My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink, and
sleep, and I could not help doing these things; but there was no
life, for there were no wishes the fulfillment of which I could
consider reasonable. If I desired anything, I knew in advance
that whether I satisfied my desire or not, nothing would come of
it. Had a fairy come and offered to fulfil my desires I should
not have know what to ask. If in moments of intoxication I felt
something which, though not a wish, was a habit left by former
wishes, in sober moments I knew this to be a delusion and that
there was really nothing to wish for. I could not even wish to
know the truth, for I guessed of what it consisted. The truth was
that life is meaningless. I had as it were lived, lived, and
walked, walked, till I had come to a precipice and saw clearly
that there was nothing ahead of me but destruction. It was
impossible to stop, impossible to go back, and impossible to
close my eyes or avoid seeing that there was nothing ahead but
suffering and real death — complete annihilation.
It had come to this, that I, a healthy, fortunate man, felt I
could no longer live: some irresistible power impelled me to rid
myself one way or other of life. I cannot say I wished to kill
myself. The power which drew me away from life was stronger,
fuller, and more widespread than any mere wish. It was a force
similar to the former striving to live, only in a contrary
direction. All my strength drew me away from life. The thought of
self-destruction now came to me as naturally as thoughts of how
to improve my life had come formerly. and it was seductive that I
had to be cunning with myself lest I should carry it out too
hastily. I did not wish to hurry, because I wanted to use all
efforts to disentangle the matter. "If I cannot unravel
matters, there will always be time." and it was then that I,
a man favoured by fortune, hid a cord from myself lest I should
hang myself from the crosspiece of the partition in my room where
I undressed alone every evening, and I ceased to go out shooting
with a gun lest I should be tempted by so easy a way of ending my
life. I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired
to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it.
And all this befell me at a time when all around me I had what
is considered complete good fortune. I was not yet fifty; I had a
good wife who lived me and whom I loved, good children, and a
large estate which without much effort on my part improved and
increased. I was respected by my relations and acquaintances more
than at any previous time. I was praised by others and without
much self- deception could consider that my name was famous. And
far from being insane or mentally diseased, I enjoyed on the
contrary a strength of mind and body such as I have seldom met
with among men of my kind; physically I could keep up with the
peasants at mowing, and mentally I could work for eight and ten
hours at a stretch without experiencing any ill results from such
exertion. And in this situation I came to this — that I could
not live, and, fearing death, had to employ cunning with myself
to avoid taking my own life.
My mental condition presented itself to me in this way: my
life is a stupid and spiteful joke someone has played on me.
Though I did not acknowledge a "someone" who created
me, yet such a presentation — that someone had played an evil
and stupid joke on my by placing me in the world — was the form
of expression that suggested itself most naturally to me.
Involuntarily it appeared to me that there, somewhere, was
someone who amused himself by watching how I lived for thirty or
forty years: learning, developing, maturing in body and mind, and
how, having with matured mental powers reached the summit of life
from which it all lay before me, I stood on that summit —
like an arch-fool — seeing clearly that there is nothing in
life, and that there has been and will be nothing. And he was
amused. ...
But whether that "someone" laughing at me existed or
not, I was none the better off. I could give no reasonable
meaning to any single action or to my whole life. I was only
surprised that I could have avoided understanding this from the
very beginning — it has been so long known to all. Today or
tomorrow sickness and death will come (they had come already) to
those I love or to me; nothing will remain but stench and worms.
Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be, will be
forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why go on making any
effort? ... How can man fail to see this? And how go on living?
That is what is surprising! One can only live while one is
intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible
not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud! That
is precisely what it is: there is nothing either amusing or witty
about it, it is simply cruel and stupid.
