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It is very, very difficult for me to know what to forgive among people’s vices (mine, too). Where to take a stand and say, finally, this is wrong, and therefore this person or that no longer deserves my love or friendship or anyone else’s. Europeans are better off than Americans in being brought up from infancy with clear ideas on morality—at least compared to Americans. Believing as I do that only out of personal chaos and failure and humiliation can truth and real character come, it is twice as hard for me. When should one’s patience give out? When should one stop believing in the core of goodness in everyone? In this is the whole art of life. And because it is an art, not a science, no one will ever lay down the laws. It is for this reason only that people are different, one from another. It is because of its flexibility that it torments me.
2/11/59
Discipline, solitude and the ascetic life are not difficult for me, but I do not like the feeling of being virtuous that comes when I lead such a life even for two days. I resent feeling virtuous, just as I resent ”virtue” and consider it stupid. Small use—at this point in my life—to remind myself that I am being virtuous in order better to practice an art that is by no means dedicated to virtue.
11/7/60
Lots of writers, especially young writers, think they will put down “everything” in one book. They mean human consciousness (that mystery!), emotions, atmosphere, the whole gamut of existence. When they begin writing their book, they realize how much must be left out, how painfully specialized a work of art has to be to be any good at all. They’ll tell only a fraction of what they want to in each book.
12/18/60
The muse doesn’t come when you beckon. She comes when you’ve tried all day to get something right, and you’re tired and about to go to bed—and then you stay up. She comes when you’ve lost your love. She touches you, she touches your shoulder, and then you know you’re not alone after all.
12/18/63
The taste of death is sometimes in my mouth, these solitary evenings.
Each day I live means one day less to live.
That’s evident!
Before I die, I’d spend some time with her,
Just living.
Mornings are frantic, like all mornings,
The too fresh mind incapable
Of the maniacal decisions that produce art.
Exhausted by afternoon, I have completed my chores,
And am faced with myself and my hot-self again.
Then I work. I work like a worm in the earth,
I work like a termite fashioning a tunnel, a bridge.
I work for a future I can no longer see.
That’s my life.
Will I in five years, two years, one,
Gnash my teeth again (teeth long ago gnashed to bits)
And curse what I hesitate to call my fate, my pattern?
Or should I call it my stupidity?
Who but an imbecile would have chosen such a hard way?
Or shall I in five years or one,
Grow like an oak dressed in evergreen.
Happiness having swollen in me, become me,
Because of the devotion which she swears?
This I argue with myself on paper.
That is what I feel like sometimes,
Paper.
8/9/65
With the new acquaintance: that moment in the conversation when I realize he has a different morality, weltanschauung from mine, like a sudden canyon between us. We can change direction and find some bridge across somewhere else. But the knowledge lurks. It will turn up again years from now to part us, in every way, though we remain friends.
11/3/66
In the most terrible and terrifying moments of my life (ten, perhaps, in a lifetime) Mozart, not a sedative, is the hope—though not the healing power. There is no healing power. But Mozart knew all that. I, or we, suffer here and now, and he often wrote his music during the worst. It is this that I admire, and only this spirit that gives me courage to go on also. It is (apparently!) impossible for me to convey the joy I felt one miserable Saturday morning, listening to the 24th piano concerto on a transistor radio in the bathroom. I had been wretched a moment before. But with Mozart’s courage, I could face lions. Bach for minor crises. Mozart for major ones.
1/5/70
These are “man of the house” problems, for I do think if it concerned a married couple, the husband would worry more than the wife, as he would be expected to deal with them. No wonder men die a bit earlier than their wives. It’s 3:30 AM. I lie in bed reading in this first hideous month without my cat, wishing I could find some consolation somewhere. It is to be found neither in friends nor in success in work, I think, because I have both, and declined an invitation to dinner for tomorrow. I keep trying to grasp within myself (actually by working) the solace and security I need. To look outside—just to have the company of other people—seems escape—though I write an absurd amount of letters. Obviously I am self-absorbed. But what writer isn’t? My besetting sin—lately—is that I reproach myself too much. I am constantly telling myself I don’t accomplish enough, I don’t work fast enough, I could do better. (This perhaps is not even the opinion of people who know me.) Alas, it is so difficult for me to know when to flog myself, when to say “Thank God (or luck) that I have done as well as I have”—or am doing as well. What is this terrible drive? It makes me miserable. The only consolation (one must find one) is that there are other tormented ones who scribble such things in the early hours of the morning.
9/12/71
What troubles the small and the great is the difficulty of reconciling their personal dramas with such things as the moon in its course, the strength of the sea, the inevitability of death. Everyone feels so small, yet his problems shake him with the force of hurricanes. It does not make sense.
1/31/77
If one’s entire life is work, preparation, diligence, eternally aiming toward something as a student aims toward a diploma, it is bewildering to reach the goal—or even 90% of it. What does one do then? And why? Was the objective money? No. Leisure? No. Fame? Again no. Just an abstract excellence really. One can have the same feeling at seventeen or nineteen, having written a short-story word perfect, or nearly so.