Here was the great and feverish bodily groan of public life; life as spectacle; life as illusion; life as a restless miracle that can’t believe in itself, but must always seek another; life as this sighing, this moaning – these heart-felt utterances and inner stirrings were audible signs of universal disenchantment with our material life; and they joined together and made themselves into a felt thing, a muffled roar that resounded through the doorways, alcoves and crypts like a rushing flood, to drown everyone present – and they wanted it, you could see them drowning – drowning in colour, drowning in meaning, drowning in an answer to life.
