The Journals of Ayn Rand Page 5
Judging from the newspaper accounts of the time, Hickman was articulate and arrogant, and seems to have enjoyed shocking people by rejecting conventional views. The public furor against him was unprecedented. For reasons given in the following notes, AR concluded that the intensity of the public’s hatred was primarily “because of the man who committed the crime and not because of the crime he committed. ” The mob hated Hickman for his independence; she chose him as a model for the same reason.
Hickman served as a model for Danny only in strictly limited respects, which AR names in her notes. Danny does commit a crime in the story, but it is nothing like Hickman’s. To guard against any misinterpretation, I quote her own statement regarding the relationship between her hero and Hickman: [My hero is] very far from him, of course. The outside of Hickman, but not the inside. Much deeper and much more. A Hickman with a purpose. And without the degeneracy. It is more exact to say that the model is not Hickman, but what Hickman suggested to me.
The Little Street is not the only early work ofAR’s in which she chose a criminal to symbolize an independent man. In her first play, The Night of January 16th, the hero commits financial fraud on a grand scale and then attempts to escape by faking his own death. She explains her use of the heroic criminal in the introduction to the play, written in 1968. Her comments are applicable here. Night of January 16th is not a philosophical, but a sense of life play....
This means that its events are not to be taken literally; they dramatize certain fundamental psychological characteristics, deliberately isolated and emphasized in order to convey a single abstraction: the characters’ attitude toward life. The events serve to feature the motives of the characters’ actions, regardless of the particular forms of the actions—i.e., the motives, not their specific concretization. The events feature the confrontation of two extremes, two opposite ways of facing existence: passionate self-assertiveness, self-confidence, ambition, audacity, independence—versus conventionality, servility, envy, hatred, power-lust.
I do not think, nor did I think when I wrote this play, that a swindler is a heroic character or that a respectable banker is a villain. But for the purpose of dramatizing the conflict of independence versus conformity, a criminal—a social outcast—can be an eloquent symbol. This, incidentally, is the reason of the profound appeal of the “noble crook” in fiction. He is the symbol of the rebel as such, regardless of the kind of society he rebels against, the symbol—for most people—of their vague, undefined, unrealized groping toward a concept, or a shadowy image, of man’s self-esteem.
That a career of crime is not, in fact, the way to implement one’s self-esteem, is irrelevant in sense-of-life terms. A sense of life is concerned mainly with consciousness, not with existence—or rather: with the way a man’s consciousness faces existence. It is concerned with a basic frame of mind, not with rules of conduct.
If this play’s sense of life were to be verbalized, it would say, in effect: ‘Your life, your achievement, your happiness, your person are of paramount importance. Live up to your highest vision of yourself no matter what circumstances you might encounter. An exalted view of self-esteem is a man’s most admirable quality.’ How one is to live up to this vision—how this frame of mind is to be implemented in action and in reality—is a question that a sense of life cannot answer: that is the task of philosophy.
AR did not get far in planning The Little Street. The project was too alien to her deepest premises. The notes are undated, but it seems likely that they were made over a short period when she was feeling particularly bitter toward the world. This was not a novel that she could have written; to her, the purpose of fiction writing is not to denounce that which one despises, but to exalt that which one admires.
The Little Street
The world as it is.
Show it all, calmly and indifferently, like an outsider who does not share humanity’s feelings or prejudices and can see it all “from the side.”
Show all the filth, stupidity, and horror of the world, along with that which is supposed to atone for it. Show how insignificant, petty, and miserable the “good” in the world is, compared to the real horror it masks. Do not paint one side of the world, the polite side, and be silent about the rest; paint a real picture of the whole, good and bad at once, the “good” looking more horrid than the bad when seen together with the things it tolerates. Men see only one part of life at a time, the part they have before their eyes at the moment. Show them the whole.
Show that humanity is petty. That it’s small. That it’s dumb, with the heavy, hopeless stupidity of a man born feeble-minded, who does not understand, because he cannot understand, because he hasn’t the capacity to understand; like a man born blind, who cannot see, because he has no organ for seeing.
Show that the world is monstrously hypocritical. That humanity has no convictions of any kind. That it does not know how to believe anything. That it has never believed consistently and does not know how to be true to any idea or ideal. That all the “high ” words of the world are a monstrous lie. That nobody believes in anything “high” and nobody wants to believe. That one cannot believe one thing and do another, for such a belief isn’t worth a nickel. And that’s what humanity is doing.
Show that humanity is utterly illogical, like an animal that cannot connect together the things it observes. Man realizes and connects much more than an animal, but who can declare that his ability to connect things is perfect? The future, higher type of man will have to perfect just this ability [to achieve] the clear vision. A clear mind sees things and the connections between them. Humanity is stumbling helplessly in a chaos of inconsistent ideas, actions, and feelings that can’t be put together, without even realizing the contradictions between them or their ultimate logical results.