There is an Eastern fable, told long ago, of a traveller
overtaken on a plain by an enraged beast. Escaping from the beast
he gets into a dry well, but sees at the bottom of the well a
dragon that has opened its jaws to swallow him. And the
unfortunate man, not daring to climb out lest he should be
destroyed by the enraged beast, and not daring to leap to the
bottom of the well lest he should be eaten by the dragon, seizes
s twig growing in a crack in the well and clings to it. His hands
are growing weaker and he feels he will soon have to resign
himself to the destruction that awaits him above or below, but
still he clings on. Then he sees that two mice, a black one and a
white one, go regularly round and round the stem of the twig to
which he is clinging and gnaw at it. And soon the twig itself
will snap and he will fall into the dragon's jaws. The traveller
sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish; but while
still hanging he looks around, sees some drops of honey on the
leaves of the twig, reaches them with his tongue and licks them.
So I too clung to the twig of life, knowing that the dragon of
death was inevitably awaiting me, ready to tear me to pieces; and
I could not understand why I had fallen into such torment. I
tried to lick the honey which formerly consoled me, but the honey
no longer gave me pleasure, and the white and black mice of day
and night gnawed at the branch by which I hung. I saw the dragon
clearly and the honey no longer tasted sweet. I only saw the
unescapable dragon and the mice, and I could not tear my gaze
from them. and this is not a fable but the real unanswerable
truth intelligible to all.
The deception of the joys of life which formerly allayed my
terror of the dragon now no longer deceived me. No matter how
often I may be told, "You cannot understand the meaning of
life so do not think about it, but live," I can no longer do
it: I have already done it too long. I cannot now help seeing day
and night going round and bringing me to death. That is all I
see, for that alone is true. All else is false.
The two drops of honey which diverted my eyes from the cruel
truth longer than the rest: my love of family, and of writing —
art as I called it — were no longer sweet to me.
"Family"...said I to myself. But my family — wife
and children — are also human. They are placed just as I am:
they must either live in a lie or see the terrible truth. Why
should they live? Why should I love them, guard them, bring them
up, or watch them? That they may come to the despair that I feel,
or else be stupid? Loving them, I cannot hide the truth from them:
each step in knowledge leads them to the truth. And the truth is
death.
"Art, poetry?"...Under the influence of success and
the praise of men, I had long assured myself that this was a
thing one could do though death was drawing near — death which
destroys all things, including my work and its remembrance; but
soon I saw that that too was a fraud. It was plain to me that art
is an adornment of life, an allurement to life. But life had lost
its attraction for me, so how could I attract others? As long as
I was not living my own life but was borne on the waves of some
other life — as long as I believed that life had a meaning,
though one I could not express — the reflection of life in
poetry and art of all kinds afforded me pleasure: it was pleasant
to look at life in the mirror of art. But when I began to seek
the meaning of life and felt the necessity of living my own life,
that mirror became for me unnecessary, superfluous, ridiculous,
or painful. I could no longer soothe myself with what I now saw
in the mirror, namely, that my position was stupid and desperate.
It was all very well to enjoy the sight when in the depth of my
soul I believed that my life had a meaning. Then the play of
lights — comic, tragic, touching, beautiful, and terrible — in
life amused me. No sweetness of honey could be sweet to me when I
saw the dragon and saw the mice gnawing away my support.
Nor was that all. Had I simply understood that life had no
meaning I could have borne it quietly, knowing that that was my
lot. But I could not satisfy myself with that. Had I been like a
man living in a wood from which he knows there is no exit, I
could have lived; but I was like one lost in a wood who,
horrified at having lost his way, rushes about wishing to find
the road. He knows that each step he takes confuses him more and
more, but still he cannot help rushing about.
It was indeed terrible. And to rid myself of the terror I
wished to kill myself. I experienced terror at what awaited me —
knew that that terror was even worse than the position I was in,
but still I could not patiently await the end. However convincing
the argument might be that in any case some vessel in my heart
would give way, or something would burst and all would be over, I
could not patiently await that end. The horror of darkness was
too great, and I wished to free myself from it as quickly as
possible by noose or bullet. that was the feeling which drew me
most strongly towards suicide.