My best-loved wickedness and art is it, that my silence hath learned not to betray itself by silence.
Clattering with diction and dice, I outwit the solemn assistants: all those stern watchers, shall my will and purpose elude.
That no one might see down into my depth and into mine ultimate will—for that purpose did I devise the long clear silence.
Many a shrewd one did I find: he veiled his countenance and made his water muddy, that no one might see therethrough and thereunder.
But precisely unto him came the shrewder distrusters and nut-crackers: precisely from him did they fish his best-concealed fish!
But the clear, the honest, the transparent—these are for me the wisest silent ones: in them, so PROFOUND is the depth that even the clearest water doth not—betray it.—
Thou snow-bearded, silent, winter-sky, thou round-eyed whitehead above me! Oh, thou heavenly simile of my soul and its wantonness!
And MUST I not conceal myself like one who hath swallowed gold—lest my soul should be ripped up?
MUST I not wear stilts, that they may OVERLOOK my long legs—all those enviers and injurers around me?
Those dingy, fire-warmed, used-up, green-tinted, ill-natured souls—how COULD their envy endure my happiness!