At this time, when I had considered these ideas and made my plans, I had already written and published various things, but I would not have dared to call myself an novelist or even an artist yet. And does not every real novelist have to be an artist as well. I did not even regard myself as a proper apprentice in this business, but only as a beginner, who is not a part of this business, but just groping his way, like a child trying to take his first steps. And in spite of this all, I already made plans, covering so much ground, extending so far into the future! Looking over these plans, I ought to have become pretty scared, because undoubtedly, it had to take several men's lives full of work, without disturbances, and without misfortune, to cope with this task I was facing in a genuinely literary, which is to say artistic, fashion. But still, I did not become scared, I rather remained very calm through all of this. I was asking myself: Is it really necessary to be a novelist, and to be an artist, to be allowed to write these kinds of things? Who would want and who could forbid someone to do it? Let's do it without the established world of literature, if it will only turn out right! And let's do it without art, if it will only have its effect and achieves what it is supposed to achieve! Whether novelists and artists would accept me as a "colleague", I had to ignore then. Though, I had my individual pride just as anybody else, and I had the highest possible opinion of art. But these thoughts of mine were different than other people's thoughts, especially those of my fellow authors. To be an artist, stuck me as being the highest thing to be on earth, and deeply within my heart, there lived the ardent wish to reach these heights, even if it should not be until the final hour before my death. That night when I got to see the "Faust" as a child, still lived unforgotten in my soul, and the resolutions I had made under its impression still possessed the very same willpower and the same hold over me as before. To write for the theatre! To write dramas! Dramas, which show how man shall and can rise up from the sufferings of earth to the joys of existence, from the slavery of the low urges to the purity and greatness of the soul. To be able to write something like this, it is necessary to an artist, not just any artist, but a genuine and true one. But all of my conceptions of art were something entirely different than this what today's critics describe as art; and thus I was left with no other choice than to postpone all of my wishes, which concerned me being allowed to be an artist in literature, an artist who is a true, valuable artist, for many, many long years and to remain until then what I was at the time, a beginner, who is not a part of the established business, and who made no pretension to becoming a member of it. As I had always been, as long as I had lived, by myself and lonely, I was already