Sadism

“ Sadism and masochism occupy a special place among the perversions, for the contrast of activity and passivity lying at their bases belong to the common traits of the sexual life.
That cruelty and sexual impulse are most intimately connected is beyond doubt taught by the history of civilization, but in the explanation of this connection no one has gone beyond the accentuation of the aggressive factors of the libido. ”

“ They had indeed their sorrows, true and deep, but still, more like children's sorrows than ours, whether bursting into open cry of pain, or hid with shuddering under the veil, still passing over the soul as clouds do over heaven, not sullying it, not mingling with it;—darkening it perhaps long or utterly, but still not becoming one with it, and for the most part passing away in dashing rain of tears, and leaving the man unchanged; in nowise affecting, as our sorrow does, the whole tone of his thought and imagination thenceforward. ”

“ For, from an inexplicable defect of harmony in the constitution of human nature, the pain of the inferior is frequently connected with the pleasures of the superior portions of our being. Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself, are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. ”

“ Must it ever be thus,—that the source of our happiness must also be the fountain of our misery? The full and ardent sentiment which animated my heart with the love of nature, overwhelming me with a torrent of delight, and which brought all paradise before me, has now become an insupportable torment,—a demon which perpetually pursues and harasses me. ”

“ Shall I ever feel joy? Do all suffer like me; or am I framed so as to be particularly susceptible of misery? It is true, I have experienced the most rapturous emotions—short-lived delight!—ethereal beam, which only serves to shew my present misery—yet lie still, my throbbing heart, or burst; and my brain—why dost thou whirl about at such a terrifying rate? why do thoughts so rapidly rush into my mind, and yet when they disappear leave such deep traces? I could almost wish for the madman's happiness, and in a strong imagination lose a sense of woe. ”

“ MISERY his heart hath broken—
Misery is mystery!
Let the sad one lonely be;
As the Ancients shunned the token
Of a lightning-blasted tree.
II.
Breathe no word, his doom is spoken—
Misery is mystery!
By its scathing lightning fated,
Human hearts are consecrated,
For a higher destiny.
[Pg 110]
FAREWELL
LET mine eyes the parting take,
Which my faint lips never can;
Moments such as these might break
Even the sternest heart of man.
Mournfully doth Joy's eclipse,
Shroud in grief Love's sweetest sign;
Cold the pressure of thy lips,
Cold the hand that rests in mine. ”

“ Ours the sorrow, outpouring
Sad self on a selfless thing,
As our eyes and hearts are mild
With our sympathy for Spring,
With a pity sweet and wild
For the innocent and far,
With our sadness in a star,
Or our sadness in a child. ”

“ The look of pity which saddens nearly every face that approaches me cuts me to the heart. Can I never give joy, or excite pleasurable emotion? Must I always be a mute and unwilling petitioner for sympathy in suffering!—always giving pain? ”

“ And men who see us and hear us moaning so piteously, groaning so painfully, have the feeling: “No pain like this!” But how mistaken they are! For there is a cry of the soul, heard of no one, more painful than all that can be pitied or lamented. ”

“ When sadness springs from some definite cause, if the cause is removed the sadness may also disappear; but if sadness springs up spontaneously in the soul like those weeds and rushes you see growing on the borders of that pond, if it is in ourselves, if it is the essence of our being, if it does not spring up here and there only, but everywhere, if nothing on earth can alleviate it, then—believe me, child, the patient is beyond help. ”

“ Some have wandered about the earth with pictures of bliss in their imagination, and with hearts that shrank sensitively from the idea of pain and woe, yet have studied all varieties of misery that human nature can endure. ”

“ These are the charming agonies of love,
Whose misery delights. But thro' the heart
Should jealousy its venom once diffuse,
'Tis then delightful misery no more,
But agony unmix'd, incessant gall,1075
Corroding every thought, and blasting all
Love's paradise. Ye fairy prospects, then,
Ye beds of roses, and ye bowers of joy,
Farewel! ”

