Category: Notes

Those who are impressed by the power of love certainly do not know misanthropy, a feeling that is infinitely more powerful and that does not detach itself from the one it dominates for a single second. Every aspect of reality reminds of it and reinforces it; it cannot be stripped for any activity. The intellectual stimulation it provides is indescribable, and he who experiences it finds himself always perfecting it, regardless of how he lives and what surroundings he is used to. If the misanthrope gives his neighbor an opportunity, he reinforces his misanthropy; if he does not, he reinforces it anyway. Therefore, he almost always lives in a planned manner, and every action that he performs or relegates takes on a clearer meaning and has more easily measurable consequences. Misanthropy amplifies every act and every feeling, and renders any manifestation that might cause it to give way of an extraordinary singularity.

I strip away my modesty to state that no one has ever been as apt as I am to found the Church of Misanthropy. I have the complete theoretical foundation and the practice of a high priest. But I confess, with a certain sadness, that Karl Kraus would make an exemplary minister. He says that he has discovered that it is possible to live with people in a strange land, that is, in an environment where he does not understand a word of what they say and where it is impossible for them to communicate. Thus, the neighbor really seems tolerable. But I am impressed that I do not consider this as a novelty, since I have already written this myself. It is curious how, every time, exactly the same thing happens: I am happy to detect the shared anomaly, but it never impresses me. I am capable of each and every misanthropic manifestation ever conceived; no particularity escapes me, and I empathize with every expression of repulsion and detachment toward man. Ban language by law, proposes Karl Kraus; allow man only gestural manifestation in cases of emergency. And I support, of course, these being propositions that have already come from my own fingers. But this church would never prosper; and however efficient removal techniques may be, just as there are interesting proposals to build walls to separate him from his surroundings, to the misanthrope there is and always will be only one definitive solution—and this one, it is prudent to avoid.