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First published January 1, 1966
I do not yet know what will be written here. But in the strokes of these letters at least some of what was in me will remain, no longer to perish in eddies of mist as if it had never been, or as if I had never known what happened. In this way I will come to see how I became what I am 鈥� this self that is a mystery even to me. And yet it is a mystery to me that I have not always been what I am now. I know these lines are muddled; my hand trembles at the task of disentanglement that I face, at the trial I now commence. Here I am everything: judge, witness, and accused.
鈥淚f you don鈥檛 think blackly, things can get blacker. Nothing depends on you. It doesn鈥檛 help to be either brave or cowardly, neither to curse nor to weep; nothing can help you. So sit and wait for your lot, and it鈥檚 already black since you鈥檙e here. That鈥檚 what I think: if you鈥檙e not guilty, then it鈥檚 their mistake. If you are guilty, then it鈥檚 your mistake. If you鈥檙e innocent, then misfortune has struck you, as if you鈥檝e fallen into a deep whirlpool. And if you鈥檙e not innocent, you鈥檝e earned it, nothing more.鈥�
They dreamed of rulers who were good, but who was that? As far as he was concerned, he dreamed of bribable ones, he liked them the most because there was a way to them. Worst are the honest ones, who need nothing, who have no human weaknesses, and know only about some higher law, which is almost incomprehensible to ordinary men. No one can do more evil than they can. They create enough hatred to last for a hundred years.