I know the world was and always will be a cesspool...
(In the year 506 and in the year 2000, too!).
That there have always been crooks, Machiavellians, and suckers,
the happy and the bitter, the genuine and the fake...
But that the twentieth century is a display of brazen wickedness—that, no one can deny.
We live wallowing in a mess, all of us smeared in the same muck...
Today, it turns out it’s all the same: being honest or being a traitor!...
Ignoramus, sage, or crook; generous soul or con artist!
It’s all the same! Nothing is better!
A donkey is no different from a great professor!
There are no failing grades or rankings; the immoral have leveled the playing field.
If one lives a lie and another steals out of greed,
it makes no difference if he’s a priest, a mattress-maker, a King of Clubs, a shameless rogue, or a stowaway!...
What a lack of respect, what an affront to reason!
Anyone can be a gentleman! Anyone can be a thief!
Mixed in with Stavisky are Don Bosco and "La Mignón," Don Chicho and Napoleon, Carnera and San Martín...
Just like in the irreverent window display of a junk shop,
life has become a jumble; and—wounded by a broken saber—you see the Bible weeping against a water heater...
Twentieth century: a chaotic, feverish hodgepodge!...
He who doesn't cry doesn't get fed, and he who doesn't steal is a fool!
Go right ahead! Let it rip! We’ll all meet in the fiery furnace soon enough! Don't give it another thought—just sit back and watch; nobody cares if you were born honest!
It makes no difference whether a man slaves away night and day like an ox,
or lives off others, kills, heals, or lives outside the law...