.
.
.
.
From the sidewalk where I stood....
.
I looked more closely I saw over the portal a bright shield, on which, it seemed to me, there was something written....
.
...letters dancing and then disappearing, returning and vanishing once more....
.
But wait, at last I succeeded in catching several words on end. They were:
.
MAGIC THEATER
ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY
.
I tried to open the door, but the heavy old latch would not stir. The display too was over. It had suddenly ceased, sadly convinced of its uselessness. I took a few steps back, landing deep into the mud, but no more letters came. The display was over. For a long time I stood waiting in the mud but in vain.
.
Then, when I had given up and gone back to the alley, a few colored letters were dropped here and there, reflected on the asphalt in front of me. I read:
.
FOR MADMEN ONLY!
.
My feet were wet and I was chilled to the bone. Nevertheless I stood waiting. Nothing more. But while I waited, thinking how prettily the letters had danced in their ghostly fashion over the damp wall and the black sheen of the asphalt, a fragment of my former thoughts came suddenly to my mind; the similarity to the track of shining gold which suddenly vanishes and cannot be found.
.
—STEPPENWOLF (Hermann Hesse)
.
.
.
.
.