Kenneth Patchen The Journal of Albion Moonlight, Padell: New York, 1941, (Fifth Edition, 1946), 313 pp.
[p. 200] " . . . It was true. Coming down the coarse hills in a great tide the river of blood rushed upon us. There was no escape. We were drowned in that awful bath. Indeed, my friends, we are all drowning-it covers our faces, it drips from our hands . . . O Jesus! Jesus! Lord have mercy on us . . . Lord have mercy!
"To tell the truth, I have lost the way. I want to destroy all these stupid pages-what a miserable, broken-winded hack I am! What remains? Be assured-whatever happens, I won't lie to you. One ends by hiding the heart. I say here is my heart, it beats and pounds in my hand-take it! I hold it out to you . . . Close the covers of this book and it will go on talking. Nothing can stop it. Not death. Not life. Draw in closer to me. How small and frightened we are. Our little fire is almost out. What do we seek? I am smiling now. You will be told that what I write is confused, without order-and I tell you that my book is not concerned with the problems of art, but with the problems of this world, with the problems of life itself-yet of life itself. Does this astonish you? If you will listen to me, you will learn to create laws. You have none, you know. What did you get from Shakespeare's hooting and howling? A bit of stuff about an idiot and a king. And you threw up in sheer ecstasy. That won't do. The noble speeches aren't enough. The thread-bare and ridiculous plots aren't enough. Men were made to talk to one another. You can't understand that. But I tell you that the writing of the future will be just this kind of writing-one man trying to tell another man of the events in his own heart. Writing will become speech. Novelists talk about their characters. This is because they have nothing to say about themselves. You will ask, was this true of Dostoievsky? and sadly I must answer: yes. Dostoievsky made this stupid mistake-but I am wrong! I am right in what I want to say, but it doesn't make sense, it doesn't tell you what you shouldn't know. We must keep Shakespeare and Doestoeievesky, because they talked above the clamor of their characters-they poked their bleeding heads through the junk-pile of literature, and we saw their white, twitching faces. We saw their lips moving. We heard their grunts and their sobs. Ah, but who did! I am full of anger when I think of the smug pigs who call themselves writers-the dirty white-livered fat boys fingering their mother's love letters off in the attic somewhere. What luck! Get that rubbish out of my way . . . you're damn right there, I am stewing in my own juices . . . Hm-unmmh! I can still remember my first pair of roller skates . . . hot-assing it down Morrison Avenue with little pork sausages held fast in our mitts . . . I never have enough money. I have no trade. There is money in novels, but none at all in writing. Money is a necessity. Without it one starves. Then there is the matter of the landlord. Landlords care even less about writing than novelists do. It is hard to write in the street. People get the idea that maybe you are crazy. Writing is a difficult job. There is no trouble at all in knowing what you want to say; the trouble begins in keeping out the rest of it. I'd like to talk about God all the time. I know less about this than anything else; I know that you encourage me to show my heart. I have never belonged to a political party. Please tell all your friends to read my journal. I have spent many lives learning to write. It would be a pity if no one bothered to read this, wouldn't it? I feel that I have somebody to write to. I am not evil. I want to be saved. Does that amuse you? Perhaps I have been too kind to you. We are not alike you know. I have much more to give you than you could ever give me. I have stepped onto a new planet, I have a cold wind on my face. The dear old horrors bore me. Do you see me at all? Does my voice come through to [p. 202] you? How soundly you sleep? Do you hear the feet of an angel on this page? I am crying-do you know at least that? I want to leave you now for a little time.
"I have prayed. Let us go on.
"I work in the shadow. I stab out and many words fail to land on the paper. I bang away at the stone. Nothing but the essential must go into writing.-but everthing is essential. I take you into my confidence. I told you that I hated novels. This is only partly true, for I also love novels. I love even the cheapest, most debased novels. You make a mistake in thinking that I demand purity in everything. Don't forget that veterinaries have their place in the world. And pimps too. Even people who send schoolboys up in bombing planes. There is a spot for everyone and everything. But this was nothing of my doing. Why shoould I exhaust myself shouting at a wooden Indian.? Why should I care that there are no artists in America? What am I? a newspaper reporter? Why make a record of something that no one can use? It is clearly my duty to come just at the right time, saying exactly the right thing. You have read many books. This book is reading you.
