Philosophy can exist only in Art.
In the highest Art is always a Philosophy.
Philosophy ouside Art is barren.
“I must despise the world which does not know that music is a
higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.” - Beethoven.
1.
The narrow path winds its way steeply down the
mountainside – the sea lies at our feet, struggling with the
rocks. The dense shrubs make progress difficult and the
loose stones underfoot add to the discomfort. As the ground
becomes less steep the terrain changes; it becomes almost
soft and grassy.
The cliff yawns in blackness surrounded by a greying
border as the light intensity within the cave ends and
diminishes to a smallness outside the range of perception.
And as we enter the blackness recedes before us and
reveals the mysteries of the cave. There is blood and slime
on the terrible rock bottom, and yet there is a small opening
bypassing the obvious scene of a combat – not a recent one,
we are urged by the silence. In this new byway the darkness
lies as a thick tangible veil and we retreat rapidly – too
rapidly. We brave the odious regions and emerge on a cold
rock ledge, shaded from the moderate sun by the looming
cliff. High up we hear a sound, but soon afterwards all is
silence. Looking back the passage seems interminable, but
we now hear the waves and are soon assured. It is for us
now to pause and admire the beauty of the clear waters
running smoothly over the brilliant plants. The white foam,
toned with a cool green shadow, puts the plants to flight and
we see now only a torrent of well ordered water with not only
the appearance of smiling enterprise but also with a vision of
supreme joy. And we passed from obscurity to paradise.
3.
A trip to the river at this time of year will be a very healthy idea – swimming and
basking in the sun all morning – a peaceful rest after a carefree lunch – at 4 pm we
go out to the sunsoaked sands with as many lbs. of large fresh grapes as we
please – a dip now and again to make the sun once more appreciated – and after a
long day in the open we cook our unpretentious meal in the twilight and then once
more lie on the beach talking of pleasurable things, watching the idle canoes on
the calm water and listening to the occasional splash of a diver or the ripple of an
oar, the occasional happy laugh or contented voice.... the twilight deepens and the
large moon hangs upon the shoulder of the koppie across stream, making the
ripples in the water gleam silver around the dark shapes of canoe or swimmer. The
voices become seemingly deeper and seem to acquire powerful echoes with just a
tinge of eeriness – immediately dispelled by a realisation of bliss and serving to
heighten this feeling. The air is now pleasantly cool upon our heated bodies – but
shortly it becomes chilly and we begin to draw our clothes closer for warmth.... A
long run across the cool sand produces warmth once more and now we dive
continually into the water and swim briskly shorewards through the water – now
seemingly warmer than the sharp air. As we emerge a brisk rub with the towel
causes warmth: we quickly don our thick shirts and make for the trees. Here a mug
of hot cocoa around the still glowing embers of the fire seems to take on a new
ethereal value. And bed on the warm ground – very firm but samdy and not cruel –
seems the best place int world. The wind which has now arisen in the high trees
soon sends us to sleep.
4.
This is really non-progressive and now he of all people has got a vacation job in
America! I hear a steamboat trip costs L200 although I may get there for L50. Now
I think I have been offered a free trip with some escort – or I think I have certain
friends with me. Now I shall see the great cities for the first time. I see one or two
smaller ones and then Philadelphia – but haven't I seen this corner with the lion
cage before? I see the sights and at one moment I see a person go by with a
provocative smile – my companion remarks on this in a manner calculated to
increase my respect for the seemingly superficial. A haunting vague feeling of
nostalgia is prevalent – I see Vivian with his customary scowl at a station platform –
he comes here from Porterville every vacation – here the dual personality of city
and farm seems unreal too. I consider my struggle to get here opposed to his
regular nonchalant visits, always to return home at Porterville! What am I being
driven by? Somewhere else I see a class of very young gymnasts running round a
corner – and I see Sammy Kahn among them – still only about 4 ft 9 inches high –
still with the same contented reptilian expression on his characteristic scarred
face! Then he too is here? And they all seem here as a matter of course – and then
I think of a gravel road, pleasantly hot and dusty, with the dry blue gums on either
side and the farm close by and the sound of the car which has just passed still
hanging in the air!
So I am driven by the haunting nightmare of fatalism – what can I think of now?
Does reason step in for one moment to banish the emotional current, which
dictates no path of permanence but only sways the moment? These are actions of
weakness and strength has here no existence – such is the substance of our
emotions, the foundation of all art – which yet seeks to concern itself with the
virtuous, the beautiful – and its materials are all of fear and ignorance.... Indeed,
let us distrust art and our present feelings, let us avoid the drunkenness of the
intellect.
5.
I look out of the window and am struck by an altered appearance of Table
Mountain: the top seems perhaps dented in and the sides appear jagged and
peninsulitic. I can hardly persuade myself that the mountain could indeed have
changed when a summary occurrence convinces me. The peninsulitic portions of
rock projecting from the sides assume the appearance of gigantic drops of molten
lava (viscous and clearly visible even from this distance), and drop off onto the city
below. The spectacle is awe-inspiring in the extreme, since although from here a
whole mountain is represented by what appears a tiny shoe, the dismembered
semi-liquid portions of rock appear in the same scale as marbles. The imagination
follows the perceptions but with difficulty.
