- end_line
- 13485
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.924Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 13425
- text
- IV.
From eight o'clock in the morning till half-past four in the evening,
Pierre sits there in his room;--eight hours and a half!
From throbbing neck-bands, and swinging belly-bands of gay-hearted
horses, the sleigh-bells chimingly jingle;--but Pierre sits there in his
room; Thanksgiving comes, with its glad thanks, and crisp turkeys;--but
Pierre sits there in his room; soft through the snows, on tinted Indian
moccasin, Merry Christmas comes stealing;--but Pierre sits there in his
room; it is New-Year's, and like a great flagon, the vast city overbrims
at all curb-stones, wharves, and piers, with bubbling jubilations;--but
Pierre sits there in his room:--Nor jingling sleigh-bells at throbbing
neck-band, or swinging belly-band; nor glad thanks, and crisp turkeys of
Thanksgiving; nor tinted Indian moccasin of Merry Christmas softly
stealing through the snows; nor New-Year's curb-stones, wharves, and
piers, over-brimming with bubbling jubilations:--Nor jingling
sleigh-bells, nor glad Thanksgiving, nor Merry Christmas, nor jubilating
New Year's:--Nor Bell, Thank, Christ, Year;--none of these are for
Pierre. In the midst of the merriments of the mutations of Time, Pierre
hath ringed himself in with the grief of Eternity. Pierre is a peak
inflexible in the heart of Time, as the isle-peak, Piko, stands
unassaultable in the midst of waves.
He will not be called to; he will not be stirred. Sometimes the intent
ear of Isabel in the next room, overhears the alternate silence, and
then the long lonely scratch of his pen. It is, as if she heard the busy
claw of some midnight mole in the ground. Sometimes, she hears a low
cough, and sometimes the scrape of his crook-handled cane.
Here surely is a wonderful stillness of eight hours and a half, repeated
day after day. In the heart of such silence, surely something is at
work. Is it creation, or destruction? Builds Pierre the noble world of
a new book? or does the Pale Haggardness unbuild the lungs and the life
in him?--Unutterable, that a man should be thus!
When in the meridian flush of the day, we recall the black apex of
night; then night seems impossible; this sun can never go down. Oh that
the memory of the uttermost gloom as an already tasted thing to the
dregs, should be no security against its return. One may be passibly
well one day, but the next, he may sup at black broth with Pluto.
Is there then all this work to one book, which shall be read in a very
few hours; and, far more frequently, utterly skipped in one second; and
which, in the end, whatever it be, must undoubtedly go to the worms?
Not so; that which now absorbs the time and the life of Pierre, is not
the book, but the primitive elementalizing of the strange stuff, which
in the act of attempting that book, have upheaved and upgushed in his
soul. Two books are being writ; of which the world shall only see one,
and that the bungled one. The larger book, and the infinitely better, is
for Pierre's own private shelf. That it is, whose unfathomable cravings
drink his blood; the other only demands his ink. But circumstances have
so decreed, that the one can not be composed on the paper, but only as
the other is writ down in his soul. And the one of the soul is
elephantinely sluggish, and will not budge at a breath. Thus Pierre is
fastened on by two leeches;--how then can the life of Pierre last? Lo!
he is fitting himself for the highest life, by thinning his blood and
collapsing his heart. He is learning how to live, by rehearsing the part
of death.
- title
- Chunk 1