I have thought lately that you were able to make yourself believe that you were anything you wished to think yourself. Whenever you wring my heart and deprive me of strength, I shall go somewhere alone, and when I have controlled myself, come back to you.
You say you are master—but it must be master of the right. I want strength, and why you should think it right ever to have helped to throw me into more despair, I do not know. The reason I have written all this is because such ideas have come to me lately, and a fear that sometimes you might resort to your unloving methods, with the thought of its being right. I tell you I would rather stay at home, than ever go through with some of the pangs you have cost me, in what you called your higher moods. You must not gainsay me, that I am also capable of respecting high moods and bowing before them; but it would seem to me that they are only high if they are a source of inspiration and joy to me.
Because we love each other, would that be any reason why we must dote upon each other, or sink from our high resolves? I cannot see why our love for each other should not always be a means of our reaching our higher selves. You need not answer this letter—but when you come back, tell me whether what I say impresses you as being right or wrong —if there is not
LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE
some justification in it. But perhaps I should wait. I have no right to disturb you now.
XXXII
THYRSIS :
I woke up this morning with the feeling that I did not love you. That same thing has happened to me two or three times, and I do not understand it.
It must be because at the present moment you do not love me ! You are writing your book, and telling yourself that you cannot love me as you ought! Is this so? It is only a surmise on my part, and I do not know, but I should not be surprised if you were. I only know that the one thing that can bring us together is love, and I do not love you now. Perhaps you can explain it to me. I write this absolutely without emotion.
I tell you there have been things horribly wrong about you. You have done anything but inspire love in my heart—you have never seen me with love in my heart. Until lately, I never have felt any love for you; before, I simply compelled myself to think I loved you, because my life seemed to depend upon it. There have been many times when, as I look back, you seem to me to have been base.
Well may you preach, while you are alone, and are monarch of yourself. I shall have to have more of a chance than has ever come to me, before I will bear your displeasure or your exhortations. If you come to me and speak to me of the high, proud self that I must reach, every vestige of love for you will leave my heart, and I would as soon marry a stone pillar!
Great Heaven, what strange moods I have! I picture
our meeting each other, unmoved by love; you determined, energetic, indifferent to all things, myself included; and I disappointed, but with a hardness in my heart—no tears !
I am indulging now in the most lifeless and gloomy of broodings; if you do not come back to me, the only soul I can love, if you are not joyful and strong, sincere, sympathetic, and loving, all of these—I shall know it is a farce for me to ever hope to gain any life with you. I do not believe that any woman can grow without love, and a great deal of it. Why do you suppose I am writing all this—I, who have felt such deep and true love for you? I have no courage—the dampness of the day has settled into my soul—and I shall be joyless until there is no more cursed doubt of you and your love for me.
XXXIII DEAR CORYDON :
Against resolutions, I am writing to you again. I thought of you—there is a boat up the lake to-day with some hunters, and if I finish this letter, I can send it in by them as they pass. I have many things to tell you, and you must think about them.
This is one of my paralyzing letters. It will reach you Monday. I can't tell where I may be then. I have been wrestling with the end of the book, and I am wild with rage at my impotence. The fact has come to me that no amount of will is enough, because all my life is cowardly and false. I have found myself wanting to znedk through this work, and come home and enjoy myself; and you can't sneak with God, and that's all.
I cannot come home beaten, and so here I am, still
struggling—and with snow on the ground, and the shack so cold that I sit half in the fire-place.
I think of you, and at times when my soul is afire, I imagine I can do anything. I see that you are helpless, but I think that I can change your whole being, and make you what I wish. But then that feeling dies out, and I think of you as you are, and with despair. I do not allude to any of your "deficiencies"—music, learning, and other stuff. I mean your life-force, or your lack of it. I see that you have learned nothing of the unspeakable, unattainable thing for which I am panting. And it has come to me that I dare not marry you, that I should be binding my life to ruin. My head is surging with plans, and a whole infinity of future, and I simply cannot carry any woman with me on this journey.
As I say this, I see the tears of despair in your eyes. I can only tell you what I am—God made me for an artist, not a lover! I have not deep feelings—I do not care for human suffering; I can work, that is all. Art is no respecter of persons, and neither am I—I labor for something which is not of self, and requires denial of self. And as I think about you, the feeling comes to me that it is not this you want, that I should make you utterly wretched if I married you. You love love; you do not wish to fling yourself into a struggle such as my life must be. I see that in all your letters —your terror of this highest self of mine. If you married me, you would have to fight a battle that would almost kill you. You would have to wear your heart out, night and day—you would have to lose yourself and your feelings—fling away everything, and live in self-contempt and effort. You would have to know it—I can't help it—that I love life, and that to
THE VICTIM HESITATES
human hearts I owe no allegiance; that to me they are simply impatience and vexation.
Do you want such a life? If you can learn to love it for what it is—a wild, unnatural, but royal life-very well. If you are coming to me with pleading eyes, secretly wishing for affection, and in terror of me when you don't get it, then God help you, that is all!
You are a child, and you can not dream what I mean. But every day I learn something more of a great savage force of mine, that will stand out against the rest of this world, that is burning me up, that is driving me mad. One of two things it will do to you—it will make you the same kind of creature, or it will tear the soul out of you. Do you understand that? And nothing will stop it—it cares for nothing in the world but the utterance of itself! And if you wish to marry me, it will be with no promise of mine save to wreak it upon you! To take you, and make you just *uch a creature, kill or cure—nothing else! Not one instant's patience— but just one insistent, frantic demand that you succeed—and fiery, writhing disgust with you when you do not succeed—disgust that will make you scream— and make you live! Do you understand this—and do you get any idea of the temper behind this? And how it seems to you, I don't know—it is the only kind of truth I am capable of; I shall simply fling naked the force of my passionate, raging will, and punish you with it each instant of your life—until you understand it, and love it, and worship it, as I do.
Now, I don't know what you will think about this letter—and I don't care. It is here—and you must take it. It does not come to you for criticism, any more than it would come for criticism to the world. It
will rule the world. If I marry you I must live all my soul before you, and you must share it; if you think you can do this without first having suffered, having first torn loose your own crushed self, you are mistaken. But remember this—I shall demand from you just as much fire as I give; you may say you cannot, you may weep and say you cannot—I will gnash my teeth at you and say you must.