Journal of Arthur Stirling | Page 9

earned, that I might save two-thirds of my time. I once washed dishes in a filthy restaurant because that took only two or three hours a day.
I have said, "I will be an artist! I will fix my eyes upon the goal; I will watch and wait, and fight the fight day by day. And when at last I am strong, and when my message is ripe, I will earn myself a free chance, and then I will write a book. All the yearning, all the agony of this my life I will put into it; every hour of trial, every burst of rage. I will make it the hope of my life, I will write it with my blood--give every ounce of strength that I have and every dollar that I own; and I will win--I will win!
"So I will be free, and the horror will be over."
I have done that--I am doing that now. I mean to finish it if it kills me.--
But I was sitting on the edge of the bed to-night, and the tears came into my eyes and I whispered: "But oh, you must not ask me to do anymore! I can not do any more! It will leave me broken!"
Only so much weight can a man carry. The next pound breaks his back.
* * * * *
April 22d.
I am happy to-night; I am a little bit drunk.
To-day was one day in fifty. Why should it be? Sometimes I have but to spread my wings to the wind. Yesterday I might have torn my hair out, and that glory would not have come to me. But to-day I was filled with it--it lived in me and burned in me--I had but to go on and go on.
The Captive! It was the burst of rage--the first glow in the ashes of despair. I was walking up and down the room for an hour, thundering it to myself. I have not gotten over the joy of it yet: _"Thou in thy mail��d insolence!"_
I wonder if any one who reads those thirty lines will realize that they meant eight hours of furious toil on my part!
* * * * *
Stone by stone I build it.
The whole possibility of a scene--that is what I pant for, always; that it should be all there, and yet not a line to spare; compact, solid, each phrase coming like a blow; and above all else, that it should be inevitable! When you stand upon the height of your being, and behold the thing with all your faculties--the thing and the phrase are one, and one to all eternity.
* * * * *
April 24th.
I was looking at a literary journal to-day. Oh, my soul, it frightens me! All these libraries of books--who reads them, what are they for? And each one of them a hope! And I am to leap over them all--I--I? I dare not think about it.
I have been helpless to-day. I can not find what I want--I struggled for hours, I wore myself out with struggling. And I have torn up what I wrote.
Blank verse is such a--such a thing not to be spoken of! Is there anything worse, except it be a sonnet? How many miles of it are ground out every day--sometimes that kind comes to me to mock me--I could have written a whole poem full of it this afternoon. If there are two lines of that sort in The Captive, I'll burn it all.
An awful doubt came to me besides. Somebody had sown it long ago, and it sprouted to-day. "Yes, but will it be _interesting_?"
Heaven help me, how am I to know if it will be interesting? The question made me shudder; I have never thought anything about making it interesting--I've been trying to make it true. Can it possibly be that the ecstasy of one soul, the reality of one soul, the quivering, exulting life of it--will not interest any other soul?
"How can you know that what you are doing is real, anyhow?" The devil would plague me to death to-day. "But how many millions write poems and think they are wonderful!"
--I do not believe in my soul to-day, because I have none.
* * * * *
April 25th.
Would you like to know where I am, and how I am doing all these things? I am in a lodging-house. I have one of three hall rooms in a kind of top half-story. There is room for me to take four steps; so it is that I "walk up and down" when I am excited. I have tried--I have not kept count of how many places--and this is the quietest. The landlady's husband has a carpenter shop down-stairs, but he is always drunk and doesn't work; it has also been providentially arranged that the daughter, who