Part 6 (2/2)

to swear at myself in a way that would make a longsh.o.r.eman turn white. And I shall spend perhaps two or three hours--perhaps two or three days--doing that, until I am quite in a white heat; and then--I shall go to my work.

That is the price I pay for being distracted.

May 11th.

I said to myself the day before yesterday--with a kind of a dry sob--”I can't do it! I can't do it!”

Oh how tormented I am by noises--noises! What am I not tormented by? Some days ago I was writing in a frenzy--and the landlady came for her rent. And the horrible creature standing there, talking at me! ”So lonely!--don't ever see people! Mrs. Smithers was a-saying--” Oh, d.a.m.n Mrs. Smithers!

I thought I could never do it--I was really about to give it up. I went out on the street--I roamed about for hours, talking I don't know what nonsense to myself. And then at last I came home, and I knelt down there at the bedside and said: ”Here you stay without anything to eat until you've written ten lines of that poem!”

And that was how I did it. I stayed there, and I prayed. I don't often pray, but that time I prayed like one possessed--I was so lonely and so helpless--and the work was so beautiful. I stayed there for nine blessed hours, and then the clock stopped and I couldn't count after that.

But the day came, and then the ten lines! And so I had my breakfast.

These things leave you weak, but a little less dull.

May 13th.

I have been working with a kind of wild desperation all day to-day. Oh it hurts--it hurts--but I am doing it! Whenever I read some lines of it that are real--whenever some great living phrase flashes over me--then I laugh like a man in the midst of a battle.

I shall be just as a man who has been through a battle; haggard and wild and desperate. Oh, I don't think I shall _ever_ have the courage to do it again!

I did not know what it meant! I did not! It was giving myself into the hands of a fiend!

All great books will be something different to me after this. Did Shakespeare write thus with the blood of his soul? Or am I weak? Did he ever cry out in pain, as I have?

May 14th.

Another day of raw torture. It is like toiling up a mountain side; and your limbs are of lead. It is like struggling in a nightmare,--that is just what it is like. It is sickening.

But then you dare not stop. It is hard to go on, but it is ten times as hard to start if you stop.

I could hardly stand up this afternoon! but the thing was ringing in my ears--it went on and on--I had to go after it! I was in the seventh heaven--I could see anything, dare anything, do anything. It made no difference how hard--it called to me--on--on! And I said: ”Suppose I were to be tortured--could I go then?” And so I went and went.

I haven't written it down yet; I felt sick. But I know it all.

Oh men--oh my brothers--will you love me for this thing?

May 16th.

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