There is depth in a drunkard; it’s like a total refusal and abdication of what it is to be a human being. To drink steadily is a most serious manoeuvre against seriousness. In guilds of the past there was a kind of science of drinking, and the best at it were called Sublime. There’s a very deep and brutal irony in play here, for to destroy oneself methodically is directly opposed to the sublime, and so shares in the sublime. I’ve known two or three drunks who were certainly not mediocrities. More than once it’s been found in real poets. Sometimes people drink from too much clear-sightedness or too much feeling. Misers are sober from a kind of avarice of themselves, and this is the counter evidence.
Thirst is a long way off. Desire is a long way off and very weak. Every passionate person is a drinker without thirst. It seems to me that desire is sufficiently regulated by being satisfied, as animal life shows. It’s a part of wisdom, and disregarded too often, to follow one’s desires. Or, in other words, there is a remedy to the passions, which is pleasure; it’s a better tyrant and its reign is short. Anger and irritation are rather more to be feared, because they tend to increase the suffering. Nature has imposed limits to the pleasure of drinking, but not to the passion for drink. Far from the case of a passionate man rushing to what he desires, I often see quite the opposite, a man rushing to what he fears. I don’t easily believe that one man desires to kill another; but rather the criminal aims directly at consummating his own unhappiness, and knows it. It’s as if he’s tired of reason. He pounces upon the methods of force. Gamblers also know this rage and despair. There are tragic suicides. Orestes killing his own mother kills himself. Beware of these existences angry at existence. The drunkard contemplates this series of regrets and crimes, and drinks another glass.
There’s more than one kind of drunkenness, and this awesome word has more than one meaning. But in all senses there is a refusal to reflect, or the certainty of going wrong in one’s own eyes. There is a degree of extravagance, which is only healed by a worse extravagance. Fanaticism is eminently respectable in that it’s the greatest shame to blush before one’s own mind. A person who feels that the premises are weak jumps to the conclusion and commits every possible error. The refusal to listen comes from passion more often than from laziness. This can be seen in the least discussion and in proportion to the difficulty and uncertainty involved. The false leads to an excess of falsity. Note how fanatics in politics fly from the centre and wash up at the extremes. These are human beings and not even the worst; but it’s the imperfection of their thoughts, the very difficulty of thinking, that provokes them. Hence these cannibalistic parties.
No one completely avoids this tendency. Every socialist looks towards communism and feels a certain attraction, which would cure him of the evil of compromise. In the same way every moderate looks towards despotism and the benefits of war, which are also heroic remedies and a desired intoxication. Anger absolves. I understand why religious wars were the most ferocious, ferocious from thought, all from fear of doubting. One must begin with doubt, it’s an honour each of us owes to our own minds. It’s a doubt of weakness that is humiliating or, if you will, received doubt; but there is a forceful doubt, which comes from the firmest and most resolute thought. So Descartes did very well to begin the difficult fight with a step back.
Libres Propos, Première série, Quatrième année, n°3, 15 juillet 1924
English translation copyright © Michel Petheram
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