I hope this letter will not surprise you too much. It has nothing to do with our business arrangements. Since I wrote I have gone through a kind of private revolution. It has been in the air for years with me. And now it has happened very very much has changed.

When we met in England and discussed ‘ideas’ I spoke, page 260 as nearly as one can, the deepest truth I knew to you. But even while I spoke it I felt a pretender—for my knowledge of this truth is negative, not positive, as it were cold, and not warm with life. For instance all we have said of ‘individuality’ and of being strong and single, and of growing—I believe it. I try to act up to it. But the reality is far far different. Circumstances still hypnotise me. I am a divided being with a bias towards what I want to be, but no more. And this it seems I cannot improve. No, I cannot. I have tried. If you knew how many note books there are of these trials, but they never succeed. So I am always conscious of this secret disruption in me—and at last (thank Heaven!) it has ended in a complete revolution and I mean to change my whole way of life entirely. I mean to learn to work in every possible way with my hands, looking after animals and doing all kinds of manual labour. I do not want to write any stories until I am a less terribly poor human being. It seems to me that in life, as it is lived to-day, the catastrophe is imminent; I feel this catastrophe in me. I want to be prepared for it, at least.

The world as I know it is no joy to me and I am useless in it. People are almost non-existent. This world to me is a dream and the people in it are sleepers. I have known just instances of waking but that is all. I want to find a world in which these instances are united. Shall I succeed? I do not know. I scarcely care. What is important is to try and learn to live—really live—and in relation to everything—not isolated (this isolation is death to me).

Does this sound fatuous? I cannot help it. I have to let you know for you mean much to me. I know you will never listen to whatever foolish things other people may say about me. Those other helpless people going round in their little whirlpool do not matter a straw to me.

All this sounds much too serious and dramatic. As a matter of fact there is absolutely no tragedy in it; of course.