Darkness visible: a Memoir of Madness = Face aux ténèbres: chronique d'une folie

Nous ne croyons pas à l'Enfer, nous sommes incapables de l'imaginer, et pourtant il existe, on peut s'y retrouver brusquement au-delà de toute expression. Telle est la leçon de ce petit livre magnifique et terrible. Récit d'une dépression grave, avec son cortège "d'angoisses, d'insomnies, de rafales dévastatrices, de tentations de suicide", il nous montre pour la première fois ce qu'est réellement cette " tempête des ténèbres " intérieure qui peut frapper n'importe qui à chaque instant, mais peut-être plus particulièrement certains écrivains, ou artistes. Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Romain Gary, Primo Levi, Van Gogh : la liste de ces proies désignées de l'ombre serait longue. Enfer, donc, comme celui de Dante, douleur sans autre issue que celle de l'autodestruction, état de transe incommunicable que ne soupçonnent pas les autres, pas même les psychiatres. Pourtant, la guérison est possible, on peut en tirer une connaissance nouvelle. Avec précision et courage, le grand romancier qu'est William Styron plaide ici à la fois pour une meilleure compréhension de notre prochain abîme dans l'horreur, et contre le goût du néant qui nous guette tous. Darkness Visible (published in 1990), is a memoir, which began as a magazine article. It chronicles the author's descent into depression and his near-fatal night of "despair beyond despair." It is a first-hand account of a major depressive episode and challenged the modern taboo on acknowledging such issues. The memoir's goals included increasing knowledge and decreasing stigmatization of major depressive disorders and suicide. It explored the phenomenology of the disease among those with depression, their loved ones, and the general public as well. Earlier, in December 1989, Styron had written an op-ed for The New York Times responding to the disappointment and mystification among scholars about the apparent suicide of Primo Levi, the remarkable Italian writer who survived the Nazi death camps, but apparently had depression in his final years. Reportedly, it was the public's unsympathetic response to Levi's death that impelled Styron to take a more active role as an advocate for educating the public about the nature of depression, about which he was a dilettante, and the role it allegedly played in mental health and suicide. Styron noted in an article for Vanity Fair that "the pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne. The prevention of many suicides will continue to be hindered until there is a general awareness of the nature of this pain. Through the healing process of time--and through medical intervention or hospitalization in many cases--most people survive depression, which may be its only blessing; but to the tragic legion who are compelled to destroy themselves there should be no more reproof attached than to the victims of terminal cancer." "William Clark Styron Jr. (June 11, 1925 - November 1, 2006) was an American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his work."--Wikipedia