Page:The Jail, Experiences in 1916.pdf/90

 even imagine that it would be possible to live without it—and lo, I am living here, I am living without sunshine, without air, in dirt, amid hunger, with thieves, sharpers, robbers and murderers, which human society has rejected from its midst; I watch how time as it elapses bears away the irrecoverable hours of my life, and whenever a bitter wave of grief arises in my spirit, I suppress it, refuse to recognize within me the slightest shadow of an emotion, and I assume a hearing as if I had been here for years and were to remain here my whole life. For: Danton, no weakness! Nobody in the other world has ever detected signs of it within me, nobody shall ever do so here among the filthy dregs of human society. Here a man practices mimicry, it is true, he adapts himself to his new surroundings, but he cannot drag forth his soul as the rest do, and expose it quivering to the gaze of beholders. No word of grief must pass the lips, the breast must heave no sigh, and not the least stirring of sorrow must be revealed in the glance. Everything must remain within the soul, and there let it crystallize; it already contains a whole array of such crystals of wrath and hatred, let there be more of them. There is no paper, and in any case it is impossible to write here, so let us hold our peace. I would, however, give the following advice to all estimable states (if such conditions prevail elsewhere as in this one): if you lock up poets, give them paper and pencils, and let them write. Verse, prose, it doesn't matter which. They will write down the contents of their souls, and although the critics may afterwards adopt a varying attitude towards it, you will be satisfied. Let them sing when you put them into a cage, for the things that have to crystallize within them are apt to be worse than dynamite.

Yesterday evening towards 9 o'clock before the lamp flared up, I heard the warbling of a skylark. A brief, exultant scale, as if it