Sternly and ruthlessly does Fate lead each one of us--and only in the
early days do we, occupied with all sorts of accidents, nonsense,
ourselves, fail to feel her harsh hand.--So long as we are able to
deceive ourselves and are not ashamed to lie, it is possible to live and
to hope without shame. The truth--not the full truth (there can be no
question of that), but even that tiny fraction which is accessible to
us--immediately closes our mouths, binds our hands, and reduces “to
negation.”--The only thing that is then left for a man, in order to keep
erect on his feet and not crumble to dust, not to become bemired in the
ooze of self-forgetfulness, is self-scorn; is to turn calmly away from
everything and say: “It is enough!”--and folding his useless arms on his
empty breast to preserve the last, the sole merit which is accessible to
him, the merit of recognising his own insignificance; the merit to which
Pascal alludes, when, calling man a thinking reed, he says that if the
entire universe were to crush him, he, that reed, would still be higher
than the universe because he would know that it is crushing him--while
it would not know that. A feeble merit! Sad consolation! Try as thou
mayest to permeate thyself with it, to believe in it,--oh, thou my poor
brother, whosoever thou mayest be!--thou canst not refute those ominous
words of the poet:
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing....[32]
I have cited the verses from “Macbeth,” and those witches, phantoms,
visions have recurred to my mind.... Alas! it is not visions, not
fantastic, subterranean powers that are terrible; the creations of
Hoffmann are not dreadful, under whatsoever form they may present
themselves.... The terrible thing is that there is nothing terrible,
that the very substance of life itself is petty, uninteresting--and
insipid to beggary. Having once become permeated with _this_
consciousness, having once tasted of _this_ wormwood, no honey will ever
seem sweet--and even that loftiest, sweetest happiness, the happiness of
love, of complete friendship, of irrevocable devotion--even it loses
all its charm; all its worth is annihilated by its own pettiness, its
brevity. Well, yes: a man has loved, he has burned, he has faltered
words about eternal bliss, about immortal enjoyments--and behold: it is
long, long since the last trace vanished of that worm which has eaten
out the last remnants of his withered tongue. Thus late in autumn, on a
frosty day, when everything is lifeless and dumb in the last blades of
grass, on the verge of the denuded forest, the sun has but to emerge for
an instant from the fog, to gaze intently at the chilled earth, and
immediately, from all sides, gnats rise up; they frolic in the warmth of
his rays, they bustle and jostle upward, downward, they circle round one
another.... The sun hides himself, and the gnats fall to the earth in a
soft rain--and there is an end to their momentary life.