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349
The Journal of a Disappointed Man
·
W. N. P. Barbellion
210
May
22.
Generosity
may
be
only
weakness,
philanthropy
(beautiful
word),
self-advertisement,
and
praise
of
others
sheer
egotism.
One
can
almost
hear
a
eulogist
winding
himself
up
to
strike
his
eulogy
that
comes
out
sententious,
pompous,
and
full
of
self.
May
23.
The
following
is
a
description
of
Lermontov
by
Maurice
Baring:
"He
had
except
for
a
few
intimate
friends
an
impossible
temperament;
he
was
proud,
over-bearing,
exasperated
and
exasperating,
filled
with
a
savage
amour-propre
and
he
took
a
childish
delight
in
annoying;
he
cultivated
'le
plaisir
aristocratique
de
déplaire.'
...
He
could
not
bear
not
to
make
himself
felt
and
if
he
felt
he
was
unsuccessful
in
this
by
fair
means
he
resorted
to
unpleasant
ones.
Yet
he
was
warm-hearted,
thirsting
for
love
and
kindness
and
capable
of
giving
himself
up
to
love
if
he
chose....
At
the
bottom
of
all
this
lay
no
doubt
a
deep-seated
disgust
with
himself
and
with
the
world
in
general,
and
a
complete
indifference
to
life
resulting
from
large
aspirations
which
could
not
find
an
outlet
and
recoiled
upon
himself."
This
is
an
accurate
description
of
Me.
May
26.
The
time
will
come--it's
a
great
way
off--when
a
joke
about
sex
will
be
not
so
much
objectionable
as
unintelligible.
Thanks
to
Christian
teaching,
a
nude
body
is
now
an
obscenity,
of
the
congress
of
the
sexes
it
is
indecent
to
speak
and
our
birth
is
a
corruption.
Hence
come
a
legion
of
evils:
reticence,
therefore
ignorance
and
therefore
venereal
disease;
prurience
especially
in
adolescence,
poisonous
literature,
and
dirty
jokes.
The
mind
is
contaminated
from
early
youth;
even
the
healthiest-minded
girl
will
blush
at
the
mention
of
the
wonder
of
creation.
Yet
to
the
perfectly
enfranchised
mind
it
should
be
as
impossible
to
joke
about
sex
as
about
mind
or
digestion
or
physiology.
The
perfectly
enfranchised
poet--and
Walt
Whitman
in
"The
Song
of
Myself"
came
near
being
it--should
be
as
ready
to
sing
of
the
incredible
raptures
of
the
sexual
act
between
"twin
souls"
as
of
the
clouds
or
sunshine.
Every
man
or
woman
who
has
loved
has
a
heart
full
of
beautiful
things
to
say
but
no
man
dare--for
fear
of
the
police,
for
fear
of
the
coarse
jests
of
others
and
even
of
a
breakdown
in
his
own
highmindedness.
I
wonder
just
how
much
wonderful
lyric
poetry
has
thus
been
lost
to
the
world!
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