Carolina QuotesTo those of us who have suffered severe depression - myself included - this general unawareness of how relentlessly the disease can generate an urge to self-destruction seems widespread; the problem badly needs illumination. What is saddening about Primo Levi's death is the suspicion that his way of dying was not inevitable and that with proper care he might have been rescued from the abyss. I find it difficult not to believe that if Mr Levi had been under capable hospital attention, sequestered from the unbearable daily world in a setting where he would have been safe from his self-destructive urge, and where time would have permitted the storm raging in his brain to calm itself and die away, he would be among us now.
William Styron Connected to the Carolinas
Source
Essay, 'Why Primo Levi need not have died' [pub. New York Times Op-Ed Page, December 19 1988] - p.170, 171
- work
- This Quiet Dust and Other Writings (1982)
- year
- 1982
- locator
- p.170
Cite this record
“To those of us who have suffered severe depression - myself …” William Styron. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-E3FC69055D. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/e3fc69055d
More from William Styron
Grieving, yet somehow unbending, steadfast, unafraid, the voice rose through the evening like memory, and a gust of wind blew up from the river, dimming the song, rustling the trees, then died and became still. I’ll lay in de grave and stretch out my arms … Suddenly the voice ceased, and all was quiet. Then what I done was wrong, Lord? I said. And if what I done was wrong, is there no redemption? I raised my eyes upward but there was no answer, only the gray impermeable sky and night falling fast over Jerusalem.
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Someday I will understand Auschwitz. This was a brave statement but innocently absurd. No one will ever understand Auschwitz.