Addiction to Despair

Seddiq Qotbi:

“The habit of despair is worse than despair itself.” (The Plague, Albert Camus, translated by Reza Seyyed-Hosseini, Niloufar Publications)

It very much depends on your temperament and taste. In everything, you can find aspects and dimensions that provide a convenient vehicle for rejecting life, for scorning love and beauty. Then you artfully piece these signs and words together and sell them, with cunning, to this person and that. You speak of the negation of life and, from its stronghold, you live.

I suspect some of us are like this. We are addicted to despair, and of course, addiction to despair is worse than despair itself. “Addiction to despair” is an expression of Forough Farrokhzad: “Listen Do you hear the blowing of darkness? I gaze strangely upon this happiness I am addicted to my despair”

We become people whose despair does not reject life, but even propels it forward. We continue our academic education, write our books, become renowned in the city and conspicuous in every street and alley. Yet everywhere, with a song of despair on our lips, we hold life in contempt and derision.

We attend to our health, beauty, and possessions; we take care of our lives. We neither fail our studies nor our work. But everywhere, at all times, with a dreadful arrogance and an endless stubbornness, we mock the whispers of life.

In my view, this seemingly dark and seemingly bitter despair is highly suspect. If, in every public and private appearance, such despairing, energy-draining, and contemptuous words, stances, poems, and declarations emanate from us to this extent, if we imagine we have unclenched the fists of life and seen nothing but nothingness and emptiness, then where does this strength, this desire, this motivation and energy to carry on, to overtake, to shine, and to captivate come from?

Where does this well-groomed appearance, this passion for artistic creativity, this undeniable desire to be seen and to be in the public eye originate?

My impression is that many of us make a living from these sad and despairing songs. This dark despair and sorrow both guarantee our distinction, making us special and unique individuals, and through this passage, we can attribute our evasions of responsibility to our wretched state and a foundationless world, and be at ease. These despairing, night-tinged melodies also elicit the sympathetic care and attention of those around us. They say that those who have profound spiritual and mystical experiences have little inclination to speak of them: they sealed their lips and stitched their mouths shut. I believe that someone who is deeply despairing of life, for whom days are nothing but fragments of an endless night, will not lay a hand on this life. They will have no love of emergence and manifestation, nor any passion for artistic creativity, oratory, poetry, or authorship... If life is so dark and bitter that you never speak of a bright, hopeful glimmer, then what urges you so much to move forward? What places you in the midst of life’s movements and adorns you with such eloquence and sociability?

The truly despairing person, in my eyes, is someone who, if they have not hanged themselves, it is only out of fear of dying or out of pity for the survivors; they have disembarked from the speeding train of progress, creativity, and the pursuit of name and fame, and silently, far from the clamor of life, they patch together the nights and days.

These addicts to despair and pessimism, whom nothing delights and who are very keen to count the corpses of fish and, with bitter songs, constantly heap the dreadfulness of life upon you, remind me of the character depicted in Forough Farrokhzad’s poem:

“My brother calls the garden a graveyard My brother laughs at the turmoil of the weeds And from the corpses of fish that beneath the sick skin of water turn into corrupt particles he takes a count My brother is addicted to philosophy My brother sees the garden’s cure in the garden’s destruction He gets drunk and punches the doors and walls and tries to say that he is deeply pained, weary, and despairing He carries his hopelessness too like his ID card, calendar, handkerchief, lighter, and pen with him to the streets and the marketplace And his hopelessness is so small that every night it gets lost in the crowd of the tavern.”

The addict to despair, as Christian Bobin says of the depressed, seeks out anything that harmonizes with his bitter murmurs. Even in the brightest things, he searches for dark spots that, in this “will to despair,” might confirm and assist him:

“The depressed person is someone who is certain he has lost everything, except his depression, to which he is fiercely attached. This illness is someone who, aggrieved that he cannot be everything, with the childish stubbornness of pride, chooses to be nothing and wants from the world only what resembles him: melancholy and rain. I passed through this illness. I don’t quite know how, but it left me… and if I still enjoy cloudy skies, it is in a more peaceful way: I love them because they are, and not because they would be a seal of approval on the catastrophe unfolding within me.” (A Celebration at the Heights, Christian Bobin, translated by Delara Ghahreman, Parseh Publishing)

In my opinion, addiction to despair is more concealed than any other addiction. Addiction to despair differs from genuine despair. There are those who feed on despair, bitterness, and pessimism. They hang the cloak of their lives upon it and, self-absorbed and misanthropic, take pleasure in the murmur of bitter songs.

Forugh Farrokhzad, if she spoke of the end of night and the blowing of darkness, also saw the bloodline of flowers, sought a lamp, and had her heart staked on the throng of a happy alley.