Excerpts
from
by
Viktor E. Frankl,
In spite of all the enforced
physical and mental primitiveness
of the life in a concentration camp,
it was possible
for spiritual life to deepen.
Sensitive people
who were used to a rich intellectual life
may have suffered much pain
(they were often of a delicate constitution),
but the damage to their inner selves was less.
They were able
to retreat from their terrible surroundings
to a life of inner riches and spiritual freedom.
Only in this way
can one explain
the apparent paradox
that some prisoners
of a less hardy make-up
often seemed
to survive camp life better
than did those
of a robust nature.
In order to make myself clear,
I am forced to fall back
on personal experience.
Let me tell what happened
on those early mornings
when we had to march
to our work site.
There were shouted
commands:
"Detachment,
forward march!
Left-2-3-4!
Left-2-3-4!
Left-2-3-4!
Left-2-3-4!
First man
about,
left and left
left and left!
Caps off!"
These words
sound
in my ears
even now.
At the order
"Caps off!"
we passed the gate of the camp,
and
searchlights were trained upon us.
Whoever did not march smartly
got a kick.
And worse off was the man who,
because of the cold,
had pulled his cap back over his ears
before permission was given.
We stumbled on in the darkness,
over big stones and through large puddles,
along the one road leading from the camp.
The accompanying guards
kept shouting at us
and driving us
with the butts of their rifles.
Anyone with very sore feet
supported himself
on his neighbor's arm.
Hardly a word was spoken;
the icy wind did not encourage talk.
Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar,
the man marching next to me
whispered suddenly:
"If our wives could see us now!
I do hope they are better off in their camps
and don't know what is happening to us."
That brought thoughts
of my own wife to mind.
And as we stumbled on for miles,
slipping on icy spots,
supporting each other time and again,
dragging one another
up and onward,
nothing was said,
but we both knew:
each of us
was thinking of his wife.
Occasionally I looked at the sky,
where the stars were fading
and the pink light of the morning
was beginning to spread
behind a dark bank of clouds.
But my mind clung to my wife's image,
imagining it with an uncanny acuteness.
I heard her answering me,
saw her smile,
her frank and encouraging look.
Real or not,
her look
was then more luminous
than the sun
which was beginning to rise.
A thought transfixed me:
for the first time in my life
I saw the truth
as it
is set into song
by so many poets,
proclaimed
as
the final wisdom
by
so many thinkers.
The truth --
that love
is the ultimate
and
highest goal
to which man
can aspire.
Then I grasped the meaning
of the greatest secret
that human poetry
and human thought and belief
have to impart:
The salvation of man
is through love
and in love.
I understood how a man
who has nothing left in this world
still may know bliss,
be it only for a brief moment,
in the contemplation of his beloved.
In a position of utter desolation,
when man
cannot express himself
in positive action,
when his only achievement
may consist
in enduring his sufferings
in the right way --
an honorable way --
in such a position
man can,
through loving contemplation
of the image he carries
of his beloved,
achieve fulfillment.
For the first time in my life
I was able to understand
the meaning of the words,
"The angels
are lost
in
perpetual
contemplation
of
an infinite glory."
In front of me
a man stumbled
and those following him
fell on top of him.
The guard rushed over
and used his whip on them all.
Thus my thoughts
were interrupted
for a few minutes.
But soon my soul
found its way back
from the prisoner's existence
to another world,
and I resumed talk with my loved one:
I asked her questions,
and she answered;
she questioned me in return,
and I answered.
"Stop!"
We had arrived at our work site.
Everybody rushed into the dark hut
in the hope of getting a fairly decent tool.
Each prisoner got a spade or a pickaxe.
"Can't you hurry up, you pigs!"
Soon we had resumed the previous day's positions
in the ditch.
The frozen ground cracked under the point of the pickaxes,
and sparks flew.
The men were silent, their brains numb.
My mind still clung to the image of my wife.
A thought crossed my mind:
I didn't even know
if she were still alive.
I knew only one thing --
which I have learned well
by now:
Love goes very far
beyond the physical person
of the beloved.
It finds its deepest meaning
in his spiritual being, his inner self.
Whether or not he is actually present,
whether or not he is still alive at all,
ceases somehow to be of importance.
I did not know whether my wife
was alive,
and I had no means of finding out
(during all my prison life
there was no
outgoing or incoming mail);
but at that moment
it ceased to matter.
There was no need for me to know;
nothing could touch the strength of my love,
my thoughts, and the image of my beloved.
Had I known then
that my wife was dead,
I think that I would
still have given myself,
undisturbed by that knowledge,
to the contemplation of her image,
and that my
mental conversation with her
would have been
just as vivid
and just as satisfying.
"Set me
like a seal
upon thy heart,
love
is as strong
as death."
This intensification of inner life
helped the prisoner find a refuge
from
the emptiness,
desolation
and spiritual poverty
of his existence,
by letting him
escape into the past.
When given free rein,
his imagination played with past events,
often not important ones,
but minor happenings and trifling things.
His nostalgic memory glorified them
and they assumed a strange character.
Their world and their existence
seemed very distant
and the spirit
reached out for them longingly:
In my mind
I took bus rides,
unlocked the front door
of my apartment,
answered my telephone,
switched on
the electric lights.
Our thoughts often centered
on such details,
and these memories
could move one to tears.
As the inner life of the prisoner
tended to become more intense,
he also experienced
the beauty of
art
and
nature
as never before.
Under their influence
he sometimes even forgot
his own frightful circumstances.
If someone had seen our faces
on the journey
from Auschwitz to a Bavarian camp
as we beheld the mountains of Salzburg
with their summits glowing in the 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.
