Discourses of Keidansky

by Bernard G. Richards

"You are coming down, dear fellow," he said; "you are compromising and becoming reconciled to everything. You cannot supply your own demand, so you are going elsewhere for your literature—spending on others your days and your nights that you may devote to the excavations of the things that lie deep and dormant within thyself. I wager that before long you will even be reading the classics. You will abdicate from the sovereignty of your own genius, and measure life by the enjoyment that you derive from the things that other people do.

"Aliens, foreigners, strangers as far away from you as different individuals are, millions of miles of impassable icebergs impeding any possible approach. They were not born as you were born, they have not lived as you have lived, they have not loved as you have loved, they have not hated as you have hated, they have not grappled with the agonies as you have, they have not died as you have over and over again, and yet—you read their books and pretend to enjoy them."

I asked my friend to be seated, but he preferred to stand up, and with a characteristic wave of the hand, showed his annoyance at being interrupted. "If you have not felt what I have felt," he said, "it is useless for me to speak to you, and for you to enjoy what I write is hard and tedious labor. You cannot get behind the things others say, and all that remains for you to do is to read the meaning in so many words; and no meaning is ever absolutely uttered in so many words. There is almost always something unsaid behind the thing that is said. There is as much in as there is out. Thought is an endless chain of which we only see separate rings. We are fortunate to see that in the case of other persons. Most often you only hear and read their talk. But when you read your own thought, you read so vastly more than you have written, and you read the history of your thoughts, their far-away causes, their prehistoric origins, and their subterranean sources—and you enjoy it. You enjoy it, if you are intimately concerned in one near and dear personality, in the greatest study in all mankind—yourself. Also, if you are interested in the evolution of human thought, and can see it through the operations of your own mind.

"We say in Yiddish about this or that person: 'Er kumt mit sich fun ein stedtel.' Well, I, too, come from the same town with myself. I have gone through the dark labyrinth of life with myself in my hand. I have felt, experienced and known the same things that Keidansky has gone through, and—frankly—I enjoy my own writings. Sometimes my favorite works are my own. They move me, they stir me and they stimulate me to higher things. There is a quality about them, more human, more intimate, more personal, that brings them nearer to me than any other writings. The pathos is so touching, the humor so rollicking, the satire so pungent. It is all so effective, significant and strong. Words, lines, sentences, pages that fall flat on the ears of another, they are pregnant with meaning, choked full of suggestion, and often so thrilling. That one has felt, thought, said, given birth to these things, is so fine; so splendid to watch a grand procession of the children of your brain—particularly when you are intuitively convinced that they are, well, a goodly and well-formed brood, and worthy of you. They have to be quite robust to withstand that uncomfortable critical sense.

"You see, I want a personality, a man, a certain mental attitude, a sense of reserve force, deep-rooted sincerity and determined intentions behind what I read, and I am sure of all that, in the case of my own writings. This gives one a feeling of gladness and joy. In the productions of others one must grope in darkness, painfully explore, and so often search in vain for these qualities through their mental manœuvres and spiritual contortions.

"In our own work we can easily forgive the flaws, faults and shortcomings. We know why they exist, and to what to attribute them; we realize that they are not due to lack of talent or any cause like that. Our characteristic carelessness, our hasty manner, impatience at the slow accommodations of mere mechanical words, a desire to say too many things at the same time—if it is not the one, it is the other. But we know that we could do better if we wanted to; if we cared less about the matter than about the form. We know that the quality is there. There is nothing the matter with that. But somehow we cannot account so well for the crudities, defects and deformities in the performances of others, which jar upon us terribly and mar so much of our pleasure. Their failings are so flagrant, their meanings so nebulous, their ideas so hazy. It is all so far off and so unsatisfying. Why do people write things we do not like? Oh, the rogues, we answer ourselves, as the thought comes to us, they must be doing it for their own enjoyment. They can fill in the gaps, read in everything that is lacking; they can make masterpieces while they read their commonplace utterances—but we? We ought to read our own immortal works. We ought to, if we have any appreciation of great literature.

"One great source of the enjoyment of our own writings is that as we read we remember when each thought came to us, whence each idea sprang into birth, how each flying fancy originated, and every vaporous whimsy took shape. We go over the old ground, tread the paths of the past again, the paths overgrown with grass, or covered with the moss of the years, and we live our life over again. Words, lines, paragraphs, pages; each turn of a phrase brings one back to some turning-point of life; each flash of thought is the reflection of some vital incident. Behind every revolution of mind was a distinct period of evolution. Every old cry conjures up a crisis. That epigram sums up an entire epoch. This page is a condensed history of your heart. Yonder little etching, who knows of what stuff you have woven it? It all comes back to you so vividly, so graphically, so impressively. You read the things that you have written, no matter how long ago, and you live your life over again. The past reaches out its arms and hugs you to its tender breast again.

"One night, far away from the city, nigh by the sea, a painful silence was broken by agonizing speech. One word, and the world that God had created in seven days was annihilated for you in a second. When you came back in the silence of a sleepless night you wrote in your note-book. 'Our dreams are crimes for which we are punished by the harsh realities of the world.' See how ideas evolve! One day you were chided on the shortness of your stature. You said that you have not had any time to grow. Later you said to some one else that the shape of one's destiny depends on the management of his time.

"The origin of a thought is greater than the thought. It is often an entire drama; and you see it performed as you read. The crowding multitudes of memories that your literary productions bring up! This was suggested at a social gathering, where you felt distressingly lonely, and it was such a soothing consolation. It was while witnessing a play that that idea came into your mind. The play was a popular success, so you were thinking your own thoughts. One night at a symphony concert you wrote on the edge of a programme: 'Music makes mute poets of us all.' You read it years after, and oh, the cherished recollections that it brings up! But no one else can ever know how great that line is. Here is an idea that illumined your mind while in conversation with ——. There were so many delightful conversations, stirring discussions, endearing episodes; there were scenes that you witnessed, events transpired of which you were part; there were little dramas of which you were both the villain and the hero. They have all passed away, and yet you have saved them from oblivion because you have written, and they cannot die. All things are immortal so long as you live. You read, and the old talks and the old walks, the things that you have seen and done, the joys you have felt and the sorrows you have endured come back and you enjoy them over again. You find this in your writings and so much more. The net results of your own ruminations are so large that there is no wonder all other writers suffer from the comparison. Your writings are the plants, the weeds and the flowers that have grown out of your life, and their aroma and fragrance of earliest bloom follow you to the end of your days. There is that in your inner consciousness which you cannot find anywhere else.