Little Poems in Prose

III THE ARTIST’S CONFESSION HOW penetrating are the ends of autumn days! Ah, keen like pain! For there are certain delicious feelings whose vagueness does not prevent them from being intense, and no point is sharper than that of the Infinite. How great is the delight of drowning one’s look in the vastness of sky and sea; solitude, silence, incomparable chastity of the blue; one little sail shuddering on the horizon is like a re- flection of my irremediable existence; the me- lodious monotony of the swell; all these things think by virtue of me, or I think by virtue of them (for in the vastness of the reverie the Ego is soon lost)—they think, I say, but musi- cally and picturesquely, without quibbles, syl- logisms, and deductions. At the same time these thoughts, whether they arise from myself or dart forth from things external, soon become too intense. En- ergy in pleasure creates uneasiness and posi- tive suffering. My nerves, too highly strung, no