modern
poet.

"These are my plans but I hardly think that I can carry them
through, although perhaps you can help me by suggestion. I have the
feeling that through the whole of last year my development did not
go forward but backward. It is as if by a mental or physical
overstrain, my whole personality has entered into a transition. I
have no joy in life, no sensation in love, no satisfaction in
labor. My will has become weak where it was strong. I am lazy, up
to an absolute dislike of everything, while I have been energy
itself. Often I have only the one desire, to end my life from mere
fatigue. If there had been any external reason for ending my life,
I should perhaps have done it long ago. I am so apathetic that I no
longer take myself seriously. My successes do not please me; the
idea of writing anything gives me anxiety. I have become less
resisting, more sweet, more soft, I should almost like to say, more
feminine. I became infatuated with a girl, simply because I knew
that she hates all men. The inaccessible is still the only thing
which can stimulate me somewhat. I have even written a poem on her,
but nothing can satisfy me in love. I consider my state a disease
of the will as a result of nervous exhaustion. I must find some one
who, with kindly power, reenforces my will system. I need a strong
mind--it may be a man or a woman. It would even be possible in the
latter case that I might marry her.

"Even the writing of this letter has fatigued me so much that I
should like best to sleep. In moments like the present I should
like best to throw myself down on the street or ... quickly ...
sink ... into the ocean. (I regret having made the little points.
They look as if my expressions are a pose.) Yet there are moods in
which I am entirely normal and no one fancies what I am passing
through. I have even become superstitious lately. Are there perhaps
beings which can absorb our energy? Perhaps another being has drunk
up my energy."

Authors run easily into such states. Here is another.

"I am a neurasthenic, and I am beginning to believe, a professional
one. My object in writing is to ask concerning the advisability of
my visiting you for treatment. I am ready to take the next train if
you say the word, if you believe you can help me. It seem