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# 2024-08-25 - More Miles by Harry Kemp | |
Recently i read the autobiographical novel Tramping On Life, | |
which ends abruptly. | |
gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/log/2024-07-25-tramping-on-life-by-harry-kemp/ | |
More Miles abruptly picks up where Tramping On Life left off. | |
Personally, i found the first book more interesting. In More Miles, | |
the author is primarily chasing after women one after another, a | |
series of disappointments in search of The One. I felt pity for the | |
author's compulsive behavior because it never seemed to get him | |
anywhere. | |
Below are quotes from the book. | |
I realized that, from now on, I could never again live for any length | |
of time without the complete companionship of a woman. | |
I knew that my solitary vagrant life of the Past would never again be | |
possible for me. | |
My poverty rather forwarded than hindered the thriving of my mind. | |
... my true reason [for visiting Ruth] was that I was beginning to | |
suffer from the desperate loneliness that living, solitary, among | |
crowds creates--more desperate than the loneliness of forests and | |
plains. At first good for the creative mind, soon it devolves into a | |
species of solitary confinement... | |
People's worst weakness was clinging to other people with whom they | |
had lived through a vital crisis. The crisis over, one should go on | |
to others, who had something fresh and unknown to give... | |
"I'd rather die than be so ignorant as to have a prejudice against | |
any racial group, Jew, Irish, Scotch, German, American, Negro--I'm | |
often in doubt about economic problems. I never doubt, in this | |
case." | |
Leaving the big, forlorn house, I commented on what an actual crime | |
it was for the Idle Rich to own houses unoccupied and completely | |
furnished and equipped--houses dotting the landscape all about the | |
country from Maine to California... | |
"The Spanish have a proverb," observed Ruth, "that there are three | |
topics that must be avoided, to keep the peace, in any | |
discussion--the other man's religion, the other man's politics, [and] | |
the other man's wife!" | |
Free love, I still believed in it, but the fight against stupidity | |
was too savage and hard... my game, I was at last convinced, must be | |
the literary game... | |
... for I must not leave out the things that hurt (they more than | |
any, belong to my spiritual evolution, and must be acknowledged.) | |
Rankin contended that he was a "perfectionist" ... that it ought to | |
be possible, if you kept on seeking--to find the ideal in everything; | |
the trouble with most people was, that they grew discourages: the | |
perfect physical condition; the perfect mate; the perfect | |
environment;--they were all attainable and practicable--if one | |
persisted in the quest. | |
The life of the poet ought, primarily, to be the life of the | |
imagination. | |
With a small income and plenty of books, I (I was sure) could put all | |
active life by, and retreat entirely into the life of the imagination. | |
I was always glad to be back again among my few, silent, wise books | |
of poetry; glad to be back where I could stretch unclothed, in the | |
sun again... to swim, unimpeded, from isolated points along the | |
lake's extended shore. | |
I liked especially to slip out of my shack in the deep of the night, | |
for a swim... | |
It was glorious to float under the star-sprinkled dark, seeming to be | |
poised alone in the endless space and time that lapsed quietly into | |
infinity and eternity like noiseless water lapsing into an immense | |
ocean... | |
"... concerning husbands--I have no feeling ... but I respect the | |
rights of sweethearts... Radical lovers take a chance--husbands have | |
the laws and the conventions on their side." | |
* * * | |
"If you'd keep abreast of the times in your craft, Gregory--leave off | |
your exclusive reading of the classics--you might have spared | |
yourself a lot of trouble." | |
* * * | |
"The need of men and women for each other is so great," Janice | |
continued, "and yet so simple, that a civilized being ought never to | |
forgive either Church or State, for fastening vampire-like on that | |
primal, simple need,--battening on it, turning it into a thing | |
difficult and complex, and so deranging the happiness of the world." | |
* * * | |
[The author was offered an editorial job on a new magazine. It paid | |
well, only required one week of work per month, and was for a | |
political cause he believed in. Most of it was writing of very poor | |
quality.] | |
The wrenching and tearing of divided purpose began within me. I | |
revolted against reading this truck, sifting through it further for | |
the one good bit of prose or verse that waited here and there; | |
animated it was true, with thrusts of fierce, bitter energy, and at | |
times, greatness. | |
I forecast that "The Proletariat" would help, on the whole, many | |
artists and writers to find themselves, and strike their own gait | |
afterward... | |
But--was this my job?--to give my creative energy in this way? | |
I shoved the heap of manuscript to the floor. I couldn't go ahead | |
with it. Regretfully, I saw the last glimmer of the sixty dollars a | |
month departing. | |
