The Early Ayn Rand (2 page)

As the years passed, I came to work closely with Miss Rand, first as an informal student of hers, then as a writer and lecturer on her ideas. The two of us regularly talked ideas, not infrequently for twelve hours (or more) at a stretch. I learned more about philosophy listening to her than I did from ten years in graduate school getting a Ph.D. in the subject.

Not long after I met Miss Rand, she let me read the two plays in the present collection,
Ideal
and
Think Twice;
she was pleased with both and hoped to see them produced one day. (This, I think, is why she never tried to have them published.) I also came to read the short story “Good Copy” and to hear Miss Rand’s analysis of it; she regarded this piece as a worthy, though flawed, attempt by a beginning writer. Of the rest of this collection, I read nothing at all during Miss Rand’s lifetime (though I heard from her in passing about a few items, which she regarded as ancient history). I was astonished, after her death, to find so much fiction that was new to me in her “trunk.”

Out of this new material, I have three personal favorites: “Vesta Dunning,” for the quality of the writing; “Kira’s Viking,” for its fairy-tale romanticism; and “The Husband I Bought,” because it is a rare window on Ayn Rand’s soul at the beginning, before she knew much about philosophy, art, or English—a window that reveals eloquently her own intense dedication to values. Along with the material I already knew, these pieces are what convinced me, as her literary executor, to publish the total.

To those unfamiliar with Ayn Rand, however, I want to say that this book is not the place to begin. Read her novels first. If their ideas interest you, you might then turn to her nonfiction works, such as
The Virtue of Selfishness
(on ethics), or
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
(politics), or
The Romantic Manifesto
(aesthetics). Then, if you wish, pick up the present collection.

If any reader wants more information—about Miss Rand’s other published essays; about courses, schools, and publications that carry on her philosophy; or about further material of hers yet to be brought out (journals, letters, lectures)—I suggest that he write to Objectivism EA, P.O. Box 177, Murray Hill Station, New York, NY 10157. I regret that owing to the volume of mail, personal replies to such letters are not possible; but in due course inquirers will receive literature from several sources indicating the direction to pursue if they want to investigate Ayn Rand’s ideas further, or to support them.

Ayn Rand has long been beloved by a broad public. Here then for all to read is her early fiction: the first of her stories, and also the last—the last, that is, for us to discover and to experience. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

—Leonard Peikoff
New York City

 

 

Editor’s Preface

Ayn Rand arrived in the United States from Russia in February 1926, at the age of twenty-one, and spent several months with relatives in Chicago before leaving for Hollywood. Although she had studied some English in Russia, she did not know the language well, and she devoted herself at first to writing scenarios for the silent screen. “The Husband I Bought” seems to be the only writing other than scenarios from these early months. It is the first story she wrote in English.

Miss Rand was aware that this story (like all her work in the 1920s) was a beginner’s exercise, written in effect in a foreign language, and she never dreamed of publishing it. She did not even sign her name to it privately (although she had chosen the name “Ayn Rand” before she left Russia). She signed it with a pseudonym invented for this one case and never used again: Allen Raynor.

Many years later, Ayn Rand was asked to give a lecture defining the goal of her work. “The motive and purpose of my writing,” she said, “is the projection of an ideal man. The portrayal of a moral ideal, as my ultimate literary goal, as an end in itself . . .”
(The Romantic Manifesto)
.

Prior to
The Fountainhead,
however, she did not consider herself ready for this task; she knew that she had too much still to learn, both as a philosopher and as a writer. What she did regard as possible to her in these early years was the depiction of a woman’s
feeling
for the ideal man, a feeling which she later called “manworship.” She herself had experienced this feeling as a driving passion since childhood, primarily in response to the projections of heroes she discovered in Romantic literature.

Concepts such as “worship,” “reverence,” “exaltation,” and the like are usually taken as naming emotions oriented to the supernatural, transcending this world. In Ayn Rand’s view, however, this concedes to religion or mysticism what are actually

“Man-worship” means the enraptured dedication to values—and to man, man the individual, as their only achiever, beneficiary, and ultimate embodiment. This is basically a metaphysical-ethical feeling, open to either sex, a feeling uniting all those “who see man’s highest potential and strive to actualize it”—those “dedicated to the
exaltation
of man’s self-esteem and the
sacredness
of his happiness on earth.”
²

When a woman with this kind of character sees her deepest values actualized and embodied in a specific man, man-worship becomes (other things being equal) romantic love. Thus the special quality of the Ayn Rand romantic love: it is the union of the abstract and the concrete, of ideal and reality, of mind and body, of uplifted spirituality and violent passion, of reverence and sexuality.

Throughout the early years, female protagonists predominate in Ayn Rand’s fiction; and one of their essential traits is this kind of man-worship. The early heroes are merely suggested; they are not fully realized until Roark. But whatever the language and literary problems still unresolved, the motif of the woman’s feeling for a hero
is
realized. Even in this first story, Ayn Rand can write eloquent scenes on this theme (especially the moving farewell scene). Even this early, she can make effective use of the dramatic, short-sentence style that became famous with
The Fountainhead.

Henry, in the present story, is the earliest ancestor of Leo (in
We the Living
), of Roark, of Francisco or Rearden (in
Atlas Shrugged
). Those who know the later heroes can see the first faint glimmer of them here. The focus, however, lies in Irene’s response to him, which may be symbolized by a single line: “When I am tired, I kneel before the table [on which Henry’s picture stands] and I look at him.”

