The Haunted Life Read online

  For The Haunted Life (April 12, 1944)

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  War creates a situation synonymous to that of a great cross-migration. People who ordinarily were habitually suited to sedentary lives are quite suddenly wandering the earth. Soldiers are sent to all parts of the world, workingmen migrate to far places in their nation and in some cases to foreign lands, country boys sail stranger seas than did the Ancient Mariner. The virus of the war enters the veins of men, women, and children. Women, who follow their husbands, or join the services, or simply take advantage of the times to take wing, can be found a thousand miles from home, anywhere. Children are only too eager to follow their elders. I have heard of some cases, in chaotic occupied Europe, where children go off in groups and are lost in the sprawling scene of the great wars, great crusades, and the like. It occasions what may be termed a “nomadic decade.” What the result of and reaction to, such a decade [will be] can only be determined—in a pattern significant to over-all understanding—in the course of time.

  Politically, one can reasonably assume that the people of the world will become more open-minded toward international issues. A small town boy from Vermont who spends three years in England will no doubt, in the future, show a lively and personal interest in that nation. He will have adopted England forever. The sailor born in Chicago who journeys to New Zealand will have his opinions regarding that stout little isle, and can be heard, in 1960, discussing the four Maoris of the House of Representatives. It is not beyond the imagination to predict that some of the marines who took Tarawa will be interested in knowing how the island is to be governed, now that it has become an American mandate, what it will promise, and so on.

  Those who went to Italy, to North Africa, Egypt, India, Australia, England, Alaska, and even Greenland and Iceland—by the millions—will have become aware, despite themselves, of the oneness of the earth. The same applies to the Germans who were sent to Scandinavia, Russia, the Balkans, Italy, Africa, to wage war, and to the Italians, Rumanians, and other satellites of Hitler. And think of the hordes of Japanese who would never have seen the East Indies, Burma, India, or China; the South Pacific islands, the Aleutians off Alaska, had it not been for the war. Never, I am certain, in the history of mankind have so many nations seen the mass influx of foreigners within the space of a few years, whether they be invaders or “liberators.” Never have so many men travelled throughout the world at the same time and witnessed people and customs and institutions of lands other than their own. These men easily number close to the one hundred million mark. There is no way of computing the number of civilians who were forced to wander, refugees, workmen, and military auxiliaries alike. The whole panorama is staggering in its proportions.

  And when one considers the amount of national cross-migration in individual nations hard at war, the uprooting of families from regions where each had been settled for generations before, the situation grows to a proportion like that of a gigantic earth-shaking which scatters men and women helter-skelter, separating families and lovers and friends in all directions with no regard for traditional humanity and dignity. The picture presents a canvas of disrupted roots drifting like tumbleweeds in a thousand crossing winds. It is an enormous canvas. And though it no longer represents traditional humanity and dignity, it is no less humanity and dignity; rooted or adrift, the soul of manhood prevails.

  What is interesting to note, with some anticipation, is that when the earth ceases its shaking and scattering, the world of men will attempt to straggle back to a traditional form. Finding this impossible, the wave of mankind—now seething from the after-effects of the tempest—will settle slowly into a new form, man by man, city by city, nation by nation.

  What will be this new form? How impetuously shall change have been shocked out of its customary lazy pace! And how haunting will be the memory of those who have lived through the great “cross-migration,” the shaking of the earth—for men were not born for this sort of life. They were born for quiet, and the hearth, and the family which takes upon itself a place on earth—a region—and calls it its own. Knowing this, men have nonetheless doomed themselves, by their folly and humanity, to indefinite frustration of their true and final need—the need for home and peace—and will continue to hurl themselves at one another, each time on a larger scale until they learn, through the lesson of great war crusades, the oneness of the earth and the likeness of men. This is for the future to consummate.

  Meanwhile, the haunted nomads wander and wage war, and will return to father others like them. The mystery of life is augmented, it deepens, but as I have mentioned, the soul of mankind prevails.