Now the falling drops are obscured, for the whole mountain bursts into flames! It
does not seem as if it were burning merely due to its surface inflammable material,
but as if the whole earth were raised to its ignition point and were burning
throughout its colossal bulk! I now seem to be presented with a wall of flame (there
is no smoke) which, in contrast to the falling drops, which somehow bore a touch of
unreality, seems almost within a stone's throw, and the suburbs seem imminently
below and steaming with heat. I have a feeling of widespread catastrophe and
spreading disaster.
Concurrently with this (or perhaps before or even after, for time was to me an
obscure dimension) I think there is a drone of planes overhead, and a sense of
danger, as if the planes were those of an enemy in wartime. I think we are taking
certain precautions, such perhaps as a blackout against them. They blend with the
theme of the mountain for some reason. Now the aeroplanes are gone, and the
mountain, a subject of interest again (or is it again?) is invisible. It is separated
from us by a solid wall, or perhaps it was more three dimensional, of water, falling
silently. It is not raining here yet (is it yet). I seem to remember that such a fire
should be followed by a downpour of colossal dimensions. Also, when the planes
were overhead, I think the air must have been gloomy, cold and damp. Now again, I
think I am waiting for the greatest imaginable flood from above (something to
compete in incredulity with the mountain) but it does not come, I think. Perhaps it
came without my seeing, not in another place, but in another time, yet neither
before nor after.
And now I know not what came of this spectacle, of the rain, and of the state of my
wakeness, yet either now or shortly after I asked myself : is this a dream? And I
rejected this possibility. And some time after I looked at the mountain (all feelings
of awe had passed) and indeed it was deformed and shrinked in size. So how could
it be a dream? Some time after I thought of looking again, but I did not. I shall look
now.... The mountain's top is shrouded in fleeting clouds... the uncertainty remains,
yet I think the mountain definitely looks as it did before there ever was a fire!
7.
Quotations from Romeo and Juliet
'Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.'
'I will follow you.'
'Farewell, ancient lady,' (farewell,
Lady, lady, lady.)
'fiend angelical!'
'And thou art wedded to calamity.'
'I come, I come!'
'What must be shall be.'
'come, come away.'
'Come, go,'
'We see the ground whereon these woes do lie;
But the true ground of all these piteous woes
We cannot without circumstance descry.'
'Where be these enemies? - '
'For I will raise her statue in pure gold.'
_____________
8.
Apple 14/2/55
I walked and saw an apple cart. A coloured boy of about 15 attended it, and 3
coloureds lay on the grass nearby. I said to the attending coloured:
“Give me an apple. For nothing.”
In a bewildered way he replied:
“You must pay.”
The others chipped in:
“Twelve for a shilling.”
“But I only want one. I have only a ten shilling note and I don't want to break it.”
“No, you must break it.”
“Hell, look at all the apples you have and you don't want to give me even one.
Alright. I'm going.”
As I walked off the attendant suddenly followed me with two of his largest apples.
“Here, take them, master.”
“No, I'm only playing. I don't want any apples.”
“Take master.”
“I'm only playing. I don't want any.”
“No, master, here.”
“All right then, I'll take one.” I took it. “Thank you.”
“All right, master. You see me. Remember me, master.”
I walked away. The apple tasted well as I took the first bite. A suspicion crossed my
mind: “Perhaps the apple is poisoned.” I rejected this as impossible, but wiped the
apple on my sleeve. I stopped at the bridge and looked over the edge at the dark
water. It was so dirty that I became disgusted and walked on. I boarded a passing
milk tractor and rode to the top of the hill.
9.
Incongruous Duet
The human animal is one species! Adapted to one earth! Who will doubt that certain details of construction are common to all mankind, and who will presume to say that these common details are specially adapted for the welfare of the polar dweller, or the equatorial dweller? Of course they are not. Of course they are adapted to something between. (to suppose the human frame pre-eminently adapted to some ultra-polar region, not known to earth, would be an absurdity, nor can we suppose the human animal adapted to the poles.)
For the greatest heights of human worth, it is necessary that man's diet should not be whale oil and whale oil exclusively : he is not exploiting his potentialities to the full, then. The polar man is a stretching of man's ability to live in temperate climates: the Eskimo is a corruption of perfection, since he comes from a stock that was built for otherwhere.
What then is to be said of emigrations of those who have not even had time for whatever little adaptation from the basic perfection towards extreme conditions the human species is capable of in the course of generations but who simply plunge themselves, as they are, into a climatically foreign regions? To say that they degenerate is a fact already observed, but what matters is that they are hereby consigning themselves to a partial death of that firstmost of their attributes – the inner spirit, or harmony with the external world.
Indeed we have lived to hear how the human life, originating in fertile regions of the Mediterranean, was at first preeminently flourishing in this region and how, as they were driven outwards by density (which ever seeks dispersion), the average of the human species moved further north (since they moved northwards) until they reached the region of Greece, the region of Rome, the region of Europe as we know it today. It can no further go, since the poles have been reached, and the average of mankind fixed, and the distribution of his races finalised.
You speak of ultimate adaptations of man to the poles? The equator? No!!! Did I say man is one species? Let me say: all life is one. It depends on the same. There is no abundance of life in the desert, or at the pole. No abundance of life of any sort. Man is to this extent dependent on natural law.
Do not hope that man is going, in this, to digress from nature. You have seen his already digressions; they are before your eyes. Rather hope then that he is not. Pray for the delay, nay the everlasting inability of man to escape from one single more of the laws which have hitherto bound him.
