Confusion In Thy Mind

For fifteen years I have diligently studied earthly life. True, I saw neither the earth nor the people, but in your books I sang songs, hunted deer and wild boar in the forests, learned to love....And beautiful love, like clouds ethereal, created by the magic of your poets' genius, visited me by night and whispered to me wonderful tales, which made my head spin. In your books I climbed the summits of Elbruz and Mont Blanca and saw from there how the sun rose in the morning, and in the evening overflowed the sky, the ocean and the mountain ridges with a purple gold.

From there I saw how above me lightnings glimmered, cleaving the clouds; I saw green forests, fields, rivers, lakes, cities; I heard sirens singing, and the playing of the pipes of Pan...In your books I cast myself into bottomless abysses, worked miracles, burned cities to the ground, preached new religions, conquered whole countries....
Your books gave me wisdom. All that non wearying human thought created in the centuries is compressed to a little lump in my skull. I know that I am more clever than you all.
And I despise your books, despise all worldly blessings and wisdom. Everything is void, frail, visionary and delusive as a mirage. Though you be proud and wise and beautiful, yet will death wipe you from the face of the earth like the mice underground; and your posterity, your history, and the immortality of your men of genius will be as frozen slag, burnt down together with the terrestrial globe.
You are mad, and gone the wrong way. You take lie for truth and ugliness for beauty. You would marvel if by certain conditions frogs and lizards should suddenly grow on apple and orange trees, instead of fruit, and if roses should begin to breathe the odor of a sweating horse. So do I marvel at you, who have bartered heaven for earth. I do not want to understand you.
That I may show you in deed my contempt for that by which you live, I waive the two  millions of which I once dreamed of as paradise, and which I now despise. That I may deprive myself of my right to them, I shall come out from here five minutes before the stipulated term, and thus shall violate the agreement.

Author's Note

..we are indeed an enigma.....always saying one thing and practicing another..