June 4.—Thought a great deal about my wife. I must love her and not be angry with her, must make her love me; so I will do.
June 6.—After dinner misery ... in the evening revived a little. Could not be loving as I would. I am very bad.
June 7.—I am trying to be bright and happy, but it is very, very hard. Everything I do is wrong, and I suffer horribly from this wrongness. It is as though I alone were not mad in the house of the mad managed by the mad.
June 9.—Agonising struggle, and I do not control myself. I look for the reasons—tobacco, incontinence, absence of imaginative work. It is all nonsense. The only cause is the absence of a loved and loving wife. It began from that time fourteen years ago when the cord snapped and I realised my loneliness.[26] All that is not a
reason. I must find a wife in her. I ought, and I can and I will: Lord, help me.
June 10.—It is awful that the luxury, the corruption of life in which I live I have myself created, and I am myself corrupted and I cannot reform it. I can say that I shall reform myself, but so slowly. I cannot give up smoking, and I cannot find a way of treating my wife so as not to hurt her feelings and not to give in to her. I am seeking it, I am trying.
June 16.[27]—It was very painful, longed to go away at once. All that is weakness. Not for men's sake but for God's. Do as one knows best for oneself and not in order to prove something. But it is awfully painful. Of course I am to blame if it hurts me. I struggle, I put out the rising fire, but I feel that it has violently bent the scales. And indeed what use am I to them, what use are all my sufferings? And however hard (though they are easy) the conditions of a vagrant's life, there can be nothing in it like this heartache!
June 23.—I am calmer, stronger in spirit. In the evening a cruel conversation about the Samara revenues.[28] I am trying to act as though in the presence of God, and I cannot avoid anger. This must end.
July 6.—I was reading over the diary of those days when I was seeking the cause of temptation. All nonsense—it is the absence of hard physical labour.[29] I do not sufficiently prize the happiness of freedom from temptation after work. That happiness is cheaply bought at the price of fatigue and aching muscles.
July 5 (isn't it the 8th?).—My wife is very serene and contented and does not see the gulf between us. I try to do what I ought, but what I ought I do not know. I must do as I ought every minute, and everything will turn out as it should.