Verdi’s Iago who sings:
I believe in a cruel God, who has created me
in his image, and whom in anger I invoke.
From some villainous seed or a filthy atom
was I born.
I am wicked
because I am a man,
and I feel the primordial mud in me.
Yes! This is my faith!
I believe with a firm heart, just as
the young widow believes in church,
that the evil that I think and act
was laid on me by destiny.
I believe that the righteous man is a strutting idiot,
both in outward appearances and inward show,
everything in him is lies:
tears, kisses, gazes,
his sacrifices and his honour.
And I believe that man is the toy of treacherous fate,
from the seed in the cradle
to the worms of the grave.
After this mockery comes Death.
And then? And then?
Death is the great Nothing.
Heaven is an old fairytale.