lower regions

How fortunate I am, not to be able to see in myself anything worth respecting and watching! To be small and stay small. And if a hand, a situation, a wave were ever to raise me up and carry me to where I could command power and influence, I would destroy the circumstances that had favored me, and I would hurl myself down into the humble, speechless, insignificant darkness. I can only breathe in the lower regions. [Robert Walser, Jacob von Gunten, p. 155)