You know how members of our race are pathologically inclined to weep and wail, especially over their own fate. Our greatest poets drank that poison and that was what led to their ruin. Until the age of forty or fifty they were revolutionaries—then they became intoxicated, addicted to pity, and the world proclaimed them saints. You seem to have the same ambition and you’re convinced your case is unique, that no one else has ever gone through the same process . . .”
