Black Spring. Генри Миллер

an old issue of a magazine. Here I will find peace. To my amazement the page falls open on these words: “Goethe and his Demon.” The pencil is in my hand again, the margin crammed with notes. It is midnight. I am exhilarated. The dictation has ceased. A free man again. I’m so damned happy that I’m wondering if I shouldn’t take a little spin before sitting down to write. The bike is in my room. It’s dirty. The bike, I mean. I get a rag and begin cleaning it. I clean every spoke, I oil it thoroughly, I polish the mudguards. She’s spick and span. I’ll go through the Bois de Boulogne. …

      As I’m washing my hands I suddenly get a gnawing pain in the stomach. I’m hungry, that’s what’s the matter. Well, now that the dictation has ceased I’m free to do as I like. I uncork a bottle, cut off a big chunk of bread, bite into a sausage. The sausage is full of garlic. Fine. In the Bois de Boulogne a garlic breath goes unnoticed. A little more wine. Another hunk of bread. This time it’s me who’s eating and no mistake about it. The other meals were wasted. The wine and the garlic mingle odorously. I’m belching a little.

      I sit down for a moment to smoke a cigarette. There’s a pamphlet at my elbow, about three inches square. It’s called Art and Madness. The ride is off. It’s getting too late to write anyway. It’s coming over me that what I really want to do is to paint a picture. In 1927 or ’8 I was on the way to becoming a painter. Now and then, in fits and starts, I do a water color. It comes over you like that: you feel like a water color and you do one. In the insane asylum they paint their fool heads off. They paint the chairs, the walls, the tables, the bedsteads … an amazing productivity. If we rolled up our sleeves and went to work the way these idiots do what might we not accomplish in a lifetime!

      The illustration in front of me, done by an inmate of Charenton, has a very fine quality about it. I see a boy and girl kneeling close together and in their hands they are holding a huge lock. Instead of a penis and vagina the artist has endowed them with keys, very big keys which interpenetrate. There is also a big key in the lock. They look happy and a little absent-minded. … On page 85 there is a landscape. It looks exactly like one of Hilaire Hiler’s paintings. In fact, it is better than any of Hiler’s. The only peculiar feature of it is that in the foreground there are three miniature men who are deformed. Not badly deformed either—they simply look as if they were too heavy for their legs. The rest of the canvas is so good that one would have to be squeamish indeed to be annoyed at this. Besides, is the world so perfect that there are not three men anywhere who are too heavy for their legs? It seems to me that the insane have a right to their vision as well as we.

      I’m very eager to start in. Just the same, I’m at a loss for ideas. The dictation has ceased. I have half a mind to copy one of these illustrations. But then I’m a little ashamed of myself—to copy the work of a lunatic is the worst form of plagiarism.

      Well, begin! That’s the thing. Begin with a horse! I have vaguely in mind the Etruscan horses I saw in the Louvre. (Note: in all the great periods of art the horse was very close to man!) I begin to draw. I begin naturally with the easiest part of the animal—the horse’s ass. A little opening for the tail which can be stuck in afterwards. Hardly have I begun to do the trunk when I notice at once that it is too elongated. Remember, you are drawing a horse—not a liverwurst! Vaguely, vaguely it seems to me that some of those Ionian horses I saw on the black vases had elongated trunks; and the legs began inside the body, delineated by a fine stenciled line which you could look at or not look at according to your anatomical instincts. With this in mind I decide on an Ionian horse. But now fresh difficulties ensue. It’s the legs. The shape of a horse’s leg is baffling when you have only your memory to rely on. I can recall only about as much as from the fetlock down, which is to say, the hoof. To put meat on the hoof is a delicate task, extremely delicate. And to make the legs join the body naturally, not as if they were stuck on with glue. My horse already has five legs: the easiest thing to do is to transform one of them into a phallus erectus. No sooner said than done. And now he’s standing just like a terra cotta figure of the sixth century B.C. The tail isn’t in yet, but I’ve left an opening just above the asshole. The tail can be put in any time. The main thing is to get him into action, to make him prance like. So I twist the front legs up. Part of him is in motion, the rest is standing stock still. With the proper kind of tail I could turn him into a fine kangaroo.

      During the leg experiments the stomach has become dilapidated. I patch it up as best I can—until it looks like a hammock. Let it go at that. If it doesn’t look like a horse when I’m through I can always turn it into a hammock. (Weren’t there people sleeping in a horse’s stomach on one of the vases I saw?)