Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
"We have a new name for him, Professor Weldon," said Nick Mabley. "We call him Hegel Gant."
He listened to their shout of laughter; he saw their pleased faces turn back on him. That was meant well. I shall smile--their Great Original, the beloved eccentric, the poet of substantial yokels.
"That's a name he may be worthy of," said Vergil Weldon seriously.
Old Fox, I too can juggle with your phrases so they will never catch me. Over the jungle of their wits our unfoiled minds strike irony and passion. Truth? Reality? The Absolute? The Universal? Wisdom? Experience? Knowledge? The Fact? The Concept? Death--the great negation? Parry and thrust, Volpone! Have we not words? We shall prove anything. But Ben, and the demon-flicker of his smile? Where now?
The Spring comes back. I see the sheep upon the hill. The belled cows come along the road in wreaths of dust, and the wagons creak home below the pale ghost of the moon. But what stirs within the buried heart? Where are the lost words? And who has seen his shadow in the Square?
"And if they asked you, Mr. Rountree?"
"I'd have told the truth," said Mr. Rountree, removing his glasses.
"But they had built a good big fire, Mr. Rountree."
"That doesn't matter," said Mr. Rountree, putting his glasses on again.
How nobly we can die for truth--in conversation.
"It was a very hot fire, Mr. Rountree. They'd have burned you if you hadn't recanted."
"Ah. I'd have let them burn," said the martyred Rountree through moistening spectacles.
"I think it might be painful," Vergil Weldon suggested. "Even a little blister hurts."
"Who wants to be burned for anything?" said Eugene. "I'd have done what Galileo did--backed out of it."
"So should I," said Vergil Weldon, and their faces arched with gleeful malice over the heavy laughter of the class.
Nevertheless, it moves.
"On one side of the table stood the combined powers of Europe; on the other stood Martin Luther, the son of a blacksmith."
The voice of husky passion, soul-shaken. This they can remember, and put down.
"There, if ever, was a situation to try the strongest soul. But the answer came like a flash. Ich kann nicht anders--I can't do otherwise. It was one of the great utterances of history."
That phrase, used now for thirty years, relic of Yale and Harvard: Royce and Munsterberg. In all this jugglery, the Teutons were Weldon's masters, yet mark how thirstily the class lap it up. He will not let them read, lest some one find the rag-quilt of his takings from Zeno to Immanuel Kant. The crazy patchwork of three thousand years, the forced marriage of irreconcilables, the summation of all thought, in his old head. Socrates begat Plato. Plato begat Plotinus. Plotinus begat St. Augustine. . . . Kant begat Hegel. Hegel begat Vergil Weldon. Here we pause. There's no more to beget. An Answer to All Things in Thirty Easy Lessons. How sure they are they've found it!
And to-night they will carry their dull souls into his study, will make unfleshly confessions, will writhe in concocted tortures of the spirit, revealing struggles that they never had. "It took character to do a thing like that. It took a man who refused to crack under pressure. And that is what I want my boys to do! I want them to succeed! I want them to absorb their negations. I want them to keep as clean as a hound's tooth!"
Eugene winced, and looked around on all the faces set in a resolve to fight desperately for monogamy, party politics, and the will of the greatest number.
And yet the Baptists fear this man! Why? He has taken the whiskers off their God, but for the rest, he has only taught them to vote the ticket.
So here is Hegel in the Cotton Belt!
During these years Eugene would go away from Pulpit Hill, by night and by day, when April was a young green blur, or when the Spring was deep and ripe. But he liked best to go away by night, rushing across a cool Spring countryside full of dew and starlight, under a great beach of the moon ribbed with clouds.
He would go to Exeter or Sydney; sometimes he would go to little towns he had never before visited. He would register at hotels as "Robert Herrick," "John Donne," "George Peele," "William Blake," and "John Milton." No one ever said anything to him about it. The people in those small towns had such names. Once he registered at a hotel, in a small Piedmont town, as "Ben Jonson."
The clerk spun the book critically.
