Wild Nights! Read online

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Wild Nights!

  Stories About the Last Days of

  Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James,

  and Hemingway

  For JOYCE and SEWARD JOHNSON

  Contents

  Epigraph

  Poe Posthumous; or, The Light-House

  EDickinsonRepliLuxe

  Grandpa Clemens & Angelfish, 1906

  The Master at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, 1914–1916

  Papa at Ketchum, 1961

  Notes

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Joyce Carol Oates

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Epigraph

  Wild Nights—Wild Nights!

  Were I with thee

  Wild Nights should be

  Our luxury!

  Futile—the Winds—

  To a Heart in port—

  Done with the Compass—

  Done with the Chart!

  Rowing in Eden—

  Ah, the Sea!

  Might I but moor—Tonight—

  In Thee!

  EMILY DICKINSON (1861)

  POE POSTHUMOUS; OR, THE LIGHT-HOUSE

  7 October 1849. Ah, waking!—my soul filled with hope! on this, my first on the fabled Light-House at Viña de Mar—I am thrilled to make my first entry into my Diary as agreed upon with my patron Dr. Bertram Shaw. As regularly as I can keep the Diary, I will—that is my vow made to Dr. Shaw, as to myself—tho’ there is no predicting what may happen to a man so entirely alone as I am—one must be clear-minded about this—I may become ill, or worse…

  So far I seem to be in very good spirits, and eager to begin my Light-House duties. My soul, long depressed by a multitude of factors, has miraculously revived in this bracing spring air at latitude 33°S, longitude 11°W in the South Pacific Ocean, some two hundred miles west of the rock-bound coast of Chile, north of Valparaíso; at the realization of being—at last, after the smotherings of Philadelphia society, and the mixed reception given to my lectures on the Poetic Principle, in Richmond—thoroughly alone.

  May it be noted for the record: after the melancholia of these two years, since the tragic & unexpected death of my beloved wife V., & the accumulated opprobrium of my enemies, not least an admitted excess of “debauched” behavior on my part, there has been not the slightest diminution of my rational judgment. None!

  This fine day, I have much to rejoice in, having climbed to the pinnacle of the tower, with good-hearted Mercury leaping & panting before me; gazing out to sea, shading my dazzled eyes; all but overcome by the majesty of these great spaces, not only the ever-shifting lava-like waters of the great Pacific, but the yet more wondrous sky above, that seems not a singular sky but numerous skies, of numerous astonishing cloud-formations stitched together like skins! Sky, sea, earth: ah, vibrant with life! The lantern (to be lit just before dusk) is of a wondrous size quite unlike any mere domestic lantern I have seen, weighing perhaps 50 pounds. Seeing it, & drawing reverent fingers across it, I am filled with a strange sort of zest, & eager for my duties to begin. “How could any of you have doubted me,” I protest, to the prim-browed gentlemen of the Philadelphia Society, “I will prove you mistaken. Posterity, be my judge!”

  One man has managed the Light-House at Viña de Mar from time to time in its history, tho’ two is the preferred number, & I am certainly capable of such simple operations & responsibilities as Keeper of the Light entails, I would hope! Thanks to the generosity of Dr. Shaw, I am well outfitted with supplies to last through the upcoming six months, as the Light-House is an impressively sturdy bulwark to withstand virtually all onslaughts of weather in this temperate zone not unlike the waters of the Atlantic east of Cape Hatteras. “So long as you return to ‘rescue’ me, before the southern winter begins,” I joked with the captain of the Ariel; a burly dark-browed Spaniard who laughed heartily at my wit, replying in heavily accented English he would sail into the waters of Hades itself if the recompense was deemed sufficient; as, given Dr. Shaw’s fortune, it would appear to be.

  8 October 1849. This day—my second upon the Light-House—I make my second entry into the Diary with yet more resolution & certainty of purpose than the first. For last night’s sleep, while fitful, owing to the winds that never cease to insinuate themselves into the cracks & crevices of the Light-House, was the most restful in many months. I believe that I have cast off totally the morbid hallucination, or delusion that, on a rain-lashed street in a city not familiar to me, I slipped, fell, cracked my head upon sharp paving stones, and died. (Yes, it is too ludicrous: Mercury barks as if laughing at his master’s fanciful thoughts.)

