Journal of Arthur Stirling | Page 6

I wonder if any one else would have thought of it.
It is not merely the opening--it is the whole content of the thing--the
struggle of a prisoned spirit. I would call The Captive a symphony, and
print the C-minor themes in it, only it would seem fanciful.--But it
would not really be fanciful to put the second theme opposite the
thought of freedom--of the blue sky and the dawning spring.
All except the scherzo. I couldn't find room for the scherzo. Men who
have wrestled with the demons of hell do not tumble around like
elephants, no matter how happy they are. I wish I could take out
Beethoven's scherzos!
My heart leaps when I think of my one big step. I have put those pages
away--I shall not look at them again for a month. Then I can judge
them.
* * * * *
April 13th.
A cable-car conductor and a poet! I think that will be a story worth
telling.
I have tried many and various occupations, but I have not found one so
favorable to the study of poetry as my last. I should have made out very
well--if I had not been haunted by The Captive.
With everything else you do you are more or less hampered by having
to sell your brain; and also by having to obey some one. But a cable-car
is an unlimited monarchy; and all you have to do is to collect fares and
pull the bell, both of which duties are quite mechanical. And besides
that you receive princely wages--and can live off one-third of them, if
you know how; and that means that you need only work one-third of
the time, and can write your poetry the rest of it!
This sounds like jesting, but it is not. I have only been a cable-car

conductor six months, but in that time I have taught myself to read
Greek with more than fluency. All you need is good health and spirits,
a will of iron, and a very tiny note-book in the palm of your hand, full
of the words you wish to learn. And then for ten or twelve hours a day
you go about running a car with your body--and with your
mind--hammering, hammering! It is excellent discipline--it is fighting
all day, "_Pous, podos_, the foot--_pous, podos_, the foot--34th Street,
Crosstown East and West--_pous, podos_, the foot!"
And then when you get home late at night, are there not the great
masters who love you?
* * * * *
April 15th.
Thou wouldst call thyself Artist; thou wouldst have the Eternal
Presence to dwell within thee, to fire thy heart with passion and dower
thy lips with song; canst thou go into thy closet, and alone with thy
Maker, say these words:
"O Thou Unthinkable, source of all light and life, Thou the great
unselfish One, the great Sufferer; Thou seest my heart this day, how in
it dwells but love of Thy truth and worship of Thy holiness. Thou seest
that I seek not wealth that men should serve me, nor fame that they
should honor me, for the glory that is Thine. Thou seest that I bring all
my praise to Thy feet, that I love all things that Thou hast made, that I
envy no man Thy gifts, that I rejoice when Thou sendest one stronger
than I into the battle. And when these things are not, may Thy power
leave me; for I seek but to dwell in Thy presence, and to speak Thy
truth, which can not die."
* * * * *
That prayer welled up in my heart to-day. There are times when I sit
before this thing in my soul, crouching and gazing at it in fear. Then I
see the naked horror of it, the shuddering reality of it. I see the Soul:
motionless, tense, quivering, wrestling in an agony with the powers of
destruction. It is so real to me that my body stiffens into stone, and I sit
with the sweat on my forehead. That happened to me to-day, and I
wrote a few lines of the poem that made my voice break--the passionate
despairing cry for deliverance, for rest from the terror.
But there is no rest. The mountain slope is so that there is no standing
upon it, and once you stop, it breaks your heart to begin again. And so

you go on--up--up--and there is not any summit.
It is that way when you write a book; and that way when you make a
symphony; and that way when you wage a war.
* * * * *
But my soul hungered for it. I have loved the great elemental
art-works--the art-works that were born of pure suffering. For months
before I began