by Gary Lachman
From Religion and the Rebel
COLIN WILSON
My solipsism I had arrived at by reading of Berkeley and Hume in some textbook of philosophy. I remember explaining to a group of friends in the playground at school why a bar of chocolate existed only in their own minds. Berkeley, added to Einstein and Eliot’s Hollow Men, made a vertiginous mixture.
Then, quite suddenly, my ‘nihilism’ received a check. A day came when I seriously contemplated suicide. It was during the long, hot summer of 1947, when I was working as a laboratory assistant. I arrived home one evening in a state of nervous exhaustion, and tried to ‘write away’ my tension in my journal. I found writing simply an aid to reflection, a crutch for my thoughts. And after about an hour of writing, I found my resistance slowly returning. I thought clearly: This must cease immediately; I will not go on living like this. I was all too familiar with these revivals of strength that was sucked away the next day. Then I saw the answer: Kill myself.
It cheered me immensely. I cycled to my evening classes with a feeling of having at last learned to master my destiny. I arrived late, and listened to the professor’s sarcasms without interest. It was our evening for analytical chemistry practice. A glass tray contained a mixture of powders which we had to separate. I took some in my watch glass, sniffed it, tested it in a Bunsen flame, and then went into the other room to the reagent shelves. Glass bottles contained cobalt chloride, silver nitrate, potassium iodide and various acids. In the middle there was a bottle of hydrocyanic acid. As I took it down, my mind made a leap, and for an instant I was living in the future, with a burning in my throat and in the pit of my stomach. In that moment I was suddenly supremely aware that what I wanted was not less life, but more. The sensation of drinking the acid was so clear that it was almost as if it had actually taken place. I stood there for a second with the bottle in my hand, but the experience was so vivid that it seemed to last for hours. Then, as someone stood beside me, I put it back, vaguely, as if I had taken it by mistake, and reached down for the methyl red. In one second, I had seen something that I have striven to see all my life since.
David Hume
[…] both prudence and courage should engage us to rid ourselves at once of existence when it becomes a burden. It is the only way we can be useful to society, by setting an example, which, if imitated, would present to everyone his chances for happiness in life, and would effectually free him from all danger or misery.
From Empedocles at Etna
MATTHEW ARNOLD
ACT II
Evening. The Summit of Etna
Empedocles
Alone! –
On this charr’d, blacken’d, melancholy waste,
Crown’d by the awful peak, Etna’s great mouth,
Round which the sullen vapour rolls – alone
Pausanias is far hence, and that is well,
For I must henceforth speak no more with man.
He has his lesson too, and that debt’s paid;
And the good, learned, friendly, quiet man,
May bravelier front his life, and in himself
Find henceforth energy and heart; but I,
The weary man, the banish’d citizen –
Whose banishment is not his greatest ill,
Whose weariness no energy can reach,
And for whose hurt courage is not the cure –
What should I do with life and living more?
No, thou art come too late, Empedocles!
And the world hath the day, and must break thee,
Not thou the world. With men thou canst not live,
Their thoughts, their ways, their wishes, are not thine;
And being lonely thou art miserable,
For something has impair’d thy spirit’s strength,
And dried its self-sufficing fount of joy.
Thou canst not live with men nor with thyself –
Oh sage! oh sage! – Take then the one way left;
And turn thee to the elements, thy friends,
Thy well-tried friends, thy willing ministers,
And say: – Ye servants, hear Empedocles,
Who asks this final service at your hands!
Before the sophist brood hath overlaid
The last spark of man’s consciousness with words –
Ere quite the being of man, ere quite the world
Be disarray’d of their divinity –
Before the soul lose all her solemn joys,
And awe be dead, and hope impossible,
And the soul’s deep eternal night come on,
Receive me, hide me, quench me, take me home!
Although the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein didn’t commit suicide, the idea wasn’t foreign to him. Three of his four brothers killed themselves. As a student he had hoped to study under Ludwig Boltzmann, but was prevented from doing this by Boltzmann’s suicide in 1906. We’ve seen that he was on his way to visit the poet Georg Trakl, but on arrival discovered that Trakl had killed himself. We’ve also seen that Wittgenstein was a great reader of Otto Weininger, who also killed himself. Wittgenstein was a gloomy character, who mortified himself over his homosexuality, and is said to have read Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov a dozen times. Like many figures in this book, he set an impossibly high standard for himself, and when he failed to achieve it, thought of killing himself. Although suicide per se does not figure in the works published in his life time, in the number of notebooks and journals to appear since his death from cancer in 1951, it is a frequent theme. Wittgenstein’s last words were, “Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life.”
From Notebooks 1914–1916
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
If suicide is allowed then everything is allowed.
If anything is not allowed then suicide is not allowed.
This throws a light on the nature of ethics, for suicide is, so to speak, the elementary sin. And when one investigates it, it is like investigating mercury vapour in order to comprehend the nature of vapour.
Or is even suicide in itself neither good nor evil?