  Yesterday evening, with much enthusiasm, in the waning hours of the lengthy day, my canine companion and I climbed to the great lantern, & proceeded as required; ah! there is indeed wind at this height, that sucked away our breath like invisible harpies, but we withstood the assault; I took great pleasure in striking the first match, & bringing it to the tongue-like wick so soaked in a flammable liquid, it seemed virtually to breathe in the flame from my fingers. “Now, that is done. I declare myself Keeper of the Light at Viña de Mar: that all ships be warned of the treacherous rocks of the coast.” Laughing then aloud, for sheer nervous happiness; as Mercury barked excitedly, in confirmation.

  With this, any phantom doubts I might have entertained of being abandoned to the elements, were put immediately to rest; for I acknowledge, I am one of those individuals of a somewhat fantastical & nervous disposition, who entertains worries where there are none, as my late beloved V. observed of me, yet who does not sufficiently worry of what is. “In this, you are not unlike all men, from our esteemed ‘leaders’ downward,” V. gently chided. (V. took but fond note of my character, never criticizing it; between us, who were related by cousinly blood as by matrimony, & by a like predilection for the great Gothic works of E. T. A. Hoffmann, Heinrich von Kleist, & Jean Paul Richter, there fluidly passed at all times as if we shared an identical bloodstream a kindred humor & wryness of sympathy undetectable to the crass individuals who surrounded us.)

  But—why dwell upon these distracting thoughts, since I am here, & in good health & spirits, eager to begin what posterity will perhaps come to call The Diary of the Fabled Light-House at Viña de Mar, a document to set beside such celebrated investigations into the human psyche as the Meditations of René Descartes, the Pensées of Blaise Pascal, Les rêveries du promeneur solitaire of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, & the sixty-five volumes of Jean Paul Richter.

  Except: the Diary will provoke universal curiosity, for its author will not be the accursed E. A. P. who in a brief lifetime accumulated a vast sludge-tide of oppobrium, but: ANONYMOUS.

  Now, in an attitude of satisfied repose, I have broken off from my morning’s routine of Plotinus & Jeremias Gotthelf, the one purely investigative, the other for purposes of translation (for the Swiss-born Gothic master Gotthelf is all but unknown in my native country, & who is more capable of rendering his vision into English, than I?), to record these thoughts in the Diary; that never would be thought, in Philadelphia:

  Unexpectedly, in my forty-first year, how delighted I am, to at last being “helpful” to my fellows, however they are strangers to me, & utterly unaware of me except as the Keeper of the Light-House at Viña de Mar; not only to be helpful in this practical way, in aiding the princes of commerce, but to participate in Dr. Shaw’s experiment, in that way providing a helpfulness to scientific knowledge, & simultaneously to fulfill my great yearning, since V.’s death, to be alone. Ah, what pleasure! Plotinus, & Gotthelf; no companion but Mercury; a task so simple, a 10-year-old might execute it; vast sea & sky to peruse as figures of the most fantastical art. To
live immersed in society was a terrible error, for one of my temperament. Especially as I have been, since the age of 15, susceptible to cards, & drink, & riotous company. (By my agreement with Dr. Shaw, my debts of some $3,500 were erased as by the flourish of a magician’s wand!) Yet now I am privileged to be alone, in a place of such solitude I have passed hours merely staring out at the ocean, its boundless waters quivering and rippling as with restive thoughts; here indeed is the true kingdom by the sea, I have long yearned for. “Dr. Shaw, I am indebted to you, & will not disappoint you, I vow!”

  9 October 1849. This day—but my third upon the Light-House—I make my entry into the Diary in somewhat mixed spirits. For in the night, which was one of rowdy winds keeping both master & terrier uneasily awake, there came hauntingly to me, as it were mockingly, an echo of alone: strange how I never observed till now how ominous a sound that word possesses: alone. (My beloved V., could she come again into my arms, I would protect her as I had failed to do, in life!) In my lumpy bed I’d half-fancied that there was some perverse design in the stone composition of these funnel-like walls…But no: that is nonsense.

