Part 20 (2/2)

As if a man who was being torn to pieces would converse after the manner of Mr. Howells and Jane Austen!

--”Tone it down!” That bit of inanity has been haunting my ears. Tone down The Captive! Tone down the faith and rapture of my whole life, until it is what the reading public will find natural!--And tone down the Liebes-Tod--and tone down the Choral Symphony--and Epipsychidion--and King Lear!

Swounds, show me what thou'lt do: Woo't weep? Woo't fight? Woo't fast? Woo't tear thyself?

Woo't drink up eisel? Eat a crocodile?

I'll do't. Dost thou come here to whine?

To outface me with leaping in her grave?

Be buried quick with her, and so will I: And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw Millions of acres on us, till our ground, Singeing his pate against the burning zone, Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thou'lt mouth, I'll rant as well as thou!--

”This is mere madness,” observes the queen. Tone it down!

August 12th.

I sat last night brooding over this thing till almost dawn. I could not bring myself to the thought of offering my work again to be judged by such people. I made up my mind to take a different course--I sat and wrote a long letter to a certain poet whom I love and honor. He is known as a critic--he will know. I told him the whole story, and asked him to read the poem.

It was something that I had never thought about, the effect of The Captive upon commonplace people. I was so full of my own rapture--I made my audience out of my own fancy. And now these snuffy little men come peering at it!

My appeal is not to the reading public--my appeal is to great minds and heroic hearts--to the ages that will come when I have gone.

--And can it be that I am to repeat the old, old story--will every one laugh at me and leave me to starve?

--I will get myself together and prepare for a siege. I will find an opening somewhere. You can not shut up a volcano.

August 16th.

There seems to be little use of struggling. I can not control myself. I wander around, restless, unhappy. That horrible prison that I am pent in--G.o.d, how I hate it! Such heart-sickening waiting--waiting!--and meanwhile that intolerable treadmill! It drives me wild! I am so full of life, of pa.s.sion; and to be dragged back--and back--and stamped on! Each day I feel myself weaker; each day my power and my joy are going. Let me go--let me go!

Is my inspiration of no value at all, my ardor, my tenderness, my faith,--all nothing? You treat me as if I were an ox!

It is like being chained in the galleys! The dust and the heat, the jostling crowds, the banging and rattling, the bare, hideous streets--and above it all the wild, rampant vulgarity--the sordidness, the cheapness, the chaffering! My eyes stare at advertis.e.m.e.nts and signs until they burn me in my head.

Oh, the h.e.l.l of egotism and vulgarity that is a city!

--”Why so much trouble? Other men bear dust and heat, and do their work without complaining!” Ah, yes!--but they do not have to write poems in the bargain!

If it were for truth and beauty, such a life would be heroism. But the h.o.a.rds of wealth that they heap up--they spend it upon fine houses, and silly clothes, and gimcracks, and jewels, and rich food to eat, and wines to drink, and cigars to smoke! Bah!--

It is the brutality of it all that drives me wild. I see great, hulking, disgusting _bodies_ that live to be pampered and fed. And after that, in the place of minds, I see little restless centers of vanity--hungering, toiling, plotting, intriguing--to be stared at and praised and admired.

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