by Henry Miller
“As you say, so it would seem. But if one examines their horoscopes one is impressed by the fact that they could scarcely have chosen other than they did. What one chooses or wills is always in accordance with one’s character. Faced with the same dilemma, a Napoleon would act one way, and a St. Paul another.”
“Yes, yes, I know all that,” I interrupted. “And I also know, or believe, that St. Francis would have been St. Francis, St. Paul St. Paul, and Napoleon Napoleon, even if they had had a profound knowledge of astrology. To understand one’s problems, to be able to look into them more deeply, to eliminate the unnecessary ones, none of that really interests me any longer. Life as a burden, life as a battleground, life as a problem—these are all partial ways of looking at life. Two lines of poetry often tell us more, give us more, than the weightiest tome by an erudite. To make anything truly significant one has to poetize it. The only way I get astrology, or anything else, for that matter, is as poetry, as music. If the astrological view brings out new notes, new harmonies, new vibrations, it has served its purpose—for me. Knowledge weighs one down; wisdom saddens one. The love of truth has nothing to do with knowledge or wisdom: it’s beyond their domains. Whatever certitude one possesses is beyond the realm of proof.
“The saying goes, ‘It takes all kinds to make a world.’ Precisely. The same does not hold for views or opinions. Put all the pictures together, all the views, all the philosophies, and you do not get a totality. The sum of all these angles of visions do not and never will make truth. The sum of all knowledge is greater confusion. The intellect runs away with itself. Mind is not intellect. The intellect is a product of the ego, and the ego can never be stilled, never be satisfied. When do we begin to know that we know? When we have ceased to believe that we can ever know. Truth comes with surrender. And it’s wordless. The brain is not the mind; it is a tyrant which seeks to dominate the mind.
“What has all this to do with astrology? Nothing perhaps, and yet everything. To you I am an illustration of a certain kind of Capricorn; to an analyst I’m something else; to a Marxist another kind of specimen, and so on. What’s all that to me? What does it concern me how your photographic apparatus registers? To see a person whole and for what he is one has to use another kind of camera; one has to have an eye that is even more objective than the camera’s lens. One has to see through the various facets whose brilliant reflections blind us to the real nature of an individual. The more we learn the less we know; the more equipment we have the less we are able to see. It’s only when we stop trying to see, stop trying to know, that we really see and know. What sees and knows has no need of spectacles and theories. All our striving and struggling is in the nature of confession. It is a way of reminding ourselves that we are weak, ignorant, blind, helpless. Whereas we are not. We are as little or as much as we permit ourselves to think we are.
“Sometimes I think that astrology must have had its inception at a moment in man’s evolution when he lost faith in himself. Or, to put it another way, when he lost his wholeness. When he wanted to know instead of to be. Schizophrenia began far back, not yesterday or the day before. And when man split he split into myriad fragments. But even today, as fragmented as he is, he can be made whole again. The only difference between the Adamic man and the man of today is that the one was born to Paradise and the other has to create it. And that brings me back to the question of choice. A man can only prove that he is free by electing to be so. And he can only do so when he realizes that he himself made himself unfree. And that to me means that he must wrest from God the powers he has given God. The more of God he recognizes in himself the freer he becomes. And the freer he becomes the fewer decisions he has to make, the less choice is presented to him. Freedom is a misnomer. Certitude is more like it. Unerringness. Because truthfully there is always only one way to act in any situation, not two, nor three. Freedom implies choice and choice exists only to the extent that we are aware of our ineptitude. The adept takes no thought, one might say. He is one with thought, one with the path.
“It seems as if I were straying far afield. I’m not, really. I’m merely talking another language. I’m saying that peace and joy is within everyone’s province. I’m saying that our essential being is godlike. I’m saying that there are no limitations, either to thought or action. I’m saying that we’re one, not many. I’m saying that we are there, that we never could be anywhere else except through negation. I’m saying that to see differences is to make differences. A Capricorn is a Capricorn only to another astrologer. Astrology makes use of a few planets, of the sun and the moon, but what of the millions of other planets, other universes, all the stars, the comets, the meteors, the asteroids? Does distance count, or size, or radiance? Is not all one, interactive, interpenetrating? Who dares to say where influences begin and leave off? Who dares to say what is important and what is not? Who owns this universe? Who regulates it? Whose spirit informs it? If we need help, guidance, directions, why not go straight to the source? And what do we want help, guidance and direction for? To make things more comfortable for ourselves, to be more efficient, to better achieve our ends? Why is everything so complicated, so difficult, so obscure, so unsatisfactory? Because we have made ourselves the center of the universe, because we want everything to work out as we wish it. What we need to discover is what it wishes, call it life, mind, God, whatever you please. If that is the purpose of astrology, I am all for it.
