Читать книгу The Book of Susan: A Novel - Dodd Lee Wilson - Страница 16

Susan never kept a diary, she tells me, but she had, like most beginning authors, the habit of scribbling things down, which she never intended to keep, and then could seldom bring herself to destroy. To a writer all that his pen leaves behind it seems sacred; it is, I treacherously submit, a private grief to any of us to blot a line. Such is our vanity. However inept the work which we force ourselves or are prevailed upon to destroy, the unhappy doubt always lingers: "If I had only saved it? One can't be sure? Perhaps posterity – ?"

Susan, thank God, was not and probably is not exempt from this folly. It enables me from this time forward to present certain passages – mere scraps and jottings – from her notebooks, which she has not hesitated to turn over to me.

"I don't approve, Ambo," was her comment, "but if you will write nonsense about me, I can't help it. What I can help, a little, is your writing nonsense about yourself or Phil or the rest. It's only fair to let me get a word in edgeways, now and then – if only for your sake and theirs."

That is not, however, my own reason for giving you occasional peeps into these notebooks of Susan's.

"I'm beginning to wish that Shelley might have had a sense of humor. 'Epipsychidion' is really too absurd. 'Sweet benediction in the eternal curse!' Imagine, under any condition of sanity, calling any woman that! Or 'Thou star above the storm!' – beautiful as the image is. 'Thou storm upon the star!' would make much worse poetry, but much better sense… Isn't it strange that I can't feel this about Wordsworth? He was better off without humor, for all his solemn-donkey spots – and it's better for us that he didn't have it. It's probably better for us, too, that Shelley didn't have it – but it wasn't better for him. Diddle-diddle-dumpling – what stuff all this is! Go to bed, Susan."

"There's no use pretending things are different, Susan Blake; you might as well face them and see them through, open-eyed. What does being in love mean?

"I suppose if one is really in love, head over heels, one doesn't care what it means. But I don't like pouncing, overwhelming things – things that crush and blast and scorch and blind. I don't like cyclones and earthquakes and conflagrations – at least, I've never experienced any, but I know I shouldn't like them if I did. But I don't think I'd be so terribly afraid of them – though I might. I think I'd be more – sort of – indignant – disgusted."

Editor's Note: Such English! But pungent stylist as Susan is now acknowledged to be, she is still, in the opinion of academic critics, not sufficiently attentive to formal niceties of diction. She remains too wayward, too impressionistic; in a word, too personal. I am inclined to agree, and yet – am I?

"It's all very well to stamp round declaiming that you're captain of your soul, but if an earthquake – even a tiny one – comes and shakes your house like a dice box and then scatters you and the family out of it like dice – it wouldn't sound very appropriate for your epitaph. 'I am the master of my fate' would always look silly on a tombstone. Why aren't tombstones a good test for poetry – some poetry? I've never seen anything on a tombstone that looked real – not even the names and dates.

"But does love have to be like an earthquake? If it does, then it's just a blind force, and I don't like blind forces. It's stupid to be blind oneself; but it's worse to have blind stupid things butting into one and pushing one about.

"Hang it, I don't believe love has to be stupid and blind, and go thrashing through things! Ambo isn't thrashing through things – or Phil either. But, of course, they wouldn't. That's exactly what I mean about love; it can be tamed, civilized. No, not civilized – just tamed. Cowed? Then it's still as wild as ever underneath? I'm afraid it is. Oh, dear!

"Phil and Ambo really are captains of their souls though, so far as things in general let them be. Things in general– what a funny name for God! But isn't God just a short solemn name for things in general? There I go again. Phil says I'm always taking God's name in vain. He thinks I lack reverence. I don't, really. What I lack is – reticence. That's different – isn't it, Ambo?"

The above extracts date back a little. The following were jotted early in November, 1913, not long after our return from overseas.

"This is growing serious, Susan Blake. Phil has asked you to marry him, and says he needs you. Ditto Maltby; only he says he wants you. Which, too obviously, he does. Poor Maltby – imagine his trying to stoop so low as matrimony, even to conquer! As for Ambo – Ambo says nothing, bless him – but I think he wants and needs you most of all. Well, Susan?"

"Jimmy's back. I saw him yesterday. He didn't know me."

"Sex is a miserable nuisance. It muddles things – interferes with honest human values. It's just Nature making fools of us for her own private ends. These are not pretty sentiments for a young girl, Susan Blake!"

"Speak up, Susan – clear the air! You are living here under false pretenses. If you can't manage to feel like Ambo's daughter – you oughtn't to stay."