Let us exercise the imagination: a man, after much meditation on suicide, after careful consideration of all the torment he suffers, concludes that it is absolutely unjustifiable. He goes to a friend, with the faint hope that there is something he is not seeing, that his conclusions are based on an unknown error. The friend takes his time and begins to talk to him about the singing of the birds. Is it possible for the unfortunate man not to think it an insult? Let us now suppose a monk returning on foot from a long silent retreat. A lady comes up to him in the street and says she is afraid that it will rain and wet her clothes hanging on the clothesline. There is, again, a contrast so sharp that it seems to offer laughter as the only response. Well then: from this very banal contrast, is born a flower with black petals called misanthropy.
The Flower With Black Petals
