It is this outer reach of existential abnegation _ the moment where subjective identity deserts itself and becomes enslaved without consciousness of its subjugated condition _ that Mirbeau consistently sought to decry with horror.
There always are and always will be some strange personalities in our country, whatever the conditions, who though peaceful and not at all lazy will ever be beggars by some mysterious behest of destiny. They are always unmarried, always slovenly, always humble and downtrodden. They are forever fetching and carrying for the newly rich and newly exalted. All initiative and enterprise are a burden and a grief to them. They seem to have been born with the stipulation that they shall never do anything on their own, but always dance to someone else__ tune. It is their destiny to do what other people tell them to do. And last but not least, no change of circumstances, no upheavals can make them prosper. They will always be beggars! I have, indeed, noticed them not only among the common people, but in all walks of life, in all groupings, magazines, and associations.
The House of the Dead
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There always are and always will be some strange personalities in our country, whatever the conditions, who though peaceful and not at all lazy will ever be beggars by some mysterious behest of destiny. They are always unmarried, always slovenly, always humble and downtrodden. They are forever fetching and carrying for the newly rich and newly exalted. All initiative and enterprise are a burden and a grief to them. They seem to have been born with the stipulation that they shall never do anything on their own, but always dance to someone else__ tune. It is their destiny to do what other people tell them to do. And last but not least, no change of circumstances, no upheavals can make them prosper. They will always be beggars! I have, indeed, noticed them not only among the common people, but in all walks of life, in all groupings, magazines, and associations.
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The stuff of nightmare is their plain bread. They butter it with pain. They set their clocks by deathwatch beetles, and thrive the centuries. They were the men with the leather-ribbon whips who sweated up the Pyramids seasoning it with other people's salt and other people's cracked hearts. They coursed Europe on the White Horses of the Plague. They whispered to Caesar that he was mortal, then sold daggers at half-price in the grand March sale. Some must have been lazing clowns, foot props for emperors, princes, and epileptic popes. Then out on the road, Gypsies in time, their populations grew as the world grew, spread, and there was more delicious variety of pain to thrive on. The train put wheels under them and here they run down the log road out of the Gothic and baroque; look at their wagons and coaches, the carving like medieval shrines, all of it stuff once drawn by horses, mules, or, maybe, men.
I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness _ a real thorough-going illness. For man__ everyday needs, it would have been quite enough to have the ordinary human consciousness, that is, half or a quarter of the amount which falls to the lot of a cultivated man of our unhappy nineteenth century.
_falling in love is a state of mental misery which has a restricting, impoverishing, and paralyzing effect upon the development of our consciousness.
Therefore, in my incontrovertible capacity as plaintiff and defendant judge and accused, I condemn this nature, which has so brazenly and unceremoniously inflicted this suffering_ since I am unable to destroy Nature, I am destroying myself, solely out of weariness of having to endure a tyranny in which there is no guilty party.
Pero me sobran motivos para ser feliz. Sobre todo cuando estoy en los brazos de mis tres misses. Son tres gentiles damas a las que se llega cuando las cosas adquieren una claridad inusitada: Miss Antropía, Miss Oginia y Miss Eria; pero no las comparto, como hago con el resto de mis mujeres.