The poet is much more the one who inspires, than the one who is inspired.
―Paul Eluard
His mindset was quite ordinary for a genius. Pretty erudite, slightly crazy, somewhat eccentric he was, with an original view on many things and the courage to defend it. Like all other typical geniuses (from those of ancient times to his contemporaries), he stood out from the crowd and was destined to take his rightful place in a very long row of those whose biography would be read from the textbook pages and whose monuments would be put in the areas where they lived for at least a short period of time. He would be another person in the endless list of regular household names such as Dante, Caravaggio, and Handel — and nothing more. However, it seemed that the fact did not depress him a bit.
He wasn’t a prideful person by nature; moreover, he didn’t consider anyone worse than himself in principle, believing that people were given different types of thinking, gifts, and inclinations from above so that they could pursue various goals and objectives. Thus, it wasn’t necessary to bother about surpassing someone in one way or another; instead, it was worth trying to fulfill those goals and objectives for which certain prerequisites were given. It was also importan
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