On the Heights of Despair
Madness
For the normal man, life is an undisputed reality; only the sick man is delighted by life and praises it so that he won’t collapse.
We generally find it hard to understand that some of us must go mad. But sliding into chaos, where moments of lucidity are like short flashes of lightning, is an inexorable fatality.
The truly awful thing in madness is that we sense a total and irrevocable loss of life while we are still living. I continue to eat and drink, but I have lost whatever consciousness I bring to my biological functions. It is only an approximate death.
The premonition of madness is complicated by the fear of lucidity in madness, the fear of the moments of return and reunion, when the intuition of disaster is so painful that it almost provokes a greater madness. There is no salvation through madness, because no man with a premonition of madness overcome his fear of possible moments of lucidity.
One would welcome chaos if one were not afraid of lights in it.
Death
I like thought which preserves a whiff of flesh and blood, and I prefer a thousand times an idea rising from sexual tension or nervous depression to an empty abstraction.
One of the great delusions of the average man is to forget that life is death’s prisoner.
If death is immanent in life, why does awareness of death make living impossible? The average man is not troubled by his awareness because the process of passing into death happens simply through a diminution of vital intensity. For such a man there is only the agony of the last hour, not the long-lasting agony related to the very premise of life. From a grave perspective, every step in life is a step into death and memory is only the sign of nothingness.
All illnesses are heroic, but with a heroism of resistance, not of conquest.
In cases of depression, the awareness of death’s immanence in life creates an atmosphere of constant dissatisfaction and restlessness that can never be appeased.
The only fear is, in fact, the fear of death. Different kinds of fears are merely a manifestation of the same fundamental psychological reality in its various aspects.
Existence
How important can it be that I suffer and think? My presence in this world will disturb a few tranquil lives and will unsettle the unconscious and pleasant naivete of others. Although I feel that my tragedy is the greatest in history–greater than the fall of empires–I am nevertheless aware of my total insignificance. I am absolutely persuaded that I am nothing in this universe; yet I feel that mine is the only real existence.
Wouldn’t it be better if I buried my tears in the sand on a seashore in utter solitude? But I never cried, because my tears have always turned into thoughts. And my thoughts are as bitter as tears.
Is there anything on earth which cannot be doubted except death, the only certainty in this world? To doubt and yet to live–this is a paradox, though not a tragic one, since doubt is less intense, less consuming, than despair.
Active and objective men do not have enough inner resources to make an interesting problem of their own destiny. One must descend all the circles of an inner hell to turn one’s destiny into a subjective yet universal problem. If you are not burned to ashes, you will then be able to philosophize lyrically.
Knowledge is the plague of life, and consciousness, an open wound in its heart.
Not everybody loses his innocence: therefore not everybody is unhappy.
Why don’t I commit suicide? Because I am as sick of death as I am of life.
How can one still have ideals when there are so many blind, deaf, and mad people in the world? How can I remorselessly enjoy the light another cannot see or the sound another cannot hear? I feel like a thief of light. Have we not stolen light from the blind and sound from the deaf? Isn’t our very lucidity responsible for the madman’s darkness?
Compassion is as common as it is because it does not bind you to anything! Nobody in this world has yet died from another’s suffering. And the one who said that he died for us did not die, he was killed.
Morality can only make life a long series of missed opportunities!