What if he were to have been right, in all his fear of death, because he would now end his life as one who was interrupted at the very beginning? In that house there was not one room where he had not been afraid of dying. […] And with an unparalleled horror he realized that what was within him was scarcely begun; that, if he were to die now, he would not be capable of living in the afterlife; that they would be ashamed over there, of his rudimentary soul, and would hide it away in eternity like a premature baby.
Rainer Maria Rilke, discarded extract from second draft of The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
