Antal Szerb - discovery of the day or may be more than that...

"The hardest thing was that I had to take part in their plays. I don't have the slightest instinct for acting. I am incurably self-conscious, and at first I thought I would die when they gave me their grandfather's red waistcoat so that I could become Pope Alexander the Sixth in a long-running Borgia serial. In time I did get the hang of it. But I never managed to improvise the rich baaroque tapestries they did. On the other hand, I made an excellent sacrificial victim. I was perhaps best at being poisoned and boiled in oil. Often I was just the mob butchered in the atrocities of Ivan the Terrible, and had to rattle my throat and expire twenty-five times in a row, in varying styles. My throat-rattling technique was particularly admired.
And this I have to tell you, though it's difficult to for me to talk about it, even after so much wine, but my wife must know everything: I really enjoyed being the sacrificial victim. It was the first thing I thought of when I woke up, and I looked forward to it the whole day long, yes..."
"Why did you enjoy being the victim?" asked Erzsi.

Journey by Moonlight
by
Antal Szerb
Hungarian scholar and writer

**********

So why to be a victim and moreover, why to enjoy being a victim?
Does it have to do with the Freudian theories?
May be the feeling of guilt? This ungraspable feeling of being always wrong. You better stay unnoticed and live your life. Who's the winner?
When you are putting yourself in a position of a victim, there is nothing to blame yourself for. You cannot go more down than you already are. You are an absolute zero and there are no responsibilities anymore.
We are all so pitiful and miserable even.