"this modernity made us ill - this indolent peace, this cowardly compromise (...) we became miserable, people called us fatalists. our fate - that was abundance, tension, a damming up of forces. we thirsted for lightning and action, we stayed as far away as possible from the happiness of weaklings, from 'resignation' ... there was a storm in our air, the nature that we are grew dark - because we had no path. formula for our happiness: a yes, a no, a straight line, a goal…"

“But quiet to quick bossoms is a hell,
And there hath been thy bane; there is a fire
And motion of the soul, which will not dwell
In its own narrow being, but aspire
Beyond the fitting medium of desire;
And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore,
Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire
Of aught but rest; a fever at the core,
Fatal to him who bears, to all who ever bore.
This makes the madmen who have made men mad
By their contagion! Conquerors and Kings,
Founders of sects and systems, to whom add
Sophists, Bards, Statesmen, all unquiet things
Which stir too strongly the soul’s secret springs,(...).
Their breath is agitation, and their life
A storm whereon they ride to sink at last,
And yet so nursed and bigoted to strife,
That should their days, surviving perils past,
Melt to calm twilight, they fell overcast
With sorrow and supineness, and so die;
Even as a flame unfed, which runs to waste
With its own flickering, or a sword laid by,
Which eats into itself, and rusts ingloriously.”