Throughout the crowded ballroom
There’s naught but gladness and mirth;
Not one of them all that hath felt it
The weary burden of earth;
Not one of them all that hath felt it
Not one that could ever guess
How, under the veil of rejoicing,
Lurks the horror of emptiness.
Henrik Ibsen (1828 – 1906)
letter to Suzannah Thoresen Jan. 1856
(Image: Wilhelm Gause, “Hofball in Wien”)
