I AM charmingly original. I am delightfully refreshing. I am startlingly Bohemian. I am quaintly interesting—the while in my sleeve I may be smiling and smiling—and a villain. I can talk to a roomful of dull people and compel their interest, admiration, and astonishment. I do this sometimes for my own amusement. As I have said, I am a rather plain-featured, insignificant-looking genius, but I have a graceful personality. I have a pretty figure. I am well set up. And when I choose to talk in my charmingly original fashion, embellishing my conversation with many quaint lies, I have a certain very noticeable way with me, an "air."
It is well, if one has nothing else, to acquire an air. And an air taken in conjunction with my charming originality, my delightfully refreshing candor, is something powerful and striking in its way.
I do not, however, exert myself often in this way; partly because I can sometimes foresee, from the character of the assembled company, that my performance will not have the desired effect—for I am a genius, and genius at close range at times carries itself unconsciously to the point where it becomes so interesting that it is atrocious, and can not be carried farther without having somewhat mildly disastrous results; and then, again, the facial antics of some ten or a dozen persons possessed more or less of the qualities of the genus fool—even they become tiresome after a while.
Always I talk about myself on an occasion of this kind. Indeed, my conversation is on all occasions devoted directly or indirectly to myself.
When I talk on the subject of ethics, I talk of it as it is related to Mary MacLane.
When I give out broad-minded opinions about Ninon de l'Enclos, I demonstrate her relative position to Mary MacLane!
When I discourse liberally on the subject of the married relation, I talk of it only as it will affect Mary MacLane.
An interesting creature, Mary MacLane.
As a matter of fact, it is so with every one, only every one is far from realizing and acknowledging it. And I have not lacked listeners, though these people do not appreciate me. They do not realize that I am a genius.
I am of womankind and of nineteen years. I am able to stand off and gaze critically and dispassionately at myself and my relation to my environment, to the world, to everything the world contains. I am able to judge whether I am good and whether I am bad. I am able, indeed, to tell what I am and where I stand. I can see far, far inward. I am a genius.
Charlotte Bronté did this in some degree, and she was a genius; and also Marie Bashkirtseff, and Olive Schreiner, and George Eliot. They are all geniuses.
And so, then, I am a genius—a genius in my own right.
I am fundamentally, organically egotistic. My vanity and self-conceit have attained truly remarkable development as I've walked and walked in the loneliness of the sand and barrenness. Not the least remarkable part of it is that I know my egotism and vanity thoroughly—thoroughly, and plume myself thereon.
These are the ear-marks of a genius—and of a fool. There is a finely-drawn line between a genius and a fool. Often this line is overstepped and your fool becomes a genius, or your genius becomes a fool.
It is but a tiny step.
There's but a tiny step between the great and the little, the tender and the contemptuous, the sublime and the ridiculous, the aggressive and the humble, the paradise and the perdition.
And so is it between the genius and the fool.
I am a genius.
I am not prepared to say how many times I may overstep the finely-drawn line, or how many times I have already overstepped it. 'Tis a matter of small moment.
I have entered into certain things marvelously deep. I know things, I know that I know them, and I know that I know that I know them, which is a fine psychological point.
It is magnificent of me to have gotten so far, at the age of nineteen, with no training other than that of the sand and barrenness. Magnificent—do you hear?
Very often I take this fact in my hand and squeeze it hard like an orange, to get the sweet, sweet juice from it. I squeeze a great deal of juice from it every day, and every day the juice is renewed, like the vitals of Prometheus. And so I squeeze and squeeze, and drink the juice, and try to be satisfied.
Yes, you may gaze long and curiously at the portrait in the front of this book. It is of one who is a genius of egotism and analysis, a genius who is awaiting the Devil's coming,—a genius, with a wondrous liver within.
I shall tell you more about this liver, I think, before I have done.