Black Spring by Henry Miller

can well imagine a great father of the Church sitting there at his writing table, with a Papal bull before him and a huge tankard at his elbow. And one can also easily imagine a fine, fat wench sitting on his knees, while down below, in the huge kitchen, whole animals are being roasted on the spit, and the lesser dignitaries of the Church, good trenchermen that they were, drinking and carousing to their hearts’ content behind the comfort and security of the great walls. No schisms, no hairsplitting, no schizophrenia. When disease came it swept through hovel and castle, through the rich joints of the fathers and the tough joints of the peasants. When the spirit of God descended upon Avignon, it did not stop at the Musical Institute across the way; it penetrated the walls, the flesh, the hierarchies of rank and caste. It flourished as mightily in the red light district as up above on the hill. The Pope could not lift up his skirts and pass untouched. Inside the walls and outside the walls it was one life: faith, fornication, bloodshed. Primary colors. Primary passions. The frescoes tell the story. How they lived each day and the whole day long speaks louder than the books. What the Popes mumbled in their beards is one thing-what they commanded to be painted on their walls is another. Words are dead.
    The Angel Is My Watermark!
    The object of these pages is to relate the genesis of a masterpiece. The masterpiece is hanging on the wall in front of me; it is dry now. I am putting this down to remember the process, because I shall probably never do another like it.
    We must go back a bit…. For two whole days I am wrestling with something. If I were to describe it in a word I should say that I have been like a cartridge that’s jammed. This is almost deadly accurate, for when I came out of a dream this morning the only image that persisted was that of my big trunk crumpled up like an old hat.
    The first day the struggle is undefinable. It is strong enough, however, to paralyze. I put on my hat and go to the Renoir Exhibition and from Renoir I go to the Louvre and from the Louvre I go to the Rue de Rivoli -where it no longer resembles the Rue de Rivoli. There I sit over a beer for three hours, fascinated by the monsters passing me.
    The next morning I get up with the conviction that I will do something. There is that fine light tension which augurs well. My notebook lies beside me. I pick it up and riffle the pages absent-mindedly. I riffle them again-this time more attentively. The notes are arranged in cryptic lines: a simple phrase may record a year’s struggle. Some of the lines I cannot decipher any more myself-my biographers will take care of them. I am still obsessed by the idea that I am going to write today. I am merely flipping the pages of my notebook as a warming up exercise. So I imagine. But cursorily and swiftly as I sweep over these notes something fatal is happening to me.
    What happens is that I have touched Tante Melia. And now my whole life rushes up in one gush, like a geyser that has just broken through the earth. I am walking home with Tante Melia and suddenly I realize that she is crazy. She is asking me for the moon. “Up there!” she shrieks. “Up there!”
    It is about ten in the morning when this line shrieks at me. From this moment on-up until four o’clock this morning-I am in the hands of unseen powers. I put the typewriter away and I commence to record what is being dictated to me. Pages and pages of notes, and for each incident I am reminded of where to find the context. All the folders in which my manuscripts are assorted have been emptied on the floor. I am lying on the floor with a pencil, feverishly annotating my work. This continues and continues. I am exultant, and at the same time I am worried. If it continues at this rate I may have a hemorrhage.
    About three o’clock I decide to obey no longer. I will go out and eat. Perhaps it will blow over ofter lunch. I go on my bicycle in order