No More Learning

Now one breathes here the rankness of desolation.

In this narrow world, narrow and yet full of disgust, a single familiar
object smiles at me: the phial of laudanum: old and terrible love; like
all loves, alas! fruitful in caresses and treacheries.

Yes, Time has reappeared; Time reigns a monarch now; and with the
hideous Ancient has returned all his demoniacal following of Memories,
Regrets, Tremors, Fears, Dolours, Nightmares, and twittering nerves.

I assure you that the seconds are strongly and solemnly accentuated now;
and each, as it drips from the pendulum, says: "I am Life: intolerable,
implacable Life! "

There is not a second in mortal life whose mission it is to bear good
news: the good news that brings the inexplicable tear to the eye.

Yes, Time reigns; Time has regained his brutal mastery. And he goads me,
as though I were a steer, with his double goad: "Woa, thou fool! Sweat,
then, thou slave! Live on, thou damned! "




AT ONE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING.


Alone at last! Nothing is to be heard but the rattle of a few tardy and
tired-out cabs. There will be silence now, if not repose, for several
hours at least. At last the tyranny of the human face has disappeared--I
shall not suffer except alone.
At last it is permitted me to refresh
myself in a bath of shadows. But first a double turn of the key in the
lock. It seems to me that this turn of the key will deepen my solitude
and strengthen the barriers which actually separate me from the world.

A horrible life and a horrible city! Let us run over the events of the
day. I have seen several literary men; one of them wished to know if he
could get to Russia by land (he seemed to have an idea that Russia was
an island); I have disputed generously enough with the editor of a
review, who to each objection replied: "We take the part of respectable
people," which implies that every other paper but his own is edited by a
knave; I have saluted some twenty people, fifteen of them unknown to me;
and shaken hands with a like number, without having taken the
precaution of first buying gloves; I have been driven to kill time,
during a shower, with a mountebank, who wanted me to design for her a
costume as Venusta; I have made my bow to a theatre manager, who said:
"You will do well, perhaps, to interview Z; he is the heaviest,
foolishest, and most celebrated of all my authors; with him perhaps you
will be able to come to something. See him, and then we'll see," I have
boasted (why? ) of several villainous deeds I never committed, and
indignantly denied certain shameful things I accomplished with joy,
certain misdeeds of fanfaronade, crimes of human respect; I have refused
an easy favour to a friend and given a written recommendation to a
perfect fool. Heavens! it's well ended.

Discontented with myself and with everything and everybody else, I
should be glad enough to redeem myself and regain my self-respect in the
silence and solitude.

Souls of those whom I have loved, whom I have sung, fortify me; sustain
me; drive away the lies and the corrupting vapours of this world; and
Thou, Lord my God, accord me so much grace as shall produce some
beautiful verse to prove to myself that I am not the last of men, that I
am not inferior to those I despise.




THE CONFITEOR OF THE ARTIST.


How penetrating is the end of an autumn day! Ah, yes, penetrating enough
to be painful even; for there are certain delicious sensations whose
vagueness does not prevent them from being intense; and none more keen
than the perception of the Infinite. He has a great delight who drowns
his gaze in the immensity of sky and sea.