Of Time and the River (111 page)

Instead of whining that we have no traditions, or that we must learn by keeping constantly in touch with European models, or by keeping away from them, we should get busy telling some of the stories about America that have never been told.

A book like Main Street, which made such a stir, is like Main Street. It is like “I’ve seen all Europe” tourists, who have spent two days in each country in a round-the-town bus.

In a magazine like The American Mercury the stones are also too much of a pattern—they’re all about how the “Deacon Screwed the Methodist Minister’s Wife,” and how the “Town Prostitute Was Put in Jail for Coming to Church on Sunday and Mixing with the Good Folks.”

When you hear people saying about Babbitt—that it is not the whole story and that much more can be said—you agree with them. Then they begin to talk about “the other side” and you lose hope. You see they mean, by “other side,” Dr. Crane and Booth Tarkington.

So far from these being “the other side,” there are a million other sides. And so far from Babbitt being too strong, the stories that may be written about America will make Babbitt an innocent little child’s book to be read at the Christmas School entertainment along with The Christmas Carol and “Excelsior.” The man who suggests the strangeness and variety of this life most is Sherwood Anderson. Or was. I think he’s got too fancy since he wrote Winesburg, Ohio.

A French writer who said there was no real variety in the life of the French because they all had red wine on the table, sat at little tables in cafés to gossip, and had mistresses, would be called a fool. Yet an American will criticize his country for standardization on no better grounds—namely, that most of them are Methodists or Baptists, Democrats or Republicans, Rotarians or Kiwanians.

Babbitt is a very interesting book. But I believe it would be possible for a German writer with a talent similar to Sinclair Lewis to write a book called Schmidt or Bauer which would be just as sweeping a portrait.

Do you want to know what the gentleman looks like? He is much easier to describe than Babbitt.

Tuesday—December 23, 1924: The mystery explained! Today, at American Library, found out what it is:

“Time—that dimension of the world which we express in terms of before and after—the temporal sequence pervades mind and matter alike.”

Time the form of the internal sense, and space the form of the external sense.

Theory of Relativity—the time-units of both time and space are neither points nor moments—but moments in the history of a point.

W. James—Within a definite limited interval of duration known as the specious present there is the direct perception of the temporal relations.

After an event has passed beyond the specious present it can only enter into consciousness by reproductive memory.

James—“The Object of Memory is only an object imagined in the past to which the emotion of belief adheres.”

Temporal experience divided into three qualitatively distinct intervals: the remembered past, the perceived specious present, and the anticipated future—By means of the tripartite division we are able to inject our present selves into the temporal stream of our own experience.

By arrangement of temporal orders of past with temporal orders of future—we can construct a temporal order of our specious presents and their contents.

Thus time has its roots in experience and yet appears to be a dimension in which experiences and their contents are to be arranged.

Thus the stuff from which time is made is of the nature of experienced data.

The Zenonian paradoxes: Achilles cannot catch up with the almost here save by occupying an infinity of positions.

A flying arrow cannot remain where it is, nor be where it is not.

These things do not deal with space or time but with the properties of infinite assemblages and dense series (Americana).

Weber’s at midnight: The waiters in Weber’s standing in a group in their black coats and white boiled shirts—

All around the great mirrors reflecting there—for a moment a STRANGE picture I thought of TIME!

The horrible monotony of the French—Weber’s at midnight some Frenchmen in evening dress—the heavy eyelids—the dangling legs— the look of weary vitality—

Then in come some “Parisiennes”—God! God! All sizes and shapes and all the same—Unfit for anything else in the world, and not good for what they are—The texture of enamelled tinted skin, the hard avaricious noses, the chic style of coats, hair, eyebrows, etc.

The great myth that the Latins are romantic people. The Latins have qualities and standards that we do not possess—Hence we overvalue them.

There are many places in the world where life attains a greater variety, interest or profundity than in Paris (viz., New York, London, Vienna, Munich). Yet a great many Americans make their homes in Paris because they are sure it is the centre of the world’s intellectual and cultural reputations.

It is easier for a writer to secure a reputation in France than in any other country. Many French writers have very respectable reputations who would be laughed at in other countries. For example, Henri Bordeaux—Some Americans who study French literature think he is a distinguished writer. His name has a solid, respectable sound to it. On the cover of all his books is printed “Member of the French Academy.” But you could hardly find an intellectual in America who would say a kind word for Harold Bell Wright. Yet Harold Bell Wright—poor as he may be—is a better writer than Henri Bordeaux. If you don’t believe it, read them. Americans are very unfair about this.

