OF TIME AND THE RIVER

by Thomas Wolfe

  He saw the whole scene with a blazing imagery, an exact detail, as if he had himself been present and seen and heard it all. He could hear the spirited light clamour of their conversation--like everything they did, gracious, faultless, full of ease--could see them rise to greet their famous comrades--whoever they might be--Feuillet, Capus, or Donnay, all the rest of them--could see them shake hands with the swift, firm greeting, so graceful, worldly, and so French, and hear them saying:

  "Ah, my dear Maurice--how goes it with you? But--I see that I disturb you--pardon, my friend!--I see that you are busy with another of your admirable tales--Ah-h, my old one, not for the world would I disturb the flow of your so admirable genius. Parbleu! Do I wish my wretched name to become infamous to all posterity, to be heard with execration--ah, the devil! Non! The black forgetfulness of the grave is better! Eh, well, then, old comrade, till tomorrow--Then I hope--"

  "Ah, but no, but no, but no, but no, but no! My dear Octave, you shall remain! These pages here!--Pouf! it is nothing! I am already done--Attend!" Swiftly he scrawls a line or two, and then triumphantly: "Voilà! C'est fini, old cock! A trifle I was finishing for my scoundrel of a publisher, who demands it for tomorrow.--But, tell me, my dear boy--what the devil kept you in the provinces for so long a time--so long away from this dear Pa-ree? Ah, how we have missed you: my dear fellow; Paris really never is the same unless you are here to give it grace! Tiens! Tiens! Poor Courteline has been quite inconsolable! Capus has sworn daily he would go and fetch you back! Tinayre is grouchy as a bear! My dear fellow, we have all lamented you! De Régnier was certain you had got another mistress! Boylesve insisted that she was at least a duchess--Bazin, a milkmaid--"

  "And you, my old one?"

  "I? My dear fellow--I knew it must be chicken-pox or measles: I was certain you would not have to stir a foot out of Pa-ree to find a wench."

  "But tell me, Octave, how are all our friends? I am starved for news, I have read nothing. First of all--René--?"

  "Has published another admirable work--an excellent study of life in the provinces."

  "Ah, good. And Duvernois?"

  "His latest comedy has been produced and is un succès fou--a charming thing--witty, naughty, quiet in his best vein, my dear boy."

  "Renard?"

  "A comedy, a book of stories, a romance--all excellent, all doing well."

  "And Courteline?"

  "Une chose incomparable, my boy: a book of dialogues in his drollest vein--the public is convulsed: the police are in a towering rage about Le Gendarme est sans Pitié--"

  "And Abel?"

  "A formidable book, my lad--just what you would expect, a powerful tragedy, exact psychology, brilliant--but here he comes, all smiles--ah-h! I thought so! He sees you--My dear Abel, welcome: behold, our prodigal has come home again--"

  Yes, it was so that it was done, without anguish, error, or maddening of the soul.

  And far, far away from all this certain grace, this ease of form, this assured attaining of expression--there lay America--and all the dumb hunger of its hundred million tongues, its unfound form, its unborn art. Far, far away from this enchanted legend of a city--there lay America and the brutal stupefaction of its million streets, its unquiet heart, its vast incertitude, the huge sprawled welter of its life--its formless and illimitable distances.

  And Great God! Great God! but it was farther, stranger than a dream--he noted its cruelty, savagery, horror, error, loss and waste of life, its murderous criminality, and its hypocritic mask of virtue, its lies, its horrible falseness, and its murderous closure of a telling tongue--and Great God! Great God! with every pulse and fibre in him, with the huge, sick ache of an intolerable homelessness, he was longing with every beating of his anguished heart for just one thing--return!

  Day by day, hour by hour, and minute by minute, the blind hunger tore at his naked entrails with a vulture's beak. He prowled the streets of Paris like a maddened animal, he hurled himself at the protean complexities of its million-footed life like a soldier who hurls himself into a battle: he was baffled, sick with despair, wrung, trembling and depleted, finally exhausted, caught in the toils of that insatiate desire, that terrible devouring hunger that grew constantly from what it fed upon and that drove him blindly to madness. The hopeless and unprofitable struggle of the Faustian life had never been so horribly evident as it now was--the futility of his insane efforts to memorize every stone and paving brick in Paris, to burn the vision of his eyes through walls and straight into the lives and hearts of a million people, to read all the books, eat all the food, drink all the wine, to hold the whole gigantic panorama of the universe within his memory, and somehow to make "one small globe of all his being," to compact the accumulated experience of eternity into the little prism of his flesh, the small tenement of his brain, and somehow to use it all for one final, perfect, all-inclusive work--his life's purpose, his heart's last pulse and anguish, and his soul's desire.

