No More Learning

I am quite ready to say so. I am
trying to say so, though they may not think it at the present moment.
This pitiless indictment I bring without pity against myself. Terrible
as was what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more
terrible still.

I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my
age. I had realised this for myself at the very dawn of my manhood, and
had forced my age to realise it afterwards. Few men hold such a position
in their own lifetime, and have it so acknowledged. It is usually
discerned, if discerned at all, by the historian, or the critic, long
after both the man and his age have passed away. With me it was
different. I felt it myself, and made others feel it. Byron was a
symbolic figure, but his relations were to the passion of his age and its
weariness of passion. Mine were to something more noble, more permanent,
of more vital issue, of larger scope.

The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into
long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being a
_flaneur_, a dandy, a man of fashion.
I surrounded myself with the
smaller natures and the meaner minds. I became the spendthrift of my own
genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of
being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in the search for
new sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought,
perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. Desire, at the end,
was a malady, or a madness, or both. I grew careless of the lives of
others. I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot
that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character,
and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some
day to cry aloud on the housetop. I ceased to be lord over myself. I
was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I allowed
pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace. There is only
one thing for me now, absolute humility.

I have lain in prison for nearly two years. Out of my nature has come
wild despair; an abandonment to grief that was piteous even to look at;
terrible and impotent rage; bitterness and scorn; anguish that wept
aloud; misery that could find no voice; sorrow that was dumb. I have
passed through every possible mood of suffering.