Chapter I: Preface: To the First (anonymous) Danish Edition

I who write this book am still young and fair to look upon and rich
and very sad.

My youth and my beauty fill me with horror and I know not what to
do with the wealth which I possess. Daily my sorrow sings the same
song in my ears. It rustles in the folds of my train; it sighs in the
fragrant flowers at my breast. Through the long nights I sit on the
edge of my bed thrusting away the dream that comes with glaring eyes.

Now what I have written is a lie.

When I wrote it, it was the truth: now, it is a lie. When I saw it
set down on paper, I knew that my youth was my strength and my right;
that, if I were ugly, I could not live; and that, if I were poor, I
should die.

And now I am glad; and there is nothing on earth but my gladness.

I am in this case.

But I let the words stand as I wrote them, for I know that the time
will come--and that soon--when all of them will be true again ...
until they once more become a lie.

And so my book will grow, through still and stormy times, until the
day comes when I am again what I now am.

But that, too, is itself a lie. For I was always the same.

But there came a moment at which HE saw me as I am; and there my book
will end. For after that there was but little that differed from the
stories in other books and less still that I remember.

Be that as it may, it is true that the world contains a room in which
the radiant light of happiness flamed up before my eyes. And the
light went out and the door closed upon me.

And, if any one, from what I have here written, comes to think me a
great and abject sinner, then he is indeed right. But, if he thinks
that I have been cast off by the world, then he is at fault.

For I go with head erect and peacefully along the road that others
go; and I am welcome among the best. The lights in the high hall
stream down upon my hair; the men honour me with their desire, the
women with their ill-will.

There lives only one who knows my guilt and he has condemned me.

For it was HE that stayed in the room where the light burns. And she
that went out into the street was I.

I am indebted to the collaboration of my friend Mr. Osman Edwards--one of the foremost linguists in Europe--for his translation of the six songs, in which he has carefully preserved both the sense and the exquisite rhythm, and also for many suggestions regarding the accurate solution of such difficulties as occurred in the prose text.

ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS.

CHELSEA, ENGLAND, 10 December, 1907.

PART I

CORDT