Constructive suffering?
That doesn’t mean unhappiness is inherently good. It means that we can deal with it in ways that are more positive and intelligent than others. Stefan Zweig was certainly very adamant when he said that we owe everything to pain: “All science comes from pain. Suffering always looks for the cause of things, while well-being encourages passiveness and does not look back.”6 Without going that far, we must acknowledge that at least an essential part of universal literature arises from the need to express human drama or overcome it. The Debate between a man and his soul (Egypt, 2000 A.C.) reads: “To whom can I unburden myself today? Anguish chokes me. Not even the silence wants to listen to me. Perhaps my only confidant is death…”
The most beautiful poems are often the most desperate. The strength of Greek tragedy lies precisely in having given expression to the drama that battles in each human being faced with an inevitable, mortal destiny against which he rebels and of which he feels simultaneously victim and culprit. In their conflicts, tears, and anguish, love and suffering intersect at the same time like cause and effect. A large number of literary works express man’s fight against adversity and his ceaseless efforts to communicate pain, understand its meaning or overcome it somehow.
Biblical literature, deeply rooted in our culture, continues to provide comfort in suffering because it contains some of the strongest testimonies to pain. As Pascal said, “Solomon and Job knew and expressed human misery better than anyone: one in prosperity (see Ecclesiastes) and one in adversity. One experienced the vanity of the pleasures and the other experienced the reality of suffering.”7 The book of Psalms contains 150 prayers, including many inspiring psalms of “orientation” and some appalling psalms of “disorientation,”8 that is to say, of complaint, lament, and protest over the injustice in life. Meditation or prayer with those prayers is good for us because it helps us to put our hurt into words, through the experiences of those who felt heard and received comfort in their suffering.
In the art world, works of art that are downright cheerful are scarce. Comic art and laughter often mask grimaces of pain. For example, of Don Quixote it is very aptly said that “when you finish laughing, you should cry.” It has been said that the great artists are beings “cursed by suffering” and that someone who has not suffered has nothing to say.
In fact, many artists have appointed themselves as a spokesperson for suffering, lending a catalyzing aspect to their artistic creations. Some of the greatest works of art are inspired by pain.
Sensitivity—an essential trait in an artist—either makes you suffer more than other people or it enables you to express your pain with more emotion.
Although it may seem exaggerated, the truth is that if we take a list of the greatest artists in history, and we go through it almost at random, starting with musicians, this thesis seems to be confirmed. Johann Sebastian Bach was orphaned at the age of 10. Mozart died of illness and misery at 35. Beethoven, grandchild of a madwoman, son of an alcoholic and a maid, was deaf as an adult, and still wrote the sublime Pastoral. Debussy, who had such refined taste, grew up in a very poor neighborhood with a mother who had, among her other faults, a heavy hand and a fondness for using the whip.
Edgar Allan Poe, who lost his mother at the age of 3, wrote: “I could not love except where Death / Was mingling his with Beauty’s breath.” R. M. Rilke, in his Letters to a Young Poet (written when he was only 27 years old and the recipient, 20), wrote that “the creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself. […] I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for […]. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadness, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us […]. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you?” Later he would add, “Give every man his own death,” a statement that turns out to be almost prophetic for someone who died young as a result of a wound caused by a rose thorn….9
Vincent Van Gogh, the afflicted painter, ended up losing his mind after fighting desperately against madness. After painting day and night, up to one painting a day without any success or recognition, he experienced self-mutilation, hospitalization, and finally suicide at age 37, without having ever sold a single painting. In 1888, two years before his death, he wrote from Arles to his brother, Theo, who sent him funds so that he could continue painting, “Sometimes I feel too weak in the face of the given circumstances, and I’d have to be wiser and richer and younger to win the fight. Fortunately for me, I no longer count at all on any victory, and in painting I look for nothing more than the means of getting by in life.”10
Edvard Munch, the great Norwegian painter of anguish, wrote the following: “Disease, Insanity and Death were the angels which attended my cradle, and since then have followed me throughout life. […
] I learned early about the misery and dangers of life. […] When [my father] punished us, he could be almost insane in his violence. […] In my childhood, I was always treated in an unjust way, without a mother, sick, and the threat of punishment in Hell hung over my head.”11
The great genius of dance, Vaslav Nijinsky, was forced at 16 to give in to the sexual demands of the great Diaghilev, director of the famous Russian ballets, in order to study and further his career. All his short life, which ended in insanity, was consumed with the fear of misery. Towards the end of his life he wrote in is his Diary: “I live, so I suffer. But my face has rarely seen tears: my soul has had to swallow all them.”
Anguish and worry may indeed be conducive to artistic creation because the artists, being more sensitive that the average person, express their pain in their works. Their art, like therapy, helps them overcome especially difficult circumstances. A creative personality finds new means of expression even for pain. Moreover, artists suffer the chasm between the imperfect reality in which they live and the marvelous art that they long to create. Through their art, they build bridges between those two worlds. In the face of the horrors of pain and their admirable struggle to not allow themselves to be destroyed by it, it isn’t surprising that artists feel an overwhelming need to create beauty. But there is no doubt that their masterpieces emerge more from their genius talent than from their misfortunes.
1 . “Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak / Whispers the o’er-fraught hear, and bids it break.” (Shakespeare, Macbeth).
2 . Dorothee Sölle, Suffering, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975, p. 76.
3 . Former US president George H. W. Bush, after the death of two of his crew in a plain crash, wrote the following: “I’m afraid I was pretty much a sissy about it, cause I sat in my raft and sobbed for a while. It bothered me very much. I did tell them, and when I bailed out I felt that they must have gone, and yet now I feel so terribly responsible for their fate, oh, so much right now...” (All the Best: My Life in Letters and Other Writings, New York: Touchstone, 1999, p. 51).
4 . See Eduard Punset, The Happiness Trip: A Scientific Journey, White River Junction: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2007.
5 . “Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game” (Voltaire).
6 . Stefan Zweig was an Austrian writer who lived from 1881 to 1942, author of Decisive Moments in History: Twelve Historical Miniatures, Ariadne Press, 1999 (1927/1940).