A Confession

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

hung. I saw the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tasted sweet. I only saw the un­es­cap­able dragon and the mice, and I could not tear my gaze from them. and this is not a fable but the real un­answer­able truth in­tel­li­gible to all.

One can only live while one is in­tox­ic­ated with life; as soon as one is sober it is im­possible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stu­pid fraud! That is pre­cisely what it is: there is noth­ing either amus­ing or witty about it, it is simply cruel and stu­pid.

I too clung to the twig of life, know­ing that the dragon of death was in­ev­it­ably await­ing me, ready to tear me to pieces; and I could not un­der­stand why I had fallen into such tor­ment. I tried to lick the honey which formerly con­soled me, but the honey no longer gave me pleas­ure, and the white and black mice of day and night gnawed at the branch by which I

My men­tal con­di­tion presen­ted it­self to me in this way: my life is a stu­pid and spite­ful joke someone has played on me. Though I did not ac­know­ledge a “someone” who cre­ated me, yet such a present­a­tion—that someone had played an evil and stu­pid joke on my by pla­cing me in the world—was the form of ex­pres­sion that sug­ges­ted it­self most nat­ur­ally to me.

In­vol­un­tar­ily it ap­peared to me that there, some­where, was someone who amused him­self by watch­ing how I lived for thirty or forty years: learn­ing, de­vel­op­ing, matur­ing in body and mind, and how, hav­ing with ma­tured men­tal powers reached the sum­mit of life from which it all lay be­fore me, I stood on that sum­mit—like an arch-fool—see­ing clearly that there is noth­ing in life, and that there has been and will be noth­ing. And he was amused.

All my strength drew me away from life. The thought of self-de­struc­tion now came to me as nat­ur­ally as thoughts of how to im­prove my life had come formerly. and it was se­duct­ive that I had to be cun­ning with my­self lest I should carry it out too hast­ily. I did not wish to hurry, be­cause I wanted to use all ef­forts to dis­en­

I felt that what I had been stand­ing on had col­lapsed and that I had noth­ing left un­der my feet. What I had lived on no longer ex­is­ted, and there was noth­ing left

Had a fairy come and offered to ful­fill my de­sires I should not have know what to ask. If in mo­ments of in­tox­ic­a­tion I felt some­thing which, though not a wish, was a habit left by former wishes, in sober mo­ments I knew this to be a de­lu­sion and that there was really noth­ing to wish for. I could not even wish to know the truth, for I guessed of what it con­sisted. The truth was that life is mean­ing­less. I had as it were lived, lived, and walked, walked, till I had come to a pre­cip­ice and saw clearly that there was noth­ing

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.