Franz Werfel, Twilight of a World, translated from the German by H. T. Porter-Lowe (New York: The Viking Press, 1937) ("From the book cover: "The last golden days of the Austrian Empire portrayed in a new kind of fiction--four novels and four short stories bound together with a new connective material to form a unified work.").
From "Not the Murderer":
"One thing I have realized:
Everything is meaningless which does not contribute to the world new blood, new life, new reality. All that matters is this new reality.
All the rest is of the devil. And above all, dreams, those horrible vampires to which all cravens and weaklings give themselves up; all those who refuse to crawl out of the chimney-corner of their childhood. An many refuse, many thousands, yes million prefer to hide in the din, dark retreats of their infancy. To me it seems that all of you, all your would courts and uniforms and orders, ephemeral republics, churches, industries, business preoccupations, fashions, art exhibitions, newspapers, and opinions--that you all and your world, represent nothing but a great damp, mouldy, cobwebby corner, cluttered with decorations, into which our childhood fear, clad in its manhood shape, creeps to pollute itself with madness and dreams.
Let him save himself who can!"
Id. at 565, 690-691.
