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Unamuno, Miguel de, 1864-1936

"Tragic Sense Of Life"


[32] _Die Analyse der Empfindigungen und das Verhaeltniss des Physischen
zum Psychischen_, i., Sec. 12, note.
[33] I have left the original expression here, almost without
translating it--_Existents-Consequents_. It means the existential or
practical, not the purely rational or logical, consequence. (Author's
note.)
[34] Albrecht Ritschl: _Geschichte des Pietismus_, ii., Abt. i., Bonn,
1884, p. 251.
[35] Thou art the cause of my suffering, O non-existing God, for if Thou
didst exist, then should I also really exist.


VII
LOVE, SUFFERING, PITY, AND PERSONALITY
CAIN: Let me, or happy or unhappy, learn
To anticipate my immortality.
LUCIFER: Thou didst before I came upon thee.
CAIN: How?
LUCIFER: By suffering.
BYRON: _Cain_, Act II., Scene I.

The most tragic thing in the world and in life, readers and brothers of
mine, is love. Love is the child of illusion and the parent of
disillusion; love is consolation in desolation; it is the sole medicine
against death, for it is death's brother.
_Fratelli, a un tempo stesso, Amore e Morte
Ingenero la sorte_,
as Leopardi sang.
Love seeks with fury, through the medium of the beloved, something
beyond, and since it finds it not, it despairs.
Whenever we speak of love there is always present in our memory the idea
of sexual love, the love between man and woman, whose end is the
perpetuation of the human race upon the earth.


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