[from pages 55 - 59]
+++
from
"Man's Search for Meaning",
revised
and
updated version;
Viktor E. Frankl,
Washington
Square Press,
1984physical and mental primitiveness
of the life in a concentration camp,
it was possible
for spiritual life to deepen.
Sensitive people
who were used to a rich intellectual life
may have suffered much pain
(they were often of a delicate constitution),
but the damage to their inner selves was less.
They were able
to retreat from their terrible surroundings
to a life of inner riches and spiritual freedom.
Only in this way
can one explain
the apparent paradox
that some prisoners
of a less hardy make-up
often seemed
to survive camp life better
than did those
of a robust nature.
In order to make myself clear,
I am forced to fall back
on personal experience.
Let me tell what happened
on those early mornings
when we had to march
to our work site.
There were shouted
commands:
"Detachment,
forward march!
Left-2-3-4!
Left-2-3-4!
Left-2-3-4!
Left-2-3-4!
First man
about,
left and left
left and left!
Caps off!"
These words
sound
in my ears
even now.
At the order
"Caps off!"
we passed the gate of the camp,
and
searchlights were trained upon us.
Whoever did not march smartly
got a kick.
And worse off was the man who,
because of the cold,
had pulled his cap back over his ears
before permission was given.
We stumbled on in the darkness,
over big stones and through large puddles,
along the one road leading from the camp.
The accompanying guards
kept shouting at us
and driving us
with the butts of their rifles.
Anyone with very sore feet
supported himself
on his neighbor's arm.
Hardly a word was spoken;
the icy wind did not encourage talk.
Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar,
the man marching next to me
whispered suddenly:
"If our wives could see us now!
I do hope they are better off in their camps
and don't know what is happening to us."
That brought thoughts
of my own wife to mind.
And as we stumbled on for miles,
slipping on icy spots,
supporting each other time and again,
dragging one another
up and onward,
nothing was said,
but we both knew:
each of us
was thinking of his wife.
Occasionally I looked at the sky,
where the stars were fading
and the pink light of the morning
was beginning to spread
behind a dark bank of clouds.
But my mind clung to my wife's image,
imagining it with an uncanny acuteness.
I heard her answering me,
saw her smile,
her frank and encouraging look.
Real or not,
her look
was then more luminous
than the sun
which was beginning to rise.
A thought transfixed me:
for the first time in my life
I saw the truth
as it
is set into song
by so many poets,
proclaimed
as
the final wisdom
by
so many thinkers.
The truth --
that love
is the ultimate
and
highest goal
to which man
can aspire.
Then I grasped the meaning
of the greatest secret
that human poetry
and human thought and belief
have to impart:
The salvation of man
is through love
and in love.
I understood how a man
who has nothing left in this world
still may know bliss,
be it only for a brief moment,
in the contemplation of his beloved.
In a position of utter desolation,
when man
cannot express himself
in positive action,
when his only achievement
may consist
in enduring his sufferings
in the right way --
an honorable way --
in such a position
man can,
through loving contemplation
of the image he carries
of his beloved,
achieve fulfillment.
For the first time in my life
I was able to understand
the meaning of the words,
"The angels
are lost
in
perpetual
contemplation
of
an infinite glory."
In front of me
a man stumbled
and those following him
fell on top of him.
The guard rushed over
and used his whip on them all.
Thus my thoughts
were interrupted
for a few minutes.
But soon my soul
found its way back
from the prisoner's existence
to another world,
and I resumed talk with my loved one:
I asked her questions,
and she answered;
she questioned me in return,
and I answered.
"Stop!"
We had arrived at our work site.
Everybody rushed into the dark hut
in the hope of getting a fairly decent tool.
Each prisoner got a spade or a pickaxe.
"Can't you hurry up, you pigs!"
Soon we had resumed the previous day's positions
in the ditch.
The frozen ground cracked under the point of the pickaxes,
and sparks flew.
The men were silent, their brains numb.
My mind still clung to the image of my wife.
A thought crossed my mind:
I didn't even know
if she were still alive.
I knew only one thing --
which I have learned well
by now:
Love goes very far
beyond the physical person
of the beloved.
It finds its deepest meaning
in his spiritual being, his inner self.
Whether or not he is actually present,
whether or not he is still alive at all,
ceases somehow to be of importance.
I did not know whether my wife
was alive,
and I had no means of finding out
(during all my prison life
there was no
outgoing or incoming mail);
but at that moment
it ceased to matter.
There was no need for me to know;
nothing could touch the strength of my love,
my thoughts, and the image of my beloved.
Had I known then
that my wife was dead,
I think that I would
still have given myself,
undisturbed by that knowledge,
to the contemplation of her image,
and that my
mental conversation with her
would have been
just as vivid
and just as satisfying.
"Set me
like a seal
upon thy heart,
love
is as strong
as death."
This intensification of inner life
helped the prisoner find a refuge
from
the emptiness,
desolation
and spiritual poverty
of his existence,
by letting him
escape into the past.
When given free rein,
his imagination played with past events,
often not important ones,
but minor happenings and trifling things.
His nostalgic memory glorified them
and they assumed a strange character.
Their world and their existence
seemed very distant
and the spirit
reached out for them longingly:
In my mind
I took bus rides,
unlocked the front door
of my apartment,
answered my telephone,
switched on
the electric lights.
Our thoughts often centered
on such details,
and these memories
could move one to tears.
As the inner life of the prisoner
tended to become more intense,
he also experienced
the beauty of
art
and
nature
as never before.
Under their influence
he sometimes even forgot
his own frightful circumstances.
If someone had seen our faces
on the journey
from Auschwitz to a Bavarian camp
as we beheld the mountains of Salzburg
with their summits glowing in the 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.
[from pages 55 - 59]
+++
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