Page 14 of The Setting Sun

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“Mama, scold me please!”

“What for?”

“They say I’m a weakling.”

“Do they? A weakling…. I don’t think I need scold you about that any more.”

Mama’s goodness is unsurpassed. Whenever I think of her, I want to cry. I will die by way of apology to Mama.

Please forgive me. Just this once, please forgive me.

(New Year’s Poem)

The years!

Still quite blind

The little stork-chicks

Are growing up.

Ah! how they fatten!

Morphine, atromol, narcopon, philipon, panto-pon, pabinal, panopin, atropin.

What is self-esteem? Self-esteem!

It is impossible for a human being—no, a man—to go on living without thinking “I am one of the élite,” “I have my good points,” etc.

I detest people, am detested by them.

Test of wits.

Solemnity = feeling of idiocy.

Anyway, you can be sure of one thing, a man’s got to fake just to stay alive.

A letter requesting a loan:

“Your answer.

Please answer.

And in such a way that it will be good tidings for me.

I am moaning to myself in the expectation of humiliations of every sort.

I am not putting on an act. Absolutely not.

I beg it of you.

I feel as if I will die of shame.

I am not exaggerating.

Every day, every day, I wait for your answer; night and day I tremble all over.

Do not make me eat dirt.

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