Excerpt: ...radiant aloofness. His enthusiasm, he discovered, his high ardor, must be changed to patience and fortitude, the qualities which belonged to his temperament and years had to give place to those of an accomplished maturity; the romance of his circumstance deserted the surface to linger hidden, cherished, beneath all the practical and immediate rest. He began to perceive the inescapable disappointing difference between an idea, a conception of the mind, and its execution. The realization of that, he told himself, ...
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Excerpt: ...radiant aloofness. His enthusiasm, he discovered, his high ardor, must be changed to patience and fortitude, the qualities which belonged to his temperament and years had to give place to those of an accomplished maturity; the romance of his circumstance deserted the surface to linger hidden, cherished, beneath all the practical and immediate rest. He began to perceive the inescapable disappointing difference between an idea, a conception of the mind, and its execution. The realization of that, he told himself, the seduction of the lofty, the aerial, to earth, constituted success, power. The spirit and the flesh! And the flesh constantly betrayed the highest determinations. How he resented, distrusted, the mechanics, the traps and illusions, of an existence on an animal plane! His fervor, turned in upon itself, began to assume an aspect of the religious; his imposed revolt from the mundane world turned his thoughts to an intangible heaven, a spotless and immaterial hereafter. The white facades of Havana, intolerably gold under the sun and glimmering in 116 the tropical nights, the procession and clamor of the Dia des Reyes, the crowded theatres, the restaurants where, with no appetite, he ate as little as possible
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