Schopenhauer Cure by Irvin Yalom

Author:Irvin Yalom [Yalom, Irvin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780060938109
Google: D0HG9RG8Od0C
Amazon: 0060938102
Barnesnoble: 0060938102
Goodreads: 19508
Publisher: Harper
Published: 1390-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

_________________________

Sexdoes not hesitate to

intrude with its trash,

and to interfere with the

negotiations of statesmen

and the investigations of

the learned. Every day it

destroys

the

most

valuable

relationships.

Indeed it robs of all

conscience those who were

previously honorable and

upright.

_________________________

After his mother, the next most pervasive female presence in Arthur's life was a querulous seamstress named Caroline Marquet. Few biographical accounts of Schopenhauer fail to spotlight their 1823 midday encounter, which took place on a dimly lit Berlin stairway outside Arthur's flat when he was thirty-five and Caroline forty-five.

On that day Caroline Marquet, living in the adjoining flat, entertained three friends. Irritated by the noisy chattering, Arthur flung open his door, accused the four women of violating his privacy since the anteroom where they stood talking was technically a part of his flat, and sternly ordered them to leave. When Caroline refused, Arthur physically forced her, kicking and screaming, from the anteroom and down the stairs. When she impertinently climbed back up the stairs in defiance, he again removed her, this time more forcefully.

Caroline sued him, claiming that she was pushed down the stairs and suffered grievous injury resulting in trembling and partial paralysis. Arthur was highly threatened by the lawsuit: he knew that he was unlikely ever to earn money from his scholarly pursuits and had always fiercely guarded the capital inherited from his father. When his money was imperiled he became, in the words of his publisher, "a chained dog."

Certain that Caroline Marquet was an opportunistic malingerer, he fought her lawsuit with all his might, employing every possible legal appeal. The bitter court proceedings continued for the next six years before the court ruled against him and ordered him to pay Caroline Marquet sixty talers a year for as long as her injury persisted. (In that era a house servant or cook would have been paid twenty talers annually plus food and board.) Arthur's prediction that she was shrewd enough to tremble as long as the money rolled in proved accurate; he continued to pay for her support until she died twenty-six years later. When he was sent a copy of her death certificate he scrawled across it: "Obit anus, abit onus" (the old woman dies, the burden is lifted).

And other women in Arthur's life? Arthur never married but was far from chaste: for the first half of his life he was highly sexually active, perhaps even sexually driven. When Anthime, his childhood friend from Le Havre, visited Hamburg during Arthur's apprenticeship, the two young men spent their evenings searching for amorous adventures, always with women from lower social strata--

maids, actresses, chorus girls. If they were unsuccessful in their search, they ended their evening by consoling themselves in the arms of an "industrious whore."

Arthur, lacking in tact, charm, and joie de vivre, was an inept seducer and needed much advice from Anthime. His many rejections ultimately caused him to link sexual desire with humiliation. He hated being dominated by the sexual drive and in subsequent years had much to say about the degradation of sinking to animalistic life. It

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