"
That is what I desire to do, and cannot. It is as though some
creeper that had enfolded and enringed a house with its tendrils,
creeping under window-ledges and across mellow brickwork, had been
suddenly cut off at the root, and hung faded and lustreless, not
even daring to be torn away. Yet I am alive and well, my mind is
alert and vigorous, I have no cares or anxieties, except that my
heart seems hollow at the core.
January 12, 1889.
I have had a very bad time of late. It seems futile to say anything
about it, and the plain man would rub his eyes, and wonder where
the misery lay. I have been perfectly well, and everything has gone
smoothly; but I cannot write. I have begun half-a-dozen books. I
have searched my notes through and through. I have sketched plots,
written scenes. I cannot go on with any of them. I have torn up
chapters with fierce disgust, or have laid them quietly aside.
There is no vitality in them. If I read them aloud to any one, he
would wonder what was wrong--they are as well written as my other
books, as amusing, as interesting. But it is all without energy or
invention, it is all worse than my best. The people are puppets,
their words are pumped up out of a stagnant reservoir.
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