  As a result of all this anguished and frustrated struggle he began now to go about with a small notebook in his pocket, the worn stub of a chewed pencil in his hands.

  And because everything went into this mad mélange, because by every one of these scrawls of notes and sometimes incoherent words--even by the thousands of crude drawings, swift designs which he scrawled down in a thousand towns and places, to get the texture of a wall, the design of a door, the shape of a table, even the sword-cut on a man's scarred face--because in all of these shells and splinters that were thrown off from his tormented and uneasy brain the terrible Faustian fever of his tortured spirit was evident--no better image of his life--the life of a young man of that period--of modern man caught in the Faustian serpent-toils of modern life--can be given than the splintered jottings in these battered little books afford.

  Here, then, picked out at random from the ferment of ten thousand pages and a million words--put down just as they were written, in fragments, jots, or splintered flashes, without order or coherence--here, with all its vanity, faith, despair, joy, and anguish, with all its falseness, error and pretension, and with all its desperate sincerity, its incredible hope, its insane desire, is a picture of a man's soul and heart--the image of his infuriate desire--caught hot and instant, drawn flaming from the forge of his soul's agony.

  Monday, November 17, 1924: Worked over 5 hours up to present (9.40) Cigarettes and coffee--Very tired.

  Tuesday: Worked 4 hours yesterday. Very tired today only an hour--more tonight--

  Wednesday: Good week's work last week--Four or five hours' actual writing every day--I may succeed ultimately because I'm not content with what I do.

  I was born in 1900--I am now 24 years old. During that period I think the best writing in English has been done by James Joyce in "Ulysses"--I think the best writing in the ballad has been done by G. K. Chesterton in "Lepanto." The best writing in sustained narrative verse by John Masefield--particularly in "The Dauber," "The River" and "The Widow in The Bye Street." Who produce copiously--Arnold Bennett--The best practitioners of the Essay--Belloc--the most gigantically thorough realist--Theodore Dreiser--The most sparing selection and unfailingly competent--Galsworthy--The best play for Poetry--"The Playboy of Western World"--The best journalist--Sinclair Lewis.

  The critic with the greatest subtlety--T. S. Eliot--The critic with the greatest range and power--H. L. Mencken--The best woman writer--May Sinclair--The next best--Virginia Woolf--The next best--Willa Cather.

  Wednesday Night--November 26, 1924: At midnight eating at Chez Marianne--First day I have not worked for two weeks but am going home to work after eating. Up at 12.30 today after last night felt sick--walked to bank--found no mail--wrote and sent letters to Mama and to University. Talked to young fellow in bank about Switzerland--had lunch at Taverne Royale--Took taxi to Place des Vosges--Went to Victor Hugo Museum--Walked around Square--then back to Carnavalet--at National Archives--The narrow streets, the narrow sidewalks, the great buses, taxis, autos, bicycles, trucks and the catty people jabberin
g and squalling got me in a stew--Looked over distressing tons of books at a bookshop, and went on feeling crushed--Bought two books--Then got taxi Rue du Temple and so home through the jam of Rue de Rivoli--Women outside pawing cheap articles at Samaritaine. Then home to hotel where bathed went out to Deux Magots two aperitifs then to Apollo Revue!--Not as bad as some--one or two good songs--but of course, on whole quite stupid.

  Thursday--November 27, 1924: At one, after working till five this morning. Dining at Drouant's--very rich, red restaurant filled with business men talking of les Anglais, les Américains, et cinq cent mille francs--at Drouant's--a cold consommé, a rumpsteak grille--avec des pommes soufflées--a fond d'artichaut Mornay (a cheese and cream dressing and the ends of artichokes--delicious) a coffee and a half bottle of Nuit St. Georges couvert 4 fr. total 44 fr.

