Valerio Tricoli

It takes the physical pain of cancer to break through Fritz Zorn’s protective shell of a cultivated «insensitivity of the soul». It is not until he is in danger of dying that his resistance awakens against not being allowed to live: «I am young and rich and educated: and I am unhappy, neurotic and alone.» With these words the Swiss author Fritz Zorn opens his reckoning with this background, family and education. However: his contemplation of death is a contemplation of freedom. The art of dying liberates the individual from all subjugation and compulsion and by accepting one’s own finality it offers the possibility of seeing oneself as part of an overarching process of transformation.