George Gordon, Lord Byron, in a letter to Thomas Moore, 1817
I should, many a good day, have blown my brains out, but for the recollection that it would have given pleasure to my mother-in-law; and, even then, if I could have been certain to haunt her – but I won’t dwell upon these trifling family matters.
*
On 9 April 1951, the Iranian writer Sadegh Hedayat gassed himself in an apartment in Paris. An earlier attempt at suicide by throwing himself into the Marne was foiled when a couple, making love in a boat, paused to pull him out, perhaps the only time on record when coitus interuptus served a life-saving function. Hedayat, whose work since 2006 has been banned in his native country, is best known for his unclassifiable Kafkaesque fantasy, The Blind Owl, an eerie nightmarish novel whose closest relative is Alain Resnais’ 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad. Melancholy, desperation and a sense of doom characterize Hedayat’s writing, yet it’s unclear how he saw suicide as an escape from these. “The fact of dying,” he wrote, “is a fearful thing itself, but the consciousness that one is dead would be far worse.” Hedayat was concerned that in the great cosmic economy, the atoms making up his own body would, after his death, go to form the bodies of those he considered “rabble-men.” “There were times when I wished I could be endowed after death with large hands, with long sensitive fingers: I would carefully collect together all the atoms of my body and hold them tightly in my hands to prevent them, my property, from passing into the bodies of rabble-men.” (The Blind Owl [Cannongate: Edinburgh, 2000] here) Nevertheless, Hedayat, like Beddoes and Harry Crosby, had a fascination with death, as this prose poem makes clear.
“Death”
SADEGH HEDAYAT
What a sensational and frightening word “death” is! Even mentioning it rends the heart, rubs smiles off of lips and cuts joy to the quick; it brings on dullness and depression and drives all kinds of troubled thoughts through the mind.
Life and death are inseparable. If not for life, there would be no death. Thus, there must be death in order for life to have meaning. Everything, whether the largest star in the sky or the smallest particle on the earth, will sooner or later die: stones, plants, animals – they all come into existence and will successively be sent back to the world of inexistence. They will all turn into a handful of dust and fall into oblivion. However, the earth keeps spinning recklessly in the endless sky; nature resumes its life on the remains of the dead; the sun shines; the breeze blows; flowers fill the air with their fragrance; birds sing. All living creatures become excited. The sky smiles; the earth nourishes; the angel of death reaps the harvest of life with her old sickle… .
Death treats all living creatures equally and determines their fates impartially. It recognizes neither the rich nor the poor; neither the lowly nor the high. It puts human beings, plants and animals next to each other in their dark graves. It is only in the graveyard where executioners and the blood-thirsty stop acting tyrannically and innocents are not tortured. In the graveyard there is neither an oppressor nor an oppressed; young and old rest peacefully. What a peaceful and pleasant sleep! One will never see the next morning and will never hear the bluster and tumult of life. Death is the best haven, a refuge from pains, sorrows, sufferings and cruelties. With death the scintillant fire of lust and capriciousness goes out. All wars, disputes and killings among human beings end and their fierceness, conflicts and self-praise subside in the depth of cold dark soil and the narrow pass of grave.
If death did not exist, everyone would long for it. Cries of despair would rise up to the sky. Everyone would curse nature. How frightening and painful it would be if life were endless. When the hard and arduous test of life extinguishes the beguiling lights of youth, when the wellspring of kindness dries up, when coldness, darkness and ugliness befalls us, it is death which remedies the situation. It is death which puts our bent stature, our wrinkled faces and our afflicted bodies in their resting places.
Oh death, you lessen the sadness and sorrow of life and take its heavy burden off our shoulders. You put an end to the misery of wandering, ill-fated and unhappy men. You are the antidote for grief and despair. You make tearful eyes dry. You are like a compassionate mother who embraces and caresses her child and puts him to sleep after a stormy day. You are not like life – bitter and fierce. You do not drag man to aberration and depravity and throw him to a horrible whirlpool. You laugh at the meanness, lowness, selfishness, stinginess and greediness of human beings and hide their indecent acts. Who has not drunk your poisonous wine? Man has created a terrifying image of you. You, a glorious angel, are regarded as the raging Devil. Why are they afraid of you? Why do they double-cross you and accuse you? You are a shining light, but they take you for darkness. You are the auspicious angel of kindness, but they mourn loudly when you arrive. You are not the messenger of mourning and lamentation. You are a cure for sad hearts. You open the door of hope to the hopeless. You entertain the weary and helpless caravan of life and relieve them from the suffering of their journey. You are praiseworthy. You are everlasting …
From Twilight of the Idols
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (translator R.J. Hollingdale)
In a certain state it is indecent to go on living. To vegetate on in cowardly dependence on physicians and medicaments after the meaning of life, the right to life, has been lost ought to entail the profound contempt of society […] To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death of one’s own free choice, death at the proper time, with a clear head and with joyousness, consummated in the midst of children and witnesses: so that an actual leave taking is possible while he who is leaving is still there […] One perishes by no one but oneself. Only ‘natural’ death is death for the most contemptible reasons, an unfree death, a death at the wrong time, a coward’s death. From love of life one ought to desire to die differently from this: freely, consciously, not accidentally, not suddenly overtaken […] Finally, a piece of advice for messieurs the pessimists and other decadents. We have no power to prevent ourselves from being born: but we can rectify this error – for it is sometimes an error. When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live […]
*
The German dramatist Frank Wedekind is best known for his “Lulu” plays, Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box, made into an opera by Alban Berg and a film by G.W. Pabst. Wedekind was a robust character, and before his career as a playwright, he was a well-known cabaret star in Berlin. His familiarity with circus life influenced his Expressionist, aphoristic style, and Lulu, the centre of his best works, is an embodiment of the irrepressible life force. Spring Awakening, his first play, about teenage sexuality, caused a scandal, not only for its depiction of suicide, but also because of its masturbation scene. Here ‘life’, in the guise of a masked man, leads a youth away from the seduction of an early grave and the enticements of a self-destruction.