10.
He was very calm and yet did not take notice of her. Perhaps she asked him a question: or perhaps he did first. There was a great atmosphere of drama, but not one of compulsion. They started talking quietly and then with greater confidence and success: but of inconsequentialities. Then someone dropped something and he mentioned how he had once seen someone drop a tray with about eighteen glasses. Just think of it! She was really impressed.
Eventually he had to part. He said tenderly and in a friendly voice, just a little touched, 'Goodbye - '. She replied likewise, with a slightly nervous but joyful smile. Then he, or she, walked away with a rather full, but not bursting, heart.
11.
4/10/54 The sudden.
Imagine, I say, the state of nature: there are no words and there are wild beasts. How is a child expected to survive? Only, I imagine, through the existence of an emotion which must possibly arise without words.
The word seeking and cautious mentality is not pleased at the sudden. Well, it has not been so sudden. Or, if remembering the very first, I say it was sudden, then I say also – a long time has elapsed. And to the observer, indeed, what doubt could there be of the interpretation of such an expression?
For custom, or misgiving, or false allegiance to false idols, to intervene, is – evil.
12.
Graduations of Strength 16/10/54
We laugh at all, O Brothers.
Once I was smitten, and my strength was to be smitten. Next my strength was to be forgetful of this while I pursued it! Now it is strong to be wholly and forever above the smitten, and yet of them! To dabble in their greatest depths, but yet retaining a superior depth in ourselves: the depth that looks on and laughs (not in amusement).
Also I laugh at meat, and that perpetually. For the question is always: What is worth dabbling in?
Aside: To you I say, you nearly killed me, but instead you made me strong.
13.
Mozart 17/10/54
I am listening to a piece that has genius in its wailing: I don't know who it's by, but when I hear his name I shall write it here.
I return to hear a lot of singing. But now the violin returns and I know it is the same piece.
14.
Break away 19/10/54
With the one the other died, But I laugh at all. It is merely a new thing to dabble in.
To man I say: try to be hungry always. Then laugh.
Alan had a skull in his lapel, and he said something. Well said, Alan.
“The pathological genius of Mill and his utilitarianism.”
The eyes speak better than the mouth. Therefore don't look at people.
Please note the perfectly general character of this revolution: I have said: Be strong: i. e. be unaffected by any uncontrolled impulse. (Do everything coldly).
But I have not said: Use this strength for this, for that. True I have said: Laugh and Dabble. But I have not told the Best dabbling. It is not of the nature of the sun, but of the moon. I cannot tell it.
The superessence is capable of dissolution into one of two evils: love and lust.
To parody Shakespeare: “Love starves, lust like a glutton dies.”
By this I mean that the beautiful and strong in body rule by nature and that it is therefore good.... in digression from nature, we have reached a state where monstrosities rule, this being repulsive and abhorrent to the nature of man. Civilisation passes on, like an evil tide (I mean it continues to develop).
It is borne into me that poetry must be in us. I mean here the expressive nature of the essential poetry, and not poetry in the sense of the dissertations (meaning their context) of the pathological poets we have known hitherto.
All that is important is to make men disgusted with civilisation.
The fanatic who sickeningly devotes himself to an unnatural urge: (the seeker of radium, the master of the egg) is incapable of sublimity. Similarly the despicable weaklings who “lose themselves in something greater than themselves” are losing themselves but in muck. I refer to religious and pacifist idiots. So perhaps Dostoevsky is the arch fiend. He failed in passion. Tolstoy too failed in passion. Shaw probably never knew it. Who have succeeded? Not those who sought life in the image of reality, i.e. in art, but those who sought it in the physical earth and the unacted, chill emotion.
I was awake, and saw the day begin. When I walked, and saw them asleep in Death, I was infected with superior glee.
Were the blackest night to prevail, then could I not delight in Day. There are also the stars.
Not only who is compelled (i.e. always to degeneration of elevation), but also who is contented (i.e. always to degeneration of elevation) is Weak.
The spiritual Rest : Is the rest from spiritual ebullience. It has that of spiritual contemplation. It is not the self-supporting rest of sensualism. (It is impossible for any rest to have any value in itself than purely sensual comfort.) The spiritual accompaniment of the perishable, transitory and even inherently inferior is itself inferior to the highest.
15
O perishable pink glow
That shines above the mountain -
It is stupid to play chess unless you are a prisoner, unless you are quite powerless to accomplish anything, unless there is no opportunity to accomplish anything. These excuses do not apply to the majority of chess players, therefore they are stupid. In what does their stupidity consist? They consider that there is more pleasure in wasting the power of their brain in moving symbols of absolutely nothing around an image of absolutely meaningless squares than in using their minds in the shaping of the significant earth, the significant sea and the significant sky.
16.
There was a cliff we thought 1000 ft above the beach. On top, we were on the edge. Winky threw a ball very high and caught it a few times. Then the ball was below. He considered throwing it up to be caught but did not.
They must also have been below. Let me explain. I had eventually in this connection started to speak, and been invited to melktert. Then we had walked around a bit.
I remember thinking that in the distance, where the sea came right up to the cliff, it was crumbling, and thought that in spite of our beach, it could crumble here. So it is removed myself some distance from the edge.
