From an unpublished manuscript:
"Cosa è la follia (1938-1940)"
I can get used to suffering, but I will never get
used to seeing so much pain. When I go to the medication room to get my
sleeping pill I try not to see poor, unknown people in their beds. I fix
my gaze straight ahead of me just like a frightened child.
Among these people in our community, who nobody takes any notice of, there
are some who do the same things at the same time. Some are always cuddling
up to the same wall or always walking among the same trees. There are
those who don't say a word for weeks or months on end except for a furious
shout here and there at other poor devils.
For some of them the coming and going between the town and the mental
asylum is a habit. For other to go and see their families full of problems
or the misfortune of not finding work or finding sufficient workers is
distressing. Here there are old people who after a good life are declared
mad by daughters-in-law or mean children. On the whole, however, there
aren't very many of them here. It's not as bad as in the private asylums
that lend themselves to take part in the race for the inheritance.
Then we have the bent-up people with their heads that appear old . whether
they are mador not they wouldn't ask anything more than to straighten
up and work. All they want to do is to work in a reassuring world which
is friendly and generous.
If they are very difficult for rational people to understand, you can
image how distressed the underclass find mental disorders. How it reduces
them to speechlessness and they seem walled up in themselves without being
able to give understandable vent to their feelings.