From Spring Awakening (translator Tom Osborn)
FRANK WEDEKIND
MORITZ. We can do anything. Just give me your hand. We can tremble with the timid young girl who thinks she is being idealistic, or with the stubborn old man who is breaking his heart from pride. We can share in the Kaiser’s fear when he hears a music hall song in the street, or the poorest labourer’s fear at the sound of the judgment day fanfare. We can see the actor’s face through his mask, and the poet trying to bury his face in the mask of reality […] We join in when God and the Devil drink each other under the table […] Peace, Melchior, contentment. Just your little finger will do. Your hair will be white before you get another chance like this.
MELCHIOR. If I join you, Moritz – it’s because I despise myself. I’m an outlaw. My courage is buried – like her. My feelings I’ve lost faith in. There’s nothing to stop me sinking […] I revolt myself, more than anything I can think of in the whole world.
MORITZ. So what are you waiting for?
(At this point, Wedekind’s symbol of ‘life’, The Man in the Mask, steps in)
MAN. You can hardly stand up, you’re so hungry. D’you think you’re fit to decide? (To MORITZ) You clear off.
MELCHIOR. Who are you?
MAN. You’ll see in time. (To MORITZ) Well, what are you waiting for? What d’you think you’re doing here anyway. Why isn’t your head in the right place?
MORITZ. I shot myself.
MAN. So why don’t you stay where you belong, in the past? Don’t try to unload your smell of the grave on us. Look at those fingers, they’re crumbling away already.
MORITZ. Please let me stay.
MELCHIOR. Who are you, sir?
MORITZ. Let me stay a bit longer, I won’t be in the way. There’s nothing but cold earth down there.
MAN. So what’s all this boasting about the sublime? What are you preaching? Deliberate lies from a ghost! You must be desperate […] (To MORITZ) You’ve been suffering an attack of hopelessness, quite temporary, brought on by circumstances. With a warm dinner inside you, you’ll come to your senses.
MELCHIOR. […] A warm dinner won’t help after what I’ve done.
MAN. That depends on the cook […] Come with me and expand your horizon. Come with me and see everything the world has to offer. Give me your trust and I’ll give you knowledge.
MELCHIOR. That’s what you say.
MAN. It’s a fact. D’you think you’re still in a position to choose?
MELCHIOR. I can reach to my friend here.
(Here the Masked Man refutes all claims that death is preferable to life.)
MAN. Your friend is trying to sell you something he hasn’t got. Is there anyone who’ll sit and smile if he’s still got the breath to laugh – or cry? Sublime smiling – what could be more hopeless?
MORITZ. He’s right, Melchior. I was boasting. Take his offer. Go with him.
MELCHIOR. Do you believe in God?
MAN. All according to circumstances.
M
ELCHIOR. So tell me who invented gunpowder.
MAN. Berthold Schwarz – alias Konstantin Anklitzen – a Franciscan monk about 1300 at Freiburg in Breisgau.
MORITZ. If only he hadn’t.
MAN. You’d have used a rope.
*
From Spleen and Ideal “Joyful Death”
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
In a rich fertile loam where snails recess,
I wish to dig my own deep roomy grave,
There to stretch out my old bones, motionless,
Snug in death’s sleep as sharks are in the wave.
Men’s testaments and tombs spell queasiness,
The world’s laments are not a boon I crave,
Sooner, while yet I live, let the crows press
My carrion blood from out my skull and nave.
O worms, black comrades without eyes or ears,
Behold, a dead man, glad and free, appears!
Lecher philosophers, spawn of decay,
Rummage remorseless through my crumbling head
To tell what torture may remain today
For this my soulless body which is dead.
*
The Stoics had eminently practical ideas about suicide. Given they lived during a particularly dangerous period – the Roman – the thought of an escape hatch must have been a comfort.
From the Discourses
EPICTETUS
[…] Above all, remember that the door stands open. Do not be more fearful than children. But, just as when they are tired of the game they cry, “I will play no more,” so too when you are in a similar situation, cry, “I will play no more” and depart. But if you stay, do not cry.[…] Is there smoke in the room? If it is slight, I remain. If it is grievous, I quit it. For you must remember this and hold it fast, that the door stands open.