‘⁠Petrov’s flu⁠’ and the tricoteuses

Sooner or later, we find ourselves capable of hurting another: unconsciously, accidentally, as children reminding the parents of the finitude of their existence; but Petrov’s flu shows us that we can cause pain deliberately.

We may want to hurt people because we have lived the better part of our lives, and the best years lie behind us — our health is failing, we are starved of tenderness and the warmth of another body; because we go to work that brings no joy, for money, for a child who will not understand us in time. There are moments when we want to hack at this life — carelessly, clumsily — the way life hacks at us.

During the French Revolution there was a period of particular cruelty: the Reign of Terror, one long year from 1793 to 1794. During that time, the ceaselessly working guillotine claimed a myriad of lives and gave rise to the tricoteuses — women who knitted while watching heads roll. Against the madness of this image, the tricoteuses were ordinary people. Their thirst for the misfortune of others is comprehensible: we want to see others suffer so that we may forget our own.