Martin Eden: Chapters 32–46

“Though he’s lucky if he pulls even on it, or if he can inveigle a publisher to risk bringing it out.”

Just so, pusillanimous; prattling out little moralities that have been prattled into them, and afraid to live life.

As he told Martin, he had once gone three days without water, had done so voluntarily, in order to experience the exquisite delight of such a thirst assuaged.

The door jerked open, and the man flung past Martin, with an angry countenance and went down the corridor, muttering curses and clenching his fists.

It was evident that the squabble with the printer had not affected his equanimity.

“I need the money to-day,” Martin answered stolidly.

“Mr. Ford has already explained the situation,” he said with asperity.

“Dig up, you venerable discourager of rising young talent!” Martin exhorted.

She had come to make certain whether or not he would be at their table for Thanksgiving dinner; but before she could broach the subject Martin plunged into the one with which he was full.

The picture of the bewhiskered trio, as he had last seen them, mulcted of four dollars and ninety cents and a ferry ticket, made him chuckle.

He promptly diagnosed her affliction as La Grippe, dosed her with hot whiskey (the remnants in the bottles for which Brissenden was responsible), and ordered her to bed. But Maria was refractory.

The poem swung in majestic rhythm to the cool tumult of interstellar conflict, to the onset of starry hosts, to the impact of cold suns and the flaming up of nebulae in the darkened void; and through it all, unceasing and faint, like a silver shuttle, ran the frail, piping voice of man, a querulous chirp amid the screaming of planets and the crash of systems.

“The magazine editors are not wholly fatuous. I know that. And I’ll close with you on the bet. I’ll wager anything you want that ‘Ephemera’ is accepted either on the first or second offering.”

At first the conversation was desultory. Nevertheless Martin could not fail to appreciate the keen play of their minds.

Phenomenon and noumenon were bandied back and forth. They charged him with attempting to explain consciousness by itself. He charged them with word-jugglery, with reasoning from words to theory instead of from facts to theory.

It was the cardinal tenet of their mode of reasoning to start with facts and to give names to the facts.

You know I granted the reality of matter only in order to make myself intelligible to your understanding. Be positive scientists, if you please; but ontology has no place in positive science, so leave it alone.

“Overdue” was the title he had decided for it, and its length he believed would not be more than sixty thousand words—a bagatelle for him with his splendid vigor of production.

“Bourgeois,” “trader’s den”—Brissenden’s epithets repeated themselves in his mind.

As for me, I am an inveterate opponent of socialism just as I am an inveterate opponent of your own mongrel democracy that is nothing else than pseudo-socialism masquerading under a garb of words that will not stand the test of the dictionary.

I am a reactionary—so complete a reactionary that my position is incomprehensible to you who live in a veiled lie of social organization and whose sight is not keen enough to pierce the veil.

Judge Blount ably seconded him, and Martin, whose ears had pricked at the first mention of the philosopher’s name, listened to the judge enunciate a grave and complacent diatribe against Spencer.

Judge Blount glared at him with apoplectic countenance, and silence reigned.

They have purchased your slave judges, they have debauched your slave legislatures, and they have forced to worse horrors than chattel slavery your slave boys and girls.

Two million of your children are toiling to-day in this trader- oligarchy of the United States.

Martin shook his head lugubriously.

It was not that there was any vital need that the thing should be well done, but that his artistic canons compelled him to do it well.

Every nincompoop in the land rushed into free print, floating their wizened little egos into the public eye on the surge of Brissenden’s greatness.

“He can’t steal her on me that way,” the other interjected.
“He licked the Flyin’ Dutchman, an’ you know him,” Jimmy went on expostulating.

If our offer is agreeable to you, please fill in the proper blank space with the title of your book. We make no stipulations concerning its nature. Any book on any subject.

It was the bourgeoisie that bought his books and poured its gold into his money-sack, and from what little he knew of the bourgeoisie it was not clear to him how it could possibly appreciate or comprehend what he had written.

I could tell you the moon is made of green cheese and you would subscribe to the notion, at least you would not repudiate it, because I’ve got dollars, mountains of them.

His brother-in-law paused in the middle of an expatiation on the business opportunities of the neighborhood.

Him Von Schmidt desired to please and propitiate because from him could be obtained the Oakland agency for the bicycle.

Martin Eden, the famous writer, was a vapor that had arisen in the mob-mind and by the mob-mind had been thrust into the corporeal being of Mart Eden, the hoodlum and sailor.

And I still believe that Herbert Spencer is a great and noble man and that Judge Blount is an unmitigated ass.

She was stung by his words into realization of the puerility of her act, and yet she felt that he had magnified it unduly and was consequently resentful.

He listened to the man expounding the slave-morality, and as he listened, he thought languidly of his own Nietzsche philosophy.

The day the Mariposa entered the doldrums, Martin was more miserable than ever.

With swift, vigorous propulsion of hands and feet, he lifted his shoulders and half his chest out of water. This was to gain impetus for the descent.