everything, or almost everything that represents my work in the world during forty years has been destroyed by one and the same fist. So, if I allude to my “success” I do not refer to something that belongs to me but something that formerly was mine, like my house, my home, my security, my freedom, my ease of manner; I could not adequately describe the fall into the abyss which I with countless others equally innocent suffered, if I did not indicate the height from which it occurred, and the singularity and consequences of this destruction of our whole literary generation, an occurrence unique
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