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For Jesse
An over-quoted but (for the eagerly unemployed) necessary passage from Nadja —
I hope, in any case, that the presentation of some dozen observations of this order as well as what follows will be of a nature to send some men rushing out into the street, after making them aware, if not of the non-existence, at least of the crucial inadequacy of any so-called categorical self-evaluation, of any action which requires a continuous application and which can be premeditated. The slightest occurrence, if it is truly unforeseen, turns all such things to idle talk. And after this, let no one speak to me of work — I mean the moral value of work. I am forced to accept the notion of work as a material necessity, and in this regard I strongly favor its better, that is its fairer, division. I admit that life’s grim obligations make it a necessity, but never that I should believe in its value, revere my own or that of other men. There is no use being alive if one must work. The event from which each of us is entitled to expect the revelation of his own life’s meaning — that event which I may not yet have found, but on whose path I seek myself — is not earned by work.