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9/3/47
Advice to a young writer: approach the typewriter with respect and formality. (Is my hair combed? My lipstick on straight? Above all are my cuffs clean and properly shot?) The typewriter is quick to detect any nuance of irreverence and can retaliate in kind, in double measure, and effortlessly. The typewriter is above all alert, sensitive as you are, far more efficient in its tasks. After all, it slept better than you did last night, and just a little longer.
10/23/47
4:00 A.M. I cannot live alone in health. In the night, alone, awake after sleep, I am insane. I read Gertrude Stein. I eat like a Cyclopian giant, only my wine and my whiskey do not make me sleep. I do not desire anyone vaguely or specifically: I merely say, if I had so-and-so, I should not be insane now. I am without discretion, judgment, moral code. There is nothing I would not do, murder, destruction, vile sexual practices. I would also, however, read my Bible. My being is rent with frustration like the curtain before the false temple. Yes, I long to meet a beautiful woman at a tiny black table somewhere, and kiss her hand, and talk of things that would delight her. I long to pare myself as I long to pare my art of the extraneous that corrupts it. It must come first in my work. I drink whiskey to stupefy myself, and regret what it does to my body—fat cells, deterioration of the brain, above all indulgence in a dependence upon materiality when what keeps me awake is a spiritual intangible.
5/15/48
Please try to notice if every artist isn’t ruthless in some way. Even the sweetest of characters have done something, generally because of their creative life, that to the rest of the world is inhuman. Some cases are more obvious, others may be more concealed. I know mine exists, my cruelty. Though where, I cannot precisely say, for I try always to purge myself of evil. Generally it is selfishness in an artist. And because he subjects himself so cheerfully to all kinds of privations for his art, it is difficult for him to see wherein he has been guilty of selfishness. He sees it as selfishness for such an obviously worthy cause, too. Generally, in one form or another, it is a self-preservative selfishness, in regard to his not giving enough of himself to the world or another person.
SEPTEMBER 21, 1949
To the Grotta Azzurra with K. Very cluttered with rowboats, so certainly 50% of the light was obscured. What a shame. Caught the 4:10 bus back to Napoli. Then the parting. And the rushing. Grapes. And a last dinner with K. I in my white suit, which I’d wanted to wear the first evening with her. We dined—indifferently—at the vine balcony restaurant of our first lunch. K. often holds me, looks earnestly into my face, and kisses me on the lips. What does she wish me to say further? (I have said nothing.) She doesn’t wish anything. But mightn’t I? Plans—does K. want them? I know it is I who do not want them. That K. could more easily bear than I could say, I shall come to London next year and we shall live together. No, I don’t not know what I want. With perfect equanimity, I can contemplate nothing but brief affairs—promiscuous ones—in N.Y. And yet I hope for a jolt (of time, in time) to crystallize my desires. I long to write, and dream of its coming out easily as a spider’s web. Now I know why I keep a diary. I am not at peace until I continue the thread into the present. I am interested in analyzing myself, in trying to discover the reasons why I do such & such. I cannot do this without dropping dried peas behind me to help me retrace my course, to point a straight line in the darkness.
OCTOBER 24, 1949
This day completely yielded to being in love with K. What happiness upon admitting it, believing it, fully. The future suddenly spreads wide, revealing a whole golden-pink horizon. I have not been so happy since Ginnie. Jeanne called in at 9. I kissed her finally, chez elle—(why else did she ask me up?) and though she is engaged, to a numbskull, I gather, aged 35, I am quite sure she will be available. The spirit of reconquest, of ego, (of evil) motivates me tonight and tomorrow.
JANUARY 19, 1950
My birthday. 29. Work—I thought that the comics might be stimulating now. Unfortunately not. However, the checks will doubtless be. But the stories—! With the family tonight. martinis, good French wine, presents. And a check over $20 for a macintosh. Couldn’t sleep tonight. I think of Lyne—who tickles my curiosity, that’s all. Isn’t that normal after three weeks together? And I was also thinking about my life. I should be writing now. I cannot possibly justify these two months I plan to work on comics. I don’t get any younger.
5/7/50
It is freedom, which muddles a man up. I am not advocating totalitarianism. But a writer must learn how to impose his own totalitarianisms upon himself, himself being sole governor, knowing that he is free to change discipline and routine after due process of altering within himself his legislation.
JULY 4, 1951
Tonight I felt fat, old, I heard my heart and felt mortal as mortal can be. It startled me so, I had a hard time getting to sleep. I was alone, a physical body that one day would run down and die and be buried. So I thought. It was dreadful. And unforgettable. Thirty—what a turning point. I remember Natalia’s saying in Capri: “Thirty? You don’t begin to live until you are 30.” Tonight. My movie opened, I believe.
8/31/51
As to plot: to what end is individual man tending? What does he want or aim for? To leave his son with a better established business than his father left him? To die wealthy? To enjoy life as soon as possible, and as much as possible? To win the love of a certain woman? To acquire fame as a scientist? A writer? A musical comedy singer? To visit every country in the world? (No, that passes.) To understand the world as a philosopher? Most people in my book have forgotten, gradually and in the abrasive rush of time, the sharp pricking edges, the arresting colors, of their original ambitions. Their ambitions are like old lost loves, pricking them to dull attention in the middle of a drink, of a conversation, with a dulled recognition. “That is mine,” they realize suddenly, as they would think on seeing a photograph of the girl they once slept with: “She was mine once!” To make a plot of individual objectives and to see them lost and forgotten, that is logically the plot of The Sleepless Night. Carry the reader on as the ambitions carry the characters on for certain periods of time. Then simple life takes over.
10/4/51
Autumns in the heart, and old tragedy, tears, the echo of pain and the hollow echo of a cry aloud in the midst of weeping. I stared at her until I no longer knew her or her name, knew only her form and her bones and the shadows at the sockets of her eyes, and then I began to draw, while the radio played a Chopin étude. Oh how beautifully my pen behaved! The autumn came swiftly, a rising shadow of night, telling me, one day you will no longer be with her, whom you love now, but your hand in drawing, your talent and your desire, your courage, your selflessness, your happiness when you draw, these will always be with you, be you seventy and toothless, poor and alone, but she? She under the light now—I can hear her breathing—she will be gone, and worse, almost forgotten. The tragic chorus chanted in my heart, and I followed the distant play closely, tears coming to my eyes.