310
4/29/44
Art is a stone-faced mountain that we attack again and again, always to be thrown back. We sit long minutes on a rock and look at the mountain with chin in hand, rally ourselves, and attack once more. We break first our noses, then our heads and then our hearts, but our way is in this direction and we cannot turn back. Finally we lie below, prostrate on the ground, and the mountain gives no shade for the flesh or the bones in the hot sun of exposure. And if we are worthy at the last, posterity points to the dents.
4/29/44
Art is a stone-faced mountain that we attack again and again, always to be thrown back. We sit long minutes on a rock and look at the mountain with chin in hand, rally ourselves, and attack once more. We break first our noses, then our heads and then our hearts, but our way is in this direction and we cannot turn back. Finally we lie below, prostrate on the ground, and the mountain gives no shade for the flesh or the bones in the hot sun of exposure. And if we are worthy at the last, posterity points to the dents.
312
6/18/44
Note here: Happy days lead to stagnation of the mind. Happy days even in my opinion, reading, writing, drawing. Nothing has come in the way of ideas in the last two happy days. I used to think such days produced ideas. Now I wonder if frequent disturbance isn’t necessary.
6/18/44
Note here: Happy days lead to stagnation of the mind. Happy days even in my opinion, reading, writing, drawing. Nothing has come in the way of ideas in the last two happy days. I used to think such days produced ideas. Now I wonder if frequent disturbance isn’t necessary.
317
11/14/44
Shall I say I can work when I am most unhappy? Perhaps this is the only way I can dupe myself, the only way that will let me produce any work. Anything, you know, to get one’s mind off oneself.
11/14/44
Shall I say I can work when I am most unhappy? Perhaps this is the only way I can dupe myself, the only way that will let me produce any work. Anything, you know, to get one’s mind off oneself.
318
11/24/44
Perils of a first novel: Every character is one’s self, resulting in an oversoft or overhard treatment, neither of which results in the objective, which is essentially what has made good so much of the writing one has done before.
11/24/44
Perils of a first novel: Every character is one’s self, resulting in an oversoft or overhard treatment, neither of which results in the objective, which is essentially what has made good so much of the writing one has done before.
326
1/8/45
To live one’s life in the best way possible, one must live and move always with a sense of unreality, of drama in the smallest things, as though one lived a poem or a novel, attaching the greatest importance to the route one takes to a favorite restaurant, believing oneself while browsing in a bookshop, capable of being unmade or made, destroyed or reborn, by the choice of literature one makes. In one’s room alone, one should be Dante, Robinson Crusoe, Luther, Jesus Christ, Baudelaire, and in short should be a poet at all times, regarding oneself objectively and the outer world subjectively, compared to which state of mind the reality of the sorrow of a lost love is destructively real and brutal.
1/8/45
To live one’s life in the best way possible, one must live and move always with a sense of unreality, of drama in the smallest things, as though one lived a poem or a novel, attaching the greatest importance to the route one takes to a favorite restaurant, believing oneself while browsing in a bookshop, capable of being unmade or made, destroyed or reborn, by the choice of literature one makes. In one’s room alone, one should be Dante, Robinson Crusoe, Luther, Jesus Christ, Baudelaire, and in short should be a poet at all times, regarding oneself objectively and the outer world subjectively, compared to which state of mind the reality of the sorrow of a lost love is destructively real and brutal.
326
1/16/45
[...] I have a candle on my coffee table, candles are so beautiful at midday, with the snow’s gray glare and the gloom of the room on the side away from the windows. Henry James sits on a shelf, inviting me to forget my brief and unimportant day and stay with him in a slow moving, rarified world which I know will leave me clean, belonging finally to no time and no place. The radio plays bassoon sonatas. The potential pleasure of this morning, this day, which I feel only in anticipation, is more intoxicating than any substance or any physical sight. Merely to exist is an ecstatic pleasure. How inadequate are all these words, when the physical sensation now makes me taut, wanting to shout, laugh, leap around my room, and at the same time be quiet and learn and feel all I can!
1/16/45
[...] I have a candle on my coffee table, candles are so beautiful at midday, with the snow’s gray glare and the gloom of the room on the side away from the windows. Henry James sits on a shelf, inviting me to forget my brief and unimportant day and stay with him in a slow moving, rarified world which I know will leave me clean, belonging finally to no time and no place. The radio plays bassoon sonatas. The potential pleasure of this morning, this day, which I feel only in anticipation, is more intoxicating than any substance or any physical sight. Merely to exist is an ecstatic pleasure. How inadequate are all these words, when the physical sensation now makes me taut, wanting to shout, laugh, leap around my room, and at the same time be quiet and learn and feel all I can!
338
5/17/45
The beautiful wonderful sensations of working again, after chaotic idleness that is anything but restful. To hell with the ship-getting-its-keel-back theory! This is literally being on top of the world. By dealing with three characters in a story, one somehow gets atop the entire world, understands all humanity (not in a moment, but in time) and above, beneath, through all, one has regained a momentum like that of the whirling earth and all the solar system, one has acquired a heartbeat.
5/17/45
The beautiful wonderful sensations of working again, after chaotic idleness that is anything but restful. To hell with the ship-getting-its-keel-back theory! This is literally being on top of the world. By dealing with three characters in a story, one somehow gets atop the entire world, understands all humanity (not in a moment, but in time) and above, beneath, through all, one has regained a momentum like that of the whirling earth and all the solar system, one has acquired a heartbeat.
341
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.
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.
345
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.
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.
368
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.
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.