Proust:
"One day, noticing a swelling inhis stomach, he felt genuinely happy at the thought that he had, perhaps, a tumour that would prove fatal, that he need no longer concern himself with anything, that illness was going to govern his life, to make a plaything of him."
Kafka:
"From my tubercolosis this one now derives the kind of immense support a child gets from clinging to its mother's skirts. What more can one hope for? Has not the war been splendidly concluded? It is tubercolosis, and that is the end."
Illness is the exemption certificate the writer craves in order to abjure the world without guilt. There is this secret pact between the writer (of a certain sort) and death, or more precisely Fate. Fate confiscates your life, freeing up the capacity for creative work. Fate gives you your freedom.
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