The Writer’s Condition and the Concept of Fear (original) (raw)

This paper approaches Otto Rank"s theory according to which the main cause of anxiety is the human being"s separation from the loved beings and objects. Along our lives, anxiety takes two forms: the fear of life and the fear of death. The fear of life refers to the anxiety which appears when the individual becomes aware of his creative skills which could separate him/her from the existing relationships. Writers like Emil Cioran, Mihail Sebastian, Octavian Paler, Yukio Mishima, Ernest Hemingway suffered from the fear of life, they were haunted by a tragic that brought about the loneliness of death. It is what Kierkegaard named:"the fatal disease", the sin of the artist"s existence. The artistic process implies a permanent move between acceptance and rejection, satisfaction and denial, life and death, loneliness and happiness.