The Story of a Lover
Boni and Liveright
New York 1919
Copyright, 1919,
By Boni & Liveright, Inc.
All rights reserved
including the Scandinavian
Printed in the U.S.A.
[Pg 7]
The Story of a Lover
Chapter One
I was thirty years old when I saw her for the first time. We did notspeak, we were not introduced, but I knew that I must meet her; I knewthat love which had hitherto been gnawing in my imagination and mysenses, had found an object. I fell in love at first sight. She did notsee me—and I sometimes think she has never seen me since, although weare married and have lived together for fifteen years.
Life had prepared me to love. I was born sensitive and passionate, andhad acquired more emotion than I was endowed with. I had acquired[Pg 8] itpartly through ill-health and ignorance as a lad, and partly through anintense sex-imagination to which I habitually and gladly yielded. Myboyhood was filled with brooding, warm dreams, and partial experiences,always unsatisfied, and leaving a nature more and more stirred, moreand more demanding the great adventure.
Then, in youth and early manhood,—as a student, atraveler,—experiences came rich enough in number. The mysteriousbeauty and terrible attraction that woman has for the adolescent wasnot even relatively satisfied by my many adventures. Each left me moreunsatisfied than before. My hunger for profound relationship grew sostrong that all my ideas of beauty, in art, in life and in nature,seemed to be a mere comment, a partial explanation, of that which was aflame in my soul.
This explanation, this comment derived from art, while the ultimateresult was greater inflammation,[Pg 9] so to speak, yet often temporarilysoothed. This was especially true of philosophy and reflective poetry.I had no interest in metaphysics as such, but when, in the university,the magnificent generalizations of philosophy first came to me, Ithought for a time that I had found rest.
Dear Wordsworth! How he cooled my fevered senses and soothed my heartand mind; how he pleasingly introduced into every strong sensationan hygienic element of thought which made the whole into warmreflection rather than disturbing impulse! And dear Philosophy! Who,when taught to see things from the viewpoint of eternity, could beintensely unhappy about his own small Self and its imperfections? InPlato, in Spinoza, in Hegel, Fichte, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, I feltthe individual temperament struggling to free itself, as I had beenstruggling to free myself, from too great an interest in Self throughthe contemplation of[Pg 10] what seemed to be the eternal and unvarying truth.
But then, with returning strength, there came metaphysical skepticism.Th