Then it was upon us. Suddenly I was swept shorewards by a wall of water. Eventually I reached land, but of those who were below on the beach, none did. I calculated at the time that a vast quantity of water would be required to raise the level of the entire neighbouring sea by 1000 ft, and attributed the phenomenon to a marine earthquake.
17.
The Greatest 25/5/55
It was sublime love in me because it was sublime agony in you.
I said that you knew the meaning of pain because of your truthfulness. But now you are trying to break your own nature, which is so sensitive that it causes you deep pain. There are those who are angry because you are sad, because they understand nothing.
Your face was beautiful in joy only because it knew the deepest sorrow. And it was more beautiful in sorrow.
So long as you do not break completely, agony will return to you.
18.
Strangeness 28/5/55
That quality of strangeness in your eyes at my first word – I destroyed it by a rational exposition of my nature – a grave mistake. All this while listening the a violin concerto I tuned into halfway and which I do not know if I've heard. A phrase in it reminded me of Saint-Saens's concerto (it was, I think). Yes, great things were in the universal mind-matter long ago, which touched you and me. Perhaps I waited too long and the bird is flown. At least some purpose has been served, I know instinctively. (This concerto is good). I must live always for the super-rational. It is futile to fasten one's mind onto tenets in love. All this is an argument against being so famous as to be known at sight by a large proportion of people: it hinders very greatly the development of that super-rationale depending it seems on the quality of strangeness, or one akin to it. (The concerto is lyrical and imaginatively limitless). I once wrote that a man ought to “grasp anonymity.” The concerto is now announced as the G minor of Max Bruch, which I have noted as remarkable before.
I will, being clear-sighted, realise the fragility of her skull in my hand. But I cannot lament its Kareninaic destruction.
26.
To B.
And now in the new dawn my wearied soul shall go to sleep ere it riseth newly fresh. The auburn image that driveth way all ills shall come to me at long last, my heart made a home for it by grave pains.
August and on the eighth the air is newly warm and Mozart's concerto makes my spirit catch fire for the first time since the Lady of Darkness imprisoned my soul. And on the ninth what I was already awaiting came to pass and I saw the unqualified image of truth with seeing eyes for the first time. When my eyes had first looked they were blind, and as the first meagre rays were perceived my inadequate soul was plunged instead into the fire of the fatal ghost that promises all but withholds the joy it shall never give, it being so haunted as to have been made only for my transient purpose.
And its task was to burn away even by false fire the disadvantage of my very nature thrust on me by an inappropriate earth, and to leave me all seeing in my journey through the World of Beauty.
My soul was formed in agony, but that agony hath destroyed its agent, and my hand is changing. The highest and natural heart is mine, and in my sublimity I have no fear, for I cannot err. But thou art truly wonderful and originally waiting for my soul, and it cometh to thee. And thou shalt fear not what is within or without thy nature or mine, for my very nature is transposed by thine.
There is no agony for us, for agony is past; there is no discord, but perfect harmony; and yet we are wanderers who cannot know or care whither we go.
Here is Meaning.
27.
Generosity
The lawn is covered with silver discs, and bending, I pick up many coins, but the coins are rarer than the blank discs, and the halfcrowns are rarer than the sixpences. Still, I amass L4.
These things are in profusion – there is hardly six inches between any two. He walks past and I wonder how to account for his his blindness, or disinterest.
But am I so interested to see these smoothly shining bronze medals? Oh no! Wherewithall cometh these from? And the money?
Perhaps it is generous to give the things of others as well as our own.
Oh through this semi-room walketh the one who was a wife. I have never seen a warmer nature. Perhaps that accounts for her new venture – some are too soon satisfied. Her greeting and mine are easy – but there is another with her. I do not know who she is now or then. She is and was familiar, yet I could not possibly have recognised her, never having remembered seeing her before. Our glances and words were strained.
This is generosity carried too far. Here, on the outside sill, is the remnant of a ring, divested of its diamonds by thieves. All four are gone, and an opal remains in the middle. Such generosity!
Look dammit, are you crazy? You can't throw away hundreds of pounds like this! If you don't heed me I will fight you until you are on a level with the floor.
You see, an impulsive warmth counts.
36.
Transition
I can now see both equally clearly: the desire to be unfeeling and a virtuoso, to move, which scorns the Tchaikovskyan; and the desire to sink into the deepest and most austere, tragic mind. The first is cruel and hard, Hitlerian, Napoleonic, and of Bizet; the latter is ascetic, of Dürer.
The choice lies between renunciation and strife.
Tchaikovsky teaches us this : all meaning stems from depth, pain, anguish.
Unfeeling but watchful God !
Double negatives cancel in the search for satisfaction. The unfeeling participant and the self-limited to spectatorship are equally logical developments of the neurotic but agent soul.
Reformer = escapist. Learn from the spirits of the acceptors : Machiavelli, Casanova and the European intriguers.
Simplicity or complexity? Melancolia. To surround oneself with a multitude of objects, or to find calm in a clear expanse.
Paganini. I nearly said, take these virtuosos away. But no. This is real genius, the genius of whatever lyricism is real. “Die klokkie.” This is not the pain in truth, but the phantasism. There is closeness in it. The true mirror of the joined and ecstatic mind.
37.
Tragic Overture
I stand again at the margin. From Spartan unfeeling to Tchaikovskyan, Brahmsian tragedy. It now seems to me that to feel to one's uttermost depth of truth, albeit nothing but pain as is humanly appropriate, is still admissible.
