Note to “Beman Ay Shab”

Someone said: “Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.”

And with the increase in the powers of the mind, one either becomes a prisoner or a member of the state. As Camus said: “The only conception of freedom I can have is that of the prisoner or the individual in the midst of the State.” 

But far better and far more noble than either the prisoner or member of the state is the ‘Don Juan’ according to Camus. He wrote:

“Is Don Juan melancholy? This is not likely. I shall barely have recourse to the legend. That laugh, the conquering insolence, that playfulness and love of the theater are all clear and joyous. Every healthy creature tends to multiply itself. So it is with Don Juan. But, furthermore, melancholy people have two reasons for being so: they don’t know or they hope. Don Juan knows and does not hope. He reminds one of those artists who know their limits, never go beyond them, and in that precarious interval in which they take their spiritual stand enjoy all the wonderful ease of masters. And that is indeed genius: the intelligence that knows its frontiers. Up to the frontier of physical death Don Juan is ignorant of melancholy. The moment he knows, his laugh bursts forth and makes one forgive everything. He was melancholy at the time when he hoped. Today, on the mouth of that woman he recognizes the bitter and comforting taste of the only knowledge. Bitter? Barely: that necessary imperfection that makes happiness perceptible!”

So forget hope. Melancholy without hope is better than hope with melancholy. And the best captivity and prison is the one at the hands of a beautiful woman at the behest of the Don Juan, not the one at the behest of the state or as a member of the state. Moreover, both asceticism and sensual pleasure – whereby a fine balance between the two of them are the requirement and sine qua non for a remedy to hysteria and neurosis – end up as “two aspects of the same destitution.”

It is therefore in melancholy whereby “the curtain must be rung down.” It is better to be kept in melancholy than to have one’s hopes become a reality. It is safer this way. Melancholy is a foolproof guide to the “ultimate end, awaited but never desired, the ultimate end is negligible.” After all, it is the ultimate end – namely, death – which determines everything.