I remembered my record of failures well, even dating back to a time when the matter of my split personality was entirely benign and in no way seemed to foreshadow those catastrophic consequences it bore later on. It began with my being attracted to two opposing things in equal measure: on the one hand there was history of art and culture, reading, to which I devoted much time, and a predilection for abstract problems; on the other, so excessive a love of sport and everything to do with the purely physical, muscular, animal world. I very nearly strained my heart lifting weights that were far too heavy for me; I spent almost half my life in sports grounds, I participated in many competitions, and until recently I preferred a football to any theatre production. I still harbor painful memories of the savage fights that were so typical of my youth, utterly devoid of any resemblance to sport. All this came to an end long ago, of course, although I still have two scars on my head. I recalled, as if in a dream, my classmates bringing me home caked in blood, my school uniform torn to pieces. This, however--much like the fact that I frequented the company of thieves and those generally enjoying a brief period of liberty between one prison and the next--didn't seem to hold any particular significance, although even then one may infer something odd about an equal, unfaltering love for such differing things as Baudelaire's poetry and a brutal punch-up with some thug. Later on, all this acquired rather different forms; far from seeing any improvement, however, the discrepancy and sharp contradiction so characteristic of my life became all the more glaring as it continued. It was to be found between what I felt inwardly drawn towards and what I so vainly struggled against--the tumultuous and sensual root of my existence. It interfered with everything, it obscured those meditative faculties I valued above all else, it wouldn't allow me to see things as I ought to have seen them, distorting them in its crude yet indomitable refractions, and it compelled me to perform a number of deeds that I invariably came to regret later on. It induced me to like things whose aesthetic insignificance I knew full well, things clearly in poor taste, yet the strength of my attraction to them could only compare with the simultaneous disgust I inexplicably felt towards them.
--Gaito Gazdanov, The Spectre of Alexander Wolf (translated by Bryan Karetnyk)
