"Everything that is necessary is also easy. You just have to accept it. And the most necessary, the most natural matter on this planet is death"
About this Quote
Durrenmatt smuggles a provocation inside a lullaby. “Everything that is necessary is also easy” sounds like stoic self-help until the next line snaps it shut: it’s only easy “if” you accept it. The ease isn’t in the world; it’s in surrender. Then he delivers the real payload: death isn’t just inevitable, it’s “the most necessary, the most natural matter” on Earth. Necessary for whom? Not for the individual ego, which treats death as a scandal, but for the system: nature, history, plot. In Durrenmatt’s moral universe, the machinery keeps running, and people are the disposable parts.
The subtext is a critique of modern fantasies of control. We live as if the “necessary” should be negotiable, as if enough planning, medicine, or righteousness can make us an exception. Durrenmatt’s line rejects that bargaining posture. Acceptance becomes the final form of clarity, the one stance that can’t be corrupted by wishful thinking.
Context matters: Durrenmatt wrote out of a mid-century Europe where “necessity” had been weaponized by ideologies and where death had become industrial, bureaucratic, and impersonal. Calling death “natural” is deliberately uncomfortable in that aftermath. It’s not a consolation; it’s a hard-edged reminder that the ultimate fact does not require our permission. The sentence works because it turns “easy” into an accusation: if you’re struggling, it’s not because death is complex, but because denial is.
The subtext is a critique of modern fantasies of control. We live as if the “necessary” should be negotiable, as if enough planning, medicine, or righteousness can make us an exception. Durrenmatt’s line rejects that bargaining posture. Acceptance becomes the final form of clarity, the one stance that can’t be corrupted by wishful thinking.
Context matters: Durrenmatt wrote out of a mid-century Europe where “necessity” had been weaponized by ideologies and where death had become industrial, bureaucratic, and impersonal. Calling death “natural” is deliberately uncomfortable in that aftermath. It’s not a consolation; it’s a hard-edged reminder that the ultimate fact does not require our permission. The sentence works because it turns “easy” into an accusation: if you’re struggling, it’s not because death is complex, but because denial is.
Quote Details
| Topic | Mortality |
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