“La sensibilità de’ suoi nervi era così acuta che ogni minima sensazione a lui data dalle cose esteriori pareva una ferita profonda. Egli aveva tutto il suo essere esposto agli urti della vita circostante.”
“His senses were so heightened that even the slightest move by the outside world seemed a deep wound. His entire being was exposed to the world of external circumstances.”
“Pleasure”, the English translation of this novel, concerns Andrea Sperelli, a rich young gentlemen who lives his life for pleasure. The aforementioned quote gives a little insight to this type of life though: when one lives for external pleasure, he is mortally exposed to the circumstances of life.
The book elaborately describes the richness Andrea is surrounded by. He is a man obviously in tune with, and in love with beauty. He is intensely aware of the beauty of the women he loves and the details he sees in them are just as elaborately recalled. This is what he lives for- this sensation of pleasure in beauty.
The problem mentioned earlier is that the requirements necessary to attune himself this much to beauty leave him exposed to circumstances, which are not always beautiful. Being young and rich, he is able to surround himself more than most with the objects that fill his life. But that exposure remains.
In his affair with Elena Muti, we are told:
“La passione li avvolse, e li fece incuranti di tutto ciò che per ambedue non fosse un godimento immediato. Ambedue, mirabilimente formati nello spirito e nel corpo all’esercizio di tutti i più alti e più rari delitti, ricercavano senza tregua il Sommo, l’Insuperabile, I’Inarrivabile…”
“Passion enveloped them and made them careless of everything that wasn’t a pleasure in that moment. Both, admirably formed in both spirit and body in the exercise of all the highest and most rare crimes, ceaselessly searched for the Highest, the Insurmountable, the Unreachable…”
He finds ‘heaven’ in this, but when things go wrong, he is in hell. Because his life requires this beauty, finding himself in circumstances where he doesn’t have it renders his life meaningless.
Worse yet, experiencing the highest, etc, means he is unsatisfied with anything less, and that is truly a dangerous place to be.