So far, I have spoken of my wife; it is time that I said something of myself. I am tall and thin, with an energetic face and marked, sharp features. Perhaps, on closer examination, certain weaknesses might be discerned in the form of my chin and the shape of my mouth; but the fact remains that I have a strong, determined face which does not at all represent my true character, though it partly explains some contradictions in it. Perhaps my most noteworthy characteristic is lack of depth. Whatever I do or say, the whole of me is contained in what I do or say, and I have nothing in reserve upon which to fall back in the event of my having to retreat. I am, in fact, a man all vanguard, without any main body or rearguard. From this characteristic comes my proneness to enthusiasm: I get excited over any trifle. This enthusiasm of mine, however, is rather like an uncontrolled horse taking a very high fence, having already thrown its rider, who lies biting the dust ten yards behind. What I mean is that it is an enthusiasm that almost always lacks the support of the intimate, effective strength without which any kind of enthusiasm dwindles into mere foolish desire and rhetoric. And I am, in fact, inclined to rhetoric — that is, to the substitution of words for deeds. My rhetoric is of the sentimental kind; I want, for instance, to be in love and often deceive myself into thinking that I am in love, when all that I have done is to talk about it — with great feeling, no doubt, but simply to talk about it. At such moments tears come easily, I stammer, I assume all the attitudes of overflowing emotion. But beneath these outward signs of fervour I often conceal a bitter, a positively mean, kind of subtlety which makes me deceitful and does not represent any real strength, being merely the expression of my egoism.
For all those who knew me superficially I was, before I met Leda, what can still be called — but not perhaps for very much longer — a dilettante. A man, that is, who is sufficiently well off to lead a life of leisure, and who devotes that leisure to the understanding and enjoyment of art in its various forms. I suppose that such an assessment, anyhow as regards the part that I played in society, was on the whole just. But when I was alone with myself, I was in reality anything but a dilettante: I was a man tormented with anguish and always on the border of despair. There is amongst the works of Poe a story which accurately describes the state of my mind at that time; it is the one in which he relates the adventure of the fisherman who is drawn with his boat into the coils of a whirlpool at sea. In his boat he circles all round the walls of the abyss, and with him, above, beside, and below him, circle the innumerable remains of former shipwrecks. He knows that as he goes round and round he is approaching nearer and hearer to the bottom of the whirlpool where death awaits him, and he knows where all those derelicts come from. Well, my life might have been compared to a perpetual whirlpool. I was held in the swirls of a black vortex, and above me, beneath me, and all round me I saw all the things I loved circling round with me — those things upon which, according to others, I lived, but which I saw overwhelmed with me in the same strange shipwreck. I felt that I was going round in a circle with everything good and beautiful that had ever been created in the world, and I did not cease for one single moment to see the black depth of the vortex that for me and all the other derelicts held the promise of an inevitable end. There were moments when the whirlpool seemed to grow narrower, to flatten out, to go round more slowly and restore me to the calm surface of everyday life; there were also moments when, on the other hand, its circles spun swifter and deeper, and then down I would go, whirling round and round, lower and lower, and down would go, with me, all human art and science. At such times I longed, almost, to be finally swallowed up. In my younger days these crises were frequent, and I can say with truth that there was not a single day between my twentieth and thirtieth years when I did not cherish the idea of suicide. Of course I did not really wish to kill myself (otherwise I should have done so), but this obsession with suicide nevertheless supplied the predominant colour of my mental landscape.
I thought often of possible remedies; and soon I realized that there were only two things that could save me — the love of a woman and artistic creation. It may seem ridiculous for me to mention two things of such importance in so casual a manner, as though it were a matter of a couple of ordinary quack remedies that could be bought at any chemist's shop; but this summary statement merely shows the extreme clarity I had attained, about the age of thirty-five, with regard to the problems of my life. As for love, it seemed to me that I had as much right to it as all other men on this earth; and as for artistic creation, I was convinced that I was led naturally towards it both by my tastes and also by a talent which, in my better moments, I was under the illusion that I possessed.
What happened, on the contrary, was that I never went beyond the first two or three pages of any composition; and with women, I never attained to that depth of feeling which convinces both ourselves and others. The thing that did me most harm in both my sentimental and creative efforts was, precisely, that facility of mine for enthusiasm, which was just as prompt to be kindled as it was quick to fade. How many times — in a kiss snatched from unwilling lips, in two or three pages written at furious speed — did I think I had found what I was seeking! And then, with the woman, I would slip at once into a wordy sentimentality that ended by alienating her from me; and, as I wrote, I would lose myself in sophistries, or else in a flood of words into which, for lack of serious inspiration, I was led by a momentary facility. My first impetus was good, and deceived both myself and others; but then some indefinable weakness, cold and discursive, would creep in. And I would realize that in reality I had not loved or written so much as wished to love and to write. Sometimes, too, I would find a woman who, either for her own advantage or out of pity, was prepared to allow herself to be taken in and to delude me as well; on other occasions the written page seemed to resist me and to invite me to continue. But I have anyhow one good thing about me — a diffident conscience which halts me in time upon the path of illusion. I would tear up the pages and, under some pretext or other, stop visiting the lady. And so, in such vain attempts, youth fled by.