d everyday actions. Try to
call things what they are and it is a perfect realm of ever
increasing delight, for everything around us is lies from beginning
to end. But in general everything is lies and the ambitions are all
false and the education is no better than the shoes that are put on
Chinese female feet to stunt and deform them. What a sweet and
perfect simile. How did I happen to fall on it?"

Sofia 1900.

"I am thinking seriously of working just about twice as much as I did
last winter. If one would do anything the least in art one must give
oneself to it 24 hours and live these 24 hours double. There is no
art but good art and what is not best is not art at all. I hate
pretense. It only exists among people who know nothing. I know
nothing in any line but I would rather remain a nullity studying with
serious intentions than profit of or repose upon some meaningless
accidental achievement. Of all traits presumption is the most
insufferable. Oh, how one is anxious to put one's finger in pies one
is completely incapable of understanding."

After her stay in Bulgaria, Nelka return to Paris to finish her
studies before returning to America.

Paris 1901.

"Oh how stimulating this place is and how much study and achievement
there is. What a lecture I heard. It was more helpful to me than
anything I can remember for a long while. And what a book I have
got! A complete resignation without losing energy on one's work at
hand that is what one may strive for. Energy and conviction and elan
are not usually resigned to all obstacles and resignation is often
lassitude. I feel resignation so necessary and at the same time I
have such infinite faith in the power of 'il faut' (one must). The
worst thing I am afraid of is to become tired in the way I mean. I
think it is more hopeless than disgust and disillusion."

Paris 1900.

"Where can I read something holding your point of view which would be
more within my range of understanding than Hegel? I can't understand
free will as independent of our physical being and I don't see how
will can be something different from a kind of complicated reflex. I
am afraid there is no help for it. I will have to inform myself
somehow. Anyway my head always seems clearer over here. I wish I
could be so in America. You would not believe how waked up I can
get. I believe it is in the air. There is something both
stimulating and relaxing in the moral atmosphere that I feel only
here."

A