Ирвин Ялом - The Schopenhauer Cure
to work in the group?»
«I agree,” said Bonnie, «but where to start? How about a follow–up on you and
your wife, Stuart? Last we heard she e–mailed you that she was thinking of leaving the
marriage.»
«It`s settled down and we`re back to status quo. She`s keeping her distance, but at
least things are no worse. Let`s see what else is pending in the group.» Stuart looked
around the room. «I can think of two items. Gill, how about you and Rose—what`s been
happening there? And, Bonnie, you said earlier today you had something to work on, but
it felt too trivial.»
«I want to pass today,” said Gill, looking downward. «I took too much time last
week. But the bottom line is defeat and capitulation. I`m ashamed to be back home in the
same situation. All that good advice from Philip, from all of you, was wasted on me. How
about you, Bonnie?»
«My stuff feels like small potatoes today.»
«Remember my version of Boyle`s law,” said Julius. «A small amount of anxiety
will expand to fill our whole anxiety cavity. Your anxiety feels just as awful as anxiety in
others that comes from more obviously calamitous sources.» He looked at his watch.
«We`re just about out of time, but do you want to open it up? Get it on the agenda?»
«To stop me from chickening out next week, you mean?» asked Bonnie. «Well,
that`s not a bad idea. What I was going to bring up has to do with my being homely and
fat and clumsy and Rebecca—and also Pam—being beautiful and...and stylish. But,
Rebecca, you, especially, open up a lot of painful old feelings for me—feelings I`ve
always had about being klutzy, homely, unchosen.» Bonnie stopped and looked at Julius.
«There, it`s out.»
«And on the agenda for next week,” said Julius, rising to signal the end of the
meeting.
14
1807—How
Arthur
Schopenhauer
Almost Became
a Merchant
_________________________
Aperson of high, rare mental
gifts who is forced into a job
which is merely useful is like
a valuable vase decorated with
the most beautiful painting
and then used as a kitchen
pot.
_________________________
The Schopenhauer family`s grand tour ended in 1804, and the sixteen–year–old Arthur,
with a heavy heart, honored his pledge to his father by commencing his seven–year
apprenticeship with Senator Jenisch, an eminent Hamburg merchant. Slipping into a
double life, Arthur fulfilled all the quotidian tasks of his apprenticeship but
surreptitiously spent every spare moment studying the great ideas of intellectual history.
He had so internalized his father, however, that these stolen moments filled him with
remorse.
Then, nine months later came the staggering event that marked Arthur`s life
forever. Though Heinrich Schopenhauer was only sixty–five, his health had rapidly
deteriorated: he appeared jaundiced, fatigued, depressed, and confused, often not
recognizing old acquaintances. On the twentieth of April, 1805, he managed, despite his
infirmity, to travel to his Hamburg warehouse, slowly climb to the upper loft of the
granary, and hurl himself out of the window into the Hamburg Canal. A few hours later
his body was found floating in the icy water.
Every suicide leaves a wake of shock, guilt, and anger in the survivors, and Arthur
experienced all these sentiments. Imagine the complexity of feelings Arthur must have
experienced. His love for his father resulted in intense grief and loss. His resentment of
his father—later he often spoke of his suffering from his father`s excessive hardness—
evoked remorse. And the wonderful possibility of liberation must have evoked much
guilt: Arthur realized that his father would have forever blocked the path to his becoming
a philosopher. In this regard one thinks of two other great free–thinking moral
philosophers, Nietzsche and Sartre, who lost their fathers early in life. Could Nietzsche
have become the Antichrist if his father, a Lutheran minister, had not died when
Nietzsche was a child? And in his autobiography Sartre expresses his relief that he was
not burdened with the search for his father`s approbation. Others, Kierkegaard and Kafka,
for example, were not so fortunate: all their lives they were oppressed by the weight of
their fathers` judgment.
Though Arthur Schopenhauer`s work contains an enormous range of ideas, topics,
historical and scientific curiosities, notions, and sentiments, there are to be found only a
couple of personal tender passages, and each pertains to Heinrich Schopenhauer. In one
passage Arthur expresses pride in his father`s honest admission that he was in business to
make money and compares his father`s forth–rightness to the duplicity of many of his
fellow philosophers (particularly Hegel and Fichte), who grasp for wealth, power, and
fame all the while pretending they are working for humanity.
