A letter from Jack London to Anna Strunsky.
Dear Anna:
Did I say that the human might be filed in categories?
Well, and if I
did, let me qualify — not all humans. You elude me. I cannot place you,
cannot grasp you. I may boast that of nine out of ten, under given
circumstances, I can forecast their action; that of nine out of ten, by
their word or action, I may feel the pulse of their hearts. But of the
tenth I despair. It is beyond me. You are that tenth.
Were ever two souls, with dumb lips, more incongruously matched! We
may feel in common — surely, we ofttimes do — and when we do not feel in
common, yet do we understand; and yet we have no common tongue. Spoken
words do not come to us. We are unintelligible. God must laugh at the
mummery.
The one gleam of sanity through it all is that we are both large
temperamentally, large enough to often understand. True, we often
understand but in vague glimmering ways, by dim perceptions, like
ghosts, which, while we doubt, haunt us with their truth. And still, I,
for one, dare not believe; for you are that tenth which I may not
forecast.
Am I unintelligible now?
I do not know. I imagine so.
I cannot find the common tongue.
Large temperamentally — that is it. It is the one thing that brings
us at all in touch. We have, flashed through us, you and I, each a bit
of universal, and so we draw together. And yet we are so different.
I smile at you when you grow enthusiastic? It is a forgivable smile —
nay, almost an envious smile. I have lived twenty-five years of
repression. I learned not to be enthusiastic. It is a hard lesson to
forget. I begin to forget, but it is so little.
At the best, before I
die, I cannot hope to forget all or most. I can exult, now that I am
learning, in little things, in other things; but of my things, and
secret things doubly mine, I cannot, I cannot. Do I make myself
intelligible? Do you hear my voice? I fear not. There are poseurs. I am
the most successful of them all.
Jack
Oakland, April 3, 1901
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