  Alone I will hear as music, in the way of the legended Ulalume: that melancholy so sweetly piercing, its effect is that of pain exquisite as ecstasy. Alone I consign to mere shadows, as my perky Mercury has done; & take pleasure in observing the vast domain of the sky, so much more pronounced at sea than on land. Alone I observe the curiosity, remarked upon by the Gothic masters, that nature seems but a willed phenomenon, of the imagination: the sun ascending in the eastern sky; a vision of such beauty, even the crudest of cumulus clouds is transformed. Yet without the Keeper of the Light, which is to say “I” (“eye”), could such beauty be revealed, let alone articulated?

  I will rejoice in this, the supremacy of “I”; though the more languid breeze of afternoon smells of brine & somewhat rotted things, from a pebbly shore of the island, I have yet to explore.

  15 October 1849. At leisure exploring the Light-House & its environs, with dear, faithful Mercury; the two of us becoming, with the passage of time, somewhat more “at home” in this strange place. Aboard the Ariel, I was told conflicting histories of the Light-House, and am uncertain which to believe. The predominant claim is that the Light-House at Viña de Mar is of unknown origin: discovered on the rock-bound island as a tower of about half its present size, constructed of rough-hewn rock and mortar, before the era of Spanish dominance. Some believe that the tower is centuries’-old; others, more reasonably, that it must have been constructed by a tribe of Chilean Indians now extinct, who had a knowledge of seafaring.

  It is true, the primitive tower yet remains, at the base of the Light-House; beyond twenty feet, the tower is clearly “new”—tho’ we are talking still of at least a century. This most hazardous stretch of waters west of the coast of Chile, looking as if the treacherous Andes had intruded into the sea, has long been notorious to sailors, I have been told; the need for a light-house is obvious. And yet, such a lofty structure!—you might almost call godly.

  (Yet I could wish that such godliness had been tempered by restraint: these circular winding stairs are interminable! Nearly as exhausting, & yet more vertiginous, descending as ascending! Within these few days at Viña de Mar, my leg-calves and thighs are aching, & my neck is stiff from craning to see where I am stepping. Indeed, I have slipped once or twice, & would have fallen to crack my skull if I had not reached out immediately, to seize the railing. Even frisky Mercury pants on these stairs! Initially my count of the stairs was 190, my second was 187; my third, 191; my fourth, I have put off. The tower would appear to be about 200 feet, from the low-water mark to the roof above the great lantern. From the bottom inside the shaft, however, the distance to the summit is beyond 200 feet—for the floor is 20 feet below the surface of the sea, even at low-tide. It seems to me, the hollow interior at the base should have been filled in with solid masonry, of a keeping with the rest of the sturdy tower. Undoubtedly the whole would have been thus rendered more safe:—but what am I thinking? No mere sea, no hurricane, could defeat this solid iron-riveted wall—which, at 50 feet from the high-water mark, is four feet thick at least. The base on which the structure exists appears to be chalk: a curious substance, indeed!)

  Well! I take a curious pride in the Light-House, of which I am sole Keeper. I did not linger below-ground, for I have a morbid fear of such dank, confining places, but prefer to tramp about in the open air at the base of the tower. Gazing upward I declared, as if Posterity might be listening: “Here is a construction of surpassing ingenuity yet devoid of mystery: for a Light-House is but a structure designed by men for purely commercial, hardly romantic or esoteric purposes.” At my heels, Mercury barked excitedly, in a frolicsome sort of echo!

  And now, the restless terrier is larking about in the boulders, & on the pebbly shore, where I am not happy he should venture; the poor “fox” hunter cannot quite fathom, there are no foxes in this lonely place for him to hunt & bring back in triumph to his master.

