"Affecting lightheartedness, I trod the moist pavements of the narrow streets. As though in tears and veiled, the lamps glimmered through the chill gloom and sucked their reflections slowly from the wet ground. The forgotten years of my youth came back to me. How I used to love the dark, sad evenings of late autumn and winter...." In this excerpt from a literary classic, a man meditates on his own nature and his difficult relationship with society. Maybe you understand his isolation; maybe not. Is alienation universal, or just for the few?