The Outsider

…

Let us summarize our conclusions briefly:

The Outsider wants to cease to be an Outsider.

He wants to be “balanced.”

He would like to achieve a vividness of sense-perception (Lawrence, Van Gogh, Hemingway).

He would also like to understand the human soul and its workings (Barbusse and Mitya Karamazov).

He would like to escape triviality forever, and be “possessed” by a Will to power, to more life.

Above all, he would like to know how to express himself, because that is the means by which he can get to know himself and his unknown possibilities.

Every Outsider tragedy we have studied so far has been a tragedy of self-expression.

We have, to guide us, two discoveries about the Outsider’s “way”:

(1) That his salvation “lies in extremes.”

(2) That the idea of a way out often comes in “visions,” moments of intensity, etc. It is this latter possibility that we must investigate further in the next two chapters …


– from “The Great Synthesis,” chapter 7, of The Outsider (1956), by Colin Wilson