The Darkness from the Darkness

There’s a line by Heinrich Heine that irked me when I first read it and irks me now when I read it again: “Psychical pain is more easily borne than physical; and if I had my choice between a bad conscience and a bad tooth, I should choose the former”—which, if I didn’t know better, makes Heine sound as if he’d never been truly torpedoed by psychical pain. Psychical pain, the real thing, causes physical pain: the heaviness of the head, the tautness of the chest, the gnarling of the intestines, the constriction of the throat, and all those bruises from banging into objects because depression warps your vision. Besides, there’s opium and extraction available for that bad tooth; I have yet to come across an opium or extracting method for the diseased soul.