‘Yes, by God,’ he shouted, ‘by God, that’s right! Blown out of shape by the wind. That’s it: you’ve said it.’ He began stamping up and down the room again, gesticulating. ‘The wind, the great wind that’s in me.’ He struck his forehead. ‘The wind of life, the wild west wind. I feel it inside me, blowing, blowing. It carries me along with it; for though it’s inside me, it’s more than I am, it’s a force that comes from somewhere else, it’s Life itself, it’s God. It blows me along in the teeth of opposing fate, it makes me work on, fight on.’ He was like a man who walks along a sinister road at night and sings to keep up his own spirits, to emphasize and magnify his own existence. ‘And when I paint, when I write or improvise my music, it bends the things I have in my mind, it pushes them in on