The way things go: At 6.10 A.M. the street lights of Paris go off. I sit at a little all-night café in Grand Boulevard opposite Rue Faubourg de Montmartre and watch light widen across the sky behind Montmartre. At first a wide strip of blue-grey—a strip of violet light. You see the line of the two clear and sharp. The paper trucks of Hachette, Le Petit Parisien, etc., go by.

In the bar a rattling of leaden, holey coins—the five-, ten- and twenty-five-centime pieces. Taxi-drivers drinking café rhum, debating loudly in hoarse sanguinary voices. A prostitute, the blonde all-night antiquity of the Quarter streets, drinking rich hot chocolate, crunching crusty croissants at the bar. The veteran of a million loves, well known and benevolently misprized, hoarse with iniquity and wisdom. A pox upon you, Marianne: You have made Monsieur le Président trčs triste; the third leg of the Foreign Legion wears a sling because of you!

A swart-eyed fellow, oiled and amorous, sweetly licks with nozzly tongue his prostitute’s rouge-varnished face: with choking secret laughter and with kissy, wetty talkie he cajoles her; she answers in swart choked whisperings with her sudden shrill prostitute’s scream of merriment.

A morning rattle of cans and ashes on the pavements. With rich jingle-jangle and hollow clitter-clatter a Paris milk wagon passes. Suddenly, a screak of brakes: all over the world the moaning screak of brakes, and racing, starting motors.

Across the street in faint grey-bluish light the news kiosk is opening up.

“Est-ce que vous avez Le New York ‘Erald?”

“Non, monsieur. Ce n’est pas encore arrivé.”

“Et Le Tchicago Treebune?”

“Ça pas plus, monsieur. C’est aussi en retard ce matin.”

“Merci. Alors: Le Matin.”

“Bien, monsieur.”

Passage of leaden sous: the smell of ink-worn paper, dear to morning throughout the world. A big Hachette truck swerves up, an instant halt, the flat heavy smack of fresh-corded ink-warm paper on the pavement, a hoarse cry and instant loud departure!

Ça aussi, monsieur. Sing ye bi-i-i-rds, sing! Light up your heart, O son of man!

Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, with charm of earliest birds!

Some things will never change: some things will always be the same: brother we cannot die, we must be saved; we are united at the heart of night and morning.

A good time now, just before dawn and morning. Surfeit of sterile riches: harvests of stale bought love: the burnt-out candle-end of night, the jaded blaze of crimson light, in shattered bars; numb weary lust—which one? which one?

The prostitutes at daybreak, the dead brilliance of electric smiles.

Tired, tired, tired.

Tuesday: Woman who sang tonight at Concert Mayol—She was near 50— magnificent teeth—so good they made me uneasy—Those things in her head—but how? They keep them so. This comes to me—that they spend all their time looking after them: there is something filthy about this.

On the Boulevards—3.20 du matin. Reading the Sourire for strumpet-house items—I want to find me a Ballon of Champagne— First of all—préservatif right to my left around corner Rue Faubourg de Montmartre; all-night pharmacy.

Along the quais again this afternoon to the bookstalls—Made afraid by the junk—Bought a dozen books or so, but no “prints” or “etchings”—Countless old-fashioned prints—pictures of Versailles— the Palais Royal, the Revolution—Sentimental and cheap pictures— Florid ones—“La Courtisane Passionnée,” etc. Stage-coach pictures, etc. Works of Eugčne Scribe—The little books bound or tied, so you can’t look—nothing in them—Vie ŕ la Campagne— countless cheap books—ah, I have a little of it all!—Strasbourg.

Christmas Week—Colmar, Alsace-Lorraine—Written on the Spot.

The Isenheimer Altar of Mathias Grünewald in the Cloisters of the Unterlinden Museum at Colmar:

There is nothing like it in the world. I have spent over 4 months getting here—it is much more wonderful than one imagines it will be. The altar is set up NOT IN ONE PIECE but in three sections in a big room with groined ceilings, a long groined room like a Dominikaner Cloister.

