Or worse, what if I am really ambitious but too scared to admit it and then to find myself wanting? Lacking drive and skills, courage and the fear of humiliation and failure. That what happened was that many years ago I attempted to opt for a quiet life only to be faced with the depredations enforced by those who have meanwhile been worming their way into positions of power and influence.
“They employed the word decadence to describe a particular sensibility they shared, a languid disdain for anything so clumsy and naïve as sincere emotion. They congratulated themselves upon it – so refined, so sophisticated – while at the same time deploring it as an enervation of the energy and will.”
(Lucy Hughes-Hallett, The Pike: Gabriele d’Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War)
Caught between Eros and Thanatos we wriggle and squirm like d’Annunzio, a disgusting wretch, a proto-Fascist, sadist and fantasist. Yet in the distorting mirror we might catch glimpses of ourselves.
