It is but a tiny step.
There’s but a tiny step between the great and the little, the tender and the contemptuous, the sublime and the ridiculous, the aggressive and the humble, the paradise and the perdition.
And so is it between the genius and the fool.
I am a genius.
I am not prepared to say how many times I may overstep the finely-drawn line, or how many times I have already overstepped it. ’Tis a matter of small moment.
I have entered into certain things marvelously deep. I know things, I know that I know them, and I know that I know that I know them, which is a fine psychological point.
It is magnificent of me to have gotten so far, at the age of nineteen, with no training other than that of the sand and barrenness. Magnificent—do you hear?
Very often I take this fact in my hand and squeeze it hard like an orange, to get the sweet, sweet juice from it. I squeeze a great deal of juice from it every day, and every day the juice is renewed, like the vitals of Prometheus. And so I squeeze and squeeze, and drink the juice, and try to be satisfied.
Yes, you may gaze long and curiously at the [portrait] in the front of this book. It is of one who is a genius of egotism and analysis, a genius who is awaiting the Devil’s coming,—a genius, with a wondrous liver within.
I shall tell you more about this liver, I think, before I have done.