"Isn't there an h in that name?" he said.
"No," said Eugene. "That's another branch of the family. I have an uncle, Samuel, who spells his name that way."
Sometimes, at hotels of ill-repute, he would register, with dark buried glee, as "Robert Browning," "Alfred Tennyson," and "William Wordsworth."
Once he registered as "Henry W. Longfellow."
"You can't fool me," said the clerk, with a hard grin of disbelief. "That's the name of a writer."
He was devoured by a vast strange hunger for life. At night, he listened to the million-noted ululation of little night things, the great brooding symphony of dark, the ringing of remote churchbells across the country. And his vision widened out in circles over moon-drenched meadows, dreaming woods, mighty rivers going along in darkness, and ten thousand sleeping towns. He believed in the infinite rich variety of all the towns and faces: behind any of a million shabby houses he believed there was strange buried life, subtle and shattered romance, something dark and unknown. At the moment of passing any house, he thought, some one therein might be at the gate of death, lovers might lie twisted in hot embrace, murder might be doing.
He felt a desperate frustration, as if he were being shut out from the rich banquet of life. And against all caution, he determined to break the pattern of custom, and look within. Driven on by this hunger, he would suddenly rush away from Pulpit Hill and, as dusk came on, prowl up and down the quiet streets of towns. Finally, lifted beyond all restraint, he would mount swiftly to a door and ring the bell. Then, to whoever came, reeling against the wall and clutching at his throat, he would say:
"Water! In God's name, water! I am ill!"
Sometimes there were women, seductive and smiling, aware of his trick, but loath to let him go; sometimes women touched with compassion and tenderness. Then, having drunk, he would smile with brave apology into startled and sympathetic faces, murmuring:
"Pardon me. It came on suddenly--one of my attacks. I had no time to go for help. I saw your light."
Then they would ask him where his friends were.
"Friends!" he glanced about wildly and darkly. Then, with a bitter laugh, he said, "Friends! I have none! I am a stranger here."
Then they would ask him what he did.
"I am a Carpenter," he would answer, smiling strangely.
Then they would ask him where he came from.
"Far away. Very far," he would say deeply. "You would not know if I told you."
Then he would rise, looking about him with grandeur and compassion.
"And now I must go!" he would say mysteriously. "I have a long way to go before my journey is done. God bless you all! I was a stranger and you gave me shelter. The Son of Man was treated not so well."
Sometimes, he would ring bells with an air of timid inquiry, saying:
"Is this number 26? My name is Thomas Chatterton. I am looking for a gentleman by the name of Coleridge--Mr. Samuel T. Coleridge. Does he live here? . . . No? I'm sorry. . . . Yes, 26 is the number I have, I'm sure. . . . Thank you . . . I've made a mistake . . . I'll look it up in the telephone directory."
But what, thought Eugene, if one day, in the million streets of life, I should really find him?
These were the golden years.
39
Gant and Eliza came to his graduation. He found them lodgings in the town: it was early June--hot, green, fiercely and voluptuously Southern. The campus was a green oven; the old grads went about in greasy pairs; the cool pretty girls, who never sweated, came in to see their young men graduate, and to dance; the mamas and papas were shown about dumbly and shyly.
The college
On this rich stage, Gant, who had left his charnel-house of death for three days, saw his son Eugene. He came, gathered to life again, out of his grave. He saw his son enthroned in all the florid sentiment of commencement, and the whole of his heart was lifted out of the dust. Upon the lordly sward, shaded by great trees, and ringed by his solemn classmen and their families, Eugene read the Class Poem ("O Mother Of Our Myriad Hopes"). Then Vergil Weldon spoke, high-husky, deep, and solemn-sad; and Living Truth welled in their hearts. It was a Great Utterance. Be true! Be clean! Be good! Be men! Absorb the Negation! The world has need of. Life was never so worth. Never in history had there been. No other class had shown so great a promise as. Among other achievements, the editor of the paper had lifted the moral and intellectual level of the State two inches. The university spirit! Character! Service! Leadership!
