Winter, William, 1836-1917 / 2008-10-17 00:00:00
He has had
enough and more than enough of study, of struggle, of unfulfilled
aspiration. Lonely dignity, arid renown, satiety, sorrow, knowledge
without hope, and age without comfort,--these are his present portion;
and a little way onward, waiting for him, is death. Too old to play with
passion, too young not to feel desire, he has endured a long struggle
between the two souls in his breast--one longing for heaven and the
other for the world; but he is beaten at last, and in the abject
surrender of despair he determines to die by his own act. A childlike
feeling, responsive in his heart to the divine prompting of sacred
music, saves him from self-murder; but in a subsequent bitter revulsion
he utters a curse upon everything in the state of man, and most of all
upon that celestial attribute of patience whereby man is able to endure
and to advance in the eternal process of evolution from darkness into
light. And now it is, when the soul of the human being, utterly baffled
by the mystery of creation, crushed by its own hopeless sorrow, and
enraged by the everlasting command to renounce and refrain, has become
one delirium of revolt against God and destiny, that the spirit of
perpetual denial, incarnated in Mephistopheles, steps forth to proffer
guidance and help.
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