by Susan Sontag
The issue of my sanity cannot be easily dismissed, but after long consideration of the matter, I hold that I was not insane. Call it eccentricity if you like—but do not explain it away. The acts of the eccentric and the madman may well be the same. But the eccentric has made a choice, while the insane person has not; rather, he is abandoned to his choices, submerged in them.
I submit that I made a choice, admittedly an unusual one. I chose myself. And because of my absorption in myself and relative indifference to other people, my inward ear became acute enough to hear a mandate from myself which isolated me further from others. That mandate was, so far as I understand it, to live out to the fullest the meaning of privacy. In obeying this mandate I was of course aided by a temperament already predisposed to solitude. Well might I have appeared mad to those who judged by less inward standards. But how could I behave otherwise? The self within myself that was exposed in my dreams could only stammer and cringe. Public experiences have names. But the dedicated dreamer has no name for what he knows; if he acts on the nameless knowledge of the dream, he appears not to be acting, but falling into his acts, drowning in them.
Call it perturbation instead. Insanity and perturbation are two names, two judgments, for the same thing. We cure the insane. We quiet the perturbed. I am more quiet now.
More than quiet, I should say. I am fulfilled. For the true test of fulfillment is silence—as the meaning of fulfillment is not being filled, but becoming empty. Dreams filled my mind, I emptied them out. In order to accomplish this, it was necessary for me to give way to my dreams. And when they had done with me, they left me beached upon the shore of my old age.
The surgery that is endured, the room that is cleaned, the conviction that is expressed, the hand that is clasped, the class that is taught, the treaty that is signed, the dream that is interpreted, the object that is bought, the weight that is lifted—all these are events which do not, at least for me, have this fulfilling or emptying character. But the itch that is scratched, the book that is written, the hole that is dug, the bet that is won, the bomb that is exploded, the rage which ends in murder, the tears which are wept—these are what I should consider models of fulfillment and abolition. In this second list of acts, what is done is really concluded. And this, after all, is what everyone craves. To execute an intention amounts to abolishing a desire. The advent of anything brings with it mainly the problem of its disburdenment, its dissolution. The only thing remarkable about me is that I approached this task more comprehensively than most people do, thereby also narrowing my life more than most people care to do. For me, the very advent of myself suggested the problem of my own dissolution.
This is no small task! There is a great difficulty in concluding anything. Luckily, the conclusion of most things is not left up to us. For example, we do not have to decide when to die. We are awarded our deaths at random, without justice. This is the only true end of anything.
So my dreams, and my preoccupations with myself, came to an end at random. There was no intellectual symmetry in it. It was I who imported the meaning, by my own submission to the dreams and the way they narrowed my life. Perhaps, in a sense, my life itself ended with the passing of my dreams and their perturbations. But not really. I am a strong believer in posthumous existence. Is it not to the posthumous view that we all unconsciously aspire?—and that not only when we allow ourselves the hope of immortality. I have been more lucky than most. I have had both my life and after-life: this posthumous existence of mine prolongs itself in meditation and in the enjoyment of a well-cleared landscape. I have no expectations for the future. Far be it from me, however, to decide that the active part of my life is really over. Who knows if a new series of dreams may not someday be forthcoming, which will launch me on a series of speculations far different from those which I have experienced? Without expectations then, either of end or new beginning, I continue to live the life that is permitted me.
Now, as hard as it is, I must bring to a close what I have written. Since I must end, it should be without the effort to convince—as God, or Nature, does not try to convince us that it is time to die; convinced or not, we die. I shall conclude not by describing an act, nor with one of my favorite ideas, but with a posture. Not with words, but with silence. With a photograph of myself, myself as I shall sit here after finishing this page. It is winter. You may imagine me in a bare room, my feet near the stove, bundled up in many sweaters, my black hair turned grey, enjoying the waning tribulations of subjectivity and the repose of a privacy that is genuine.
THE BEGINNING
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PENGUIN CLASSICS
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First published 1963
Published in Penguin Classics 2009
Copyright © Susan Sontag, 1963
The moral right of the author has been asserted
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ISBN: 978-0-141-97650-1
FOURTEEN
* Here he pointed to me. I was sitting by the open casket, turning my wedding band between my fingers.