gazing into the final chasm of things, in mute dialogue
with “Death, Judgment, and Eternity” (dialogue
mute on
both sides!), not caring to
discourse with poor articulate-speaking fellow creatures
on their sorts of topics. It is right of me;
and yet also it is not right. I often feel that
I had better be dead than thus indifferent, contemptuous,
disgusted with the world and its roaring nonsense,
which I have no thought farther of lifting a finger
to help, and only try to keep out of the way of, and
shut my door against. But the truth is, I was
nearly killed by that hideous Book on Friedrich,—twelve
years in continuous wrestle with the nightmares and
the subterranean hydras;—nearly
killed,
and had often thought I should be altogether, and
must die leaving the monster not so much as finished!
This is one truth, not so evident to any friend or
onlooker as it is to myself: and then there is
another, known to myself alone, as it were; and of
which I am best not to speak to others, or to speak
to them no farther. By the calamity of April
last, I lost my little all in this world; and have
no soul left who can make any corner of this world
into a
home for me any more. Bright,
heroic, tender, true and noble was that lost treasure
of my heart, who faithfully accompanied me in all the
rocky ways and climbings; and I am forever poor without
her. She was snatched from me in a moment,—as
by a death from the gods. Very beautiful her
death was; radiantly beautiful (to those who understand
it) had all her life been
quid plura? I should
be among the dullest and stupidest, if I were not among
the saddest of all men. But not a word more on
all this.
All summer last, my one solacement in the form of
work was writing, and sorting of old documents and
recollections; summoning out again into clearness
old scenes that had now closed on me without return.
Sad, and in a sense sacred; it was like a kind of
worship; the only devout time I had
had for a great while past. These things I have
half or wholly the intention to burn out of the way
before I myself die:—but such continues
still mainly my employment,—so many hours
every forenoon; what I call the “work”
of my day;—to me, if to no other, it is
useful; to reduce matters to writing means that you
shall know them, see them in their origins and sequences,
in their essential lineaments, considerably better
than you ever did before. To set about writing
my own Life would be no less than horrible to
me; and shall of a certainty never be done.
The common impious vulgar of this earth, what has
it to do with my life or me? Let dignified oblivion,
silence, and the vacant azure of Eternity swallow
me; for my share of it, that, verily, is the
handsomest, or one handsome way, of settling my poor
account with the canaille of mankind extant
and to come. “Immortal glory,” is
not that a beautiful thing, in the Shakespeare Clubs