  Post-Fatalism (Bastille Day, July 14, 1943)

  Once I have explained the vast order of the network of the universe, how can I then rationalize its seemingly blind order? Does it require a Kant to do so?

  Indestructible matter reorganized itself to form the universe; time is matter in motion. The reorganization of matter, as it was, seems now to have been done splendidly, considering Newtonian order in the planetary systems and considering the definite rate of growth in organic life as explained by Darwinism. There is order, growth, expansion, even Spencer’s progress from homogeneity to heterogeneity. The universe is growing more complicated, thus more subtle. Each achievement of man adds to this matter subtly.

  The general will of this universe, which defies accidents, which defies chance, moves on in its moiling, orderly chaos. One entity, one man moves within this changing network; he struggles for triumph, and to the extent that he is willful, he may achieve it, but to do so he must pursue a winding course. There are obstructions everywhere, for this man is not the only entity in the universe, but one of billions. An analogy: matter cannot go through matter, it must top it, circle it, or bowl it over. This man, his own will, and the will and impulse of the universe, determine the man’s destiny: it is inviolable, perfect and terribly irrevocable.

  History proves what I say. See now if you can change what has gone before. See, too, how this history wrote itself, if not by the moiling will of billions limiting the personal will of one great figure; or, on the other hand, if not [by] this great general will destroying the weak will of an obscure figure. See too how death happens: it is no accident; it is the general intention of the universe, and when it happens, the die is not only cast, but the race is run, the circle is drawn, and all is as it should be, for such is life.

  This is not fatalism: it is Post-Fatalism. Before an event may occur, one man may prevent it by exerting his individual will, and if he chooses so, and if he has the strength and vigor and determination. But if the man does not prevent the event, and the event occurs, it is obvious that the man did not change it, nor did the universe shy from bringing it about, and so it occurred, and therefore it was meant to be. It is Fate only after it has happened.

  This network, then, what relation has it to us, although we can affect it, and it can affect us? I believe firmly that this network, the combination of the General Impulse of the Universe and the Individual Impulse of a Single Entity, is a guiding force which leads one to one’s destiny and is irrevocable, final, and orderly. It guides us, like God, and is perhaps God. It watches over us. It does not protect us, but in guiding us, it watches over us, and we are not so alone, so unrecorded, so unwatched, and so directionless as we think. These two wills, ours and the world’s, lead us to glory or to horror: we should not whine over it, because a challenge is a challenge and we should all accept it. In accepting this challenge with force and courage, we are facing life on two feet and are prepared to enjoy the adventure of its infinite possibilities with all the warmth, all the richness, and all the valor inherent in the human breast.

  Sit now as you read this by the window, and listen to the sounds stealing into your room from without: it is rhythm and order, the divine rhythm of life. And this is the network within which society strives toward better days, not blindly, but irrevocably, slowly, and majestically. Songs of beaut
y may go unheard, heroic deaths unsung, beautiful flowers like the Rhodora unseen—by men; but life records them, the universe recognizes them, and the existence of these things, though obscure to men, are necessary to themselves and thus adds to the rich stores of human achievement. We are guided, and nature and the universe believe in us as much as we believe in them. For this reason, we are not alone. Human love can make it doubly certain that we are not alone. Thus I write of Wesley Martin.

  Typing Exercise (1944)

  Again I find myself at the nadir of doubt concerning that ineluctable weight, Galloway. It seems that almost every day I have to convince myself, by some neurotic ruse or other, that the game is worth the candle. Today, I feel that the novel as planned falls far short of those powers I now command: it is merely an introductory piece to more mature work, it is a prelude, an overture to a symphony. Yet the scholastic sounds that have existed in my mind ever since its original conception in 1942 persist. Why?

