I have no
sensation of impending death in these attacks, and suicide seems
impossible; I do not want to die--far from it, I want very much to live,
to intensify life a thousandfold. It is an excessive appetite for
happiness, which becomes unbearable when it lacks food; and it is only
satisfied by intense delights, which give this great overflow of feeling
an outlet. It is not a state of spleen, though that may follow later ...
spleen is rather the congealing of all these emotions--the block of ice.
Even when I am calm I feel a little of this '_isolement_' on Sundays in
summer, when our towns are lifeless, and everyone is in the country; for
I know that people are enjoying themselves away from me, and I feel
their absence. The _adagio_ of Beethoven's symphonies, certain scenes
from Gluck's _Alceste_ and _Armide_, an air from his Italian opera
_Telemacco_, the Elysian fields of his _Orfeo_, will bring on rather bad
attacks of this suffering; but these masterpieces bring with them also
an antidote--they make one's tears flow, and then the pain is eased. On
the other hand, the _adagio_ of some of Beethoven's sonatas and Gluck's
_Iphigenie en Tauride_ are full of melancholy, and therefore provoke
spleen .
Pages:
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31