The Time of the Assassins: A Study of Rimbaud by Henry Miller Read Free Book Online Page A

Nothing. I would have been regarded as a rank failure. I had to wait until my forty-third year to see my first book published. It is a fateful event for me, comparable in every way to the publication of the “
Saison
.” With its advent a long cycle of frustration and defeat comes to an end. For me it might also be styled “my nigger book.” It is the last word in despair, revolt and malediction. It is also prophetic and healing, not only for my readers but for me too. It has that saving quality of art which so often distinguishes those books which break with the past. It enabled me to close the door on the past and re-enter it by the back door. The gnawing secret continues to eat me away, but now it is “the open secret,” and I can cope with it.
    And what is the nature of this secret? I can only say that it has to do with the mothers. I feel that it was the same with Lawrence and with Rimbaud. All the rebelliousness which I share with them derives from this problem which, as nearly as I can express it, means the search for one’s true link with humanity. One finds it neither in the personal life nor in the collective life, if one is of this type. One is unadaptable to the point of madness. One longs to find his peer, but one is surrounded by vast empty spaces. One needs a teacher, but one lacks the humility, the flexibility, the patience which is demanded. One is not even at home or at ease with the great in spirit; even the highest are defective or suspect. And yet one has affinities only with these highest types. It is a dilemma of the first magnitude, a dilemma fraught with the highest significance. One has to establish the ultimate difference of his own peculiar being and doing so discover his kinship with all humanity, even the very lowest. Acceptance is the key word. But acceptance is precisely the great stumbling block. It has to be total acceptance and not conformity.
    What makes it so difficult for this type to accept the world? The fact, as I see it now, that in early life the whole dark side of life, and of one’s own being, of course, had been suppressed, so thoroughly repressed as to be unrecognizable. Not to have rejected this dark side of being would have meant, so one unconsciously reasons with himself, a loss of individuality, loss of freedom even more. Freedom is bound up with differentiation. Salvation here means only the preservation of one’s unique identity in a world tending to make every one and every thing alike. This is the root of the fear. Rimbaud stressed the fact that he wanted
liberty
in salvation. But one is saved only by surrendering this illusory freedom. The liberty he demanded was freedom for his ego to assert itself unrestrained. That is not freedom. Under this illusion one can, if one lives long enough, play out every facet of one’s being and still find cause to complain, ground to rebel. It is a kind of liberty which grants one the right to object, to secede if necessary. It does not take into account other people’s differences, only one’s own. It will never aid one to find one’s link, one’s communion, with all mankind. One remains forever separate, forever isolate.
    All this has but one meaning for me—that one is still bound to the mother. All one’s rebellion was but dust in the eye, the frantic attempt to conceal this bondage. Men of this stamp are always against their native land—impossible to be otherwise. Enslavement is the great bugaboo, whether it be to country, church or society. Their lives are spent in breaking fetters, but the secret bondage gnaws at their vitals and gives them no rest. They must come to terms with the mother before they can rid themselves of the obsession of fetters. “Outside! Forever outside! Sitting on the doorstep of the mother’s womb.” I believe those are my own words, in
Black Spring
, a golden period when I was almost in possession of the secret. No wonder one is alienated from the mother. One does not notice her, except