rst day I looked at
my reflection in the glass, and all I could do was just what I had done
then, simply cry, "I!"

I wanted to know the secret of life. I had seen men, groups, deeds,
faces. In the twilight I had seen the tremulous eyes of beings as deep
as wells. I had seen the mouth that said in a burst of glory, "I am
more sensitive than others." I had seen the struggle to love and make
one's self understood, the refusal of two persons in conversation to
give themselves to each other, the coming together of two lovers, the
lovers with an infectious smile, who are lovers in name only, who bury
themselves in kisses, who press wound to wound to cure themselves,
between whom there is really no attachment, and who, in spite of their
ecstasy deriving light from shadow, are strangers as much as the sun
and the moon are strangers. I had heard those who could find no crumb
of peace except in the confession of their shameful misery, and I had
seen faces pale and red-eyed from crying. I wanted to grasp it all at
the same time. All the truths taken together make only one truth. I
had had to wait until that day to learn this simple thing. It was this
truth of truths which I needed.

Not because of my love of mankind. It is not true that we love
mankind. No one ever has loved, does love, or will love mankind. It
was for myself, solely for myself, that I sought to attain the full
truth, which is above emotion, above peace, even above life, like a
sort of death. I wanted to derive guidance from it, a faith. I wanted
to use it for my own good.

I went over the things I had seen since living in the boarding-house.
They were so numerous that I had become a stranger to myself. I
scarcely had a name any more. I fairly listened to the memory of them,
and in supreme concentration I tried to see and understand what I was.
It would be so beautiful to know who I was.

I thought of all those wise men, poets, artists before me who had
suffered, wept, and smiled on the road to truth. I thought of the
Latin poet who wished to reassure and console men by showing them truth
as unveiled as a statue. A fragment of his prelude came to my mind,
learned long ago, then dismissed and lost like almost everything that I
had taken the pains to learn up till then. He said he kept watch in
the serene nights to find the words, the poem in which to convey to men
the ideas that would deliver them. For two thousand years men have
always ha