[New-Poetry] Viktor Frankl

Sun Jan 6 19:33:16 EST 2008

What a sloppy typing, I tried to correct what I noticed on my blog, sorry for this:
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/2008/01/viktor-frankl-mans-search-for-meaning.html
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Anny Ballardini 
  To: New Poetry 
  Sent: Monday, January 07, 2008 12:54 AM
  Subject: [New-Poetry] Viktor Frankl

  Frankl, Viktor, E. (1985). Man's Search for Meaning. New York, N.Y.: Washington Square Press.

  "Sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia quam rara sunt" (but everything great is just as difficult to realize as it is rare to find) read the last sentence of the Ethics of Spinoza. You may of course ask, whether we really need to refer to "saints." Wouldn't it suffice just to refer to decent people? It is true that they form a minority. More than that, they always will remain a minority. And yet I see therein the very challenge to join the minority. For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.

  So, let us be alert - alert in a twofold sense:

  Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of.

  And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake. (p. 179)

  But more important, the cigarettes could be exchanged for twelve soups, and twelve soups were often a very real respite from starvation. (p. 26)

  Suddenly a cry broke from the ranks of the anxious passengers, "There is a sign, Auschwitz!" Everyone's heart missed a beat at that moment. Auschwitz-the very name stood for all that was horrible: gas chambers, crematoriums, massacres. Slowly, almost hesitatingly, the train moved on as if it wanted to spare its passengers the dreadful realization as long as possible: Auschwitz! (p. 27)

  I tried to take one of the old prisoners into my confidence. Approaching him furtively, I pointed to the roll of paper in the inner pocket of my coat and said, "Look, this is the manuscript of a scientific book. I know what you will say; that I should be grateful to escape with my life, that that should be all I can expect of fate. But I cannot help myself. I must keep this manuscript at all costs; it contains my life's work. do you understand that?"

  Yes, he was beginning to understand. A grin spread slowly over his face, first piteous, then more amused, mocking, insulting, intil he bellowed one word at me in answer to my question, a word that was ever present in the vocabulary of the camp inmates "Shit!" At that moment I saw the plain truth and did what marked the culminating point of the first phase of my psychological reaction: I struck out my whole former life. (p. 33)

  If someone now asked of us the truth of Dostoevski's statement that flatly defines man as a being who can get used to anything, we would reply, "Yes, a man can get used to anything, but do not ask us how." (p. 36)

  I think it was Lessing who once said, "There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose." An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior. (p. 38)

  I did not know what was going on in the line behind me, nor in the mind of the SS guard, but suddenly I received two sharp blows on my head. Only then did I spot the guard at my side who was using this stick. At such a moment it si not the physical pain which hurts the most (and this applies to adults as much as to punished children); it is the mental agony caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all. (p. 42)

  If someone had seen out faces on the journey from Auschwitz to a Bavarian camp a we beheld the mountains of Salzburg with their summits glowing in th sunset, through the little barred windows of the prison carriage, he would never have believed that those were the faces of men who had given up all hope of life and liberty. Despite that factor-or maybe because of it-we were carried away by nature's beauty, which we had missed for so long. (p. 59)

  Dostoevski said once, "There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings." These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in campo, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It si this spiritual freedom-which cannot be taken away-that makes life meaningful and purposeful. (p.87)

  What does Spinoza say in his Ethics?-"Affectus, qui passio est, desinit esse passio simulatque eius charam et sitinctam formamus ideam." Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it. (p. 95)

  When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden. (p. 99)

  We had realized its hidden opportunities for achievement, the opportunities which caused the poet Rilke to write, "Wie viel ist aufzuleiden!" (How much suffering there is to get through!) (p. 100)

  And I quoted from Nietzsche: "Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich staerker." (That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.) (p. 103)

  Then I spoke of the many opportunities of giving life a meaning. I told my comrades (who lay motionless, although occasionally a sigh could be heard) that human life, under any circumstances, never ceases to have a meaning, and that [.]

  When the electric bulb flared up again, I saw the miserable figures of my friends limping toward me to thank me with tears in their eyes. (p. 105)

  From all this we may learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two-the "race" of the decent man and the "race" of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely od decent or indecent people. In this sense, no group is of "pure race"-and therefore one occasionally found a decent fellow among the camp guards. (p. 108)

  Woe to him who found that the person whose memory alone had given him courage in camp did not exist any more! Woe to him who, when the day of his dreams finally came, found it so different from all he had longed for! Perhaps he boarded a trolley, traveled out to the home which he had seen for years in his mind, and only in his mind, and pressed the bell, just as he ha longed to do in thousands of dreams, only to find that the person who should open the door was not there, and would never be there again. (p. 114)

  see a page on the Author on: 

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl

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  Anny Ballardini
  http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
  http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
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  I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing star! 
  Friedrich Nietzsche 

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