Page:The Life of Michael Angelo.djvu/40

 suffer the more. If he could only, at least, have dragged himself from action! But that was forbidden him. He could not do without acting. He acted. It was necessary for him to act. He acted?—Rather was he acted upon, carried away, like one of the damned souls of Dante, by the cyclone of his violent and contradictory passions.

How he must have suffered!

He addressed despairing appeals to God:

The reason why he craved for death was that he saw it would bring an end to his maddening slavery. With what envy he spoke of those who were dead!

“You no longer feel the fear of a change of being and desire … The course of the hours lays not violent hands upon you; necessity and chance guide not your steps … I can hardly write without envy.”

To die! To be no longer! No longer to be oneself! To break away from the tyranny of things! To escape from the hallucination of oneself!