“There’s something else I would like to say, to finish with the subject once and for all. It’s about our everyday problems, principally the problem of getting along with one another, which seems to be the main problem. What I say is, if we are going to meet one another with a view or an awareness of our diversity and divergences we will never acquire enough knowledge to deal with one another smoothly and effectively. To get anywhere with another individual one has to cut through to the rock-bottom man, to that common human substratum which exists in all of us. This is not a difficult procedure and certainly doesn’t demand of one that he be a psychologist or a mind reader. One doesn’t have to know a thing about astrological types, the complexity of their reactions to this or that. There is one simple, direct way to deal with all types, and that is truthfully and honestly. We spend our lives trying to avoid the injuries and humiliations which our neighbors may inflict upon us. A waste of time. If we abandoned fear and prejudice, we could meet the murderer as easily as the saint. I get fed up with astrological parlance when I observe people studying their charts to find a way out of illness, poverty, vice, or whatever it may be. To me it seems like a sorry attempt to exploit the stars. We talk about fate as if it were something visited upon us; we forget that we create our fate every day we live. And by fate I mean the woes that beset us, which are merely the effects of causes which are not nearly as mysterious as we pretend. Most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior. Man is not suffering from the ravages wrought by earthquakes and volcanoes, by tornadoes and tidal waves; he is suffering from his own misdeeds, his own foolishness, his own ignorance and disregard of natural laws. Man can eliminate war, can eliminate disease, can eliminate old age and probably death too. He need not live in poverty, vice, ignorance, in rivalry and competition. All these conditions are within his province, within his power, to alter. But he can never alter them as long as he is concerned solely with his own individual fate. Imagine a physician refusing his services because of danger of infection or contamination! We are all members of the one body, as the Bible says. And we are all at war with one another. Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders which make no sense. There is no mystery about disease, nor crime, nor war, nor the thousand and one things which plague us. Live simply and wisely. Forget, forgive, renounce, abdicate. Do I need to study my horoscope to understand the wisdom of such simple behavior? Do I have to live with yesterday in order to enjoy tomorrow? Can I not scrap the past instantly, begin at once to live the good life—if I really mean
to? Peace and joy. … I say it’s ours for the asking. Day by day, that’s good enough for me. Not even that, in fact. Just today! Le bel aujourd’ hui! Wasn’t that the title of one of Cendrars’ books? Give me a better one, if you can….”
Naturally, I did not deliver this harangue all in one breath, nor exactly in these words. Perhaps much of it I merely imagine that I said. No matter. I say it now as of then. It was all there in my mind, not once, but repeatedly. Take it for what it’s worth.
With the coming of the first good rain he began to grow despondent. It’s true that his cell was tiny, that water leaked through the roof and the windows, that the sow bugs and other bugs took over, that they often dropped on his bed when he was asleep, that to keep warm he had to use an ill-smelling oil stove which consumed what little oxygen remained after he had sealed up all the cracks and crevices, stuffed the space beneath the door with sacking, shut all the windows tight, and so on. It’s true that it was a winter in which we got more than our usual share of rain, a winter in which the storms broke with fury and lasted for days on end. And he, poor devil, was cooped up all day, restless, ill at ease, either too hot or too cold, scratching, scratching, and utterly incapable of warding off the hundred and one abominations which materialized out of the ether, for how else explain the presence of all these creeping, crawling, ugly things when all had been shut tight, sealed and fumigated?
I shall never forget his look of utter bewilderment and distress when he called me to his room one late afternoon to inspect the lamps. “Look,” he said, striking a match and applying the flame to the wick. “Look, it goes out every time.”
Now Aladdin lamps are quixotic and temperamental, as country people know. They have to be kept in perfect condition to function properly. Just to trim the wick neatly is in itself a delicate operation. Of course I had explained things to him a number of times, but every time I visited him I noticed that the lamps were dim or smoking. I knew too that he was too annoyed with them to bother keeping them in condition.
Striking a match and holding it against the wick, I was just about to say, “You see, it’s simple … nothing to it”—when, to my surprise, the wick refused to ignite. I lit another and another, and still the wick refused to take fire. It was only when I reached for a candle and saw how it spluttered that I realized what was wrong.
I opened the door to let in some air and then tried the lamp again. It worked. “Air, my friend. You need air!” He looked at me in amazement. To get air he would have to keep a window open. And that would let the wind and rain in. “C’est emmerdant!” he exclaimed. It was indeed. It was worse than that. I had visions of finding him in bed one fine morning—suffocated.
Eventually he devised his own method of getting just enough air. By means of a string and a series of hooks inserted at intervals into the upper half of the Dutch door he could obtain as little or as much air as he chose. It was not necessary to open a window or remove the sacking beneath the door or dig out the putty with which he had sealed the various cracks and crevices in the walls. As for the bloody lamps, he decided that he would use candles instead. The candles gave his cell a mortuary look which suited his morbid state of mind.
Meanwhile the itch continued to plague him. Every time he came down for meals he rolled up his sleeves or the legs of his trousers to show us the ravages it had made. His flesh was by now a mass of running sores. Had I been in his boots I would have put a bullet through my brain.
Obviously something had to be done or we would all go crazy. We had tried all the old-fashioned remedies—to no avail. In desperation I begged a friend who lived some few hundred miles away to make a special trip. He was a capable all-round physician, a surgeon and a psychiatrist to boot. He also knew some French. In fact, he was an altogether unusual fellow, and generous and frank. I knew that he would give me good advice if he could not cope with the case.
