The Journal of a Disappointed Man

After tea went out into the Studio and watched these two enthusiasts paint. I must have glowered at them. I--the energetic, ambitious, pushing youth--of necessity sitting down doing nought, as unconsidered as a child playing on the floor. I recollected my early days in my attic laboratory and sighed. Where is my energy now? Mrs. ---- plays Chopin divinely well. How I envied this man--to have a wife play you Chopin! March 24. It is fortunate I am ill in one way for I need not make my mind up about this War. I am not interested in it--this filth and lunacy. I have not yet made up my mind about myself. I am so steeped in myself--in my moods, vapours, idiosyncrasies, so self-sodden, that I am unable to stand clear of the data, to marshal and classify the multitude of facts and thence draw the deduction what manner of man I am. I should like to know--if only as a matter of curiosity. So what in God's name am I? A fool, of course, to start with--but the rest of the diagnosis? One feature is my incredible levity about serious matters. Nothing matters, provided the tongue is not furred. I have coquetted with death for so long now, and endured such prodigious ill-health that my main idea when in a fair state of repair is to seize the passing moment and squeeze it dry. The thing that counts is to be drunken; as Baudelaire says, "One must be for ever drunken; that is the sole question of importance. If you would not feel the horrible burden of time that bruises your shoulders and bends you to the earth, you must be drunken without cease."