Chapter XLVI.41 On The Vanity And Suffering Of Life.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Schopenhauer, Arthur, Haldane, R. B. Haldane (Richard Burdon Haldane), Viscount, and Kemp, J. (John)
—Hippol, 189.
And Homer already said:—
“Ου μεν γαρ τι εστιν οϊζυρωτερον ανδρος
Παντων, ὁσσα δε γαιαν επι πνεει τε και ἑρπει.”
(Non enim quidquam alicubi est calamitosius homine
Omnium, quotquot super terram spirantque et moventur.)
—II. xvii. 446.
Even Pliny says: “Quapropter hoc primum quisque in remediis animi sui habeat, ex omnibus bonis, quæ homini natura tribuit, nullum melius esse tempestiva morte” (Hist. Nat. 28, 2).
Shakspeare puts the words in the mouth of the old king Henry IV.:—
“O heaven! that one might read the book of fate,
And see the revolution of the times,
... how chances mock,
And changes fill the cup of alteration
With divers liquors! O, if this were seen,
The happiest youth,—viewing his progress through,
What perils past, what crosses to ensue,—
Would shut the book, and sit him down and die.”
Finally, Byron:—
“Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen,
Count o'er thy days from anguish free,
And know, whatever thou hast been,
'Tis something better not to be.”
Baltazar Gracian also brings the misery of our existence before our eyes in the darkest colours in the “Criticon,” Parte i., Crisi 5, just at the beginning, and Crisi 7 at the end, where he explicitly represents life as a tragic farce.
Yet no one has so thoroughly and exhaustively handled this subject as, in our own day, Leopardi. He is entirely filled and penetrated by it: his theme is everywhere the mockery and wretchedness of this existence; he presents it upon every page of his works, yet in such a multiplicity of forms and applications, with such wealth of imagery that he never wearies us, but, on the contrary, is throughout entertaining and exciting.