And the remedy is not that suggested in the quatrain that runs--
_Cada vez que considero
que me tengo de morir,
tiendo la capa en el suelo
y no me harto de dormir._[11]
No! The remedy is to consider our mortal destiny without flinching, to
fasten our gaze upon the gaze of the Sphinx, for it is thus that the
malevolence of its spell is discharmed.
If we all die utterly, wherefore does everything exist? Wherefore? It is
the Wherefore of the Sphinx; it is the Wherefore that corrodes the
marrow of the soul; it is the begetter of that anguish which gives us
the love of hope.
Among the poetic laments of the unhappy Cowper there are some lines
written under the oppression of delirium, in which, believing himself to
be the mark of the Divine vengeance, he exclaims--
Hell might afford my miseries a shelter.
This is the Puritan sentiment, the preoccupation with sin and
predestination; but read the much more terrible words of Senancour,
expressive of the Catholic, not the Protestant, despair, when he makes
his Obermann say, "L'homme est perissable. Il se peut; mais perissons en
resistant, et, si le neant nous est reserve, ne faisons pas que ce soit
une justice." And I must confess, painful though the confession be, that
in the days of the simple faith of my childhood, descriptions of the
tortures of hell, however terrible, never made me tremble, for I always
felt that nothingness was much more terrifying.
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