Casa Robino

“The only healthy reaction of the organism against the incessant, multiple, insidious and harassing pressure of madness is joy.
We all have great powers of vitality. We are filled with such a deep love of life that sometimes it takes only the slightest impulse to make the flame of joy suddenly rise up in us. And we are elevated above ourselves, the present, despair, prison. I once asked a comrade - whose life, I knew well, had been hopeless, full of suffering, a savage struggle in city slums and jail - what had been the happiest hour of his past existence. He answered me:
‘It was in V*** Prison, one Christmas night. I was alone. It was warm. I had a good book and some wine… All at once I felt so well, so calm, so glad to be able to think, so glad to be alive…’
Among those who succeed in resisting madness, their intense inner life brings them to a higher conception of life, to a deeper consciousness of the self, its value, its strength. A victory over jail is a great victory. You sense that if this torture has not broken you, nothing will ever be able to break you. In silence you struggle against the huge prison machine with the firmness and its stoic intelligence of a man who is stronger than the suffering of his flesh and stronger than madness… And, when a broad ray of sunlight inundates the barred window, when good news comes in from the outside, when you have succeeded in filling the dismal day with useful work, an inexpressible joy may ascend within you like a hymn.” - Victor Serge, Men in Prison (via notsoterriblymisanthropic)