On the surface, this story might appear to be quite conventional. I can imagine someone reading it as the tragic story of an unloved wife “selflessly” removing herself from her husband’s path. But the actual meaning is the opposite. Irene is not a selfless wife, but a passionate valuer; her decision to leave Henry is not self-sacrifice, but self-preservation and the reaffirmation of
her
values. She cannot accept anyone less than Henry, or any relationship with him less than what she has had.

Nor does Irene draw a tragic conclusion from her suffering. The glory of her life, she feels, is that Henry exists, that she had him once, and that she will love him always. Even in the agony of unrequited love, her implicit focus is on values, not on pain. This is especially clear in her desire to protect her ideal from suffering, to protect him for her
own
sake, although she is leaving him, to keep her supreme value whole, radiant, godlike, not dimmed or diminished by loss and sorrow. “Henry, you must be happy, and strong, and glorious. Leave suffering to those that cannot help it. You must smile at life. . . . And never think about those that cannot. They are not worthwhile.”

The story’s events are conventional—but their meaning and motivation are vintage Ayn Rand, and utterly unconventional. What makes this possible is the profound
seriousness
of Irene’s passion. This is what transforms and transfigures an otherwise ordinary tale.

There are, of course, major flaws in the story’s execution. Important events are not dramatized, but merely narrated (and sometimes only sketchily explained). This is a practice opposite to that of the mature Ayn Rand. The moral code of the small town—the narrow respectability of sixty years ago—is thoroughly dated, and, in our age, virtually unbelievable. Above all, there is the problem of the language, which reflects a mind still unfamiliar with many essentials of English grammar, vocabulary, and idiom; as a result, the dialogue in particular is often stilted and unreal. I have edited out the most confusing lapses of English grammar and wording and the most obvious foreignisms, but have allowed the rest of the text to stand as written, so as to leave to posterity a record of where Ayn Rand began. Those who have read her novels can judge for themselves how far she was able to travel.

It may be wondered why Ayn Rand chose to present man-worship first of all in the form of a story of unrequited love. My conjecture—it is only that—is that this aspect of the story was autobiographical. Ayn Rand as a college student was in love with a young man in Russia who was the real-life source of the character of Leo. She remembered this young man, and her feeling for him, all her life. The relationship between them, however, was never fulfilled—whether for personal reasons or political ones (I believe he was exiled to Siberia) I do not know. But, either way, it is easy to imagine that alone in a new country, on the threshold of a new life, she should be drawn to focus as a kind of farewell on the man she loved and had now lost forever—or, more exactly, to focus on her own feeling for that man and loss.

—L. P.

I should not have written this story. If I did it all—I did it only by keeping silent. I went through tortures, such as no other woman on earth, perhaps just to keep silent. And now—I speak. I must not have written my secret. But I have a hope. My one and only, and last hope. And I have no time before me. When life is dead and you have nothing left on your way—who can blame you for taking a last chance, a poor little chance . . . before the end? And so I write my story.

I loved Henry. I love him. It is the only thing I know and I can say about myself. It is the only thing, that was my life. There is no person on earth that has never been in love. But love can go beyond all limits and bounds. Love can go beyond all consciousness, beyond your very soul.

I never think of how I met him. It has no importance for me. I
had
to meet him and I did. I never think of how and when I began to love him or how I realized that he loved me. The only thing I know is that two words only were written on my life: “Henry Stafford.”

He was tall and slim, and beautiful, too beautiful. He was intensely ambitious and never made a step to realize it. He had an immense, indefinite longing and did not trouble himself to think about it. He was the most perfectly refined and brilliant man, whom society admired and who laughed at society. A little lazy, very skeptical, indifferent to everything. Haughty and self-conceited for himself—gracious and ironical for everybody.

In our little town Henry Stafford was, of course, the aim and target of all the girls and “homemade” vamps. He flirted openly with everyone; that made them all furious.

His father had left him a big business. He managed it just enough to have the necessary money and the least trouble possible. He treated his business with the same smile of perfect politeness and perfect indifference with which he spoke to our society ladies or read a popular best-seller, from the middle.

Mr. Barnes, an old lawyer and a friend of mine, said once, with that thoughtful, indefinite look afar that was so characteristic to him: “That impossible man . . . I could envy the girl he shall love. I would pity the one he will marry.”

For the moment, I could have been envied by Mr. Barnes, and not by Mr. Barnes only: Henry Stafford loved me. I was twenty-one then, just graduated from one of the best colleges. I had come to live in my little native town, in the beautiful estate that belonged to me after my parents’ death. It was a big, luxurious house, with a wonderful old garden, the best in the town. I had a considerable fortune and no near relatives at all. I was accustomed to ruling my existence quietly and firmly myself.

I tell the whole truth here, so I must tell that I was beautiful. And I was clever, I knew it; you always know it when you are. I was considered a “brilliant girl,” “a girl with a great future” by everybody in our society, though they did not like me too much, for I was a little too willful and resolute.

I loved Henry Stafford. It was the only thing I ever understood in my life. It was my life. I knew I would never have another one, never could have. And I never did. Perhaps you should not love a human being like this. I cannot tell and I will not listen, if someone tells me you should not. I cannot listen: it was my whole life.

Henry Stafford loved me. He loved me seriously. It was the first thing he did not smile at in his life.

“I did not know I would be so helpless before love,” he said sometimes. “It was impossible, that you would not be mine, Irene. I must always have the things I wish, and it is the only thing I ever wished!” He kissed my arms, from the fingertips to the shoulder. . . . As for me, I looked at him and felt nothing else. His every movement, his manners, the sound of his voice made me tremble. When a passion like this gets hold of you, it never lets you go, never till your last breath. It burns all in you, and still flames, when there is nothing more to burn. . . . But then, how happy, oh! how happy I was!