I often feel as if there is a fortyish woman somewhere - a phantom - watching over my life.
Might it be the work of some supernatural power giving occasional glimpses of itself to the real world?

إنني أعيشُ الآن في «سعادة مُنتهى التعاسة»

The sun threatened to set before long, but he went on threading book spines with undiminished intensity. Lined up before him was not so much an array of books as the fin de siècle itself. Nietzsche, Verlaine, the Goncourt brothers, Dostoevsky, Hauptmann, Flaubert.

He often wondered if people who loved each other had to cause each other pain.

𝘏𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦

This passion for pictures gave him a whole new way of looking at the world. He began to pay constant attention to the curve of a branch or the swell of a woman's cheek.

Spreading these man-made wings, he soared with ease into the sky. The higher he flew, the farther below him sank the joys and sorrows of a life bathed in the light of intellect. Dropping ironies and smiles upon the shabby towns below, he climbed through the open sky, straight for the sun as if he had forgotten about that ancient Greek who plunged to his death in the ocean when his man-made wings were singed by the sun.

He discovered in this painter a poetry of which no one else was aware.

He discovered in himself a soul of which he himself had been unaware.

It was also a portrait of his vulnerable self.
The discovery only served to increase his melancholy.

Those whom God loves die young.

You who more than anyone burned with ideals


Are you who more than anyone knew reality.

You fellows still have a strong will to live, I suppose?'

'Yes, of course, but you, too...

'Not any more,' he said. He was telling the truth. At some point he had lost interest in life. 'I do have the will to create, though.'

'But surely the will to create is a form of the will to live...?'