Is my inspiration of no value at all, my ardor, my tenderness, my faith,—all nothing? You treat me as if I were an ox!
It is like being chained in the galleys! The dust and the heat, the jostling crowds, the banging and rattling, the bare, hideous streets—and above it all the wild, rampant vulgarity—the sordidness, the cheapness, the chaffering! My eyes stare at advertisements and signs until they burn me in my head.
Oh, the hell of egotism and vulgarity that is a city!
—“Why so much trouble? Other men bear dust and heat, and do their work without complaining!” Ah, yes!—but they do not have to write poems in the bargain!
If it were for truth and beauty, such a life would be heroism. But the hoards of wealth that they heap up—they spend it upon fine houses, and silly clothes, and gimcracks, and jewels, and rich food to eat, and wines to drink, and cigars to smoke! Bah!—
It is the brutality of it all that drives me wild. I see great, hulking, disgusting bodies that live to be pampered and fed. And after that, in the place of minds, I see little restless centers of vanity—hungering, toiling, plotting, intriguing—to be stared at and praised and admired.
August 20th.