MY PHILOSOPHY, I find after very little analysis, approaches precariously near to sensualism.
It is wonderful how many sides there can be to just one character.
Nature, with all those suns, and all those hilltops, and all those rivers, and all those stars, is inscrutable—intangible—maddening. It affects one with unutterable joy and anguish, but no one can ever begin to understand what it means.
Human nature is yet more inscrutable—and nothing appears on the surface. One can have no idea of the things buried in the minds of one's acquaintances. And mostly they are fools and have no idea themselves of what germs are in themselves—of what they are capable. And in most minds it is true the dormant devils never awaken and never are known.
It is another sign of my analytical genius, that I, aged nineteen, recognize the devils in my character. I have not the slightest wish, since things are as they are with me, to rid myself of them. There is in me much more of evil than of good. Genius like mine must needs have with it manifold bad. "I have in me the germ of every crime." I have no desire to destroy these germs. I should be glad indeed to have them develop into a ravaging disease. Something in this dreadful confusion would then give way. My wooden heart and my soul would cry out in the darkness less heavily, less bitterly.
They want something—they know not what.
I give them poison.
They snatch it and eat it hungrily.
Then they are not so hungry. They become quieter.
The ravaging disease soothes them to sleep—it descends on them like rain in the autumn.
When I hurry over my sand and barrenness my vivid passions come to me—or when I sit and look at the horizon. When I walk slowly I consider calmly the question of how much evil I should need to kill off my finer feelings, to poison thoroughly this soul of unrest and this wooden heart so that they would never more be conscious of too-brilliant lights, and to make myself over into a quite different creature.
A little evil would do—a little of a fine, good quality.
I should like a man to come (it is always a man, have you ever noticed?—whatever one contemplates when one is of womankind and young). I should like a man to come, I said calmly to myself to-day as I walked slowly over my barrenness—a perfect villain to come and fascinate me and lead me with strong, gentle allurements to what would be technically termed my ruin. And as the world views such things it would be my ruin. But as I view such things it would not be ruin. It would be a new lease on life.
Yes, I should like a man to come—any man so that he is strong and thoroughly a villain, and so that he fascinates me. Particularly he must fascinate me. There must be no falling in love about it. I doubt if I could fascinate him, but I should ask him quite humbly to lead me to my ruin.
I have never yet seen the man who would not readily respond to such an appeal.
This villain would be no exception.
I would then jerk my life out of this Nothingness by the roots. Farewell, a long farewell, I would say. Then I would go forth with the man to my ruin. The man would be bad to his heart's core. And after living but a short time with him my shy, sensitive soul would be irretrievably poisoned and polluted. The defilement of so sacred and beautiful a thing as marriage is surely the darkest evil that can come to a life. And so everything within me that had turned toward that too-bright light would then drink deep of the lees of death.
The thirst of this incessant unrest and longing, this weariness of self, would be quenched completely.
My life would be like fertile soil planted thickly with rank wild mustard. On every square inch of soil there would be a dozen sprouts of wild mustard. There would be no room—no room at all—for an anemone to grow. If one should start up, instantly it would be choked and overrun with wild mustard. But no anemone would start up.
My life now is a life of pain and revolt.
My life darkened and partly killed would be more than content to drift along with the current.
Oh, it would be a rest!
The Christians sing, there is rest for the weary, on the other side of Jordan, where the tree of life is blooming. But that rest, of course, is for the Christians. My rest will have to come on this side of Jordan. Let the impress of a thoroughly evil and strong man be stamped upon my inner life, and I am convinced there would come a wonderful settled quiet over it. Its spirit would be broken. It would rest. Why not? I have no virtue-sense. Nothing to me is of any consequence except to be rid of this unrest and pain. Yes, surely I might rest.
The coming of the man-devil would bring rest. But I am fool enough to think that marriage—the real marriage—is possible for me!
This other thing is within the reach of every one—of fools and geniuses alike—and of all that come between.
And so I want a fascinating wicked man to come and make me positively, rather than negatively, wicked. I feel a terrific wave of utter weariness. My life lies fallow. I am tired of sitting here. The sand and barrenness is gray with age. And I am gray with age.
Happiness—the red of the sunset sky—is the intensest desire of my life.
But I will grasp eagerly anything else that is offered me—anything.
The poisoning of my soul—the passing of my unrest—would rouse my mental power. My genius would receive a wonderful impetus from it. You would marvel, good world, at the things I should write. Not that they would be exalted—not that they would surge upward. Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles? But they would be marvels of fire and intensity. I should no longer exhaust much of my energy in grinding, grinding within. The things that would come of the thorns and thistles would excite your astonishment and admiration, though they be not grapes and figs.
And as for me—the real me—the creature imbued with a spirit of intense femininity, with a spirit of an intense sense of Love—with a spirit like that of the Magdalene who loved too much, with the very soul of unrest and Nothingness—this thing would vanish swiftly into oblivion, and I should go down a dark world and feel not.