A Confession

: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it.

it was pleas­ant to look at life in the mir­ror of art.

I saw the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tasted sweet.

ques­tions would not wait, they had to be answered at once, and if I did not an­swer them it was im­possible to live. But there was no an­swer.

The ques­tions would not wait, they had to be answered at once, and if I did not an­swer them it was im­possible to live. But there was no an­swer.

I did not my­self know what I wanted: I feared life, de­sired to es­cape from it, yet still hoped some­thing of it.

but it is my heart and I.

And so among us this the­ory was de­vised: “All that ex­ists is reas­on­able. All that ex­ists de­vel­ops. And it all de­vel­ops by means of Cul­ture. And Cul­ture is meas­ured by the cir­cu­la­tion of books and news­pa­pers. And we are paid money and are re­spec­ted be­cause we write books and news­pa­pers, and there­fore we are the most use­ful and the best of men.”

But strange to say, though I un­der­stood this fraud and re­nounced it, yet I did not re­nounce the rank these people gave me: the rank of artist, poet, and teacher. I na­ively ima­gined that I was a poet and artist and could teach every­body without my­self know­ing what I was teach­ing, and I ac­ted ac­cord­ingly.

­ment we—men of thought—have the chief part; and among men of thought it is we—artists and po­ets—who have the greatest in­flu­ence. Our vo­ca­tion is to teach man­kind.