My life came to a standstill.I could breathe,eat,drink,and sleep,and I could not help doing these things;but there was no life,for there were no wishes the fulfillment of which I could consider reasonable.If I desired anything,I knew in advance that whether I satisfied my desire or not,nothing would come of it.
Had a fairy come and offered to fulfil my desires I should not have know what to ask.If in moments of intoxication I felt something which,though not a wish,was a habit left by former wishes,in sober moments I knew this to be a delusion and that there was really nothing to wish for.I could not even wish to know the truth,for I guessed of what it consisted.The truth was that life is meaningless.I had as it were lived,lived,and walked,walked,till I had come to a precipice and saw clearly that there was nothing ahead of me but destruction.It was impossible to stop,impossible to go back,and impossible to close my eyes or avoid seeing that there was nothing ahead but suffering and real death--complete annihilation.
It had come to this,that I,a healthy,fortunate man,felt I could no longer live:some irresistible power impelled me to rid myself one way or other of life.I cannot say I *wished*to kill myself.The power which drew me away from life was stronger,fuller,and more widespread than any mere wish.It was a force similar to the former striving to live,only in a contrary direction.All my strength drew me away from life.The thought of self-destruction now came to me as naturally as thoughts of how to improve my life had come formerly.and it was seductive that I had to be cunning with myself lest I should carry it out too hastily.
I did not wish to hurry,because I wanted to use all efforts to disentangle the matter."If I cannot unravel matters,there will always be time."and it was then that I,a man favoured by fortune,hid a cord from myself lest I should hang myself from the crosspiece of the partition in my room where I undressed alone every evening,and I ceased to go out shooting with a gun lest I should be tempted by so easy a way of ending my life.I did not myself know what I wanted:I feared life,desired to escape from it,yet still hoped something of it.
And all this befell me at a time when all around me I had what is considered complete good fortune.I was not yet fifty;I had a good wife who lived me and whom I loved,good children,and a large estate which without much effort on my part improved and increased.
I was respected by my relations and acquaintances more than at any previous time.I was praised by others and without much self-deception could consider that my name was famous.And far from being insane or mentally diseased,I enjoyed on the contrary a strength of mind and body such as I have seldom met with among men of my kind;physically I could keep up with the peasants at mowing,and mentally I could work for eight and ten hours at a stretch without experiencing any ill results from such exertion.And in this situation I came to this--that I could not live,and,fearing death,had to employ cunning with myself to avoid taking my own life.
My mental condition presented itself to me in this way:my life is a stupid and spiteful joke someone has played on me.
Though I did not acknowledge a "someone"who created me,yet such a presentation--that someone had played an evil and stupid joke on my by placing me in the world--was the form of expression that suggested itself most naturally to me.
Involuntarily it appeared to me that there,somewhere,was someone who amused himself by watching how I lived for thirty or forty years:learning,developing,maturing in body and mind,and how,having with matured mental powers reached the summit of life from which it all lay before me,I stood on that summit--like an arch-fool--seeing clearly that there is nothing in life,and that there has been and will be nothing.And *he*was amused....
But whether that "someone"laughing at me existed or not,I was none the better off.I could give no reasonable meaning to any single action or to my whole life.I was only surprised that I could have avoided understanding this from the very beginning--it has been so long known to all.Today or tomorrow sickness and death will come (they had come already)to those I love or to me;
Nothing will remain but stench and worms.Sooner or later my affairs,whatever they may be,will be forgotten,and I shall not exist.Then why go on making any effort?...How can man fail to see this?And how go on living?That is what is surprising!One can only live while one is intoxicated with life;as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud!That is precisely what it is:there is nothing either amusing or witty about it,it is simply cruel and stupid.
