Peace at last. All that was dross and residue vanishes from my soul as if it had never been. I’m alone and calm. It’s like the moment when I could theoretically convert to a religion. But although I’m no longer attracted to anything down here, I’m also not attracted to anything up above. I feel free, as if I’d ceased to exist and were conscious of that fact.

Peace, yes, peace. A great calm, gentle like something superfluous, descends on me to the depths of my being. The pages I read, the tasks I complete, the motions and vicissitudes of life – all has become for me a faint penumbra, a scarcely visible halo circling something tranquil that I can’t identify. The exertion in which I’ve sometimes forgotten my soul, and the contemplation in which I’ve sometimes forgotten all action – both come back to me as a kind of tenderness without emotion, a paltry, empty compassion.

It’s not the mild and languidly cloudy day. It’s not the feeble, almost non-existent breeze, hardly more perceptible than the still air. It’s not the anonymous colour of the faintly and spottily blue sky. It’s none of this, because I feel none of it. I see without wanting to see, helplessly. I attentively watch the non-spectacle. I don’t feel my soul, just peace. External things, all of them distinct and now perfectly still, even if they’re moving, are to me as the world must have been to Christ when, looking down at everything, Satan tempted him. They are nothing, and I can understand why Christ wasn’t tempted. They are nothing, and I can’t understand why clever old Satan thought they would be tempting.

Go swiftly by, life that’s not felt, a stream flowing silently under forgotten trees! Go gently by, soul that’s not known, an unseen rustle beyond large fallen branches! Go uselessly by, pointlessly by, consciousness conscious of nothing, a hazy flash in the distance amid clearings in the leaves, coming from and going to we don’t know where! Go, go, and let me forget!

Faint breath of what never dared live, dull sigh of what failed to feel, useless murmur of what refused to think, go slowly, go slackly, go in the eddies you have to have and in the dips you’re given, go to the shadow or to the light, brother of the world, go to glory or to the abyss, son of Chaos and of the Night, but remember in some obscure part of you that the Gods came later and that they will also pass.