My father was in business, a practical man but with an inclination towards art and interests outside the business. The eldest son (Heinrich) is a poet, but also a ‘writer’, with strong intellectual gifts, expert in criticism, in philosophy and politics. Then comes the second son (me), who is only an artist, only a poet, only a man of mood, without intellectual power, socially useless. Hardly surprising if finally the late arrival, the third son, devotes himself to the vaguest of the arts, the art furthest of all from the intellect, the art that requires nothing more than nerves and senses, and no brains at all – that is, music. That's what you call degeneration. But I find it devilishly nice. But, quite apart from that, with the impressions and influences he grows up amidst, the lad will scarcely develop into a business man