Martin Birck's Youth by Hjalmar Soderberg

But for Martin this was not life. For him it was a retreat, an asylum in which he had sought repose for a time, which he hoped to make short.

He read and thought. In books and in his own thoughts he searched for what one so often seeks in youth in order to forget in age that one has ever bothered about it: a faith to live by, a star to steer by, a concord in things, a meaning, and a goal.