that pussy of hers. That Sunday afternoon every-
thing clicked again. I looked at her as we left the hotel, and
I saw very clearly what a whore she was, but she was a likable
one, a comrade, a fellow-sufferer, and the fact that she was worm-
ing me for drinks and dinner and cigarettes and taxi had not the

172.

least disturbing effect upon me. And when I came to write later,
certain lines about "Mlle Claude" it was not her I was thinking
of, but Germaine, a fifteen franc whore on the Boulevard Beau-
marchais. "...while she's washing up and combing her hair all
the men she's been with and now you, just you, and barges going
by, masts and hulls, the whole damned current of life flowing
through you, through her, through all the guys before you and
maybe after, the flowers and the birds and the sun streaming in
and the fragrance of it choking you, annihilating you. O Christ!

Give me a whore always, all the time!" That was for Germaine.... Because Claude was not like that earthy, sensual, wholly amoral creature that Germaine was. Claude had a soul and a conscience; she had refinement too, which was bad--for a whore. Claude imparted always a feeling of sadness; unwittingly she left that impression on you that you were one more who had added himself to the stream of Fate for the purpose of destroying her. Unconsciously, I say. Because Claude would have been the last person in the world to consciously create such an image in one's mind.

She was too delicate and sensitive for that, and her mind was bright, nimble, flecked with reason, justice, honor, etc. Claude was simply a good French girl, of breeding and intelligence, whom life had tricked somehow; something in her, not tough enough, to combat reality. Whereas Germaine was a whore from the cradle, conscienceless, thoroughly satisfied with her role, enjoying

it, in fact, except when her stomach pinched her or her shoes
were worn out--little surface things of no account, nothing that
ate into her soul, nothing that created torment. Ennui--that
was the worst she felt. Some days she was probably tired of

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fucking, some days she probably had a bellyful, as we say--but no more than that! Plenty of times she enjoyed it, she came with you--whoever you were--sucker, pimp, drunkard, clochard, no difference. **A man!** A man with something between his legs that could tickle her, that could make her writhe in ecstacy, make her grab that bushy thing of hers with both hands and rub it joyously, proudly, with a sense of connection, a sense of life running through it, a sense of significance, of prime value. And when Germaine assured you that she had no disease it was a real assurance; she made you feel that it would be the greatest blow to her ego, that it wasn't for **your** sake she kept herself clean, but for her own. Would she be fool enough to destroy the instrument which gave her so much pleasure, and not pleasure only, **but a living**?

Her work! She talked about it with as much seriousness as a cabinet minister would talk of his portfolio. Work and pleasure! How few of us know how to combine them! And if one has to be a whore to understand this, be a whore then, because the other is futile. Germaine's whorishness I prize. She was a whore all the way through, even down to her good heart, which is not really a good heart, but a lazy, indifferent one, a flaccid heart that can be touched for a moment, a heart that has no reference to any fixed point within, a heart detached from its proper orbit--which is to say wisdom, morality, etc., all those questionable attributes of civilized man which we cannot do without any more. In however circumscribed, vile, odious a world she built for herself, *nevertheless Germaine functioned* well in it; that in itself was a tonic thing. When sometimes I would go searching for her, stopping every few paces to talk to her comrades, they would twit me

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about my passion for her and some of them would try so earnestly
to get me to switch "just for once"; and when I would stubbronly
refuse, saying I wanted only Germaine, they would laugh and say
"You're in love with her!", a thing almost inconceivable to them.
"Yes," I would say, and with vehemence, "I'm in love with her.

I don't want any one but Germaine!" Which was untrue, of course.

I could not more think of loving Germaine than I could think of
loving a spider. If I was faithful, kaxham it was not to her so
much as to some image which she had left in my mind, some image
of healthful, wholesome carnality. I might add that it gave me
pleasure to watch her ply her trade, to see her resorting to the
same grimaces, the same expressions, with others as she had with
me. "She's doing her job!" That's all I thought of it, and it
was with approbation that I looked upon it. Later, when I had
taken up with Mlle Claude, and night after night I would see her
sitting in her accustomed place, her little round buttocks chubbily
esconced in the plush settee, I had a sort of inexpressible rebell-
ion-- a whore, it seemed to me, had no right to be sitting there
like a lady, waiting for some one to approach her, and all the
while absteniously sipping her tea or her chocolat. Germaine used
to hustle for hers; I remember the holes in her stockings and the
torn, ragged shoes, I remember too how she would stand at the bar,
and with a sort of courageous defiance throw a strong drink down

her stomach and march out again. Perhaps it wasn't so pleasant to
smell that boozy breath of hers, that mixture of cafe cremes and
aperitifis and cognacs and all the stuff she guzzled between times,
what to warm herself and what to summon up additional courage, but
the fire of it penetrated her, it glowed down there between her

