People point to Reading Gaol and say
‘That is where the artistic life leads a man.’
Well, it might lead to worse places
The more mechanical people to whom life is a shrewd speculation
Depending on a careful calculation of ways and means
Always know where they are going, and go there
They start with the ideal desire of being the parish beadle
And in whatever sphere they are placed
They succeed in being the parish beadle and no more
A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself
To be a member of Parliament, or a successful grocer
Or a prominent solicitor
Or a judge, or something equally tedious
Invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be
That is his punishment
Those who want a mask have to wear it

But with the dynamic forces of life
And those in whom those dynamic forces become incarnate
It is different
People whose desire is solely for self-realisation
Never know where they are going
They can’t know
In one sense of the word it is of course necessary
As the Greek oracle said, to know oneself:
That is the first achievement of knowledge
But to recognise that the soul of a man is unknowable
Is the ultimate achievement of wisdom
The final mystery is oneself
When one has weighed the sun in the balance
And measured the steps of the moon
And mapped out the seven heavens star by star
There still remains oneself
Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?
When the son went out to look for his father’s asses
He did not know that a man of God was waiting for him
With the very chrism of coronation
And that his own soul was already the soul of a king
I hope to live long enough and to produce work of such a character
That I shall be able at the end of my days to say
‘Yes! this is just where the artistic life leads a man!’
Two of the most perfect lives I have come across in my own experience
Are the lives of Verlaine and of Prince Kropotkin:
Both of them men who have passed years in prison:
The first, the one Christian poet since Dante;
The other
A man with a soul of that beautiful white Christ which seems coming out of Russia
And for the last seven or eight months
In spite of a succession of great troubles reaching me from the outside world
Almost without intermission
I have been placed in direct contact with a new spirit
Working in this prison through man and things
That has helped me beyond any possibility of expression in words:
So that while for the first year of my imprisonment I did nothing else
And can remember doing nothing else, but wring my hands in impotent despair, and say
‘What an ending, what an appalling ending!’
Now I try to say to myself, and sometimes
When I am not torturing myself do really and sincerely say
‘What a beginning, what a wonderful beginning!’