"When Walser first put on his make-up, he looked in the mirror and did not recognise himself. As he contemplated the stranger peering interrogatively back at him out of the glass, he felt the beginnings of a vertiginous sense of freedom that, during all the time he spent with the Colonel, never quite evaporated; until that last moment when they parted company and Walser’s very self, as he had known it, departed from him, he experienced the freedom that lies behind the mask, within dissimulation, the freedom to juggle with being, and, indeed, with the language which is vital to our being, that lies at the very heart of burlesque."
Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus. Still one of my favourite books of all time.
#Angela Carter
#Nights at the Circus
#Book
#Circus
#Burlesque
#Mask
#Identity