I caught up Milton's Paradise Lost and read page after page of sure, | |
sublime melody to counterbalance the effect of the stuff with which I | |
had been infesting my thought. | |
* * * | |
Janice was right. It was awful, being a man. The hot, surging blood | |
pulsing full and painful within me, as if constrained and to the | |
bursting point, by abstinence; the hurting fullness in my veins and | |
nerves beating blindly to escape, to find avenues of ease! | |
Around and around and about on the continual, hopeless quest I | |
whirled, seeking, in every group I knew, a woman's intimate | |
companionship ... running hectically top parties ... drinking, | |
debating, philandering, reading aloud my latest poems; enduring the | |
companionship of people I did not even like--all to alleviate the | |
misery of my solitariness,--to find, perhaps this time, in some | |
woman, more than a passing affair ... a woman, rather, who would mean | |
enough to me, to hold me to more than the temporary; to find, at | |
last, the beautiful golden-haired creature that obsessed the dreams | |
of all my imagination! | |
* * * | |
Stories, authentically attested, came to us, of striking miners in | |
Colorado first cast out of their company-owned hovels (that they were | |
forced to rent of the companies, no other places being available)... | |
We heard of evicted miners taking to the hillsides, inhabiting tents | |
furnished by friendly groups of other working men-- | |
Tents that were no sooner occupied than they were wantonly shot into, | |
by the assembled State militia... enfiladed and fusilladed into, and | |
riddled through and through causelessly--as if the assembled soldiery | |
of the commonwealth took the whole life-and-death struggle as a | |
savage lark. | |
Not only the miners, but wives and children of the miners, were | |
wounded, in some cases, ti was reported--slain! | |
* * * | |
I was glad that my pursuit was, in spite of all deviations from | |
it--the writing of my poetry, the following of a literary career. | |
I avowed revolutionary principles, and wrote poems for the Cause. | |
But inwardly I was not sure of the innocency of the proletariat, not | |
so sure of the millennium that would be brought about on earth, | |
through their rising to power... | |
"Capitalism stands solid because, at heart, every worker is a | |
would-be Capitalist--" | |
I was not so sure that the régime of the Proletariat, when it had its | |
turn, would not bring upon humanity abuses more atrocious than any | |
that saw day under the present system of exploiters and exploited. | |
* * * | |
"There'll be a period of readjustment that will hurt us ... unless | |
we're settled on a farm where we can grow our own food ... but the | |
Capitalists will bring about several world wars first, to head the | |
Revolution off. | |
* * * | |
I hate the changing-changeless moon, | |
The iteration of the sun, | |
The regularity of noon | |
And systems that like clockwork run; | |
And I would leap and clap for joy | |
If morn for once would enter late | |
His empire, like a careless boy, | |
And make, expectant twilight wait; | |
And I would dance for joy, and shot, | |
If the sun bartered gold for green, | |
Or if the moon would turn about, | |
The silver side I've never seen! | |
* * * | |
"I ask you are WE reporting the truth about this strike?--the way the | |
strikers are being rough-housed, and framed up? the way the women | |
and children are being treated?--bot much!" | |
"And if we did report the facts--would our papers print them?--" | |
"You fellows know damn well they wouldn't--and that we'd lose our jobs!" | |
* * * | |
Very well, I would give them a talk on the Ultimate Ideal-- | |
The Ultimate Ideal of the world set free to write poems, paint | |
pictures, model statuary, read in great libraries the classics of all | |
literatures,--discuss, put on plays, make love: after a marginal | |
general hour or two of daily necessary work, shared in, without | |
respect to person, by all mankind. ... | |
Soon I felt a chill, invisible but real Something vastly lapping up | |
about me ... though psychic, as actual as the platform I was standing | |
on--a wide propulsion sweeping up from that restless mob against me... | |
Their first vague restless whispering mounted to an audible murmur. | |
They began milling about like a great herd of restless cattle... | |
They were talking openly now, back and forth with each other--those | |
hundreds of strikers, standing on the floor... packed there without | |
seats... not understanding a word of what I was saying. | |
I shrank back from them, drawing myself into an infinitesimal point | |
of dividuality. | |
I stopped, put my hand to my head, stumbled out--sick! | |
Riding back to the city on the train with Lilla and the bunch, I was, | |
for me, unusually silent. | |
For the first time in my life, I had sensed directly that enormous, | |
ruthless, unthinking and idiot power latent in masses of people... | |
and it had appalled me. | |
author: Kemp, Harry, 1883-1960 | |
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Harry_Kemp | |
LOC: PS3521.E45 Z52 | |
source: gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/ia/details/moremilesanautob012531mbp | |
tags: biography,ebook,non-fiction,vagabond | |
title: More Miles | |
# Tags | |
biography | |
ebook | |
non-fiction | |
vagabond |