You see, with us tragics it is not that we cannot escape feeling, but that we want to plunge ourselves into Mazzini's mourning.
Brahms made me feel this one Sunday afternoon in my darkened room as I lay almost in a fever of melancholy, hellishness and Casanovan despair with his Third Symphony.
Strength to feel truth.
Melancholic blackness.
But how often have I journeyed hither and thither between the utter introvert and the utter extrovert.
Rachmaninoff. The capacity for melancholy; Concerto No 2 in C minor. That day when I saw a projection of a lunching Rachmaninoff; I was missing one beloved and saw her co-extroverted co-wooer. I saw and heard Paderewski.
54.
Beauty : Bach's Italian Concerto. (favori)
30th August – a magnificent Beethoven (about whom previously see) programme, but I was not so much in a mood for it, and thought myself enjoying each more than the item after, and thought him too restless, and wanted peaceful beauty. I am too weary to judge B. tonight. Tonight I want something more romantic, or something more classic, than Beethoven.
I long for the chastely unheroic (dimmed 5th symphony on the air) beauties of Bach.
Dvorak's fourth symphony is, in addition to the three other things, unheavy and charged.
As for music – well, there is Bach. Not only does his music make us feel it superior to other, but it makes us irritated by the mere fact that other people have tried to write music.
It is the music of passion, and music of wonderment.
**Concerto in C min for two pianos.
__________________
A tennis racquet may die in two ways – use or disuse. Use should kill and it does. The concept of an instinct of self preservation is wholly inapplicable to a mature organism of the reproductive kind.
___________________
'How could I have been blind to the healing and the bliss in the crocus-like body of a tender woman!' - DHL.
'She is making herself completely penetrable. Ah! how terrible to fail her, or to trespass on her!'
'the woman... the soft white rock of life....
“On this rock I built my life.”'
To E: 'Lost Girl' (read), first 47 pages. (perhaps more).
'The soul itself needs its own mysterious nourishment.'
'The Journey Across' (The Lost Girl), with its continued description of the exterior world, makes me think that I shall have to plunge myself into the great force and hardship of nature (e.g. mendicancy in Italy); the force in which we have to cling to existing creatures to escape that annihilation ('It seems there are places which resist us, which have the power to overthrow our psychic being.')
'The Place called Califano' – a Riversdale farm; town and country.
_______________
Balzac: “Mediocrity carries on a horrible, unceasing warfare against the man that is its superior.”
_______________
Skeepwys: I'm too hard; she wants love now and her mouth carries wistful pain; I'll prefer Pieza's more perfect legs.
______________
A strange assortment of men has seen fit to play the part of a coxcomb.
__________________
Turgenev – (Smoke) at last – a burning passion – other things for mockery only now. :-
“What? You could have done something else? And still you think it was of any importance?”
This Tanya makes me sick.
'We start for Italy in a fortnight' ! (Turg.)
Much later: On the Eve : A shadow of truth. She sacrifices herself, but not to the man, to the idea; and only on hearing of his love. This should be unnecessary.
What I must fasten my mind onto is the glimmering of something great and deep that I find in this whole well-foiled story. (Take the contrast between Shubin's tirade initiale on love: foolish, ridiculous by comparison with the later reality.)
20. Bach: Partita No 1 Bflat Dinu Lipatti. I considered it as a favourite to be considered with the Appassionata.
22. Overture: The Seraglio – Mozart (a challenge to mediocre ideas?)
30. Dvorak's 4th symphony: lyrical, profound and great.
55.
A Jean (Of January)
The sight and sound of strange colours
Vibrated in her hair,
And the noise of distant waters seemed to fall
Through her inner ear.
A dearth of heavenly grace
Deemed her worthy of another place
But the sanctuary of a path.
Betrodden by other feet, that is.
Or perchance gave her not feet
But wings for an uncharted sky.
And eyes not for the things of earth
- Not eyes at all, but things to be seen.
And seeing all this, who can but wonder
That paths already tear the world asunder.
(The fish hath a path of whiteness
Along its belly.
Have toads? Maybe; a snake has.
But then they crawl upon their bellies.
Anatomy hath changed.
Light and colour is born
Into the eye -
Scales are heated and turned
Into something finer.
The ear grows like a plant upon the head,
A multiplicity of legs is resolved.
And now you speak of life and flesh.
This always was, always is, and always will be.
Iron is flesh, sand lives: we have no need to be kind to life.)
56.
The mark of the moon's face descending
On a plate of steel bar,
Sent a shiver down my spine on the day
Of the new decline.
Sheets of water through the night cascading
Lit by lights of green and golden glints
Which yield to red of fiery brightness
At Luan's behest.
A night of magic, that marked
The end of Yoag's sojourn in the west.
Then took they them up,
And left that haunt of men already dead.
58.
Palma. In this moment I must think of this perfect wench of the South, and remember that she does not go with my higher ideas of Elena and Elise.
________________
At times I am more cognisant of the beauty of calm.
As an illustration we have the protagonist of Rum and Coke as she watched the card-fortunetelling (my first good look at her, anyway) and as she held aloft the Rum (what an apotheosis of calm this envisagement was !). I disturbed her calm by my examination of the psychoanalysis she had learnt, and her calm was also less evident when she was playing physical games. But not when she danced, or dressed up. She wanted to portray calm, really, as well as was calm.
