Arnon Grunberg

Winter

Five years

D.A. de Sade To Madame de Sade:

March 6, 1777

‘Oh, my dear friend! When will my horrible situation cease? When in God's name will I be let out of the tomb where I have been buried alive? There is nothing to equal the horror of my fate! Nothing that can depict everything I am suffering, that can convey the state of anxiety wherewith I am tormented and the sorrows that devour me! Here, all I have as support are my tears and my shouts, but no one hears them ... Where is the time when my dear friend shared them? Today I no longer have anyone; it seems as if the whole of Nature were dead for me! Who knows whether you even receive my letters? No reply to the last one I wrote you proves to me that they are not being given to you and that 'tis to make sport of my sorrow or to see what is going on in my head that I am allowed to write them to you. Yet another refinement invented no doubt by the rage of her who stalks me as her personal prey! What can so much cruelty auger for the future? Judge for a moment in what state my poor mind must be. Till now, a faint hope sustained me, calmed the early moments of my terrible sorrow; but everything concerts to destroy it, and I clearly see from the silence wherein I am left, from the state I am in, that all they want is my undoing. If 'twere for my good, would they proceed in this manner? They must realize full well that the severe measures that are being taken with me can only unhinge my brain, and, consequently, from this naught can result (supposing they mean to keep me alive) save the greatest ill. For I am quite certain I cannot hold out a month here without going mad: which is probably what they want, and that fits in wonderfully with the means they proposed this past winter. Ah! my dear friend, I can see all too well my fate! Remember what I sometimes told you, that they had decided to let me finish out my five years in peace, and then ... There's the idea that torments me and is driving me to my grave. If 'tis in your power to reassure me on that score, please do so, I beseech you, for my state is frightful in the extreme and if you could only understand it fully for what it is, your heart would most assuredly be filled with pity for me. Nor do I doubt that they are making every effort to separate us: for me that would be the final blow, and I would not survive it, of that you may be sure. I beseech you to oppose this with all the strength at your command, and to understand that the first victims of this effort would be our children: there is no example of children made happy when their mother and father are in disagreement. My dear friend, you are all I have left on earth: father, mother, sister, wife, friend, you are all those to me, I have no one but you: do not abandon me, I beg you, let it not be from you that I receive the final blow of misfortune.’

Read the letter here.

The final blow of misfortune of is usually coming from an insider, a family member, a parent, a best friend, a love object.

All those people we can only beg: let it not be from you that I receive the final blow of misfortune.

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