lived through life like a shadow

process of decay

Someone condemned to death says, or thinks an hour before his death, that if he had to live on a high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he'd only have room to stand, and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than die at once.

Only to live, to live and live, whatever it maybe.

Raskolniko meditates in Crime and Punishment text taken from the Outsider Colin Wilson

His way of seeing the world is pessimistic

and of heroes and Saints explorers and discoverers 

and of barren landscapes

the Romantic outsider is a dreamer of dreams

Thus I had wandered about the city, like a child in a dream inspired by a mighty faith in the marvellousness of everything. Up courts and down courts - in and out of yards and little squares - peeping into counting houses passages and running away.

Gone Astray, Night Walks, Charles Dickens