A perfect, clear understanding also means a feeling. It isn’t enough to realize a thing is true. The realization must be so clear that one feels this truth. For men act on feelings, not on thoughts. Every thought should be part of yourself, your body, your nature, and every part of your nature should be a thought. Every feeling—a thought, every thought—a feeling. [This is AR ’s earliest statement regarding the harmony of reason and emotion that follows from a proper integration of mind and body.]
Show the silent terror that is life at present, the silent terror that hangs over us, chokes us, that everybody feels and nobody can define, the nameless thing that is the atmosphere of humanity.
Show that the mob determines life at present and show exactly who and what that mob is. Show the things it breaks, the precious enemies that it ruins. Show that all humanity and each little citizen is an octopus that consciously or unconsciously sucks the blood of the best on earth and strangles life with its cold, sticky tentacles.
Show that the world is nothing but a little street. That this little street is its king and master, its essence and spirit. Show the little street and how it works.
Religion: show what it means when thought out consistently; what it does to man; who needs it; who defends it with all the ferocious despotism of a small, ambitious nature. The great poison of mankind.
Morals (as connected with religion): the real reason for all hypocrisy. The wrecking of man by teaching him ideals that are contrary to his nature; ideals he has to accept as his highest ambition, even though they are organically hateful and repulsive to him. And when he can’t doubt them, he doubts himself. He becomes low, sinful, imperfect in his own eyes; he does not aspire to anything high, when he knows that the high is inaccessible and alien to him. Humanity’s morals and ideals, its ideology, are the greatest of its crimes. (“Unselfishness” first of all.)
Communism, democracy, socialism are the logical results of present-day humanity. The nameless horror of [these systems], both in their logical end and in the unconscious way that they already rule mankind.
Family-life: the glorification of mediocrity. Elevating the “everyday” little man’s existence into the highest ideal for mankind.
Show that humanity has and wants to have: existence instead of life, satisfaction instead of joy, contentment instead of happiness, security instead of power, vanity instead of pride, attachment instead of love, wish instead of will, yearning instead of passion, a glow-worm instead of a fire.
All the “realistic” books have shown the bad side of life and, as good, have shown the good of today. They have denounced that which is accepted as bad and set up as a relief or example that which is accepted as good. I want to show that there is no good at present, that the “good” as it is now understood is worse than the bad, that it is only the result, the skin over a rotten inside that rules and determines it. I want to show that all the conceptions of the “good,” all the high ideals, have to be changed, for now they are nothing but puppets, slaves and accomplices to the horrible [stifling] of life. There are too many things that people just tolerate and don’t talk about. Show them that it can’t be tolerated, for all their life is a rotten swamp, a sewer, a dumping place for more filth than they can ever realize.
Show that the real God behind all their high words and sentiments, the real omnipotent power behind their culture and civilization, is the little street, just a small, filthy, shabby, common little street, such as exist around the center of every town in the world.
Show them the real, one and only horror—the horror of mediocrity.
The Characters
Danny Renahan. The boy.
He is born with the spirit of Argon and the nature of a medieval feudal lord. Imperious. Impatient. Uncompromising. Untamable. Intolerant. Unadaptable. Passionate. Intensely proud. Superior to the mob and intensely, almost painfully conscious of it. Restless. High-strung. An extreme “extremist.” A clear, strong, brilliant mind. An egoist, in the best sense
of the word.
He is born in a small town, into a poor, very average family. He grows up lonely, hating everybody and being hated by everybody. (?) Very unpopular in school—for his imperious, masterful character. No love-affairs or drinks. Too straightforward and too absolute for the rest of the boys. Dangerous, too. People don’t trust him, instinctively, feeling him to be an “outsider.”
Show his battle with the world. He is too impatient to toil slowly through the years for the things he wants. Too uncompromising to succeed in the way of the popular young men who know how to get along with those in power. Too intolerant to “get along” with anybody. Too passionate not to burn with disgust for life as he sees it and with humiliation at not being above the mob, crushing it under his feet, giving it orders instead of trying to satisfy it, of crawling before it for its good graces. He is unable to understand how he can act and live as an equal with those he knows to be inferior to him, those he despises and has a right to despise. More passionate than strong. Daring and courageous; but without the patient courage that can fight through, slowly, against disgust. A man that can slash with an [ax], but can’t saw patiently. Too brilliant and fiery a nature to be able to handle any “job” and make money. Crushed by a stupid, ignoble poverty. Too restless and innately, unconsciously romantic to “make good” in the way of the model, average, hard-working young man.
As a result, he is perfectly cynical. Stone-hard. Monstrously cruel. Brazenly daring. No respect for anything or anyone.
