Somehow all at once that thought took hold of me with an overwhelming power—I saw the truth as I had never seen it before in my life. I saw how we live in society; and how social convention and triviality have us in such a grasp that it never even dawns upon us that the laws it dictates are not eternal and necessary! “You must be dignified, and calm, and commonplace,” say social convention and triviality.
—But I am not dignified—I am not calm!—I am not commonplace!
Well, then, you must seem so. You must walk quietly; you must gaze around indifferently; you must keep a vacant face; you must try to look innocent of a thought. If you can't manage that—if you really want to think—why then you must flee away to the woods, where you are sure no one will come upon you and find you out. And if you can't do that—why then there's nothing for you to do but give up thinking, give up living, become like everybody else!
That idea shook me all of a sudden, it made me quite wild—it made me dig my nails into my hands. It was the truth—I saw that—it was the truth! Here I was, a miserable, pining, starving wretch—and for no reason in the world but that I was a coward, but that I was a coward—a blind fool! Because I had not let the empty-headed and sodden, the placid and smug, the fat and greasy citizens of our great metropolis, tell me—the servant of the muses—how I ought to look, how I ought to act, what I ought to be! The very breath of my body is prayer—is effort—is vision; to dwell in my own light, to behold my own soul, to know my own truth—that is my one business in this world! To assert my own force—to be what I like—that is my duty, that is my hope, my one hope in all the world! And I do not, I can not, I dare not do it! I am sick and starved and dying, and I crouch in corners while I pray for help, and if a gleam of sunshine comes from a flower to me, it goes because a child sees me laughing!
I sat burning with the rage of that. What am I to do? I cried. How is it to be changed? Shall I live my life in spite of all men?
And then I heard one of my devils—my commonplace devil—say, “But people would think you were crazy!”
“What do I care what people think?” I burst out.
Then came another of my devils—my facetious devil—and he made me laugh. “By all means,” said he, “let us get together a few eager poets, and establish a Society for the Propagation of Lunacy. Let us break down these conventions and confound the eyes of the fat and greasy citizens, and win freedom for our souls at any price. Let us wear strange clothes, and recite our poetry upon the streets. Let us—”
But I was not in a mood for my facetious devil—I flung him aside and sprang up and fled out to the street (this in thought, of course). What do I need with others? I exclaimed—with others to help me dare? This has to do with me! And it has to do with me now—with this moment! Am I to give up and let myself go down for such a phantom as this! For such a dread as that wooden-headed men and women will think me “queer”! Am I to stay in a prison such as that—to be bound by a chain such as that? I—I, who go about trying to persuade myself that this world is nothing to me—that this world is nothing to any one—that it is a phantom—that the soul is truth! When I say that the soul is truth, do I mean it? Do I mean it? And if I do mean it, will I act by it—will I act by it now—now, while I see it? Will I fling off this nightmare, will I tear my way through these wrappings that have choked me? Will I say, once and for all time, that I will be myself—that I will live my life—and that no man shall stop me—that no man shall make me afraid? Will I take the battle upon me and win it—win it now—fling off the last rag of it—put the world straight behind me—now—here? Spread the wings of my soul and take my flight into the far spaces of myself! And dwell there—stay there—hold to the task and give it not up though it kill me—now—now!