He raced this way and that. A song of hell triumphant was...

He raced this way and that. A song of hell triumphant was in his breast.

[...] [H]e was now standing at the abyss, driven by an insane desire to peer into it over and over, and to repeat this torture.

At times he walked slowly and complained his limbs had grown very weak, then he would pick up astonishing speed, the landscape was making him anxious, it was so narrow he was afraid he would bump into everything.

... the world he has wanted to benefit from had a gaping rip in it, he had no hate, no love, no hope, a horrible emptiness, and yet a tormented desire to fill it. He had nothing. Whatever he did, he did in full self-awareness, and yet some inner instinct drove him onward. When he was alone he felt so terribly lonely he constantly spoke to himself aloud, called out, grew afraid again, it seemed to him as if the voice of a stranger had spoken to him. [...]

... The incidents during the night reached a horrific pitch. Only with the greatest effort did he fall asleep, having tried at length to fill the horrible void. Then he fell into a dreadful state between sleeping and waking; he bumped into something ghastly, hideous, madness took hold of him, he say up, screaming violently, bathed in sweat, and only gradually found himself again. He had to begin with the simplest things in order to come back to himself. in fact he was not the one doing this but rather a powerful instinct for self-preservation, it was as if he were double, the one half attempting to save the other, calling out to itself; he told stories, he recited poems out loud, wracked with anxiety, until he came to his senses. [...]

.... [I]t was the abyss of irreparable madness, an eternity of madness. [...]

The half-hearted attempts at suicide that he kept on making were not entirely serious, it was less the desire to die, death for him held no promise of peace or hope, than the attempt, at moments of excruciating anxiety or dull apathy bordering on non-existence, to snap back into himself through physical pain. [...]

Can't you hear it, can't you hear that hideous voice screaming across the entire horizon, it's what's usually called silence and ever since I've been in this quiet valley I can't get it out of my ears, it keeps me up at night, oh dear Reverend, if I could only manage to sleep again. [...]

He seemed quite rational, conversed with people; he acted like everybody else, but a terrible emptiness lay within him, he felt no more anxiety, no desire; he saw his existence as a necessary burden. - And so he lived on.

from Georg Buechner, Lenz