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The hibernation of animals, the suspension of life practised by certain low forms of life, the marvellous vitality of the bedbug which lies in wait endlessly behind the wallpaper, the trance of the Yogi, the catalepsy of the pathologic individual, the mystic's union with the cosmos, the immortality of cellular life, all these things the artist learns in order to awaken the world at the propitious moment. The artist belongs to the X root race of man; he is the spiritual microbe, as it were, which carries over from one root race to another. He is not crushed by misfortune, because he is not a part of the physical, racial scheme of things. His appearance is always synchronous with catastrophe and dissolution; he is the cyclical being which lives in the epicycle. The experience which he acquires is never used for personal ends; it serves the larger purpose to which he is geared. Nothing is lost on him, however trifling. If he is interrupted for twenty-five years in the reading of a book he can go on from the page where he left off as though nothing had happened in between. Everything that happens in between, which is “life” to most people, is merely an interruption in his forward round. The eternality of his work, when he expresses himself, is merely the reflection of the automatism of life in which he is obliged to lie dormant, a sleeper on the back of sleep, waiting for the signal which will a
If I shudder now and then, when I think of my active life, if I have nightmares, possibly it is because I think of all the men I robbed and murdered in my day sleep. I did everything which my nature bade me to do. Nature is eternally whispering in one's ear – “if you would survive you must kill!” Being human, you kill not like the animal but automatically, and the killing is disguised and its ramifications are endless, so that you kill without even thinking about it, you kill without need. The men who are the most honoured are the greatest killers. They believe that they are serving their fellowmen, and they are sincere in believing so, but they are heartless murderers and at moments, when they come awake, they realize their crimes and perform frantic, quixotic acts of goodness in order to expiate their guilt. The goodness of man stinks more than the evil which is in him, for the goodness is not yet acknowledged, not an affirmation of the conscious self. Being pushed over the precipice, it is easy at the last moment to surrender all one's possessions, to turn and extend a last embrace to all who are left behind. How are we to stop the blind rush? How are we to stop the automatic process, each one pushing the other over the precipice?
As I sat at my desk, over which I had put up a sign reading “Do not abandon all hope ye who enter here!” – as I sat there saying Yes, No, Yes, No, I realized, with a despair that was turning to white frenzy, that I was a puppet in whose hands society had placed a gatling gun. If I performed a good deed it was no different, ultimately, than if I had performed a bad deed. I was like an equals sign through which the algebraic swarm of humanity was passing. I was a rather important, active equals sign, like a general in time of war, but no matter how competent I were to become I could never change into a plus or a minus sign. Nor could any one else, as far as I could determine. Our whole life was built up on this principle of equation. The integers had become symbols which were shuffled about in the interests of death. Pity, despair, passion, hope, courage – these were the temporal refractions caused by looking at equations from varying angles. To stop the endless juggling by turning one's back on it, or by facing it squarely and writing about it, would be no help either. In a hall of mirrors there is no way to turn your back on yourself. I will not do this… I will do some other thing I Very good. But can you do nothing at all? Can you stop thinking about not doing anything? Can you stop dead, and without thinking, radiate the truth which you know? That was the idea which lodged in the back of my head and which burned and burned, and perhaps when I was most expansive most radiant with energy, most sympathetic, most willing, helpful, sincere, good, it was this fixed idea which was shining through, and automatically I was saying – “why, don't mention it … nothing at all, I assure you … no, please don't thank me. it's nothing,” etc. etc. From firing the gun so many hundreds of times a day perhaps I didn't even notice the detonations any more; perhaps I thought I was opening pigeon traps and filling the sky with milky white fowl. Did you ever see a synthetic monster on the screen, a Frankenstein realized in flesh and blood? Can you imagine how he might be trained to pull a trigger and see pigeons flying at the same time? Frankenstein is not a myth: Frankenstein is a very real creation born of the personal experience of a sensitive human being. The monster is always more real when it does not assume the proportions of flesh and blood. The monster of the screen is nothing compared to the monster of the imagination; even the existent pathologic monsters who find their way into the police station are but feeble demonstrations of the monstrous reality which the pathologist lives with. But to be the monster and the pathologist at the same time – that is reserved for certain species of men who, disguised as artists, are supremely aware that sleep is an even greater danger than insomnia. In order not to fall asleep, in order not to become victims of that insomnia which is called “living”, they resort to the drug of putting words together endlessly. This is not an automatic process, they say, because there is always present the illusion that they can stop it at will. But they ca