“Shame on you!” Albert said, as he forced my hand down. “What on earth is the meaning of this?”
“It isn’t loaded,” I said.
“Even so…what was going on in your mind?” He sounded impatient. “I simply cannot imagine how a man could be so foolish as to shoot himself. The very idea disgusts me.”
“Oh you people,” I cried, “who, when you talk about anything, must immediately declare: that is foolish, that is clever, that is good, that is bad! And what does it all amount to? Do you think you can uncover the vital circumstances of an action with your questions? Are you sure you know how to get at the heart of the matter: why did it happen? Why did it have to happen? If you were, you wouldn’t be so hasty with your decisions.”
“You will grant me, I am sure,” Albert said, “that certain actions are vicious whatever the reason may be.”
I shrugged and had to agree with him. “And yet, my dear fellow,” I went on, “here too you will find your exceptions. To steal is a sin, true, but the poor man who steals to save himself and his dear ones from starvation, what does he deserve? Pity or punishment? Who will cast the first stone against the married man who, in his first fury, murders his faithless wife and her vile seducer? And what about the young girl who in a blissful hour loses herself in the irresistible delights of love? Even our laws, cold-blooded and pedantic as they are, can be moved to withhold punishment.”
“That is something quite different,” said Albert. “A man who lets himself be overwhelmed by passion can be considered out of his mind, and is treated like a drunkard or a madman.”
“Oh you sensible people!” I cried, but I was smiling. “Passion. Inebriation. Madness. You respectable ones stand there so calmly, without any sense of participation. Upbraid the drunkard, abhor the madman, pass them by like the priest and thank God like the Pharisees that He did not make you as one of these! I have been drunk more than once, and my passion often borders on madness, and I regret neither. Because, in my own way, I have learned to understand that all exceptional people who created something great, something that seemed impossible, have to be decried as drunkards or madmen. And I find it intolerable, even in our daily life, to hear it said of almost everyone who manages to do something that is free, noble and unexpected: He is a drunkard, he is a fool. They should be ashamed of themselves, all these sober people! And the wise ones!”
“Now you are being fanciful again,” Albert said. “You always exaggerate, and you are certainly wrong when you classify suicide—and suicide is what we are talking about—as any sort of great achievement, since it can be defined only as a sign of weakness. For it is certainly easier to die than to stand up to a life of torment.”
I was about to break off the conversation, for nothing can so completely disconcert me as when a man presents me, who am talking from the heart, with an insignificant platitude. But I controlled myself because I had heard the same thing so often and let it vex me. Instead I said, with quite some vehemence, “You call it weakness? I beg of you, don’t let yourself be misled by appearances. Would you call a nation groaning under the unbearable yoke of a tyrant weak if it revolts and breaks its chains? Or the man who, in his horror because his house is afire, musters sufficient strength to carry off burdens with ease which he could scarcely have budged when he was calm? Or the man who, enraged by insults, takes on six men and overpowers them? Would you call these men weak? And if exertion is strength, why should exaggeration be the opposite?”
Albert looked at me and said, “Don’t be offended, but the examples you give don’t seem to fit at all.”
“That may be,” I said. “I have often been told that my way of combining things borders on the absurd. Let us try and see if we can imagine in some other way how a person feels who shoots himself, thereby throwing off the burden of a life that is generally considered to be pleasant. Because we have the right to talk about a thing only when we can feel for it.
“Human nature,” I continued, “has its limitations. It can bear joy and suffering, and pain to a certain degree, but perishes when this point is passed. Here there can therefore be no question of whether a man is strong or weak, but of whether he can endure his suffering, be it moral or physical. And I find it just as astonishing to say that a man who takes his own life is a coward, as it would be improper to call a man a coward who dies of a pernicious fever.”
“Paradox! Paradox!” cried Albert.
“Not to the extent you would have it,” I replied. “You must admit that we call it a fatal illness when Nature is attacked in a fashion that destroys a part of her powers and incapacitates the rest to such an extent that she cannot rise again and is incapable of restoring a normal flow of life. Well, my dear fellow, let us apply this precept to the spirit of man. Look at man, with all his limitations—how impressions affect him, how ideas take hold of him until finally a passion grows within him to such an extent that it robs him of his peace of mind and ruins him. The calm, sensible man overlooks the poor fellow’s plight to no avail and encourages him with as little success, just as the healthy man, standing beside a sickbed, cannot imbue the invalid with any of his strength.”
Albert found too much generalization in all this. I reminded him of a girl who had been found in the river, drowned, not long ago, and told him her story. She was a sweet young thing who had grown up in a world narrowed down by household duties and the regimentation of her daily chores. She knew no better pleasure nor could hope for anything more than a Sunday walk with girls like herself, in finery accumulated gradually, bit by bit. Perhaps she went dancing on our feast days or passed a few hours chatting with a neighbor, with all the liveliness of hearty participation in the cause of a quarrel or some other bit of gossip.
And then her passionate nature begins to feel more intimate needs and they are increased by the flattery of the men she meets. Slowly the little things that used to please her grow stale, until she at last meets a man to whom she is irresistibly attracted by a feeling hitherto unknown. Now she puts all her hopes in him, forgets the world around her, hears nothing, sees nothing, feels naught but him, longs only for him—he is her all. Unspoiled by the empty pleasures of fickle vanity, her desire has but one goal—to be his. In an eternal union with him she hopes to find all the happiness she lacks and enjoy all the pleasures she longs for. Promises, repeated over and over again, seem to assure the fulfillment of her hopes; bold embraces increase her desire and make her soul captive.
With her consciousness dulled, she wavers in the anticipation of happiness and reaches the highest possible degree of tension. At last she stretches out her arms to grasp all she desires—and her lover leaves her. Petrified, out of her mind, she stands in front of an abyss. All is darkness around her; she has no comfort, nothing to hope for, because he, in whom she had her being, has left her. She doesn’t see the wide world in front of her nor the many people who might make up for what she has lost. She feels alone, abandoned; and blindly, cornered by the horrible need in her heart, she jumps and drowns her torment in the embrace of death. And you see, Albert, that is the story of quite a few people, and tell me—would you not call it a sickness? Nature finds no way out of a labyrinth of confused and contradictory powers and has to die.
“What a wretch, the man who sees it happen and can say, ‘Foolish girl! If only she had waited, if only she had let time take effect, her despair would have left her; another would have come forward to comfort her.’ That is as if someone were to say, ‘The fool! He died of a fever. Why didn’t he wait until he regained his strength, until his physical condition improved and the tumult in his blood died down? Then everything would have turned out well and he would be alive today!’”
Albert, who still couldn’t see the point, had a few things to say—among others, that I had spoken about a simple girl. But he could not understand how any sensible person, not so limited, with a broader outlook on life, could be excused for similar behavior.
“My friend!” I cried. “A man is a man, and the little bit of sense he may have plays little or no part at all when passion rages in him, and the limitations of humankind oppress him. And what is more—but no, we’ll talk about it some other time,” I