At the age of sixty he planned to dedicate his complete works to the memory of his
father. He worked and reworked the wording of his dedication, which ultimately was
never published. One version began: «Noble, excellent spirit to whom I owe everything
that I am and that I achieve...any one finding in my work any kind of joy, consolation,
instruction, let him hear your name and know that, if Heinrich Schopenhauer had not
been the man he was, Arthur Schopenhauer would have perished a hundred times.»
The strength of Arthur`s filial devotion remains puzzling, given Heinrich`s lack of
any overt affection toward his son. His letters to Arthur are laced with criticism. For
example: «Dancing and riding do not make for a livelihood for a merchant whose letters
have to be read and must therefore be well written. Now and then I find that the capital
letters in your hand are still veritable monstrosities.» Or: «Do not acquire a round back,
which looks ghastly.... if in the dining room one catches sight of someone stooping, one
takes him for a disguised tailor or cobbler.» In his very last letter Heinrich instructed his
son: «With reference to walking and sitting upright, I advise you request everyone you
are with to give you a blow whenever you are caught oblivious of this great matter. This
is what children of Princes have done, not minding the pain for a short time, rather than
appear as oafs all their lives.»
Arthur was his father`s son, resembling him not only physically but
temperamentally. When he was seventeen, his mother wrote him: «I know too well how
little you had of a happy sense of youth, how large the disposition for melancholic
brooding you received as a sad share of your inheritance from your father.»
Arthur also inherited his father`s deep sense of integrity, which played a decisive
role in the dilemma that confronted him following his father`s death: should he stay in the
apprenticeship even though he hated the world of commerce? Eventually, he decided to
do what his father would have done: honor his pledge.
He wrote of his decision, «I continued to hold my position with my merchant
patron, partly because my excessive grief had broken the energy of my spirit, partly
because I would have had a guilty conscience were I to rescind my father`s decision so
soon after his death.»
If Arthur felt immobilized and duty–bound after his father`s suicide, his mother had
no such inclinations. With the speed of a whirlwind she changed her entire life. In a letter
to the seventeen–year–old Arthur she wrote: «Your character is so completely different
from mine: you are by nature undecided, I myself am too fast, too resolute.» After a few
months of widowhood she sold the Schopenhauer mansion, liquidated the venerable
family business, and moved away from Hamburg. She boasted to Arthur, «I will always
choose the most exciting option. Consider my choice of residence: instead of moving to
my hometown, back to my friends and relatives, like every other woman would have
done in my stead, I chose Weimar, which was almost unknown to me.»
Why Weimar? Johanna was ambitious and yearned to be close to the epicenter of
German culture. Supremely confident of her social abilities, she knew she could make
good things happen, and, indeed, within months she had created an extraordinary new life
for herself: she established the liveliest salon of Weimar and developed a close friendship
with Goethe and many other leading writers and artists. Soon she began a career, first as a
successful writer of travel journals chronicling the Schopenhauer family`s tour and a trip
to southern France; then, with Goethe`s urging, she turned to fiction and wrote a series of
romantic novels. She was one of the first truly liberated women and was Germany`s first
woman to earn her living as a writer. For the next decade Johanna Schopenhauer became
a renowned novelist, the Danielle Steel of nineteenth–century Germany, and for decades
Arthur Schopenhauer was known only as «Johanna Schopenhauer`s son.» In the late
1820s Johanna`s complete works were published in a twenty–volume edition.
Though history (based greatly on Arthur`s scathing criticism of his mother) has
generally presented Johanna as narcissistic and uncaring, there is no doubt that she, and
only she, liberated Arthur from his servitude and started him on his way to philosophy.
The instrument of delivery was a fateful letter she wrote to Arthur in April 1807, two
years after his father`s suicide.
