Poems in Prose

Not a word. Can my soul be dead?

Where evil comes up softly like a flower. Thou knowest, O Satan, patron of my pain, Not for vain tears I went up at that hour;

"Have you sunk then into so deep a stupor that only your own pain gives you pleasure? If that be so, let us go to the lands that are made in the likeness of Death. I know exactly the place for us, poor soul! We will book our passage to Torneo. We will go still further, to the last limits of the Baltic; and, if it be possible, further still from life; we will make our abode at the Pole. There the sun only grazes the earth, and the slow alternations of light and night put out variety and bring in the half of nothingness, monotony. There we can take great baths of darkness, while, from time to time, for our pleasure, the Aurora Borealis shall scatter its rosy sheaves before us, like reflections of fireworks in hell!"

Life is a hospital, in which every patient is possessed by the desire of changing his bed

Perhaps you will say to me: "Are you sure that it is the real story?" What does it matter, what does any reality outside of myself matter, if it has helped me to live, to feel that I am, and what I am?

So hard is it to understand one another, dearest, and so incommunicable is thought, even between people who are in love!