PESSIMISTIC OPTIMISM

I know that I am a guest but a stranger in the bustling human market of this great big city! I have sought in my existence the home of the hard-working and gentle workaday, and I have worked cleaning and polishing to make forty office rooms shine with a spotless sheen! Yet my shelter-home: Which at once became my home, and my roof, which against the natural laws, which have hitherto guarded and protected me, has been my home, and my roof, which has hitherto protected me, and hitherto only been a part of the good gift which the knights of fortune have entrusted to me with fearful care!

My bread: With the pure and carefully considered intellect of myself I am not yet seeking it myself - though the assembled weighty and decisive message-volumes of my manuscripts would be just enough - and if the profit-seeking, shapeless world would give me the opportunity, I could stand up with a working consciousness - and not be merely unemployed in a free profession - as many with a mocking arrogance repeat my prodigal name!

What I keep in my self-believing and ever-mortifying consciousness, My artificial backbone, which is the unchangeable and unpardonable harmony of my personal character, my inner conscience! - Would that many would sweep under the table My confessed purpose: That I can get money, a livelihood, and through these, in the fearful human jungle-world that has become grey, I can also retire from my own determination - fearing, of course, the eternal human conundrum: If I pay the right amount of money and work - although I am still living in the meagre times of breadwinner's misfortune, I am very proud of my parents' blessed selflessness!

I know the sooner young people get out of the cosy warmth of the family nest the easier their industrious ant-like planned lives can become, but for now I can rely on my parents' careful foresight until Damocles' fate, as the disgraced elect, takes pity on me and rewards my still pusillanimous and half-hearted optimism with a job!

To my parents' moral creed, ready to renew itself, I cling with unceasing stubbornness, with a rock-steadiness and a ridge of security: 'Be a man always! If you are happy, or if you are in the grip of inescapable necessity, and never give up the moral order of yourself, for then you can no longer know yourself, and remember the honest words of your conscience about who you are.