Gargoyles

by Thomas Bernhard

Every day I completely built myself up, and completely destroyed myself. Self-control, I said, is the satisfaction of using your brain to make the self into a mechanism that obeys your command. Only through such control can man be happy and perceive his own nature. But very few people ever perceive their natures. To let the feelings predominate, to do nothing against the normal gloominess of the emotions, delivers people up to despair. Where the reason is in control, I said, despair is impossible. “Whenever this state of total irrationality closes down on me, there is nothing but despair inside me.” Nowadays I only very rarely succumb to this state, I said. Life always seemed grim if you did not step outside it; the satisfaction came from enduring it rationally. Most people were governed by their emotions, not their reason, I said, and the result was that most sank into despair. “But the kind of reason I mean,” I said, “is completely unscientific.”