Dramatist teenagers who are obsessed with love novels and romantic movies, naturally see me only through that lens when they hear about me.

 Dramatist teenagers who are obsessed with love novels and romantic movies, naturally see me only through that lens when they hear about me. I become Romeo in their eyes, for example, because they see the world as overflowing with “meaning.” They haven’t yet lived through anything that would force them to tear that belief away. These types can compose “touching” music, toss out “melancholic” aphorisms, or write “deep” poems. But beneath it all lies the same excessive inexperience and aesthetic performance. They’ve usually never touched the foundation that makes romanticism an empty shell, because they don’t have the shovels to dig that deep, so they stay dazzled by love. They cannot live without that so-called “prince of their dreams,” because they are both accustomed to and dependent on idealizing something outside themselves. Since they are always chasing after a shared, collective reality, their individual identity has hardly developed. And even if it has, their minds have not become so godlike as to make the universe kneel. They are human, all too human. That is why the free spirit must be especially alert to these types, because they know all too well how to pose as if they are deeply engaged with every branch of art and philosophy, yet at the root they remain far from any clear and original—that is, transcendent—understanding of existence. I don’t want the naive nature—in the sense of dull-wittedness—of their innocence to stain me. I want to shout to them, by my mere existence, that sex and love is not the center of life but only an aspect of it.