Eugene's face grew dark with pride and joy there in the lovely wilderness. He could not speak. There was a glory in the world: life was panting for his embrace.
Eliza and Gant listened attentively to all the songs and speeches. Their son was a great man on the campus. They saw and heard him before his class, on the campus, and at graduation, when his prizes and honors were announced. And his teachers and companions spoke to them about him, and said he would have "a brilliant career." And Eliza and Gant were touched a little by the false golden glow of youth. They believed for a moment that all things were possible.
"Well, son," said Gant, "the rest is up to you now. I believe you're going to make a name for yourself." He laid a great dry hand clumsily upon his son's shoulder, and for a moment Eugene saw in the dead eyes the old dark of umber and unfound desire.
"Hm!" Eliza began, with a tremulous bantering smile, "your head will get turned by all the things they're saying about you." She took his hand in her rough warm grasp. Her eyes grew suddenly wet.
"Well, son," she said gravely. "I want you to go ahead now and try to be Somebody. None of the others ever had your opportunity, and I hope you do something with it. Your papa and I have done the best we could. The rest is up to you."
He took her hand in a moment of wild devotion and kissed it.
"I'll do something," he said. "I will."
They looked shyly at his strange dark face, with all its passionate and naé ardor, and they felt tenderness and love for his youth and all that was unknown to it. And a great love and pity welled up in him because of their strange and awkward loneliness, and because he felt, through some terrible intuition, that he was already indifferent to the titles and honors they desired for him, and because those which he had come to desire for himself were already beyond the scale of their value. And, before the vision of pity and loss and loneliness, he turned away, clutching his lean hand into his throat.
It was over. Gant, who under the stimulus of his son's graduation had almost regained the vitality of his middle years, relapsed now into whining dotage. The terrible heat came down and smote him. He faced with terror and weariness the long hot trip into the hills again.
"Merciful God!" he whined. "Why did I ever come! O Jesus, how will I ever face that trip again! I can't bear it. I'll die before I get there! It's fearful, it's awful, it's cruel." And he wept weak snuffling sobs.
Eugene took them to Exeter and got them comfortably disposed in a Pullman. He was remaining for a few days to gather his belongings--the clutter of four years, letters, books, old manuscript, worthless rubbish of every description, for he seemed to inherit Eliza's mania for blind accumulation. Extravagant with money, and unable to husband it, he saved everything else even when his spirit grew sick at the stale and dusty weariness of the past.
"Well, son," said Eliza, in the quiet moment before departure. "Have you thought yet of what you're going to do?"
"Yes," said Gant, wetting his thumb, "for you've got to shift for yourself from now on. You've had the best education money can buy. The rest is up to you."
"I'll talk to you in a few days when I see you at home," said Eugene. "I'll tell you about it then."
Mercifully the train began to move: he kissed them quickly and ran down the aisle.
He had nothing to tell them. He was nineteen; he had completed his college course; but he did not know what he was going to do. His father's plan that he should study law and "enter politics" had been forgotten since his sophomore year, when it became apparent that the impulse of his life was not toward law. His family felt obscurely that he was an eccentric--"queer," they called it--and of an impractical or "literary" turn.
Without asking sharply why, they felt the absurdity of clothing this bounding figure, with the wild dark face, in a frock-coat and string tie: he did not exist in business, trade, or law. More vaguely, they classified him as bookish and a dreamer?Eliza referred to him as "a good scholar," which, in fact, he had never been. He had simply performed brilliantly in all things that touched his hunger, and dully, carelessly, and indifferently in all things that did not. No one saw very clearly what he was going to do--he, surely, least of all--but his family, following the tack of his comrades, spoke vaguely and glibly of "a career in journalism." This meant newspaper work. And, however unsatisfactory this may have been, their inevitable question was drugged for the moment by the glitter of success that had surrounded his life at the university.