“ No, there was no feeling there !
From that gloomy trance of sorrow When you woke to pangs unknown;
How unwelcome was the morrow, For it rose on you alone.
Sunk in self-consuming anguish Can the poor heart always ache 1
No, the tortur'd nerve will languish, Or the strings of life must break.
O'er the yielding brow of sadness, One faint smile of comfort stole,
One soft pang of tender gladness, Exquisitely thrill'd your soul.
While the wounds of woe are healing, While the heart is all resign'd,
'Tis the solemn feast of feeling, Tis the sabbath of the mind. ”

“ Know, then, that when the dark night of sorrow, pain, or misfortune settles down upon your soul, and you stumble along with weary and uncertain steps, that you are merely intercepting your own personal desires between yourself and the boundless light of joy and bliss, and the dark shadow that covers you is cast by none and nothing but yourself. ”

“ So life has calms, in which we only see A fuller prospect of our misery. When the sick heart, by no design employ’d, Throbs o’er the past, or suffer’d, or enjoy’d, In former pleasures finding no relief, And pain’d anew in every former grief. Can friends console us when our cares distress, Smile on our woes, and make misfortunes less? Alas! like winter’d leaves, they fall away, Or more disgrace our prospects by delay ”

“ Then, also, the tears caused by this suffering flow abundantly, and without any trouble; the soul is disposed to the most touching emotions of pity, or is full of commiseration and of love; in a word, all misfortunes are the cherished and respected sisters of our misfortune.
On the contrary, if you suffer for an unworthy cause, your heart is drowned in hatred; your concentrated grief resembles dumb fury which shame bridles with a sharp bit that vanity conceals; envy and hatred gnaw you, but your eyes are dry, and the unhappiness of others can alone draw from you a sad and mournful smile. ”

“ Love, hatred, sorrow, and joy—every passion that enters into the complex structure of the human heart even here, in this scene of sadness and despair, was playing apparently as freely as where misfortune and disease had never crossed the portals of life. ”

“ There is sadness in the mood, such sadness as enters—strange to say—into a great and very definitely expected disappointment. It is an exceedingly delicate sadness—haughty, aloof like the sun, and like him cool to the outer world. ”

“ It is too ugly, too horrible, too distressing. There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores, the better. ”

“ All low desires submerged and in an ecstasy that was not joy but perfect clarity he saw the misery and sorrow of the world, sounding its deeps of agony and loss, the ruin wrought by age, disease, and death,—the hopeless dark beyond. ”

“ Surely, however broad the view we take of the universe, a real woe, a veritable experience of suffering, amidst this boundless benificence, reaching as deep as the heart's core, is this old and common sorrow;—the sorrow of woman for her babes, and of man for his helpmate, and of age for its prop, and of the son for the mother that bore him, and of the heart for the hearts that once beat in sympathy, and of the eyes that hide vacancies with tears. ”

“ In their touching pathos we seem to hear the sob of natural sorrow for the loved and lost, “the fall of kisses on unanswering clay,” the throbbings of the human heart in the hour of its deepest emotion, when the parting pang unseals the founts of feeling in the soul. ”

“ Among other things there will be waves of terrible sadness, which last sometimes for days; and dissatisfaction with one's self, and irritation at others, and anger at circumstances and stony insensibility, etc., etc., which taken together form a melancholy. ”

“ I have lived in the bitter tears thou hast wept through all these long years;—the agony of the remorse that seized thee in silent nights and lonesome wastes;—in the breath of thy youth and life exhaled in passionate agony when no human eyes beheld thee;—in the images that haunt thy dreams and make it a horror for thee to find thyself alone! ”

“ And oft a smile of moonlight fair,
To perfect peace has changed despair.
Low as we are, we blend our fate
With things so beautifully great.
And though opprest with heaviest grief,
From nature's bliss we draw relief,
Assured that God's most gracious eye
Beholds us in our misery,
And sends mild sound and lovely sight,
To change that misery to delight. ”

“ Why this is the very luxury of sorrow! thus one might go on from day to day contriving new extravagances, revelling in the paraphernalia of woe, wedded to all the appurtenances of despair. Alas! I must for ever conceal the wretchedness that consumes me. I must weave a veil of dazzling falsehood to hide my grief from vulgar eyes, smoothe my brow, and paint my lips in deceitful smiles—even in solitude I dare not think how lost I am, lest I become insane and rave. ”