He is medium height and slender. Has strong, rather irregular features, as though cut by quick, sharp blows. Not a beautiful face at all but fascinating because of its strength. Deep, dark eyes, dark more through their expression than through the color, burning with the intense fire of a strong, restless soul. His gaze is piercing and threatening under two straight, severe eye-brows. Rather frightful eyes, that make people feel uneasy. He has a large mouth, like a wound slashed in his face. The lower lip is thicker than the upper. He has a habit of an ugly grin that twists his mouth so that one comer only is raised and the upper lip curled, as in a snarl, which gives him an expression of disgusted cruelty.
He has a brilliant sense of humor. Rather a cruel, sardonic kind of humor. Being conscious of his superiority to the rest of mankind, he cannot help seeing their absurd, ridiculous, idiotic smallness. He has no respect for anything; therefore he can laugh at everything and approach all things lightly, with an attitude of superior disdain. His mind is brilliant enough to see the ridiculous side of everything. He gets immense enjoyment from shocking people, amusing them with his cynicism, [ridiculing] before their eyes the most sacred, venerated, established ideas. He takes a real delight in opposing people, in fighting and terrifying them. He has no ambition to be a benefactor or a popular hero for mankind. [...] Subconsciously, this is the result of a noble feeling of superiority, which knows that to be loved by the mob is an insult and that to be hated is the highest compliment it can pay you.
He is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness—[resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning or importance of other people. (One instance when it is blessed not to have an organ of understanding.) Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should. He knows himself—and that is enough. Other people have no right, no hold, no interest or influence on him. And this is not affected or chosen—it’s inborn, absolute, it can’t be changed, he has “no organ” to be otherwise. In this respect, he has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel “other people.” (That’s what I meant by thoughts as feelings, as part of your nature.) (It is wisdom to be dumb about certain things.)
[William Edward] Hickman said: “I am like the state: what is good for me is right.” That is this boy’s psychology. (The best and strongest expression of a real man’s psychology I ever heard.) The model for the boy is Hickman. Very far from him, of course. The outside of Hickman, but not the inside. Much deeper and much more. A Hickman with a purpose. And without the degeneracy. It is more exact to say that the model is not Hickman, but what Hickman suggested to me.
The boy is a perfectly straight being, unbending and uncompromising. He cannot be a hypocrite. He shows how impossible it is for a genuinely beautiful soul to succeed at present; for in all [aspects of] modern life, one has to be a hypocrite, to bend and tolerate. This boy wanted to command and smash away things and people he didn’t approve of. He could not compromise with that which he despised and knew he had a right to despise. All life is compromising, at present. A man that could not compromise.
At the end, when his last appeal has been refused and the execution awaits him, he throws away all protective hypocrisy and shouts to his jailers and the newspaper reporters what he thinks of the world. It must be the essence, the very heart of the book: his wild, ferocious cry. It must be the strongest speech ever uttered in condemnation of the world. It must strike people like a whip slapping them in the face. It must be scalding in its bloody suffering, like the yell of an animal with an open, torn wound.
He has a wonderful “sense of living.” He realizes that he is living, he appreciates every minute of it, he wants to live every second, he is unable to exist as other men do. He doesn’t take life for granted and live as he happens to be living—just calm, satisfied, normal. For him, life [must be] strong, high emotion; he has to live “on top,” “breathing” life, tense, exalted, active. He cannot spend eight hours each day on work he despises and does not need. He cannot understand men spending their lives on some work and not liking that work, not doing with it what they please. He knows that he wants to live and that the whole damn world hasn’t the right to deprive him of it!
He doesn’t have people’s attitude toward life, that is, the general way of existing calmly day to day and [experiencing] something strong and exalting only once in a while, as an exception. “Everyday life ”does not exist for him. His normal state is to be exalted, all the time; he wants all of his life to be high, supreme, full of meaning.
All this is unconscious in him. He cannot reason it out and explain it. It’s unconscious, because it’s innate, it’s his natural state of mind, it’s organic in him, and he cannot realize it, because he cannot quite understand the common attitude toward life, which is too monstrous for his Superman’s consciousness [to grasp].
He half-consciously realizes that he possesses something sublime, and that he is going to be condemned for possessing it. From this—his tense, wild, ferocious attitude.
Most people lack [the capacity for] reverence and “taking things seriously. ” They do not hold anything to be very serious or profound. There is nothing that is sacred or immensely important to them. There is nothing—no idea, object, work, or person—that can inspire them with a profound, intense, and all-absorbing passion that reaches to the roots of their souls. They do not know how to value or desire. They cannot give themselves entirely to anything. There is nothing absolute about them. They take all things lightly, easily, pleasantly—almost indifferently, in that they can have it or not, they do not claim it as their absolute necessity. Anything strong and intense, passionate and absolute, anything that can’t be taken with a snickering little “sense of humor”—is too big, too hard, too uncomfortable for them. They are too small and weak to feel with all their soul—and they disapprove of such feelings. They are too small and low for a loyal, profound reverence—and they disapprove of all such reverence. They are too small and profane themselves to know what sacredness is—and they disapprove of anything being too sacred.