Selected Cronicas

THE BIRTH OF PLEASURE (EXTRACT)

Pleasure brings so much pain that one almost prefers familiar sorrow to unaccustomed pleasure. True happiness cannot be explained or understood. It is best compared to the beginnings of some irretrievable disaster. This complete fusion is unbearably consoling — as if death were our greatest and final good, only it is not death, it is immeasurable life which comes to resemble the splendour of death. One must absorb happiness little by little — for it is emergent life. And let those lacking in strength cover each nerve with a protective membrane, with the membrane of death, in order to withstand life. That membrane might consist of some formal act of protection, of silence or some words without meaning. For pleasure is not to be toyed with. We are that pleasure.