. . . Be Absolute Moderne.

For A Long Time I Found The Celebrities Of Modern Painting And Poetry Ridiculous. I Loved Absurd Pictures, Fanlights, Stage Scenery, Mountebanks Backcloths, Inn-signs, Cheap Colored Prints; Unfashionable Literature, Church Latin, Pornographic Books Badly Spelt, Grandmothers Novels, Fairy Stories, Little Books For Children, Old Operas, Empty Refrains, Simple Rhythms.

No One's Serious At Seventeen.

O Witches, O Misery, O Hate, To You Has My Treasure Been Entrusted! I Contrived To Purge My Mind Of All Human Hope. On All Joy, To Strangle It, I Pounced With The Strength Of A Wild Beast. I Called To The Plagues To Smother Me In Blood, In Sand, Misfortune Was My God.

I Found I Could Extinguish All Human Hope From My Soul.

Life Is The Farce Which Everyone Has To Perform.