 | Pierre, or, The ambiguities |  |
IV.
From eight o'clock in the morning till half-past four in the
evening, Pierre sits there in his room;—eight hours and a half!
From throbbing neck-bands, and swinging belly-bands of
gay-hearted horses, the sleigh-bells chimingly jingle;—but Pierre
sits there in his room; Thanksgiving comes, with its glad
thanks, and crisp turkeys;—but Pierre sits there in his room;
soft through the snows, on tinted Indian moccasin, Merry Christmas
comes stealing;—but Pierre sits there in his room; it is
New-Year's, and like a great flagon, the vast city overbrims at
all curb-stones, wharves, and piers, with bubbling jubilations;—
but Pierre sits there in his room:—Nor jingling sleigh-bells at
throbbing neck-band, or swinging belly-band; nor glad thanks,
and crisp turkeys of thanksgiving; nor tinted Indian moccasin
of Merry Christmas softly stealing through the snows; nor
New-Year's curb-stones, wharves, and piers, over-brimming with
bubbling jubilations:—Nor jingling sleigh-bells, nor glad
Thanksgiving, nor Merry Christmas, nor jubilating New Year's:
—Nor Bell, Thank, Christ, Year;—none of these are for
Pierre. In the midst of the merriments of the mutations of
Time, Pierre hath ringed himself in with the grief of Eternity.
Pierre is a peak inflexible in the heart of Time, as the isle-peak,
Piko, stands unassaultable in the midst of waves.
He will not be called to; he will not be stirred. Sometimes
the intent ear of Isabel in the next room, overhears the alternate
silence, and then the long lonely scratch of his pen. It is,
as if she heard the busy claw of some midnight mole in the
ground. Sometimes, she hears a low cough, and sometimes
the scrape of his crook-handled cane.
Here surely is a wonderful stillness of eight hours and a
half, repeated day after day. In the heart of such silence,
surely something is at work. Is it creation, or destruction?
Haggardness unbuild the lungs and the life in him?—Unutterable,
that a man should be thus!
When in the meridian flush of the day, we recall the black
apex of night; then night seems impossible; this sun can never
go down. Oh that the memory of the uttermost gloom as an
already tasted thing to the dregs, should be no security against
its return. One may be passibly well one day, but the next, he
may sup at black broth with Pluto.
Is there then all this work to one book, which shall be read
in a very few hours; and, far more frequently, utterly skipped
in one second; and which, in the end, whatever it be, must
undoubtedly go to the worms?
Not so; that which now absorbs the time and the life of
Pierre, is not the book, but the primitive elementalizing of the
strange stuff, which in the act of attempting that book, have
upheaved and upgushed in his soul. Two books are being
writ; of which the world shall only see one, and that the bungled
one. The larger book, and the infinitely better, is for
Pierre's own private shelf. That it is, whose unfathomable
cravings drink his blood; the other only demands his ink. But
circumstances have so decreed, that the one can not be composed
on the paper, but only as the other is writ down in his
soul. And the one of the soul is elephantinely sluggish, and
will not budge at a breath. Thus Pierre is fastened on by two
leeches;—how then can the life of Pierre last? Lo! he is fitting
himself for the highest life, by thinning his blood and collapsing
his heart. He is learning how to live, by rehearsing
the part of death.
Who shall tell all the thoughts and feelings of Pierre in
that desolate and shivering room, when at last the idea obtruded,
that the wiser and the profounder he should grow, the
more and the more he lessened the chances for bread; that
could he now hurl his deep book out of the window, and fall to
the longest, then could he reasonably hope for both appreciation
and cash. But the devouring profundities, now opened
up in him, consume all his vigor; would he, he could not now
be entertainingly and profitably shallow in some pellucid and
merry romance. Now he sees, that with every accession of the
personal divine to him, some great land-slide of the general
surrounding divineness slips from him, and falls crashing
away. Said I not that the gods, as well as mankind, had
unhanded themselves from this Pierre? So now in him you
behold the baby toddler I spoke of; forced now to stand and
toddle alone.
Now and then he turns to the camp-bed, and wetting his
towel in the basin, presses it against his brow. Now he leans
back in his chair, as if to give up; but again bends over and
plods.
Twilight draws on, the summons of Isabel is heard from the
door; the poor, frozen, blue-lipped, soul-shivering traveler for
St. Petersburg is unpacked; and for a moment stands toddling
on the floor. Then his hat, and his cane, and out he sallies
for fresh air. A most comfortless staggering of a stroll!
People gaze at him passing, as at some imprudent sick man,
willfully burst from his bed. If an acquaintance is met, and
would say a pleasant newsmonger's word in his ear, that acquaintance
turns from him, affronted at his hard aspect of icy
discourtesy. “Bad-hearted,” mutters the man, and goes on.
He comes back to his chambers, and sits down at the neat
table of Delly; and Isabel soothingly eyes him, and presses
him to eat and be strong. But his is the famishing which
loathes all food. He can not eat but by force. He has assassinated
the natural day; how then can be eat with an appetite?
If he lays him down, he can not sleep; he has waked
the infinite wakefulness in him; then how can he slumber?
Still his book, like a vast lumbering planet, revolves in his aching
fain would he behead himself, to gain one night's repose. At
last the heavy hours move on; and sheer exhaustion overtakes
him, and he lies still—not asleep as children and day-laborers
sleep—but he lies still from his throbbings, and for that interval
holdingly sheaths the beak of the vulture in his hand, and lets
it not enter his heart.
Morning comes; again the dropt sash, the icy water, the
flesh-brush, the breakfast, the hot bricks, the ink, the pen, the
from-eight-o'clock-to-half-past-four, and the whole general inclusive
hell of the same departed day.
Ah! shivering thus day after day in his wrappers and
cloaks, is this the warm lad that once sung to the world of the
Tropical Summer?
| Pierre, or, The ambiguities | |