175.

legs where it ought to glow and there was that circuit established
which makes one feel the earth again under his legs, the vital re-
newal that we seek in woman. When she lay there with her legs
apart and moaning, even if she moaned that way for any and every-
body, it had the ring of genuineness; xx in any case it was the
proper kind of feeling. She didn't stare up at the ceiling vacant-
ly or look for bedbugs in the wallpaper; she kept her mind on her
business, she talked about the things a man wants to hear when he's
climbing over a woman--about cunt and nothing but cunt. Whereas
Claude's delicacy, when in bed with you, was out of place, it
jarred. Who wants a delicate whore? Calude would even ask you
to turn your face away while she squatted over the bidet. All
wrong. A man when he's burning up with passion wants to see things,
wantsto see everything, even how they make water! And while it's
all very nice to know that the woman has a mind, literature, coming
from the cold corpse of a whore, is the last thing to be served in
bed. A whore had better appeal to the baser instincts. Some time
later, glancing through a book on psychology, I came across these
words (from the lips of a patient): "a queer feeling in the
genitals, if as if it ate and drank down there." Marvellous, I
thought! Is this a diseased mind? Then I have one too. This
feeling of voraciousness, of wanting to devour everything, why this
is my feeling when I have an erection, or sometimes before I have
an erection, while I am in process of getting one, as it were.
To eat and drink down there---I find it marvellous! A genital
banquet. Oysters on the half-shell, breasts of soft bread, onion
soup, chateaubriand --a point!---. And from that same psychologic
work the chant of the Australian bushmen (unfortunately translated
into Latin: "Non fossa, non fossa, sed cunnus!" That's what

176.

they utter in a ferocious, more primitive tongue (which probably
retains the flavor of the genitals) during one of their solemn
rites. And this it is that civilized man has somehow lost.
Too often, when he is standing over a woman with his pants down,
it is a <u>hole</u> he's looking at and not a cunt. And sometimes it's
not just a mere hole--sometimes he thinks he's looking at a
ditch, or a sewer, and what a degraded feeling that must be to
pour one's vital fluid into a ditch or a sewer. How many beauti-
ful sewers there are who think themselves wife or mistress or
lover! What a commentary on the state of soul when one looks
at that thing and calls it just a crack or something of the sort.
When one finds it empty, or no different than any other hole.
When one has lost the ripe significance of that universal ex-
pression--"to tear off a piece of ass!" I love everything that
flows! Was it Joyce who said it, or myself--I don't know any more.
I woke up one morning with that expression on my lips, and I was
thinking of Joyce and of his rivers and trees and all that world
of night which he is exploring like some vast, fucked-out cunt.
Yes, I love everything that flows--rivers, drains, lava, semen,
words; I love the punctured bag that delivers the amniotic fluid
in which for nine long months we swam blissfully, without pain,
regret, remorse, conscience, trouble, worry; but I love too the
kidney with its painful gall-stones, its gravel and what-not; I
love the urine that pours out scalding, the clap that runs end-
lessly, the words of hysterics that masturbate in a void, that
flow on like dysentery and mirror all the sick images of the soul.
I love great rivers, like the A mazon and the Orinoco, where crazy
men like Morayagine float on through dreams and legends in an open
canoe and drown in the blind mouths of the river speaking at the

177.

last only gibberish. I love everything that flows, even the
menstrual flow that carries away the seed unfecond, scripts that
flow, be they hieratic, enigmatic, esoteric, everything, everything
that flows. Everything that has Time in it and Becoming, that
brings us back to the beginning where there is no end--the violence
of the prophets, the obscenity that is ecstasy, the ecstasy that
is delirium, the wisdom of the just man, the fornication of the
fanatic, the priest with his rubber litany, the foul words of the
whore, the spittle that floats away in the gutter, the milk of
the breast and the bitter honey that pours from the womb, all that
is fluid, melting, dissolute and dissolving, all the dirt that in
flowing is purified, that loses its sense of origin, that makes
the great circuit toward death and dissolution in order to begin
again. Talk to me of heroes and myths, of mother longing and
incest barriers, of the mystery of crowds and the great cities
that were whores, of the revelation of St. John on Patmos--talk to
me of this forever...it is not the language of psychologists, but
the language of the soul. The great incestuous wish is to flow
on, one with Time, to never stop in consciousness, in gesture or
moral, to merge the great image of the beyond with the here and
now, fatuous, suicidal image which is constipated by words, ar-
rested by fear, paralyzed by living. The artist is an insane negro
dancing on a vase that perpetually revolves. He is the caricature
of a hero, a horse trying to bite his tail, a myth coming alive and
trailing its bloody after-birth.