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Possessed by Barren Doubts Letters to Saul Yanovsky, March 6 and March 29, 191131 2038, Potomac Ave. Chicago, Mar. 6, 1911. Dear Comrade:— I am infinitely ashamed of myself for not having answered your letter of Dec. 12 before this; the trouble is I took the advice you gave literally; do you remember what you wrote? “The best thing it seems to me would be for you to drop letter writing and discuss the whole question” (i.e. the stagnation in our movement) “as thoroughly as you are able.” Well, dear comrade, I did both: that is to say, not being able to discuss at all, I did not write at all! And for all that I did not answer your letter at the time, I think I never felt so much that we were comrades as when I read it. The simple words: “The worst is, you don’t know (and neither do I) what is to be done”, made me feel more spiritually akin to you than I had ever felt in my life before. It is true that I do not know, and I have lost the habit of thinking that I can acquire the power to know what is the trouble. I tell you I feel spiritually , morally, and mentally bankrupt! When I think of anything as a subject to write upon I am immediately smitten with a recognition of my own incompetence. I am as satisfied as ever that society is in bad shape, but I do not know how it should be remedied. The prolific confidence of old years, has died; I am possessed by barren doubts only. What I formerly wrote, what others write, seems to me very questionable assertion. It’s not that I have the slightest idea that our opponents are right; their statements look just as foolish to me as they ever did; but I have no surety of our opposition. Under this steady paralysis, how, dear comrade, is it possible to speak 181 31. Source: Ms. Houghton Library, Harvard University, bMS Am 1614 (178). or write? What is one to do? Lay bare to the enemy, or the ignorant, or the enthusiastic, the confusion in one’s own soul? Or on the other hand assume and asu assurance one does not have, parrot one’s past self, and repeat words as one recites something learned by heart? I have been reading occasional reports of Emma Goldman’s lectures and reviews of her book.32 The whole thing looks to me like a species of self-hypnotism on her part, and stupid indiscrimination on the part of the reviewers. The book is a hastily compiled hodge-podge of ill-assorted and ill-expressed ideas, in my opinion; the notion that she is “stirring the intellectual world in favor of”33 etc., seems to me as comical a conception as that of the fly who thought the world had turned round when he went from the upper to the under side of his leaf. The fault may lie in me, but that is the way all such things appear to me. I do not speak of her just because it is she, but as a sample of the impression made on me by people who think they are “doing things.” Now in such a state of mind, how is it possible to write. I would like to be able to write for F.A.S. or F.G. or M.E.34 or any other journal of like nature; I would like to have something to say. But as soon as I look at it on paper, it looks foolish to me,—words, just; nothing in it! For all that I ought to have copied the lectures which were already written, and sent them; but I have had a rather hard struggle to live here (to adapt myself to the climate), and have been sick a good deal. I feel lost and lonesome, unadapted to my surroundings, personally wretched most of the time. That must be my excuse. The few people with whom I associate do their utmost to put some life into me, but they do not succeed. I am always trying to avoid chances of meeting people, instead of seeking them. In spite of that, I have been dragged into a promise to speak here on the 18th of March, at a meeting arranged by the Bohemian group. I enclose a notice of it, which you may like to...

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