The first two “volets” of the altar—Everything is distorted and out of perspective. The figure of the Christ is twice as big as the other figures—the pointing finger of Saint Antoine is much too big for his body—but everything in this figure points along the joints and elbows of that arm and ends in the pointing finger.

The Lamb with its straight brisk feet, its dainty right foreleg bent delicately about the Cross and red blood spouting from its imperturbable heart into a goblet of rich gold, is a masterpiece of symbolic emotion that strikes far beyond intelligence.

The body of Christ, and its agony, are indescribable. The hands and the feet are enlarged to meet the agony—the hands are tendons of agony, the feet are not feet but lengths of twisted tendons driven through by a bolt and ending in bent, broken, bleeding toes. A supernatural light falls upon the immense twisted length of the body (a grey-white-green) and yet COMPLETELY SOLID LIGHT—you can count the ribs, the muscles (the head falling to the right), full of brutal agony—it is crowned with long thorns and rusty blood—it droops over, it is too big, Christ is dead.

The great figure of the woman in white comes up and breaks backward at the middle and is caught in the red arms of the pitiful Saint. The fingers of the Magdalen are bent in eloquent supplication.

The blackness of hell’s night behind—the unearthly greenish supernatural light upon the figures—on Christ’s dead, sinewed, twisted, riven gigantic body and on the living flesh of the other figures.

The sly face of the Virgin in the wing of the Annunciation—the eyes slanting up under lowered lids in a sly leer—the fat loose sensual mouth half open, with the tongue visible—a look of sly bawdiness over all.

The enormous and demoniac intelligence that illuminates the piece in Grünewald’s Altar—the angels playing instruments in “La Vierge Glorifiée par les Anges”—the faces have a SINISTER GOLDEN LIGHT— an almost unholy glee. You can hear MAD HEAVENLY MUSIC. This is not true with Italians—syrup and sugar.

This is the greatest and also the most “modern” picture I have ever seen.

Christmas Week—1924: Returning to Paris from Strasbourg: The approach to Paris through the Valley of the Marne—Winter—The very magnificent rainbow—the rocking clacketing train.

The suburbs of Paris—Dark—The little double-deckers rattling past loaded with people—The weary approaches to a great city—Endless repetition—monotonous endlessness—The sadness of seeing people pass you in a lighted train or subway. Why is this?

PARIS: There is nothing that I do not know about Paris—That sounds like the foolishest boast but that is true—I am sitting on the terrace of the Taverne Royale—Rue Royale—It is winter—it is cold—but it is the same—to one hand the Madeleine—to the other the Place de la Concorde—to the right that of the Champs-Elysées— the Arc—the Bois—the fashionable quarters—the strumpet-houses of that district—the rue—the Troc—the Tower—the Champs-de-Mars— the Montparnasse section—the Latin Quarter—the bookshops—the cafés—the Ecole—the Institut—the St. Mich—the Ile—the Notre Dame—The Old Houses—the Rue de Rivoli—the Tour St. Jacques—the Carnavalet—the Hugo—Vosges—the Bastille—the Gare de Lyon—the Gare de l’Est—du Nord—the Montmartre—the Butte—the cafés— houses—the Rue Lepic—the Port Clignancourt—the La Villette—The Parc Monceau—the Bois—Great circle, unending universe of life, huge legend of dark time!

But unannealed by water the gaunt days sloped into the grots of time.

Paris, Saturday Night: Today has been a horrible one—I was able to sleep only the most diseased and distressed sleep (the worst sort of American-in-Europe sleep) last night after leaving Mrs. Morton. I was sick with my loss (the loss of the picture and several letters Helen sent me) and I got up sick and with the SHAKES this morning—I came to the Abiga bar—I went to the Am. Ex. Co.—I went to Wepler’s in Montmartre—At each place, as I knew they would, with mean and servile regret cut by mocking, they were sorry, sorry, sorry.

The day was of the most horrible European sort—Something that passes understanding—the wet heavy air, that deadens the soul, puts a lump of indigestible lead in the solar plexus, depresses and fatigues the flesh until one seems to lift himself leadenly through the thick wet steaming air with a kind of terrible fear—an excitement that is without hope, that awaits only the news of some further grief, failure, humiliation, and torture. There is a lassitude that enters the folds and lappings of the brain, that makes one hope for better things and better work tomorrow, but hope without belief or conviction.