Journal of Arthur Stirling | Page 7

The Captive I read but three books--read them and
brooded over them, all day and all night. They were Prometheus Bound,
Prometheus Unbound, and Samson Agonistes.
You sit with these books, and time and space "to nothingness do sink."
There looms up before you--like a bare mountain in its majesty--the
great elemental world-fact, the death-grapple of the will with
circumstance. You may build yourself any philosophy or any creed you
please, but you will never get away from the world-fact--the
death-grapple of the soul with circumstance. Æschylus has one creed,
and Milton has another, and Shelley has a third; but always it is the
death-grapple. Chaos, evil--circumstance--lies about you, binds you;
and you grip it--you close with it--all your days you toil with it, you
shape it into systems, you make it live and laugh and sing. And while
you do that, there is in your heart a thing that is joy and pain and terror
mingled in one passion.
Who knows that passion? Who knows--
"With travail and heavy sorrow The holy spirit of Man."
Prometheus Bound, Prometheus Unbound, and Samson Agonistes! And
now there will be a fourth. It will be The Captive.
Am I a fool? I do not know--that is none of my business. It is my
business to do my best.
* * * * *
Horace bids you, if you would make him weep, to weep first yourself. I
understand by the writing of a poem just this: that the problem you put
there you discover for yourself; that the form you put it in you invent
for yourself; and, finally, that what you make it, from the first word to
the last word, from the lowest moment to the highest moment, you
_live_; that when a character in such a place acts thus, he acts thus
because you, in that place--not would have acted thus, but did act thus;
that the words which are spoken in that moment of emotion are spoken
because you, in that moment of emotion--not would have spoken them,

but did speak them. I propose that you search out the scenes that have
stirred the hearts of men in all times, and see if you can find one that
was written thus--not because the author had lived it thus, but because
somebody else had lived it thus, or because he wanted people to think
he had lived it thus.
And now you are writing The Captive. You do not go into the dungeon
in the body, because you need all your strength; but in the spirit you
have gone into the dungeon, and the door has clanged, and it is black
night--the world is gone forever. And there you sit, while the years roll
by, and you front the naked fact. Six feet square of stone and an iron
chain are your portion--that is circumstance; and the will--you are the
will. And you grip it--you close with it--all your days you toil with it;
you shape it into systems, make it live and laugh and sing. And while
you do that there is in your heart a thing that is joy and pain and terror
mingled in one passion.
* * * * *
Yes, sometimes I shrink from it; but I will do it--meaning what those
words mean. I will fight that fight, I will live that life--to the last gasp;
and it shall go forth into the world a living thing, a new well-spring of
life.
It shall be--I don't know what you call the thing, but when you have
hauled your load halfway up the hill you put a block in the way to keep
it from sliding back. That same thing has to be done to society.
Man will never get behind the Declaration of Independence again, nor
behind the writings of Voltaire again. We let Catholicism run around
loose now, but that is because Voltaire cut its claws and pulled out all
its teeth.
* * * * *
April 16th.
I was thinking to-day, that The Captive would be an interesting
document to students of style. Read it, and make up your mind about it;
then I will tell you--the first line of it is almost the first line of blank
verse I ever wrote in my life.
I have read about the French artists, the great masters of style, and how
they give ten years of their lives to writing things that are never
published. But I have noticed that when they are masters at last, and
when they do begin to publish--they very seldom have anything to say

that I care in the least to hear.
--My soul is centered upon _the thing_!
Let it be a test.
* * * * *
I am trying to be an artist; but I have