Brahms.
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I am more or less at the moment saying to myself that I will allow myself to be attracted to woman only by motives of compassion, or generosity-afforded-to-the-deserving-or-evoking.
This more or less implies that the woman must prefer me extremely, for there can be no compassion in giving that which is an object of no particular concern.
And in general the most attractive women are those least dependent on one particular man.
This Crema de Cafe is wicked stuff when guzzled in mouthfuls like this – it makes one feel like the percolator in which coffee is being boiled.
It now seems that I hate all conscious beauty in woman, i.e. all attempt to attract repels me.
Kati – in spite of all her torments of me, I could never have made her happy (no one could).
59.
Residencia Esperanza
I rejected the preceding philosophy last night, anyway, but now I'm writing again, in support of it once more. Those generosity-philosophies were just attempts to ignore my own needs.
This morning I was surrounded by a mob of children, but I left them, and cruelly abruptly, for rear of having them leave or taken from me. Sensitivity seems my ruling force. Now I won a rather uncomfortable game of chess, and returning home saw a likeness of the brunette entering a black car escorted by a smart, impersonal group of men. This impersonality is killing me.
And any attempts on my part to feign strength are fraudulent. The fact in point is that I am miserable now, and because of Mugi.
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I like the force that Leuwen's slight suspicion exercised on the set-up – let me be a bit exacting.
And his chess with Grandet – by gum, I must learn from Leuwen.
Leuwen deals perfectly with the world which is in the same relation to him as it is to me. That coldness.
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Panoramic view: How is it that the miracle of love entered at this point?
La libertad no es cosa de tener o no tener hijos – es cosa espiritual.
Marina (an U. P. I. M. E. )
A criterion is the religiousness of feeling that a woman may inspire.... Nosotros tres solos en el mundo...
Ya que eres la unica y sola reina de mi corazon,
Todo el tiempo del mundo queda parar nosotros.
60.
And now – la desinteresada. How I see now that it is the spirit that values! How to the imputation “she's not much” that may be levelled at me by a seductress in Germany on hearing of my engagement and later seeing its object I may reply that this woman I see on the roof of the Hotel Mediterraneo worrying, and Pat B. closednesses, and drawer-hardnesses (a Catalana drawing on the beach), are certainly not to be compared with la desinteresada.
This morning a feeling of disgust overcame me on seeing three young women who I thought could not have appeared stupider in their giggling silliness and affectations. Then I thought that this interpretation of stupidity might not always have occurred to me; a wider interpretation of this phenomenon (which is closely tied up with my present preoccupations re the deterioration of women) is that there arises an immoderate tendency to falseness in these women. My unconcealed disgust made their faces very uglily miserable, as I thus debunked their nonsensical fraud. I suppose these women do go through pain, and perhaps that is because of the society-imposed delay (Child-Marriage philosophy). But how the truth-beauty of d. emphasises this wretchedness! This morning I asked d. “Quien sabe si siempre seras tan buena?”
- Woman needs the anchor of man's love to keep her fresh and alive, and without it she must rely on the strength of hardness and deadness. Or conversely, if she adopts these measures, she excludes herself from the possibility of love. No man could possibly love such an American-woman politician as the breadshopvender.
61.
I met her on top of a mountain.
Qualifications: 1) it wasn't a very high mountain
and 2) I had met her before.
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Pilarin-thoughts. My vaunt to Gilles about the sensitivity of the French women: now, is that sensitivity so sensitive that can survive so easily? And is there not some relation in this with the case of the Irish girls thinking themselves so “much-hearted” but being really the worst of all in this respect? (Meaning that the more sensitive creatures perforce have their sensitivity coming into crash with the unamenable situation of circumstances which must have a modifying effect on the appearance of the sensitivity).
How insensitive Lou really was.
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My lugubrious parade through the Blanes boulevard – here in this hostel lounge I may have no intentions but my apparent strength or whatever it is simply renders inevitable a train of events in which I come to be hated. (a neurotic idea? But then it didn't occur to me so much but rather to Boris.)
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EVA BOM
Thank God for opening me to this beauty.
e.g. A major concerto
St John Passion
Violin Concerto (or No 4 conc.?)
Significant Nonsense ES 59
I lie here thinking of her, and of her thinking of me, and of her thinking of my thinking of her, and of her thinking of my thinking of her thinking of me,
No puedo dormir más...
62.
P. O. Box Lantern Tops,
Troupe Restante,
Philadelphia, USA.
Sunday.
Dear Mom, A woman and I had to descend down a wall to a lower level or pit: there were some men waiting below to receive us. One has been led to believe in the fragility on these women (though who would have presupposed it from their arrogance) so we took so much damn care in lowering this woman, feet first, down only a matter of eight or nine feet. First she hung from a bar at the top, and then from one six inches lower, and then I, squatting at the top, grabbed her wrists, loosening the grasp of her hands on the bar and lowering her yet more. Then the man at the bottom had a good hold of her and lowered her to the floor. I had now to descend, without assistance from above. I found that I actually had to suppress some qualms, but then I lowered myself in a businesslike manner till I was hanging from the bar. The men now seized me by the ankles with scant ceremony and bore these downwards. I discovered another bar further down the wall and grabbed this with my hands, from which position I could reach the floor with my feet. So the descent was accomplished. Do you remember?
