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The in of the manuscript bore as motto a variation of the well- known lines from Faust:

"Thou supersensual sensual woer A woman leads you by the nose"

--MEPHISTOPHELES

I turned the title page and read: "What follows has been compiled from my diary of that period, because it is impossible ever frankly to write of one's past, but in this way everything retains its fresh colors, the colors of the present"

Gogol, the Russian Moliere, says--where? well, so

So I have a very curious feeling as I a all this down The atrance of flowers, which overcoives me a headache The sures, ser at me Chubby-cheeked cupids ride on the arms of my chair and on h aloud, as I a with ordinary ink, but with red blood that drips fro scarred over have opened and it throbs and hurts, and now and then a tear falls on the paper

The days creep along sluggishly in the little Carpathian health- resort You see no one, and no one sees you It is boring enough to write idyls I would have leisure here to supply a whole gallery of paintings, furnish a theater with new pieces for an entire season, a dozen virtuosos with concertos, trios, and duos, but--what a--the upshot of it all is that I don't do much more than to stretch the canvas, smooth the bow, line the scores For I am--no false modesty, Friend Severin; you can lie to others, but you don't quite succeed any longer in lying to yourself--I a, in poetry, in music, and several other of the so-called unprofitable arts, which, however, at present secure for their masters the income of a cabinet minister, or even that of a minor potentate Above all else I am a dilettante in life

Up to the present I have lived as I have painted and written poetry I never got far beyond the preparation, the plan, the first act, the first stanza There are people like that who begin everything, and never finish anything I a?

To the business in hand

I lie in my , and the miserable little tohich fills me with despondency, really seems infinitely full of poetry Hoonderful the outlook upon the blue wall of high ht; h them like ribbons of silver! How clear and blue the heavens into which snowcapped crags project; how green and fresh the forested slopes; the raze, down to the yellow billows of grain where reapers stand and bend over and rise up again