Living My Life - Emma Goldman [93]
I had been away from Ed only two weeks, but my longing for him was more intense than it had been on my return from Europe. I could hardly contain myself until the train came to a stop in the Grand Central Station, where he met me. At home everything seemed new, more beautiful and enticing. Ed’s endearing words sounded like music in my ears. Sheltered and protected from the strife and conflict outside, I clung to him and basked in the sunshine of our home. My eagerness to go on a long tour paled under the fascination of my lover. A month of joy and abandon followed, but my dream was soon to suffer a painful awakening.
It was caused by Nietzsche. Ever since my return from Vienna I had been hoping that Ed would read my books. I had asked him to do so and he promised he would when he had more time. It made me very sad to find Ed so indifferent to the new literary forces in the world. One evening we were gathered at Justus’s place at a farewell party. James Huneker4 was present and a young friend of ours, P. Yelineck, a talented painter. They began discussing Nietzsche. I took part, expressing my enthusiasm over the great poet-philosopher and dwelling on the impression of his works on me. Huneker was surprised. “I did not know you were interested in anything outside of propaganda,” he remarked. “That is because you don’t know anything about anarchism,” I replied, “else you would understand that it embraces every phase of life and effort and that it undermines the old, outlived values.” Yelineck asserted that he was an anarchist because he was an artist; all creative people must be anarchists, he held, because they need scope and freedom for their expression. Huneker insisted that art has nothing to do with any ism. “Nietzsche himself is the proof of it,” he argued; “he is an aristocrat, his ideal is the superman because he has no sympathy with or faith in the common herd.” I pointed out that Nietzsche was not a social theorist but a poet, a rebel and innovator. His aristocracy was neither of birth nor of purse; it was of the spirit. In that respect Nietzsche was an anarchist, and all true anarchists were aristocrats, I said.
Then Ed spoke. His voice sounded cold and constrained, and I sensed the tempest behind it. “Nietzsche is a fool,” he said, “a man with a diseased mind. He was doomed from birth to the idiocy which finally overtook him. He will be forgotten in less than a decade, and so will all those other pseudo-moderns. They are contortionists in comparison with the truly great of the past.”
“But you haven’t read Nietzsche!” I objected heatedly; “how can you talk about him?” “Oh, yes, I have,” he retorted, “I read long ago all the silly books you brought from abroad.” I was dumb-founded. Huneker and Yelineck turned on Ed, but my hurt was too great to continue the discussion.
He had known how I had wanted him to share my books, how I had hoped and waited for him to recognize their value and significance. How could he have kept me in suspense, how could he have remained silent after he had read them? Of course, he had a right to his opinion; that I believed implicitly. It was not his differing from me that had stabbed me to the quick; it was his scorn and ridicule of what had come to mean so much to me. [ ... ]
Late at night, when we returned home, he said to me: “Let’s not spoil our beautiful three months; Nietzsche is not worth it.” I felt wounded to the heart. “It isn’t Nietzsche, it is you—you,” I cried excitedly. “Under the pretext of a great love you have done your utmost to chain me to you, to rob me of all that is more precious to me than life. You are not content with binding my body, you want also to bind my spirit! First the movement and my friends—now it’s the