Why am I afraid to dance, I who love mus...

(with a suffering bewilderment) Why am I afraid to dance, I who love music and rhythm and grace and song and laughter? Why am I afraid to live, I who love life and the beauty of flesh and the living colors of earth and sky and sea? Why am I afraid of love, I who love love? Why am I afraid, I who am not afraid? Why must I pretend to scorn in order to pity? Why must I hide myself in self-contempt in order to understand? Why must I be so ashamed of my strength, so proud of my weakness? Why must I live in a cage like a criminal, defying and hating, I who love peace and friendship? (clasping his hands above in supplication) Why was I born without a skin, O God, that I must wear armor in order to touch or to be touched? (A second's pause of waiting silence--then he suddenly claps his mask over his face again, with a gesture of despair and his voice becomes bitter and sardonic.) Or rather, Old Graybeard, why the devil was I ever born at all?

O’Neill, Eugene. The Great God Brown. Prologue. 1926.

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