If we would be in a big town, and if it was sufficiently grey and extensive, we would find that Elizabeth was lost. We waited there, hoping to hear something of her. But she had disappeared and there was no trace of her or indication of where she might be. Above all, the inactivity of this waiting grew more and more unendurable, and eventually we despaired of ever seeing her again. But what could have happened to her? We have left this town far from us. So far, that we could not find it again for want of time and money. Supposing that of necessity we died, just as easily could we find it again.
I have left Blanes and am now in Philadelphia.
Gurth.
63.
Translation: (The Hunted Girl-I.)
18.8.59. Dream of last night. (1) In the house (2) In the park (3) On the hill (The murder of Ursula-I)
(1) In the house the girl-I tries to escape and is found in a quadrangle where she is given a gun.
She realises that the purpose is to use this fact as an excuse to kill her: “She was going to shoot us.” She verifies that the gun is empty, and with great violence the girl-I throws the gun away, high through the air.
(2) In the park she surrounds herself with the little girls, many girls, to protect herself from the bullet which she expects at any moment. She runs with the girls; she sits on a bench with their heads close by.
(3) She finds herself on the hill. The fear of death is always present. She notes the extreme beauty of colours (grey-blue) of the trees and the water. It is the place of the origin of the fountains: which have been directed into spray.
She runs with great swiftness down the hill. She passes the others. At the bottom she passes round some corners and walls. She passes some dark-skinned women. She passes a corner, hears the report of guns, turns round in curiosity and surprise and receives the bullets in her face. She falls amazed and already knows that the blood will burst from her brain within a moment.
My dream says that after the bursting she determines to live and is certain of getting better, but I know that she dies.
64.
The Power of beauty is great. In youth my desire for love was great, and yet in this I have not been a great success. The philosopher Nietzsche says that a mob success is a small success, because there are few appreciators of great beauty. It follows that the most beautiful thing of all (me and my nature) will be appreciated by nobody, so I must resign myself to failure, because beauty is an all-powerful and relentless master. It is not in my power to be otherwise.
Nietzsche's most sublime sentence :
“Art is the only superior counter-agent to all will to the denial of life; it is par excellence the anti-Christian, the anti-Buddhistic, the anti-Nihilistic force.”
To gain my ends I must be soft, child-like, wondering, hopeful, open, ingenuous and religious and happy. But to the external world I must be found quite unyielding and insusceptible.
65.
I wrote her a letter. In it I said: “My ambition is to live to display fantastic qualities.” Mind you, that was long ago and I have no ambitions any more.
Oh how nicely I walked down the street in the evenings of that cold town! I couldn't care a damn then about whether she answered my letter or not. Later she told me that she had and that it must have gone astray; how could I ever have fallen from such a high state to preoccupy myself with such things?
It was cold then in winter, and oh the freedom though it came late still heightened the precious remaining minutes of the slanting sun which warmed my dark blue jacket. I chewed chocolate there and it was not Cadbury's but the specially tasty and milky chocolate of that time because afterwards the Cadbury's was never the same. I walked down the street in the pristine air and saw small houses clustered together some way down from the road through the razid medium.
Oh and believe me those milling motions of my limbs and insides though slowly gathering force and genius out of the nothing which surrounded me could (and did!) certainly expostulate a tumult of intoxication! (My rabid and moribund eye jelly-like and full of power.)
66.
Today I saw lying at his ease in the street a few feet away from the gutter, a fairly well-dressed European man, repeatedly jabbing with his forefinger a wart on his cheek.
Of more interest than this is I immediately concluded his actions were not one whit more mad than those of all the other passers-by, walking along briskly performing muscular movements with pride in their faces to achieve an end that really to me has no more absolute worth than that pursued by the prostrate man, whatever that was. If anything they were more despicable than him because I straight away saw the fear in them to do what he was doing.
I just cannot be interested in the nonsensical activities feelings and thoughts of that self-opinionated mob, I am afraid.
Today in fact I was wondering why the whole world was so miserable, dead and played-out and I come to the conclusion that that is the result of too much cowardice and subjection of the self to useless, worn-out taboos. We want some courage, and some fresh air, to voice one of Nietzsche's most frequent exhortations.
67.
Remote and most beautiful creature !
Thou walkedst along like a remote vision and dream ....
And that vision smiles to itself in the water, gently smiling and joyful plays in the water.
Crouches and sits there in the bright sun, between the blue of the sea and the blue of the sky.
What moment of peace and beauty, placed so remote from the miserable that came not with us.
There is such quality in that romantic and elevated image alone that it must satisfy completely.
68.
My signature must be well known among the rank and file of the teeming hundreds in this office building. You know, Dawn, I wrote my name very large, the size of a small carpet, on the marble floor of the entrance hall of this building, inside the main glass doors. Not my signature but a form of handwriting. I wrote it in ink or in rubber, I don't rightly know which. And when Chris told me he had seen it there, it was as if a doubt was removed from my mind. Had I, then, hoped that the mob would not see it, or be able to read it? Chris and I were in that hall, and I started to erase the writing, which followed the perimeter of a rectangle on the floor of the hall which became a closed hall with no windows or glass, only lit. The patterns or lines inside the rectangle I was not worried about and left at first.
