{"id":"01KG8AMZ4MT0PQKQ38XQA91K40","cid":"bafkreifsatlph7ki56g46u6azsacztf6gdkvwfiy2gf6whp4xx3qgx4tay","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":12552,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:52.924Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","start_line":12500,"text":"I.\r\n\r\nWe are now to behold Pierre permanently lodged in three lofty adjoining\r\nchambers of the Apostles. And passing on a little further in time, and\r\noverlooking the hundred and one domestic details, of how their internal\r\narrangements were finally put into steady working order; how poor Delly,\r\nnow giving over the sharper pangs of her grief, found in the lighter\r\noccupations of a handmaid and familiar companion to Isabel, the only\r\npractical relief from the memories of her miserable past; how Isabel\r\nherself in the otherwise occupied hours of Pierre, passed some of her\r\ntime in mastering the chirographical incoherencies of his manuscripts,\r\nwith a view to eventually copying them out in a legible hand for the\r\nprinter; or went below stairs to the rooms of the Millthorpes, and in\r\nthe modest and amiable society of the three young ladies and their\r\nexcellent mother, found some little solace for the absence of Pierre;\r\nor, when his day's work was done, sat by him in the twilight, and played\r\nher mystic guitar till Pierre felt chapter after chapter born of its\r\nwondrous suggestiveness; but alas! eternally incapable of being\r\ntranslated into words; for where the deepest words end, there music\r\nbegins with its supersensuous and all-confounding intimations.\r\n\r\nDisowning now all previous exertions of his mind, and burning in scorn\r\neven those fine fruits of a care-free fancy, which, written at Saddle\r\nMeadows in the sweet legendary time of Lucy and her love, he had\r\njealously kept from the publishers, as too true and good to be\r\npublished; renouncing all his foregone self, Pierre was now engaged in a\r\ncomprehensive compacted work, to whose speedy completion two tremendous\r\nmotives unitedly impelled;--the burning desire to deliver what he\r\nthought to be new, or at least miserably neglected Truth to the world;\r\nand the prospective menace of being absolutely penniless, unless by the\r\nsale of his book, he could realize money. Swayed to universality of\r\nthought by the widely-explosive mental tendencies of the profound events\r\nwhich had lately befallen him, and the unprecedented situation in which\r\nhe now found himself; and perceiving, by presentiment, that most grand\r\nproductions of the best human intellects ever are built round a circle,\r\nas atolls (_i. e._ the primitive coral islets which, raising themselves\r\nin the depths of profoundest seas, rise funnel-like to the surface, and\r\npresent there a hoop of white rock, which though on the outside\r\neverywhere lashed by the ocean, yet excludes all tempests from the quiet\r\nlagoon within), digestively including the whole range of all that can be\r\nknown or dreamed; Pierre was resolved to give the world a book, which\r\nthe world should hail with surprise and delight. A varied scope of\r\nreading, little suspected by his friends, and randomly acquired by a\r\nrandom but lynx-eyed mind, in the course of the multifarious,\r\nincidental, bibliographic encounterings of almost any civilized young\r\ninquirer after Truth; this poured one considerable contributary stream\r\ninto that bottomless spring of original thought which the occasion and\r\ntime had caused to burst out in himself. Now he congratulated himself\r\nupon all his cursory acquisitions of this sort; ignorant that in reality\r\nto a mind bent on producing some thoughtful thing of absolute Truth, all\r\nmere reading is apt to prove but an obstacle hard to overcome; and not\r\nan accelerator helpingly pushing him along.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AKVZ9PRGAJDFCS3CYK67E","peer_type":"section","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AMZ4DRRWKEJ7VEGNBBVFW","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:54.420Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:49:30.335Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}