278.--Wanderer, who art thou? I see thee follow thy path without scorn,
without love, with unfathomable eyes, wet and sad as a plummet which has
returned to the light insatiated out of every depth--what did it seek
down there?--with a bosom that never sighs, with lips that conceal their
loathing, with a hand which only slowly grasps: who art thou? what
hast thou done? Rest thee here: this place has hospitality for every
one--refresh thyself! And whoever thou art, what is it that now pleases
thee? What will serve to refresh thee? Only name it, whatever I have
I offer thee! "To refresh me? To refresh me? Oh, thou prying one,
what sayest thou! But give me, I pray thee---" What? what? Speak out!
"Another mask! A second mask!"
279. Men of profound sadness betray themselves when they are happy: they
have a mode of seizing upon happiness as though they would choke and
strangle it, out of jealousy--ah, they know only too well that it will
flee from them!
280. "Bad! Bad! What? Does he not--go back?" Yes! But you misunderstand
him when you complain about it. He goes back like every one who is about
to make a great spring.
281.--"Will people believe it of me? But I insist that they believe it
of me: I have always thought very unsatisfactorily of myself and about
myself, only in very rare cases, only compulsorily, always without
delight in 'the subject,' ready to digress from 'myself,' and always
without faith in the result, owing to an unconquerable distrust of the
POSSIBILITY of self-knowledge, which has led me so far as to feel a
CONTRADICTIO IN ADJECTO even in the idea of 'direct knowledge' which
theorists allow themselves:--this matter of fact is almost the most
certain thing I know about myself. There must be a sort of repugnance
in me to BELIEVE anything definite about myself.--Is there perhaps
some enigma therein? Probably; but fortunately nothing for my own
teeth.--Perhaps it betrays the species to which I belong?--but not to
myself, as is sufficiently agreeable to me."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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