"I exaggerate nothing. I am not a dealer in distortions. This is precisely the way I found the world. Imaginative people end by becoming tongue-tied. They talk about things. I operate from the inside. My feet never leave the ground. It is not my business that now and then the ground sinks away. I am heavy with the stars in my cap. I bring the sea in. I do no research whatever. Every problem to me is a problem of living. I make no attempt to translate. My speech is as much a part of my body as my arms and legs are. What have I to do with the cult of hallucination? Derangement is for the too-sane-everything under heaven cries to be arranged; I demand order and precision in what I do. The supreme cultivation of chaos has already been done. That is what I am talking against. The world is drunk on pig-piss . . . power! power! You need nothing of the kind., What is powerful? A gun is. A battleship. But we are weak. We are stumbling around in the dark. War is endured because it offers [p. 203] up as a spectacle . . . a better and bigger kind of fireworks. It scares the hell out of us. It rurns us inside out. There is its hold, its fascination. Nobody can understand how year after year and age after age war is put up with. It's because everybody wants to see what it's really like. Everybody is secretly proud of it. We put that on. God! nothng like this ever before. Did they think they had a war . . . watch this one! But the real secret lies in property. These are our guns, this is our fleet, this is my country, My country! Now you are beginning to watch me closely. I won't let you squirm out of it! You poor little creature . . . what is yours? Your house . . . your job . . . your kitchen chairs and the number plate on the door . . . ah! but these don't belong to you. Where did you get them? By what right did they come to you? You worked for them? Worked . . .? What did you do? Oh, you sat in an office and put figures in a book. You even dug in a cold, water-filled ditch. But I have already told you that property is murder. Because of property people starve to death and are beaten by the police. Because of property millions of men are blown into bloody pieces. Every Negro who is lynched has your rope around his neck. Because of property every good impulse of mankind has been defiled and lost. Your property? The butchering of Jews in Poland . . . the murder of Sacco and Vanzetti . . . the blood-drenched monster called Hitler . . . yest, these belong to you. These are your property. Indeed, this is your country. A country where systematic murder is the one function of the State. At the last your only property is murder. Refuse to murder in hte name of the State, and you will find yourself behind bars-your house, your job, your kitchen chairs and number plate over your door . . . kicked into the ditch you spent your life digging, your death but another figure you entered into the monstrous book of Capitalism. I ask for an unconditional overthrow of every last vestige of the world you will risk your life for tomorrow. Don't attempt to conceal the truth from me. You will fight because you are stupid, brutal and cowardly. And a fool as well. But this is your role. Why should I expect a monster to give birth to an angel? The [p. 204] State has no misgivings about you. You will be in the kill with the rest of your kind. You will march uprightly along at the very head of the paid assassins-stepping like a brainless goose away out in front of everybody. What does your death matter to me? It is the living who matter-those who will struggle with thier last ounce of strength to live, not die for a crew of soft-handed gangsters. What matters to me is the heritage of creation which a few brave men have managed to keep inviolate from the destroyers-it is their courage and purity, their faith and idealism which moves me to take heart and to speak out now. I am not alone. I have no wish to become a murderer. I do not choose my truths. I am not concerned with what appears to be true. I do not play a dozen parts at once. I am not caught off guard. I don't make judgements througth casual reading of Manifestos. I say that it is almost inconceivable that I should be rejected for the phlegmbags of the marketplace. Doubtless I will be. To live honestly. To be loved honestly. Am I such a criminal? Am I not to be given a moment before the quaint ritual at the stake? Thus, against murder, against hypocrisy, and for life, for all that is most beautiful and noble in man, for the immense joy of being alive, do I speak. I am an island in a cess-pool called History. A strange feeling comes over me. I seem to be addressing a dead man. A dead world. A dead sun. The angel has gone. I am ringed in by a circle of mocking mcking savages . . .
"[p. 205 ] . . . The power of an empire rests in the threat of its poor, half-starved subjects to take up arms against it. For that reason fleets are built and armies are trained. Wars are conducted that the people may lose sight of their own need to wage war. The people always fight for the cause which enslaves them; that is, the cause of their rulers. A monstrous game is played. Not content with condemning their subjects to a life of hunger and slavery, the powers that be craftily call in the wretched subjects of a foreign murderer to complete the job. This is done for the sake of trade and markets, mind you. It would be an unforgiveable impertinence to ask: whose trade? whose markets? Your, perhaps, Or mine. Then, when the paint wears thin on the mask, they just haul out a new set of labels and begin all over again; they say, "Horror of horrors, what is this ghastly thing? Look what it say there! Fascism. Now isn't that barbarous! Surely you'll fight against that! The world must be saved from Fascism." And they [p. 206] are right. It must. But it should have been saved from Fascism before some clever butcher thought up the word. For it is only a word. It differs from what we have known by only a word. Make no mistake. If Capitalism is wearing a new mask in Europe, we'll get a bigger and a better one ourselves tomorrow. The styles of Imperialist murder must change as Capitalism draws nearer to its death . . . In our cities we have tolerated noise and dirt that would sicken a half-witted ape; we have deliberately sought out the ugly and the deformed; we have done everything in our power to stamp out the merest hint of that which has grace nnd beauty. We have behaved as though only the taste of the most depraved and besotten had any claim to gratification. We have pushed the nose of our culture into the shit of our self-interest. For all this is done that, of all things! we may enjoy ourselves . . . the moron-minded radio; the literature which exploits the sufferings of the migratory worker; the music which stinks of Hollywood-here we are!! . . . the greatest nation on earth . . .