  At one table three Frenchmen of 50 or more--one of 40--one with black beard--coal-black, neatly trimmed, naked around jaws--another a heavy distinguished man--grey beard pompadoured--grey close-cropped moustache--high-coloured--nervous grey eyes shot with red--hands white, taut and tapping constantly, while the face smiles--talks politely--another a red gnarled satanic face--fierce with rich foods and wines--smooth-shaven--and the youngest--black hair, a black moustache--a quiet smiling, well-fleshed type. He had rich colour--red shot with richness, the satanic yet not unpleasant cast of face--the cropped brown moustache and such pompadoured brownish hair--a Gallic type.

  LATER: Seated at the café in front of Magasin du Louvre and Palais Royal--Heard a high even monotone that tickles the ear like a dynamo--It made me think of a great locomotive in the yards at Altamont--steam shut off (perhaps) and the high small ear-tickling dynamic noise they make.

  Tuesday--December 2, 1924:

  MOCK LITERARY ANECDOTES:

  Young mannered voice of Harvard johnny: "Oh! Simply priceless! Don't you l-o-o-ve that?

  . . . Marvellous!" etc.--telling what Oscar said to Whistler, and what Whistler answered him.

  A certain kind of mind collects these--pale, feeble, rootless, arty, hopeless, lost--Joel Pierce tells them, too. First time I heard them at Harvard what sophisticated raconteurs I thought them!--God, how green I was! "You will, Oscar, you will," and all the rest of it!--Today, sitting on terrace at Taverne Royale, I made some of my own. Here they are:

  One day as Whistler was standing before a window in St. James's Street observing some prints of Battersea Bridge, he was accosted by Oscar Wilde coming in the opposite direction. "You will, James, you will," said Wilde with generous impulsiveness.

  "Gad," remarked the inimitable James, imperturbably adjusting his monocle, "I wish I had said that!"

  One day in June, Anatole France went to Rodin's studio for luncheon. The talk having turned to early Greek primitives, Rodin remarked:

  "Some writers have a great deal to say and an atrocious style. But you, dear Master, have a delicious style."

  "And you, Master?" queried France ironically, allowing his eyes to rest upon the torso of The Thinker, "since when did you become a critic?"

  In the burst of laughter that followed the thrust, Rodin had to admit himself floored for once.

  A young actor who had, it must be confessed, more ambition than talent, one day rushed excitedly up to Sir Henry Irving during the rehearsal of "Hamlet":

  "It seems to me, sir," he burst out without preliminaries, "that some actors ruin their parts by overplaying them."

  "And some," remarked Sir Henry, after an awful pause, "don't."

  One day Sir James Barrie discovered Bernard Shaw while he was lunching at the Athenæum, staring somewhat disconsolately at an unsavoury mess of vegetables that adorned his plate.

  "I hear you are working on a new play," remarked Barrie, whimsically eyeing the contents of the platter.

  For once G. B. S. had no answer ready.

  Why won't these do?

  (Suggestion to Young American writing Book Reviews for New York Times in classical, simple, god-like manner of Anatole France.)

  "The new book of Monsieur Henry Spriggins, which lies before me on my desk, fills me with misgivings. The author is young and intolerant of simple things. He is full of talent, but he is proud, and has not a simple heart. What a pity!" (etc.)

  Wednesday--December 3, 1924: Comédie Francaise tonight "Les Plaideurs"--and "Phèdre"--Respect for play grew and for actors diminished and went on--The French applauded loudly when Madame Weber ended a long declamation on a screech.

  LATER: To Régence and Harry's--Bought some books along the quays--Saw Mrs. Martin at hotel today--Story of how she had been robbed--The picture galleries and antique shops of Rue des Saints-Pères.

  Saturday--December 6:

  Young Icarus lies drowned, God knows where.

  Oxford in pursuit of a woman--one of the most dreary spectacles God hath given--Buol's in the afternoon--

  Foolish Question: Why are the Tories so eager to say Democracy has failed?

  Hair like a copper cloud--feather and flame come back again.

  The gutted plums bee-burrowed.

  The poisoned inch around the heart.

  The cancerous inch.

  The burning inch of tongue.

  The hairy grass.

  The long sea-locks.

  The hairy seas.