  6 November 1849. No entries in this Diary for some days, for I have slept poorly under the assault of an unnatural floating cloud, or mist, bearing devilish stinging insects from the mainland; an airborne ant of some kind, seemingly crossbred with a spider! Thankfully, a powerful gale-force wind bore upon us, & swept these miniature harpies out to sea! Yet I have worked out my schedule, to record here:

  Waking, precisely at dawn

  Climbing the stairs to extinguish the lantern

  Ablutions, shaving etcetera

  Breakfast while reading/note-taking

  Exercise, with Mercury; exploration/meditation

  Diary entry

  Midday meal while reading/note-taking

  Afternoon: exploration/reading/note-taking/meditation

  Evening meal, while reading/note-taking

  Climbing the stairs to light the lantern

  Bed & sleep

  Ah, you are shaking your head, are you! That this schedule appears to you confining as an imprisonment. But, I assure you, it is not so. I am not a creature like poor Mercury, roused to terrier exuberance & frustration by these balmy spring mornings (November in the southern hemisphere, recall, is April in the northern), as if seeking not merely prey but a mate; I am perfectly at ease with aloneness. As Pascal observed in the 139th Pensée:

  …all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.

  This Diary shall record whether such a “truth” is universal; or applies merely to the weak.

  15 November 1849. At midday, sighted a ship some miles to the east. Bound for the Strait of Magellan & very likely the great port at Buenos Aires. In the bland waters of day, this ship had no need for the Light-House at Viña de Mar & I felt for the briefest moment a strange sort of outrage. “Sail in these waters by night, my friends, & you will not so blithely ignore the Keeper of the Light.”

  19 November 1849. Waking at dawn, a night of interrupted sleep. While breakfasting (with little appetite, I know not why) continued my painstaking translation of Das Spinne; then, in relief turning to the Enneads of Plotinus, I had strangely neglected in my previous old careless life. (Dr. Shaw has been so generous, allowing me countless books among my more practical provisions; some of these already in my possession but most of the volumes & journals, his.) Plotinus is an ancient whose treatises on cosmology, numerals, the soul, eternal truth & the One are wonderfully matched to me, a pilgrim at the Light-House at Viña de Mar. For I continue to marvel, how at ease I am with aloneness, which I believe I have yet to explore, to its depth.

  Plotinus is the very balm for grief, which I feel still, in times of repose, following the death of my darling V. (of a burst vein in her alabaster throat, suffered while singing the exquisite “Annie Laurie” as I, in a transport of delight, accompanied her on the pianoforte) when I vowed I would remain celibate, & penitent, for the remainder of my unhappy life. As V. dreaded the bestial, which permeates so much of human inte
rcourse, within even the marital bed, I have a like aversion; tho’ I take pleasure in fondling Mercury & stroking his pricked-up ears, I would be revulsed to so intimately touch another human being! For even hand-shaking, one gentleman with another, leaves me repelled. “Your hand is very cold, my boy,” Dr. Shaw teased, at our parting in Philadelphia harbor, “which the ladies assure me is the sign of a warm heart. Yes?”

  (Here is a strangeness: in this solitude where the only sounds are those of the infernal sea-birds, & the dull admixture of waves & whining winds, lately I have been hearing Dr. Shaw’s unmistakable voice; & in drifting clouds overhead, I see Dr. Shaw’s face: stolid, bewhiskered, with glittering eyeglasses atop a sizable nose. My boy he has called me—tho’ in my forty-first year I am scarcely a boy—what a role you are destined to play, in advancing the cause of scientific knowledge. My deep gratitude to this gentleman, who rescued me from a life of dissolution & self-harm, to engage me in this experiment into the effect of “extreme isolation” upon an “average male specimen of Homo sapiens.” The irony being lost to Dr. Shaw, seemingly, that tho’ I am quite a normal male specimen of Homo sapiens, I am hardly average!)

  28 November 1849. Ships sighted, at a distance. Sea-birds, noisy & tenacious, until routed by Mercury & his master. A sudden fierce gale swept upon us in the night leaving the usual sea-filth (some of it yet wriggling with the most repulsive life, tho’ badly mauled & mutilated) washed up on the pebbly beach.

  If I have not recorded in the Diary much of this “wriggling life,” it is out of fastidious disdain & a lofty ignorance of such low species. Tho’ I should note, I suppose, that the sloshing waves of the beach are within fifteen paces of this perch, in the Light-House doorway. Fortunately, the wind blows in the other direction, my nostrils need not contract with foul smells!