As I write, I control my anxiety and anguish thanks to the

The great writer Enrique Vila-Matas once confessed: “As I write, I control my anxiety and anguish thanks to the invaluable aid of irony and humor. But every night I am subdued by an anxiety that knows no irony, and I must wait until the next day to rediscover the blend of anguish and humor that characterizes my writing and that generates my style.” In these words dwells a deep truth about the struggle of the human soul — the battle between darkness and creation, between anguish and art. His voice is the echo of every thinker who has wrestled with despair and turned that very despair into beauty. It is the eternal confession of the artist who bleeds in silence but transforms his suffering into light for others.

When Vila-Matas speaks of irony and humor as the tools by which he controls his anguish, he reveals the alchemy of the spirit — the power to transmute pain into laughter, fear into wit, despair into meaning. Irony becomes the shield, humor the sword. Together they protect him against the devouring night of the soul. Yet when the sun falls and the pen rests, the battle returns. The anxiety that knows no irony rises like a tide, reminding him that the struggle is never fully conquered — only paused, only postponed. The writer’s craft is thus both refuge and battlefield.

Such is the way of the ancients as well. Marcus Aurelius, emperor and philosopher, wrote his Meditations amidst war and grief. Each dawn he clothed his sorrow in reason, writing as a soldier of the spirit. But even he confessed to nights of torment when philosophy faltered, and the weight of empire crushed his peace. Yet he returned to his scroll each morning, as Vila-Matas returns to his page, and there he found again the blend of anguish and wisdom that shaped his virtue. Thus we learn: the artist and the philosopher alike are sustained not by the absence of pain, but by the mastery of it through expression.

There is a sacred rhythm in Vila-Matas’s confession — the cycle of day and night, of creation and silence. Day is the realm of control, where the mind harnesses pain and gives it form. Night is the realm of surrender, where all masks fall and anguish reveals its raw face. To live as a creator is to dwell within this cycle without despairing of it — to accept that the night will always come, but so too will the morning, bringing again the tools of laughter and irony, of work and meaning. The wise understand that suffering cannot be slain, but it can be shaped.

This is why humor is not mere amusement; it is a spiritual weapon. It is how the soul laughs in defiance of sorrow. The ancient cynic Diogenes, living in his barrel, mocked the vanity of kings and the illusions of men. He laughed not because he was carefree, but because laughter was his armor. Like Vila-Matas, he used irony to master despair. His humor was not escape — it was conquest. To laugh in the face of pain is to say: “You may dwell within me, but you will not define me.”

Thus the lesson for those who walk this world of turmoil is clear: Do not flee from your anguish — transform it. Use the tools at your disposal — laughter, irony, art, prayer, or song. Each is a vessel for survival, a means to turn chaos into creation. When night falls and your heart trembles with an anxiety that knows no irony, remember that dawn will come again, bringing with it the chance to reclaim your strength through the sacred act of making.

In practice, let your own form of creation be your ritual of renewal. If your heart is heavy, write, paint, sing, or walk among the trees. Use humor not to mock life, but to endure it with grace. When despair visits you, welcome it as Vila-Matas does — as a dark muse that deepens your art. For it is in the tension between anguish and irony, between night and day, that the truest voice of the human spirit is born.

And so remember, as the ancients would say: The soul that dares to laugh amid sorrow is unconquerable. For through that laughter, and through that act of creation, we rediscover the sacred balance — the blend of anguish and humor that makes us not mere sufferers of life, but its poets.