Satan’s Diary quotes

January 18. On board the Atlantic.

This is exactly the tenth day since I have become human and am leading this earthly life.

My loneliness is very great. I am not in need of friends, but I must speak of Myself and I have no one to speak to.

The work is slow, difficult and repulsive for one who is accustomed to—I do not know what to call it—to embracing all in one breath and expressing all in a single breath.

It is not in vain that men respect their thinkers so much, and it is not in vain that these unfortunate thinkers, if they are honest and conscientious in this process of construction, as ordinary engineers, end in insane asylums.

I am but a few days on this earth and more than once have the yellow walls of the insane asylum and its luring open door flashed before my eyes.

I could have composed for your benefit one of those funny little stories about horny and hairy devils, which appeal so much to your meagre imagination, but you have had enough of them already and I do not want to lie so rudely and ungracefully.

I will lie to you elsewhere, when you least expect it, and that will be far more interesting for both of us.

And the truth—how am I to tell it when even my Name cannot be expressed in your tongue? You have called me Satan and I accept the name, just as I would have accepted any other: Be it so—I am Satan.

And you yourself are to blame for this, my friend: why is there so little understanding in your reason?

Your reason is like a beggar’s sack, containing only crusts of stale bread, while it is necessary to have something more than bread.

You have but two conceptions of existence: life and death. How, then, can I reveal to you the third? All your existence is an absurdity only because you do not have this third conception. And where can I get it for you?

to be transformed from Satan, “the mighty, immortal chieftain and ruler” into you? I am tired of seeking words that cannot be found. I will answer you in English, French, Italian or German—languages we both understand well.

I have grown lonesome in Hell and I have come upon the earth to lie and play.

You know what ennui is. And as for falsehood, you know it well too. And as for play—you can judge it to a certain extent by your own theaters and celebrated actors.

There is one moment in the process of my assumption of the human form that I cannot recollect without horror. That was when for the first time I heard the beating of My heart.

This regular, loud, metronome-like sound, which speaks as much of death as of life, filled me with the hitherto inexperienced sensation of horror.

Men are always quarrelling about accounts, but how can they carry in their breasts this counting machine, registering with the speed of a magician the fleeting seconds of life?

I was highly emotional. I was extremely good and affable. I was very eager to play, but I was not inclined to tragedy! Blood! How can any person of good breeding thrust his white hands under the nose of a stranger—

Hangmen have very white hands!

Do not think I am jesting. I did not feel well. In the daytime I still manage to subdue Wondergood but at night he lays his hands upon me.

This canaille Wondergood gets overgrown with hair as quickly as his golden skinned pigs. I complained about this to Toppi with whom, while waiting for Magnus, I was walking in the garden. And Toppi, thinking a while, replied philosophically:

“Yes, man sleeps and his beard grows. This is as it should be⁠—for the barbers!”

Magnus appeared. He was no more hospitable than yesterday and his pale face carried unmistakable indications of weariness. But he was calm and polite. How black his beard is in the daytime! He pressed my hand in cold politeness and said:

And she really did not indicate in any way that she was already acquainted with Me.

One must respect an incognito if one would remain a gentleman and only a scoundrel would dare to tear a mask from a lady’s face!

This would have been all the more impossible, because her father, Thomas Magnus, continued to urge us with a chuckle:

I do not know what Maria said. But I swear by eternal salvation—her gaze, and her entire uncanny countenance was the embodiment of an all-embracing meaning so that any wise word I might have uttered would have sounded meaningless.

The wisdom of words is necessary only for those poor in spirit. The right are silent.

Take note of that, little poet, sage and eternal chatterbox, wherever you may be. Let it be sufficient for you that I have humbled myself to speak.

That is a mistake: I have simply taken the wrong note book. No, it is not a mistake. It is worse. I play because my loneliness is very great, very deep—I fear it has no bottom at all!

I stand on the edge of an abyss and hurl words, many heavy words, into it, but they fall without a sound.

I hurl into it laughter, threats and moans. I spit into it. I fling into it heaps of stones and rocks. I throw mountains into it—and still it remains silent and empty.

In the meantime leave me alone with my great peace and … Maria. Boundless peace and … Satan!—isn’t that a splendid touch in my play? And what kind of a liar is he who can fool only others?

To lie to oneself and believe it⁠—that is an art!

After breakfast all three of us walked over the downy hills and slopes of the Campagna. It was still early Spring and only little white flowers gently brightened the young, green earth.

I permitted myself to yawn slightly and thus drew the attention of my host back to myself. But Magnus kept quiet for another moment, until the following words rang out through the air and well nigh hurled me out of my seat:

“But Maria loves you. Of course, you do not know that?”

“Yes, that is the truth: Maria loves you. I did not expect this misfortune. I failed to kill you, Mr. Wondergood. I should have done that at the very beginning and now I do not know what to do with you.

Well, I, too, will try to get used to it. Everything here is so well ordered that after rain comes sunshine and dries him who is wet, if he has not been in too great a hurry to die.

Everything here is so well ordered that there is not a single disease for which there is no cure.

This is so good! One may be ill all the time, provided there is a drug store nearby!

A fatal unconsciousness is driving me into your life, but of one thing I am quite certain: I am of the race of the free. I am of the tribe of the rulers. I come from those who transform their will into laws.

Conquered kings are taken into captivity but conquered kings never become slaves.

And when I shall perceive, above my head, the whip of a dirty guard and my fettered hands are helpless to avert the blow … well: shall I remain living with welts upon my back?

I do not love you yet, oh man, but on these nights I have been more than once on the verge of tears when I thought of your suffering, of your tortured body, and of your soul, relinquished to eternal crucifixion.