  The other gate of ivory--

  Ida--Cadmus--blunt drummed woodenly with blunt fingers. Sir Leoline the baron rich--Thunder-cuffing Zeus--Erasmus fed on rotten eggs--what a breath--Has an angel local motion or "The goose-soft snow."

  Feathery snow--The feather-quilted snow.

  Freckled eyes.

  Wild Ceres through the wheat.

  The slow dance of dancers.

  The gull swerves seaward like hope--September full of departing leaves and wings.

  He sat alone four thousand miles from home--the lonely death of seas at dawn.

  The decent and untainted eyes that look on spattered death--Myself dreaming of old battles--For a child the spear goes clearly through--The musical horns beg and the battles press--The phantasy of bloody death: The cloven brain-pan--the one lost second near enough to touch its brother life, but infinitely far.

  The wind-blown lights of the town.

  A branch of stars.

  A hen and a pig.

  Quills--frills.

  Mired--feathers.

  The vast low stammer of the night.

  By the rim--the geese go waddling to the Fair.

  The minute-whirring flies buzz home to death.

  "Old England will muddle through, my lads"--

  She has muddled and she's through: but she's not through muddling.

  Gull-cry and gull are gone.

  Shadow and hawk are gone.

  Shadow and hawk are gone.

  Shadow and hawk are--

  Friday Night--December 12, 1924: The Fratellini Brothers: How in his rich robe I saw him--the younger brother--waiting for the act--the waiting is all over--The burlesque musical act--They were great, sad, epic--what clowns should be.

  Salle Rubens with all the meat--All the people clustered about--dull.

  Mona Ugly Lisa.

  The Virgin with Saint Anne--a great picture.

  Guido Reni--the sainted and sugared faces.

  The Italians--Veronese--The Cana--The Gigantic three-storey canvases.

  Zurberan--Goya and the Grey--Picture of a Gentleman on horseback--Nicolas Maes--Rembrandt's picture of his brother.

  Sam's--The man from San Francisco with the loud, dark, debauched face.

  "We had ham and eggs for lunch across at Ciro's, Anne"--the two barkeepers in Harry's, "Chip" and Bob--names of dogs and horses.

  Velasquez in the Louvre.

  Vetzel's again 12.30 Apéritif (X365) The arch of the opera I have never seen before, things sit like this.

  [Here follows drawing]

  Remember "Faust" at The Opéra.

  The Promenoirs--The vast stage--click-clack of feet in the music.

  I awoke this morning in a cru
cifixion of fear and nervousness--What if they hadn't written? What? What? What?

  My agony as I approached the place--My distrust of Paris in peril--City of light disloyalties. Sun never shines more than two days (for me) here--Went to American Express--Harry's Bar--The men at Vetzel's eating--

  The French are not bad but children--old men too wise and kind for hatred--but French French French and Suspicious.

  How beautiful the Fratellini are! How fine a thing is a French circus! Their enormous interest in children--The lion-taming act--by far the best and finest I have ever seen--and I felt sorry for the lions--Savoir is right in this.

  Monday--December 15, 1924: I am getting a new sense of control--millions of books don't annoy me so much--went along the Seine today after Louvre--most of it worthless old rubbish I must begin to put up my fences now--I can't take the world or this city with me.

  Things in Paris I must see at once--Père Lachaise--Also investigate old quarter again around Place des Vosges--Go there first thing tomorrow--Go to Cluny Musée again--And up and down Rue de la Seine--Also Ile St. Louis.

  Books I want: Julien Benda--New one by Soupault (?) Charles Derennes--L'Education Sexuelle. Read one of the Vautel things.

  Get for inspection--and at random Le Petit Livre--Mon Livre Favori--Bibl. Nationale--Livre Epatant--go into Court of Palais Royal--Investigate there--

  Louvre today--Mantegna's picture of St. Sebastian C.

  Giotto's great picture of St. Francis d'Assisi receiving stigma from Christ--

  Gros--Pictures of Napoleon at war--The one of the leper's house at Jaffa a good one--Huge naked leper held in kneeling position--Weight of body.

  Books I want--Go to bookstalls in Seine for books on Paris twenty or thirty years ago with naughty illustrations.

  Tuesday--December 16, 1924: Along Seine again--Looked at thousands of books and bought one--a critique on Julien Benda--Miles and miles of books--but also, miles and miles of repetitions--