If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize at one effort the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment, the opportunity is his own-the road to immortal renown lies straight, open, and unencumbered before him. All that he has to do is to write and publish a very little book. Its title should be simple-a few plain words-My Heart Laid Bare. But this little book must be true to its title.
Now, is it not singular that, with the rabid thirst for notoriety which distinguishes so many of mankind-so many, too, who care not a fig what is thought of them after death, there should not be found one man having sufficient hardihood to write this little book? To write, I say. There are ten thousand men who, if the book were once written, would laugh at the notion of being disturbed by its publication during their life, and who could not even conceive why they should object to its being published after their death. But to write it-there is the rub. No man dare write it. No man ever will dare write it. No man could write it, even if he dared. The paper would shrivel and blaze at every touch of the fiery pen!
I wonder did even Poe realize how difficult it is to tell the truth about oneself.
It is not merely a question of fear, as he seems to think; the paper might shrivel and I should not care a jot. German-American mediocrities might go on prating of my "literary and moral suicide," and the American authorities might go on making bonfires of my books in public, while saving from the flames copies enough to fill their pockets or gratify their taste in private.
What would it matter to me? But is my attempt futile? That's the question. Is it possible truly to mirror in words the whole soul of man and this magical incomprehensible mystery of a world?
I thought that if I used Truth and described the intense sex-urge of my youth simply, at the same time showing how passionately eager I have always been to learn and grow at all costs, that at any rate the porch of the temple would be significant and appealing.
My first volume taught me that Truth was a mortal enemy of Beauty. I remember once measuring the distance between the pillars of the Parthenon on the Acropolis and finding that it was never exactly the same; the pillars looked to be of equal size and at an equal distance one from the other; but it was all a delusion of our seeing and the rhythmic beauty of the colonnade is surely due to inexactitude.
Was this why Goethe wrote Wahrheit und Dichtung-Fact and Fiction Out of My Life? He saw that he could not write the naked truth and accordingly admitted the poetry?
Should I follow his example?
His autobiography is dull, even tedious; yet if he had tried to tell the truth, how fascinating it would have been. We should have known Frederika and Mignon and Madame Von Stein and a host of other passionate women to the heart's core; even his cook-wife would have thrown new light on what was prosaic in him and German-sentimental. We should have known Goethe infinitely better and he was well worth knowing. As he himself said:
Willst du ins Unendliche schreiten,
Geh nur in Endlichen nach alien Seiten.
As soon as I first read it, I knew that this was my life's motto. The fact is we men cannot deal with absolutes. Truth is not for us; pure Light we cannot even
see; but a nearer and ever nearer approximation to truth should be our endeavour.
One would have thought that the World War showed the danger of our ordinary aggressive Ideal clearly enough; yet the World War and its many millions of young and vigorous lives all lost is no worse than the hating, snarling and snapping of these dachshunds, poodles and bulldogs that are now making of Europe a hell on earth! And America, the America of Whitman and Lincoln, will stand aside forsooth and fill her pockets and see injustice done!
To man propose this test
Thy body at its best
How far shall that project thy Soul
On its lone way?
What hope is there for humanity save in confession and reform; in truth and in love. We must construct a new ideal of life and build for ourselves a new faith: the arrogant, combative, prudish ideal of the past must be finally discredited and discarded.
And if all the ways of love are beautiful to me, why should I not say so? All the girls and women I have met and loved have taught me something; they have been to me the charm and the wonder, the mystery and the romance of life. I have been from the Cape to Cairo; and from Vladikavkas to Vladivostok; but one girl has taught me more than I could find in two continents. There is more to learn and love in one woman's spirit than in all the oceans. And their bodies are as fascinating-thank God! — as their souls.
And all the lessons they have taught me have been of gentleness and generosity, of loving-kindness and tender pity, of flower-soft palms and clinging lips, and the perfume of their flesh is sweeter than all the scents of Araby, and they are gracious-rich in giving as crowned queens. All that is amiable and sweet and good in life, all that ennobles and chastens, I have won from women. Why should I not sing their praises or at least show my gratitude by telling of the subtle intoxication of their love that has made my life an entrancing romance?
The soul of life to me has always been love of women and admiration of great men.
For many years only two men appealed to me as guides in life's labyrinth, Jesus and Shakespeare; twin spirits of intensest appeal; then in maturity others like Goethe and Heine, Leopardi, Keats and Blake, Nietzsche, Wagner and Cervantes, Cezanne, Monet, Rodin and a host of others; my contemporaries who taught me that they too shared my striving and were proud of their singular achievement: this admiration of great men and especially of great artists is the other side of my religion.
In the world I have made many friends and found kindness at least equal to my own; sunny days of joy and nights moonlit with mystery and no foe to be found anywhere save ignorance, no enemy save corsets, prohibitions and conventions, no boredom save hypocrisy and want of thought, no God save my own love of the highest, no devil except my own appalling limitations in sympathy and feeling.
Yet the "unco guid" tell me that this honest attempt of mine to relate in simplest words the story of my earthly pilgrimage will do harm and not good, corrupt and not fortify. They lie and they know it, or the population of the world would diminish as rapidly as it is increasing.
But one warning I must give: this, my second volume, will not be so exact and painfully true as the first for several reasons. First of all, as soon as my fears of life, the dread that I might not be able to earn a good living, had been blotted out by my success as a youth in the United States, life itself grew more fascinating to me. I realized that I could fashion it, almost at will, could travel or study as I pleased and so could develop myself almost as I wished. True, I had learned that I had dreadful, natural limitations; I could never be a great athlete, I was not big enough; nor a first-rate shot, my eyes were astigmatic; but I believed that within certain narrow limits I could do a great deal with myself and assuredly improve my mind and heart out of recognition. I resolved to do this; but first of all I wished to keep my word to Professor Smith and spend three or four years studying in Germany and afterwards at least one year at the University of Athens; a scholar I must be, even if I were never to be learned.
Alas! life in my Lehrjahre was infinitely interesting to me, so I took few notes and must now trust my memory, even for Important facts.
It is a paradox that may serve as a truth that an excellent memory is the source of much falsehood. In talking to my friend Professor Churton Collins once, I found that his extraordinary and minute exactitude came from a bad memory; he could not pin a date or a fact or a line of poetry in his head and so was compelled to verify all his statements. On the other hand, I had a most excellent memory, as I have said, especially for words; but even as a young man I had found out that my memory, even of poetry or prose, was often vitiated by time. Now and then my memory altered this word or that in a poem, sometimes bettering the original; but more often debasing the wordvalue in favour of extra sonority. My one natural endowment, a very strong and resonant bass voice, injured my memory.