The Dream Life of Balso Snell Read Free

read. First, however, he took off his shoes because his feet hurt.
    What he had taken for letters proved on closer scrutiny to be a diary. M the top of the first page was written, “English Theme by John Gilson, Class 8B, Public School i86, Miss McGeeney, teacher.” He read further.
    Jan. 1st—at home
    Whom do I fool by calling these pages a journal? Surely not you, Miss McGeeney. Alas! no-one. Nor is anyone fooled by the fact that I write in the first person. It is for this reason that I do not claim to have found these pages in a hollow tree. I am an honest man and feel badly about masks, cardboard noses, diaries, memoirs, letters from a Sabine farm, the theatre…I feel badly, yet I can do nothing. ‘Sir!’ I say to myself, ‘your name is not Iago, but simply John. It is monstrous to write lies in a diary.’
    However, I insist that I am an honest man. Reality troubles me as it must all honest men.
    Reality! Reality! If I could only discover the Real. A Real that I could know with my senses. A Real that would wait for me to inspect it as a dog inspects a dead rabbit. But, alas! when searching for the Real I throw a stone into a pool whose ripples become of advancing less importance until they are too large for connection with, or even memory of, the stone agent.
    Written while smelling the moistened forefinger of my left hand .
    Jan 2nd—at home
    Is this journal to be like all the others I have started? A large first entry, consisting of the incident which made me think my life exciting enough to keep a journal, followed by a series of entries gradually decreasing in size and culminating in a week of blank days.
    Inexperienced diary-writers make their first entry the largest. They come to the paper with a constipation of ideas—eager, impatient. The white paper acts as a laxative. A diarrhoea of words is the result. The richness of the flow is unnatural; it cannot be sustained.
    A diary must grow naturally—a flower, a cancer, a civilization…In a diary there is no need for figures of speech, honest Iago.
    Sometimes my name is Raskolnikov, sometimes it is Iago. I never was, and never shall be, plain John Gilson—honest, honest Iago, yes, but never honest John. As Raskolnikov, I keep a journal which I call The Making of a Fiend. I give the heart of my Crime Journal:
    Crime Journal
    I have been in this hospital seven weeks. I am under observation. Am I sane? This diary shall prove me insane.
    This entry gives me away.
    Crime Journal
    My mother visited me today. She cried. It is she who is crazy. Order is the test of sanity. Her emotions and thoughts are disordered. Mine are arranged, valued, placed.
    Man spends a great deal of time making order out of chaos, yet insists that the emotions be disordered. I order my emotions: I am insane. Yet sanity is discipline. My mother rolls on the hospital floor and cries: “John darling…John sweetheart.” Her hat falls over face. She clutches her absurd bag of oranges. She is sane.
    I say to her quietly: “Mother, I love you, but this spectacle is preposterous—and the smell of your clothing depresses me.” I am insane.
    Crime Journal
    Order is vanity. I have decided to discard the nonsense of precision instruments. No more measuring. I drop the slide rule and take up the Golden Rule. Sanity is the absence of extremes.
    Crime Journal Is someone reading my diary while I sleep?
    On reading what I have written, I think I can detect a peculiar change in my words. They have taken on the quality of comment.
    You who read these pages while I sleep, please sign your name here.
    John Raskolnikov Gilson
    Crime Journal
    During the night I got up, turned to yesterday’s entry and signed my name.
    Crime Journal
    I am insane. I [the papers had it CULTURED FIEND SLAYS DISHWASHER] am insane.
    When a baby, I affected all the customary poses: I “laughed the icy laughter of the soul,” I uttered “universal sighs”; I sang in “silver-fire verse”; I smiled the “enigmatic