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7/1/45
For future reference: In case of doldrums of mind or body or both, sterility, depression, inertia, frustration, or the overwhelming sense of time passing and time past, read true detective stories, take suburban train rides, stand a while in Grand Central—do anything that may give a sweeping view of individuals’ lives, the ceaseless activity, the daedal ramifications, the incredible knots of circumstance, the twists and turns in all their lives, which no writer is gifted enough to conceive, sitting in the closeness of his quiet room.
9/8/45
Should like to determine the reason or the host of reasons why I avoid meeting people, encountering them on my walks, why I avoid greeting even the most pleasant acquaintances by crossing the street when I see them far ahead of me on the sidewalk. Perhaps it is, basically, the eternal hypocrisy in me, of which I’ve been aware since about thirteen. I may feel, therefore, that I am never quite myself with others, and hating deceit, constitutionally hating it, avoid its necessity. Then, too, I am sure I feel most contacts insignificant, because the polite phrases—there are layers and layers of polite, semi-polite, not quite natural phrases, which must be stripped away, used up, before one reaches the real person. And how rarely this happens! What troubles me somewhat is the superimposed problem of being in touch with humanity. Flatly, I do not want it.
7/25/46
The constant need to retire into oneself—daily, if only for half an hour. It is only because reality bores one finally, becomes tragically, depressingly unsatisfying. To have thought of something fantastic in the midst of reality is not enough. It must be set down. And this is not vanity only. One fears that unless the nodes of growth are fixed, one will not grow higher in the next leap of growth.
10/6/46
The farmer and the poet, providers of our physical and spiritual nourishment, are the least rewarded members of our society. At times it seems writing has only an amusement value. So be it, good enough. Then one is brought, by the death of a friend, at a funeral service, to the realization that these phrases of God’s provision and refuge are not for rare occasions, as we hear them, but for all times and places.
11/4/46
I can never be moderate in anything—not sleeping, eating, working, loving. Who realizes this understands me (who wants to?) but still does not predict me.
11/11/46
Pain sends one wandering into the dusk, the dusk of New York. It is all at once all sadness, all beauty, the soft blue gray of the air (and the gray will win), the yellow white red green lights that hang on the blue grayness like ornaments upon a Christmas tree. For it is near Christmas. Christmas, and the one we love! But she will not be with us. She has never been with us for Christmas and will never be. She is gone, she is dead, and all you have of her are the memories bound up in yourself that you carry on and on through the dusk. All at once this terrible sadness, inarticulate in the terrible beauty of dusk! Sadness so strange and beautiful and perfectly pure itself, it almost produces a kind of happiness. Where shall I not wander in the years to come? Through so many more dusks, beloved!
1/31/47
A writer should not think himself a different kind of person from any other, since this is the way to the promontory. He has developed a certain part of himself which is contained in every man: the seeing, the setting down. Only in the realization of this humble and heroic fact can he become what he must be, a medium, a pane of glass between God on the one side and man on the other.
APRIL 12, 1947
Reading Dostoyevsky’s letters. Wonderful. Too bad I can’t interest G. in them. I give her so much to read—and nothing comes of it. Tonight, she wanted to see “people.” So after dinner at the restaurant, we took the car to see Texas E. Very pleasant time. Later we two went to Soho (a Bistro Night Club) where I was frightfully bored. And when we got home at 11:15, I cried. Suddenly it seemed like everything was impossible. The old story: I want to stay home and read, and she wants to go out. I want her to find someone else for her evenings. Ginnie said that these differences are always canceled out by men and women: that they somehow always go on being happy, etc. And though I can’t recall her words exactly, I knew then that she was right. I am the serious fool. Read P. [Paris] Review until 12:30—about Kafka and people like me, until I felt strong and happy again.
4/17/47
The essence of unreality in the modern world: (is not nightclubs, but) to look for work in the late afternoon, by appointment even, after having worked at one’s own work all day. Now I know how A.C. [Allela Cornell] felt after a morning’s painting when she called at a comics’ outfit. The oppressive tedium and fatigue about it all—making one’s effort at interest, readiness, simple alertness sour in the mouth. Beware these tireless slaves! How do they do it themselves? (Do you really want to know?) Where are their moments of reality—at the breakfast table, in bed with their wives? Gardening? Washing their cars? Or are they another species of animal that does not need reality?
5/11/47
That an individual’s faults are never quite without pardon, unforgivable—this is perhaps the only adult entry I have ever made in these bloody fifteen cahiers.