But Eugene was untroubled by thought of a goal. He was mad with such ecstasy as he had never known. He was a centaur, moon-eyed and wild of mane, torn apart with hunger for the golden world. He became at times almost incapable of coherent speech. While talking with people, he would whinny suddenly into their startled faces, and leap away, his face contorted with an idiot joy. He would hurl himself squealing through the streets and along the paths, touched with the ecstasy of a thousand unspoken desires. The world lay before him for his picking--full of opulent cities, golden vintages, glorious triumphs, lovely women, full of a thousand unmet and magnificent possibilities. Nothing was dull or tarnished. The strange enchanted coasts were unvisited. He was young and he could never die.
He went back to Pulpit Hill for two or three days of delightful loneliness in the deserted college. He prowled through the empty campus at midnight under the great moons of the late rich Spring; he breathed the thousand rich odors of tree and grass and flower, of the opulent and seductive South; and he felt a delicious sadness when he thought of his departure, and saw there in the moon the thousand phantom shapes of the boys he had known who would come no more.
And in the day he went to talk with Vergil Weldon. The old man was charming, confidential, full of wise intimacy, gentle humor. They sat beneath the great trees of his yard and drank iced tea. Eugene was thinking of California, Peru, Asia, Alaska, Europe, Africa, China. But he mentioned Harvard. For him, it was not the name of a university--it was rich magic, wealth, elegance, joy, proud loneliness, rich books and golden browsing; it was an enchanted name like Cairo and Damascus. And he felt somehow that it gave a reason, a goal of profit, to his wild ecstasy.
"Yes," said Vergil Weldon approvingly. "It's the place for you, Mr. Gant. It doesn't matter about the others. They're ready now. But a mind like yours must not be pulled green. You must give it a chance to ripen. There you will find yourself."
And he talked enchantingly about the good free life of the mind, cloistered study, the rich culture of the city, and about the food. "They give you food there that a man can eat, Mr. Gant," he said. "Your mind can do its work on it." Then he spoke of his own student days there, and of the great names of Royce and Everett, and William James.
Eugene looked with passionate devotion at the grand old head, calm, wise and comforting. In a moment of vision, he saw that, for him, here was the last of the heroes, the last of those giants to whom we give the faith
Oh, my old Sophist, he thought. What were all the old philosophies that you borrowed and pranked up to your fancy, to you, who were greater than all? What was the Science of Thinking, to you, who were Thought? What if all your ancient game of metaphysics never touched the dark jungle of my soul? Do you think you have replaced my childhood's God with your Absolute? No, you have only replaced his beard with a mustache, and a glint of demon hawk-eyes. To me, you were above good, above truth, above righteousness. To me, you were the sufficient negation to all your teachings. Whatever you did was, by its doing, right. And now I leave you throned in memory. You will see my dark face burning on your bench no more; the memory of me will grow mixed and broken; new boys will come to win your favor and your praise. But you? Forever fixed, unfading, bright, my lord.
Then, while the old man talked, Eugene leaped suddenly to his feet, and grasped the lean hand tightly in his own.
"Mr. Weldon!" he said. "Mr. Weldon! You are a great man! I shall never forget you!"
Then, turning, he plunged off blindly down the path.
He still loitered, although his baggage had been packed for days. With a desperate pain, he faced departure from that Arcadian wilderness where he had known so much joy. At night he roamed the deserted campus, talking quietly until morning with a handful of students who lingered strangely, as he did, among the ghostly buildings, among the phantoms of lost boys. He could not face a final departure. He said he would return early in autumn for a few days, and at least once a year thereafter.
Then one hot morning, on sudden impulse, he left. As the car that was taking him to Exeter roared down the winding street, under the hot green leafiness of June, he heard, as from the sea-depth of a dream, far-faint, the mellow booming of the campus bell. And suddenly it seemed to him that all the beaten walks were thudding with the footfalls of lost boys, himself among them, running for their class. Then, as he listened, the far bell died away, and the phantom runners thudded into oblivion. Soon the car roared up by Vergil Weldon's house, and as he passed, he saw the old man sitting below his tree.