Well, he came. He examined Moricand from head to toe and inside out. That done, he engaged him in talk. He paid no further heed to the running sores, made no further mention of the subject. He talked about all manner of things but not about the itch. It was as if he had completely forgotten what he had been summoned for. Now and then Moricand attempted to remind him of the object of his visit but my friend always succeeded in diverting his attention to some other subject. Finally he made ready to leave, after writing out a prescription which he left under Moricand’s nose.
I escorted him to the car, eager to know what he really thought.
“There’s nothing to do,” he said. “When he stops thinking about it the itch will disappear.”
“And in the meantime…?”
“Let him take the pills.”
“Will they really help?”
“That depends on him. There’s nothing in them to hurt him, or to do him any good. Unless he believes so.”
There was a heavy pause.
Suddenly he said: “Do you want my honest advice?”
“I certainly do,” said I.
“Then get him off your hands!”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that. You might as well have a leper living with you.”
I must have looked sorely puzzled.
“It’s simple,” he said. “He doesn’t want to get well. What he wants is sympathy, attention. He’s not a man, he’s a child. A spoiled child.”
Another pause.
“And don’t worry if he threatens to do himself in. He’ll probably pull that on you when everything else fails. He won’t kill himself. He loves himself too much.”
“I see,” said I. “So that’s how it stands…. But what in hell will I tell him?”
“That I leave to you, old pal.” He started up the motor.
“O.K.” I said. “Maybe I’ll take the pills myself. Anyway, a thousand thanks!”
Moricand was lying in wait for me. He had been studying the prescription but could make nothing of it, the handwriting was too abominable.
In a few words I explained that in my friend’s opinion his ailment was psychological.
“Any fool knows that!” he blurted out and in the next breath—“Is he really a doctor?”
“A quite famous one,” I answered.
“Strange,” said Moricand. “He talked like an imbecile.
“OH?”
“Asking me if I still masturbated.”
“Et puis…?
“If I liked women as much as men. If I had ever taken drugs. If I believed in emanations. If, if, if…. C’est un foul”
For a minute or two he was speechless with rage. Then, in a tone of utter misery, he muttered as if to himself: “Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, qu’est-ce que je peux faire? Comme je suis seul, tout seul!”
“Come, come,” I murmured, “calm yourself! There are worse things than the itch.”
“Like what?” he demanded. He said it with such swiftness that I was taken aback.
“Like what?” he repeated. “Psychological … pouahl He must take me for an idiot. What a country this is! No humanity. No understanding. No intelligence. Ah, if only I could die … die tonight!”
I said not a word.
“May you never suffer, mon cher Miller, as I am suffering! The war was nothing compared to this.”
Suddenly his glance fell on the prescription. He picked it up, clenched it in his fist, then threw it on the floor.
“Pills! He gives me, Moricand, pills! Bah!” He spat on the floor. “He’s a quack, your friend. A charlatan. An impostor.”
Thus ended the first attempt to pull him out of his misery.
A week passed and then who should turn up but my old friend Gilbert. Ah, I thought, at last someone who speaks French, someone who loves French literature. What a treat for Moricand!
Over a bottle of wine I had no difficulty in getting them to talk to one another. It was only a matter of a few minutes before they were discussing Baudelaire, Villon, Voltaire, Gide, Cocteau, les ballets russes, Ubu Roi, and so forth. When I saw that they were hitting it o
ff nicely I discreetly withdrew, hoping that Gilbert who had also suffered the afflictions of Job, would raise the other’s morale. Or at least get him drunk.
An hour or so later, as I was sauntering down the road with the dog, Gilbert drove up.
“What, going so soon?” I said. It was unlike Gilbert to leave before the last bottle had been emptied.
“I’ve had a bellyful,” he replied. “What a prick!”
“Who, Moricand?”
“Exactly.”
“What happened?”
By way of answer he gave me a look of sheer disgust.
“Do you know what I’d do with him, amigo?” he said vengefully.
“No, what?”
“Push him over the cliff.”
“That’s easier said than done.”
“Try it! It’s the best solution.” With that he stepped on the gas.
Gilbert’s words gave me a shock. It was altogether unlike him to talk that way about another person. He was such a kind, gentle, considerate soul, had been through such hell himself. Obviously it hadn’t taken long for him to see through Moricand.
Meanwhile my good friend Lilik, who had rented a shack a few miles down the road, was doing his utmost to make Moricand more at home. Moricand liked Lilik and had implicit faith in him. He could hardly feel otherwise, since Lilik did nothing but render him services. Lilik would sit with him by the hour, listening to his tales of woe.
From Lilik I gleaned that Moricand thought I was not paying him enough attention. “You never inquire about his work,” he said.
“His work? What do you mean? What is he working at?”
“I believe he’s writing his memoirs.”
“That’s interesting,” I said. “I must have a look some time.”
“By the way,” said Lilik, “have you ever seen his drawings?”
“What drawings?”
“My God, haven’t you seen them yet? He’s got a whole stack of them in his portfolio. Erotic drawings. Lucky for you,” he chuckled, “that the customs men didn’t discover them.”