“ Times of rousing anxiety, times in which our fortunes, our comforts, nay, our very existence, stand on the fate of a moment, are not the periods in which the soul surrenders itself to lamentation: but frequently when solicitude for one object is united with regret for another, we yield to a gloomy sadness, that tinctures every thing with the same hue, and renders the sufferer inaccessible to one cheering emotion. ”

“ I, however, would say, when we see such objects as these for the first time, the unaccustomed soul has to expand itself; and this gives rise to a sort of painful joy,—an overflowing of emotion, which agitates the mind, and draws from us the most delicious tears. ”

“ I have lived for the last few months in the hourly contemplation of a most striking picture of the end of human life, the termination of all its joys and sorrows, the annihilation of its hopes and wishes. This could not fail to impress with sadness a mind in full possession of its powers of enjoyment, and for a time to give it almost a disgust of all those pleasures and pursuits which must so soon fail before the dim eye and feeble energies of approaching age. ”

“ These sudden alternatives of joy and sadness, divine transports and grand melancholies, exquisite tenderness and womanly depressions, depict the poet, extreme in emotions, ceaselessly troubled with grief or merriment, feeling the slightest shock, more strong, more dainty in enjoyment and suffering than other men, capable of more intense and sweeter dreams, within whom is stirred an imaginary world of graceful or terrible beings, all impassioned like their author. ”

“ Joy opens the closet of language, and the gems of expression are easily found; but the fountain of feeling being chilled by the uncongenial atmosphere of grief, by the sudden horror of death, or the more terrible breath of dishonor or shame, or even by the cold blast of undeserved misfortune, leaves the individual sympathizer in a mood of perplexity and of sadness which is of itself a most discouraging frame of mind for the inditing of a letter. ”

“ Full of sad reproach, and of love whose sweetness is the worst gall and wormwood of reproach, they gaze down upon him, these eyes of holy bliss and sorrow, these faces worn with suffering and fasting and self-renunciation, yet shining with ineffable beatitude ”

“ Still slowly pass'd the melancholy day,
And still the stranger wist not where to stray,—
The world was sad! — the garden was a wild!—
And Man, the hermit, sigh'd—till Woman smil'd!
True! the sad power to generous hearts may bring
Delirious anguish on his fiery wing!
Barr'd from delight by Fate's untimely hand,
By wealthless lot, or pitiless command;
Or doom''d to gaze on beauties that adorn
The smile of triumph or the frown of scorn ”

“ Nature itself wore the garb of sadness, and man's too dependent spirits were ready to assume it—those, at least, that were not so happy as to find means of forgetting it. Such was the case with my unfortunate self. ”

“ Who has not loathed that worst, that waking hour,
When grief and consciousness assert their power;
When misery has morn's freshness, yet we fain
Would hold it as a dream, and sleep again;
Then know 'tis not illusion of the night,
And sicken at the cold and early light? ”

“ The gleams of calm that fall upon his tortured heart only light up an abyss of misery—a vault of darkness peopled by demons. He is already cut off from among the living, by the doom of inevitable fate, and while we pity him we fear him. ”

“ We compare the past with the present, and the sad contrast affects the heart, and awakens the tenderest emotions. The unconscious tear stands trembling in the eye, as we behold the melancholy scene. But there is nothing so affecting, so much to be lamented, as the perverse obstinacy, and rebellious course of impenitent sinners. ”

“ A terrible sadness is in her face—as though the suffering of centuries had concentrated there in some deep personal struggle; and through it shines that capacity for joy which becomes colossal in its intensity and tragic in its disappointments. ”

“ And it is from this cause that in human beings bodily suffering expresses itself not only in contortions, but in shrieks and groans—that in anger, and fear, and grief, the gesticulations are accompanied by shouts and screams—that delightful sensations are followed by exclamations—and that we hear screams of joy and shouts of exultation. ”