Part 34 (1/2)

But then you enemies stole away my nights and sold them to sleepless torment; ah, whither now hath the happy wisdom fled?...

As a blind man once I went a blissful way; then you threw rubbish in the blind man's way; and now he is weary of the old blind ascendings....

And once would I dance as never had I danced before; above all the heavens away would I dance. And then you lured away my dearest singer!...

Only in the dance can I speak metaphors of the highest things:--and now my highest metaphor remained unspoken in my limbs!

Unspoken and undelivered remained my highest hope! And there died all the visions and solaces of my youth!

That thing brought the tears down my cheeks. It is what my soul has cried all day and all night--that I see all my joy and all my beauty going!

It is the fearful, the agonizing _waiting_ that does it. I know it--I put it down--there is nothing kills the soul in a man so much as that. When you wait your life is outside of yourself; you hope,--you are at the mercy of others--at the mercy of indifference and accident and G.o.d knows what.

But again I cry, ”What can I do? If there is anything I have not done--tell me! Tell me!”

Here I sit, and I have but seven dollars left to my name, including what I made by the shoveling. And I sit and watch the day creep on me like a wild beast on its prey--the day when I must go back into the world and toil again! Oh, it will kill me--it will kill me!

I sit and wait and hang upon the faint chance of one publisher more. It is my only chance,--and such a chance! I find myself calculating, wondering; yes, famous books have been rejected often, and still found their mark. Can I still believe that this book will shake men?

Ah, G.o.d, in my soul I do not believe it, because I have lost my inspiration! I have let go of that fire that was to drive like a wind-storm over the world.

Yes, I ask myself if such things can be! I ask myself if they were real, all those fervors and all that boldness of mine! If it was natural, that way that lived!

--Oh, and then I look back, and my heart grows sick within me.

So I spend my time, and when I turn and try to lose myself in Nietzsche, his mercilessness flings me into new despair.

January 18th.

I have the terrible gift of insensibility; and I think my insensibility torments me more than anything else in the world.

I have no life, no power, no feeling, naturally--it is all my will, it is all effort. And now that I am not striving, I sink back into a state of numbness, of dull, insensible despair. I no longer feel anything, I no longer care about anything. I pa.s.s my time in helpless impotence--and day by day I watch a thing creeping upon me as in a nightmare. I must go out into the world again and slave for my bread!

--Oh, _then_ I will feel something, I think!

Another week and more is gone, and I have but a little over four dollars.

January 20th.