It is well for a wolf to be a wolf. It is well for a rabbit to be a rabbit. But you, man, contain both God and Satan⁠—and, oh, how terrible is the imprisonment of both in that narrow and dark cell of yours!

Can God be a wolf, tearing throats and drinking blood! Can Satan be a rabbit, hiding his ears behind his humped back! No, that is intolerable. I agree with you.

Give heed to all the words spoken by man from the day of his birth and you will think: this is God! Look at all the deeds of man from his very first day and you will exclaim in disgust: this is a beast!

Thus does man struggle with himself for thousands of years and the sorrow of his soul is boundless and the suffering of his mind is terrible and horrible, while the final judge is slow about his coming.⁠ ⁠… But he will never come.

I say this to you: we are forever alone with our life.

For a half hour I have been silent over this sheet of paper and it seemed all the time as if I had been talking and quite excitedly! I forgot that it is not enough to think, that one must also speak!

What a shame it is, man, that for the exchange of thoughts we must resort to the service of such a poor and stealthy broker as the word⁠—he steals all that is precious and defiles the best thoughts with the chatter of the market place.

In truth, this pains me much more than death or the beating.

“And was it not of him I have just spoken?

Is not the history of this piece of soap the history of your man, who can be beaten, burned, hacked to bits, hurled beneath the hoofs of horses, thrown to the dogs, torn into shreds⁠—without rousing his consuming wrath or even his anger?

But prick him with something—and the explosion will be terrible … as you will learn, Mr. Wondergood.”

Prove to me that God himself is subject to his own laws, i.e., to put it simply, that he cannot perform miracles, and tomorrow your shaven monkey will share the fate of loneliness and all the churches will be turned into horse stables.

The miracle, Wondergood, the miracle⁠—that is what holds human beings on this cursed earth!

”

“If you are pleased to think of me so flatteringly, Wondergood, I will tell you that I aim much higher. Nonsense, my friend!

Only bloodless moralists have never dreamt of a crown, just as only eunuchs have never tempted themselves with the thought of woman.

Nonsense! But I do not seek a throne—not even the Russian throne: it is too cramping.”

And these marbles! They have swallowed as much sunlight as an Englishman whiskey before they were driven into this place that they do not fear night at all. … And I, too, do not fear the night when I am near them.

Take care of them, man!

If this is what you call art, what an ass you are, Wondergood. Of course, you are cultured, you look upon art with reverence as upon religion and you have understood as much of it as that ass did on which the Messiah entered Jerusalem.

Here was a god who would not share his power with Olympus! And what a contempt for mankind! And what open contempt for me!

Here was a grain of earth that could make the devil himself sneeze!

And do you know how I concluded that evening? I took my pious Toppi by the neck and threatened to shoot him if he did not get drunk with me. And drunk we did get!

Frequently, very frequently it is the pitiful wail of burned, rusty iron, crawling along lonely, like the winter, the whistle of bent twigs, which drives thought cold and fills the heart with the rust of gloom and homelessness.

Everything that fire can touch has burned up within me.

Was it I who wanted to play? Was it I who yearned for the game? Then—look upon this monstrous ruin of the theater wrecked by the flames:

You regard human beings so far below you, you are so convinced of their fatal powerlessness that you do not fear them at all and are quite ready to pat the rattlesnake’s head: such a nice little rattlesnake!

One should fear people, comrade!

I know your game, but at times you were quite sincere in your prattle about man, you even pitied him, but from an elevation or from a sidetrack—I know not which.

“No, my friend: your contempt for human beings!

Your contempt and at the same time your naive faith in them arising from it.

You regard human beings so far below you, you are so convinced of their fatal powerlessness that you do not fear them at all and are quite ready to pat the rattlesnake’s head: such a nice little rattlesnake! One should fear people, comrade!

“It is all the same to you, Wondergood, but I cannot! Can’t you see: I cannot permit every miserable biped to call himself a man. There are too many of them, already. They multiply like rabbits, under the stimulus of physicians and laws.

Death, deceived, cannot handle them all.

It is confused and seems to have lost its dignity and moral authority. It is wasting its time in dancing halls. I hate them. It has become repulsive to me to walk upon this earth, fallen into the power of a strange, strange species.

We must suspend the law, at least temporarily, and let death have its fling. However, they themselves will see to this. No, not I, but they, will do it. Think not that I am particularly cruel, no—I am only logical.

I am only the conclusion, the symbol of equality, the sum total, the line beneath the column of figures.

You may call it Ergo, Magnus, Ergo! They say: ‘two and two’ and I reply: ‘four.’ Exactly four. Imagine that the world has suddenly grown cold and immovable for a moment and you behold some such picture:

If I happen to be walking, I halt. If standing, I run. If I happen to be asleep, no matter how deep my slumber, I awake and cannot fall asleep again. Very simple, extremely simple words:

Do not kiss that hand!

And now listen to what happened further:

This old devil, still emitting the odor of fur, this old clown in black, this sexton with hanging nose, this seducer of little girls—burst into tears! But still worse was it when, blinking my eyes, I, too, began to weep, I, “the wise, immortal, almighty!”

Thus we both wept, two deceived devils who happened to drop in upon this earth

, and human beings—I am happy to give them their due!—looked on with deep sympathy for our tears. Weeping and laughing at the same time, I asked:

“

Desert pilgrims, to accustom themselves to death, used to sleep in coffins: let Maria be your coffin

and when you feel like going to church, kissing a woman and stretching your hand to a friend, just look at Maria and her father, Thomas Magnus. Take her, Wondergood, and you will soon convince yourself of the value of my gift.

“

I am thinking that you are an evil, contemptible, stupid and repulsive beast!

I am thinking in what springs of life or hell itself I could find for you the punishment you deserve! Yes, I came upon this earth to play and to laugh. Yes, I myself was ready to embrace any evil.