Erasing made the rubber of the writing form flakes as when you use a rubber on paper. With a sheet of newspaper I worked the rubber flakes towards a central pile, going down with my hands to the floor. I also bought some boerewors, so that lo! when I had accumulated all the rubber flakes in one heap, out of these and the remains of the sausages sprang maggots, until the whole heap was transformed into crawling maggots, which swiftly grew to the size of slugs, and the whole heap of worms started breathing in and out in unison, so that it pulsed large and small. But I saw that on one edge of the heap a spider was generated, and I feared his speed and venom. He was light grey, as the marble floor and worms, and so camouflaged to add to his terror. But soon this spider swelled in birth-giving, and produced many small spiders in what was for them a veritable sea of liquid, like thin dark soup in a soup plate.
But the spider was transformed into a large, vicious hen with a hooked and venemous nose or beak, who tried to peck me. I grabbed its neck and tried to break it, not very successfully while the hen was transformed into a beautiful woman, rather pathetic and immobile in my hands on her neck. The compulsion that had been born in me to kill the hen still drove me on, against my desire, to kill the woman, and I strove to break her neck but could not quite manage it, oh how heavy and terrible a burden it is to bear, the tragedy of killing with one's own hands what one pities, and worse still if one only half succeeds, and hurts the creature while it lingers on! Chris showed me how to kill by striking the neck with the side of the hand, and although we both tried this on the woman's rather nice neck I really don't know whether we succeeded.
69.
- Each one of us is merely a depository of passions -
In the life of Napoleon, there was romance but governed by energy.
The irony of vanity.
(Explanation: The “Irony of vanity” is as of a great personage like Napoleon. Being so great, he is very vain and cannot take other things seriously, therefore he is ironic.)
What emotion is wanted? I say, a very beautiful and poetic one. Then, perhaps the strength of Napoleon and of the irony of vanity of no use, while the acceptance of pain will perhaps bring the consequence of the emotion of greater value, although I do not know when.
After his first failure in love, Napoleon was mistaken in becoming ironical. That was weakness, not strength.
What of the saying of Beethoven? (“Strength is the moral code of those who raise themselves above their fellow men, and it is also mine.”)
Perhaps with more reason I shall say: Strength is the force that bears suffering.
Of the irony of vanity: always we must decide whether to choose irony (as of Napoleon) or deep seriousness (of whom? of Beethoven? But then he also wished to laugh at tragedies. But he presented them as such, which Napoleon never did.)
70.
Some Thoughts.
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A painful and poetic state arose in me – because we talked about a place that held such for me – an idyll which inspired my most marvellous creation -
Now I think, can I control these thoughts? Not unless I want to, but do it is want to? Not if they have value. But what has value? This is a painful state, yet it is poetic. The charm of the tragic is highly questionable, yet it undeniably exists or there would be no zest for tragedies.
Those past and irretrievable idylls of long ago – it is painful to think of them, but cruel the forget them.
The power of my writing is such, that it eases my pain.
71.
Dreams of last night: (of the night of the day in which I received the letter of rejection)
1. I was seeking reconciliation, but it was with my sister; I called her with my hand from our lounge to the place where I was , I believe in half light.
2. I was persuading a Jewess who much resembled my sister – we spoke of money – I asked her how much she had, she said five thousand pounds (she had said that she was twenty-one or 22 or 23 or 24, (it seemed that she did not know exactly) ... I told her that I had four thousand; together it was nine thousand, on that we could live and moreover I earned a hundred and twenty five pounds a month. I asked her if she knew of Schnabel, that he was a Jew that married a Christian, and I showed her my records of Schnabel and the cupboard where they usually are.
3. I was playing snooker with Jumbo and I discovered a good method of playing: I chose an exact point on the ball, and I went down very low (which made a favourable difference) and I played very straight with the cue – and I put several balls in the pocket – the balls went in the pocket after a touch against the side of the pocket.
11.0 a.m. - A type of calm happiness, in my surroundings, the murmur of pleasing sounds, and tactile (temperature) impressions, is coming to me now, amid my sorrow.
72.
Veli, her nature.
I am in love with love, and one cannot love where love is not desired by the object, because then love offends and is not love. One must respect the desire of the object to be left.
Love is valuable, but love law causes suffering at its end or parting (Veli, the child of the boat, Pili, Irma). This we must accept bravely. All earthly love will have its end, even if only in death.
“This life without love is not life.”
Of religion: Perhaps Beethoven took his pain on himself, perhaps it is necessary to do so and not to escape it in religion. (Courage!)
Maintain a tender heart, be sensitive and suffer all.
There was not love in her. There was desire. Is there love in the world? Love is pity alone, nothing else. It's pure christianity. There is love in Veli for me, but desire is stronger than this love, in her, in me and in Olenin and in all.
73.
An Idea
I have now walked along the street in the night – in me, deathly quiet; outside me the noise of wind and leaves. The realisation of the terrible nature of existence, the insight into the tragedy of nature – the perishability of all, and it leads me to one faith alone, which nothing can shake – the necessity of remaining open the these purifying voices of nature, and the necessity of love.
To listen to the voices of nature, and to move in its heartbreaking beauties. The death of my love with J. is tragic only because it was connected with nature around us – I feel tragic only when I think of our moments in beautiful places, and then it is as if the places now hurt me, not she apart from the places.
The island Ibiza hurt me like a sword when I saw it alone in its beauty!