  Is it by force of habit that I continue to return to the structure and idea of Galloway? Oh there is an interesting history behind it, its recurrences, its abandonments, its doubtfulness. If one were to take Mr. Allen Ginsberg seriously in his latest opus, Galloway is by way of being some sort of haggard thing I have been picking up and laying down for years in the course of neurotic indecisions and anxieties: that and nothing else. Has he ever lived with a work for the better part of three years? Ineluctable weight! He dashes off a “Last Voyage” in a night, and then spends three months revising it: then when you ask him how long it took to compose, he will say “Three months.” That is fine: Mr. Ginsberg is a careful artist, three months it is. But I, with my three years, ah that is but neurotic procrastination. Well, no, it has grown with me—the first draft, entitled The Vanity of Duluoz, is a half-stupid mass of words. The form is there, of course. I revived the book in 1944, two years later, with better success, even if I return to it and find myself doubting its artistic success, even if it were worked out to an incredible degree consistent with the imagined work.

  I shall combine Symbolism with Naturalism in Galloway—but to take myself at nineteen, and that dreary provincial town, and make a work of art out of it commensurate with the liveliness and intelligence I want to achieve, that indeed seems impossible, and a boresome task without even the fruit of my own satisfaction. Poo!

  I am bored at the thought of Sebastian and the others. I am bored at the whole picture of it. I can bring to it no enthusiasm. Poo again. But I shall do it, I suppose, although—and this is the crux of my circumspection regarding the whole affair—although I feel that I can master a more mature subject, now. I go back to ignorant yesterday, and gad!, do I have to trace the lines that lead to knowledge? That is not my purpose . . . that is not consistent with the doctrine of grasp and growth. I don’t lie in bed with my nightcap, because I have no Paris to offer! Who wants to bother with Lowell, Mass.? Who, who? unless it is the fool who, by force of habit, perhaps by a compulsive inanity, by a failure to organize recent experience, must give up and start at the beginning, the dreary Paleolithic beginning, and work on like a dog. Fa!

  Now I say, let us not get frantic. What a mountain of merde!

  The Dream, the Conversation, and the Deed—Some of Peter Martin’s Frenzy (c. 1947)

  A dream he has in the Brooklyn house prior to waking up that morning: of himself standing in a dark basement of some gloomy almost abandoned house, in the veritable dank cellar of the house, talking in the dark to two other men, one of them his “elder cousin” and the other “an officer” of some sort: and while listening to their conversation he is conscious of a third person in the dank basement with them, who is however in bed, in some dirty bed behind squalid hanging curtains, somewhere near the coal bin of the house, and this person, though not sleeping, is absolutely still, and also, as he gloats there in the dark, it is understood in the dream that he is an IDIOT. Upon awakening from this dream Peter goes into the kitchen for a glass of water, returns to the living room, and sees, with great interest and horror, his own bed in his own dark room behind dark hanging heavy curtains. He is that idiot. He goes back to sleep and dreams that he is in an exalted state, happy, and DOING ANYTHING HE PLEASES IN THE WORLD; simply from sheer idiotic joy, and it seems that he has committed a crime in the course of these feelings, a crime of some sort the consequences of which he isn’t even interested in, he has no interest in such things, he is an idiot—yet still guilty, and in the course of the dream, convicted to die in the electric chair. Up till the last moment of his execution in the death chair Peter is exalted and happy, chatting eagerly with everybody and even with his executioners. But when the last minute comes, when the man steps behind the curtains to go and turn on the electric current preparatory to his being sat upon the chair, he freezes and shivers from the awful terror of death—just afraid of death, still not even understanding what he has done that is a crime, though realizing that he has done it.

