Had I at my disposal, not the pitiful word but a strong orchestra, I would compel all the brass trumpets to roar. I would raise their blazing mouths to the sky and would compel them to rave incessantly in a blazen, screeching voice which would make one’s hair stand on end and scatter the clouds in terror. I do not want the lying violins. Hateful to me is the gentle murmur of false strings beneath the fingers of liars and scoundrels. Breath! Breath! My gullet is like a brass horn. My breath⁠—a hurricane, driving forward into every narrow cleft. And all of me rings, kicks and grates like a heap of iron in the face of the wind. Oh, it is not always the mighty, wrathful roar of brass trumpets. 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: all the actors, too, have lost their lives therein⁠ ⁠… ah, all the actors, too, have perished, and brazen Truth peers now through the beggarly holes of its empty windows. + 

By my throne⁠—what was that love I prattled of when I donned this human form? To whom was it that I opened my embraces? Was it you⁠ ⁠… comrade? By my throne!⁠—if I was Love but for a single moment, henceforth I am Hate and eternally thus I remain. + 

Let us halt at this point today, dear comrade. It has been quite some time since I moved my pen upon this paper and I must now grow accustomed anew to your dull and shallow face, smeared o’er with the red of your cheeks. I seem to have forgotten how to speak the language of respectable people who have just received a trouncing. Get thee hence, my friend. Today I am a brass trumpet. Tickle not my throat, little worm. Leave me. + 