Chapter 123
What One Can InventThere was once a young man who was studying to be a poet.
He wanted to become one by Easter, and to marry, and to live by
poetry. To write poems, he knew, only consists in being able to
invent something; but he could not invent anything. He had been
born too late—everything had been taken up before he came into the
world, and everything had been written and told about.
"Happy people who were born a thousand years ago!" said
he. "It was an easy matter for them to become immortal. Happy even
was he who was born a hundred years ago, for then there was still
something about which a poem could be written. Now the world is
written out, and what can I write poetry about?"
Then he studied till he became ill and wretched, the
wretched man! No doctor could