Dear Arthur,
The serious and calm tone of your March 28th letter, flowing from your mind into my
mind, woke me up and revealed that you might be on your way to totally missing
your vocation! That is why I have to do each and every thing to save you, however
possible; I know what it means to live a life repugnant to one`s soul; and if it is
possible, I will spare you, my dear son, this misery. Oh, dear dear Arthur, why was it
that my voice counted so little; what you want now, was in fact then my warmest
wish; how hard I strove to make it happen, despite everything one said against me....
if you do not wish to be taken into the honourable Philistine order, I, my dear Arthur,
truly don`t want to put any obstacle into your way; it is just you who have to seek
your own way and choose it. Then I will advise and help, where and how I can. First
try to come to peace with yourself…remember you must choose studies that promise
you a good salary, not only because it is the only way you can live, for you will never
be rich enough to live from your inheritance alone. If you have made your choice, tell
me so, but you have to take this decision on your own.... If you feel the strength and
heart to do this, I will willingly give you my hand. But just don`t imagine life as a
complete learned man to be too delightful. I now see it around me, dear Arthur. It is a
tiring, troublesome life full of work; only the delight in doing it gives it its charm.
One doesn`t get rich with it; as a writer, one acquires with difficulty what one needs
for survival.... To make your life as a writer you have to be able to produce
something excellent.... now, more than ever, there is a need of brilliant heads. Arthur,
think about it carefully, and choose, but then stay firm; let your perseverance never
fail, and you will safely achieve your goal. Choose what you want...but with tears in
my eyes I implore you: do not cheat on yourself. Treat yourself seriously and
honestly. The welfare of your life is at stake, as well as the happiness of my old days;
because only you and Adele can hopefully replace my lost youth. I couldn`t bear it to
know that you are unhappy, especially if I had to blame myself for having let this
great misfortune happen to you out of my too large pliability. You see, dear Arthur,
that I dearly love you, and that I want to help you in everything. Reward me by your
confidence and by, having once made up your mind, following my advice in fulfilling
your choice. And don`t hurt me by rebelliousness. You know that I am not stubborn. I
know how to give way by arguments, and I will never demand anything from you I
won`t be able to support by arguments....
Adieu, dear Arthur, the post is urgent and my fingers hurt. Bear in mind all I
send and write to you, and answer soon.
Your mother
J. Schopenhauer
In his old age Arthur wrote, «When I finished reading this letter I shed a flood of
tears.» By return mail he opted for liberation from his apprenticeship, and Johanna
responded, «That you have so quickly come to a decision, against your wont, would
disquiet me in anyone else. I should fear rashness; with you it reassures me, I regard it as
the power of your innermost desires that drives you.`
Johanna wasted no time; she notified Arthur`s merchant patron and his landlord
that Arthur was leaving Hamburg, she organized his move and arranged for him to attend
a gymnasium in Gotha, fifty kilometers from his mother`s home in Weimar.
Arthur`s chains were broken.
15
Pam in India
_________________________
Itis noteworthy and remarkable
to see how man, besides his
life in the concrete, always
lives a second life in the
abstract...(where) in the sphere
of calm deliberation, what
previously possessed him
completely and moved him
intensely appears to him cold,
colorless, and distant: he is
a mere spectator and observer.
_________________________
As the Bombay–Igatpuri train slowed for a stop at a small village, Pam heard the clangs
of ceremonial cymbals and peered through the grimy train window. A dark–eyed boy of
about ten or eleven, pointing to her window, ran alongside holding aloft a raised rag and
yellow plastic water pail. Since she had arrived in India two weeks ago, Pam had been
shaking her head no. No to sightseeing guides, shoe shines, freshly squeezed tangerine
juice, sari cloth, Nike tennis shoes, money exchange. No to beggars and no to numerous
sexual invitations, sometimes offered frankly, sometimes discreetly by winking, raising
eyebrows, licking lips, and flicking tongues. And, finally, she thought, someone has
actually offered me something I need. She vigorously nodded yes, yes to the young
window washer, who responded with a huge toothy grin. Delighted with Pam`s patronage
and audience, he washed the pane with long theatrical flourishes.
Paying him generously and shooing him away as he lingered to stare at her, Pam
settled back and watched a procession of villagers snake their way down a dusty street
following a priest clad in billowing scarlet trousers and yellow shawl. Their destination
was the center of the town square and a large papier–mГўchГ© statue of Lord Ganesha, a
short plump Buddha–like body bearing an elephant`s head. Everyone—the priest, the men