  That same day, in Manhattan, in a conversation with Kenneth: he comes to Kenneth exalted and happy and tells him to come and get drunk with him. Ken says he has commitments, and he is sincere in these claims, Peter believes him, so they drink about six shots apiece in a half hour and Peter rattles on happily. But suddenly Kenneth begins to say he isn’t buying 90% of the things Peter is saying, he says Peter has grown “frenetic,” foolish, and is no longer the great sincere, reverent Martin. Peter says that someday he’ll throw a party in an apartment in New York which will continue for years and years, he himself being there only half the time, and Kenneth says: “Oh no, you’ll put aside ten thousand dollars to take care of your mother and father and you’ll come around with 55¢ to get drunk on—as always.” Peter smiles bashfully and wickedly. He almost tells Kenneth that he knows too much. Kenneth says the thought of him made him sad, and that the worst thing that could happen to him would be any success of some sort, which would put him in the hands of people who would turn his head and heart away from Martin sincerity. That doesn’t impress Peter so much, though. But finally Kenneth says, “Don’t you realize how really disreputable you are, Pete. You are the most disreputable person in the world. And you don’t care. You don’t believe in anything you yourself say. I’ve never seen such awful guff, AND YOU KNOW IT YOURSELF. And your disreputability is more than just that, it’s a horrible way you have of holing-up when you don’t have to, it’s a coyness, and thank God the reason for the coyness is not coy itself. Your reverence for life is a kind of damned disrespectfulness. Any kind of success for you, Pete, and all I’ll do is pray for you, on my knees. I can’t buy you anymore. Yet I still like you and love you just like a brother.” Peter says that why the hell doesn’t Kenneth just get drunk with him and stop picking on him, but Kenneth continues just the same. Peter is abashed, he doesn’t understand what Kenneth is saying, he keeps saying “Huh?” “What?”—and Kenneth keeps just simply laughing at him. “What is it that you don’t want to hear, Pete?” he says. Peter tells him that he can make him feel abashed but what is the point of that?—and Kenneth insists that his point is not that at all, he only wants to tell him that he’s falling down into a terrible pit and is becoming completely dishonorable. The more he piles it on, the more Peter realizes the truth of it all. Peter leaves Kenneth feeling hurt—with only this one consolation: Kenneth won’t let Pete go to his girl Jeanne’s house for a shot of whiskey because Peter makes her “act silly.” Peter assures Kenneth he had never given Jeanne a thought, but just as he says that, he realizes that he’s lying bald-facedly. Kenneth knows it: he smiles again. But Kenneth assures Pete that he’s not jealous, he doesn’t like Jeanne that well (and at this point they both realize that Kenneth is now lying)—but that Jeanne is a problem to him and Peter only aggravates the whole situation. Kenneth says he doesn’t “buy” the way Peter “comes on” with Jeanne, which Peter explains had always seemed to him just affability and sociability (another quickly realized lie). Ken is afraid of Pete. It is Peter’s only consolation, since the kind of critic
ism Ken is laying on him always hurts him. Peter feels low in spite of the consolation. He’s certain that Ken’s afraid of him. It was the smile on his face that made it worse: Pete couldn’t even fathom his own reaction to it at all, or that is, he didn’t want to. He was an idiot, he knew, through and through, just as in the dream: he was bound to do some crime soon, from sheer joy, from shrewdness, amiability: an idiot of all sorts.

  That very selfsame night, after a lot else has happened, after the suicide of Alfred, when Kenneth leaves town, in the wildness of his feelings, with sudden surges of pure madness, Peter seduces Jeanne—just simply piling one mad thing upon another, hurting everybody in one grand great final gesture, hurting himself, Judie, Jeanne, Kenneth, everybody, with great joy. And the thing that maddens Peter is that he is someone to be feared, someone to be exiled if necessary—it maddens him and at the same time he walks around late that night in ecstasies, ecstasies of triumphant evil, all kinds of things he never “knew he had in him,” yet always foresaw. He thinks in these crazy terms: “I’m an idiot, I don’t drink from the cup of life, I drink it all up and then I swallow the cup. And I don’t care what I do, it’s a real crime, that’s what the dream meant. With me it’s not what I do, not WHAT, but HOW MUCH—the more and more and more the better. I would swear on the bible and on my mother’s name in Ken’s face that I hadn’t seduced and been seduced by his girl, I would do it with tears in my eyes, and even as I returned the bible to the other room I wouldn’t even grin in the dark. I do things just like that—consciously, only I’m worried about it all the time.” In proportion to the wrongness of their deed, Pete and Jeanne make love all the more violently that night, like voluptuaries, madly. Also, when she leaves in the morning, he looks in her desk drawers and reads Kenneth’s beautiful false love letters to her. He walks along the streets that day with an astounded ecstatic grin.