Why should they go back again into that jostling crowd
of phantoms, to that market-place where seller and
buyer cheat each other alike, where is noise and clamour,
and all is paltry and worthless? Why ‘with
impotence in their bones’ should they struggle
back into that world where the peoples, like peasant
boys on a holiday, are tussling in the mire for handfuls
of empty nutshells, or gape in open-mouthed adoration
before sorry tinsel-decked pictures, into that world
where only that is living which has no right to live,
and each, stifling self with his own shouting, hurries
feverishly to an unknown, uncomprehended goal?
No... no.... Enough...
enough... enough!
...The rest is silence. [Footnote: English in
the original.—TRANSLATOR’S NOTE.]
1864.
