“I go through the Cascine down to the Arno, where its yellow waters splash monotonously about a couple of stray willows. There I set and cast up my final accounts with existence. I let my entire life pass before me. On the whole, it is rather a wretched affair – a few joys, an endless number of indifferent and worthless things, and between these an abundant harvest of pain, misery, fear, disappointment, shipwrecked hopes, afflictions, sorrow, and grief.
I thought of my mother, whom I loved so deeply and whom I had to watch waste away beneath a horrible disease; of my brother, who full of the promise of joy and happiness died in the flower of youth without even having put his lips to the cup of life. I thought of my dead nurse, my childhood playmates, the friends who had striven and studied with me; all of those covered by the cold, dead, uncaring earth. I thought of my turtle-dove, who not infrequently made his cooing bows to me instead of his mate – All have returned, dust unto dust.
(‘Venus in Furs’ – Leopold von Sacher-Masoch)