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well, let us repent! But is not that equivalent
to criticising Providence, which has chosen me
for its scourge? and to saying to the powers:
“You have guided my destiny ill; you have made
me and commissioned me to chastise, to overthrow
idols, to stir up revolt, and then you withdraw
your protection from me and disown me
in an absurd way, telling me to creep to the
cross and repent!”
Strange “circulus vitiosus,” which I already
foresaw in my twentieth year, when I wrote
my drama Meister Olaf, and which has
constituted the tragedy of my life. Why be tormented
during thirty years in order to be taught by
experience what one had already foreboded?
When young I was sincerely pious, and you have
made me a freethinker. Out of the freethinker
you have made an atheist, and out of the atheist
a religious man. Inspired by humanitarian
ideas, I have been a herald of socialism. Five
years later, you have shown me the absurdity
of socialism; you have made all my prophecies
futile. And supposing I become again religious,
I am sure that, in another ten years, you will
reduce religion to an absurdity.
Ah! what a game the gods play with us poor
mortals! And therefore, in the most tormented
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