" This conviction that life is a seeking without a finding, that its purpose is impenetrable, that joy and sorrow are alike meaningless, you will see written largely in the work of all great artists. It is obviously the final message, if any message is to be sought there at all, of the nine symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven. It is the idea that broods over Wagner's Ring, as the divine wrath broods over the Old Testament. In Shakespeare, as Shaw has demonstrated, it amounts to a veritable obsession. What else is there in Turgenev, Dostoievski, Andrieff? Or in the Zola of L'Assommoir, Germinal, La Debacle, the whole Rougon-Macquart series? "

― H.L. Mencken , H. L. Mencken on Joseph Conrad