Circumstances made no difference to a man. So I used to prate!
No difference! Why, I was a giant in my soul, swift and terrible as the lion. I leaped upon my task, I seized upon everything that came my way. I passed whole classes of men at a bound, I saw, I felt—I bore the world in my soul. I would dare everything, learn everything, live everything—take it all into myself. And every day I was stronger, every day I was more!—
And now see me! You have penned me here, you have starved me, stunted me, crushed me—I sit shivering and staring at my own piteousness! Why, I can not even be angry any more—I am too shrunken, too impotent for that! And was it my fault? Have I not fought till I was ill?
—But never did I put forth a hope that it was not withered in the bud! My every enthusiasm you stamped into the ground; every advance that I made—why you smote me in the face! And all my ardor, my confidence, my trust—has it ever met with anything but jeers?
—Yes, and now you turn away—this revolts you! This is bare, painful egotism—this is whining—this is querulous misery. It offends you like the sight of raw flesh!
—It is my raw soul. My poor little naked, pitiful, beaten soul!—groveling, and begging, too!
—But whose fault is it—merciful Heaven, whose fault is it? It is my nature to live in myself—to live from myself. And this that is unbearable egotism, why, it would have been exulting power! Joy in a vision! Mastery of a life and an art!
But here you shut me up! You crush me down! I try to escape—I cry out: “I am not an egotist—I am a worshiper! I want nothing in the world so much as to forget myself—my rights, my claims, my powers, my talents! I want to think of God! Only give me a chance—only give me a chance to do that, and I care not what you do with me! Here I stand with my poor little work, begging, pleading for some one to heed it! Thinking of it only, living for it only, insisting upon it day and night! But do you think that I do that of choice? My God, no—you are mad—I only want to go on! Give me but the chance to go on—and do you think that I would care whether any man admired my work?”