Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Part I - I
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Philosophy of the Unconscious, a member of a secret
federation for the promotion of free love, the bearer of
the empty title of a “royal secretary,” and the author
of two one-act plays which had been performed at the
Royal Theatre, I had the greatest difficulty to make ends
meet. I hated life, although the thought of relinquishing
it had never crossed my mind; on the contrary, I had
always done my best to continue not only my own
existence but also that of the race. It cannot be denied that
pessimism, misinterpreted by the multitude and generally
confused with hypochondria, is really a quite serene and
even comforting philosophy of life. Since everything is
relatively nothing, why make so much fuss, particularly
as truth itself is mutable and short-lived? Are we not
constantly discovering that the truth of yesterday is the
folly of to-morrow? Why, then, waste strength and
youth in discovering fresh fallacies? The only proven
fact is that we have to die. Let us live then! But for
whom ? For what purpose? Alas!...
When Bernadotte, that converted Jacobite, ascended
the throne and all the rubbish which had been discarded
at the end of the last century was re-introduced, the
hopes of the generation of 1860, to which I belonged, were
dashed to the ground with the clamorously advertised
parliamentary reform. The two houses, which had taken
the place of the four estates, consisted for the greater
part of peasants. They turned Parliament into a sort
of town council, where everybody, on the best of terms
with everybody else, looked after his own little affairs,
without paying the least regard to the great problems of
life and progress. Politics were nothing more nor less
than a compromise between public and private interests.
The last remnants of faith in what was then “the ideal”
were vanishing in a ferment of bitterness. To this must
be added the religious reaction which marked the period
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