accidental diary entry 18/03/2023

On Cioran

Cioran said something along the lines of: I would have killed myself if I didn’t have the option of contemplating it. Possibly Kafka, too, and possibly Nietzsche. Sensible people.

Dostoevsky, no. Dostoevsky couldn’t think about it because then he would have done it – I remember that line from William Carlos Williams:

The suicide is the perfect type of the man of action (again, perhaps misquoting slightly. To prove that I refuse to Google it).

I can’t contemplate it, though.

It only comes out – and quite easily – when I write, and I do feel slightly refreshed afterwards.

Christians stared at skulls, after all.

But this activity makes even more sense in a non-Christian context, and yet it is not widely promoted.

As if secular society abandoned death along with religion, or failed to effectively distinguish the two.

Maybe a Freud-style argument works here, with suicide much like incest: you have to discourage it or else…

The only difference is that suicide is treated as tragedy, while incest is…