"Imaginary evils are incurable"
About this Quote
“Imaginary evils are incurable” lands like a cold diagnosis: if the disease lives in the mind’s theater, no medicine can touch it. Ebner-Eschenbach, writing in an era obsessed with propriety, reputation, and the invisible tripwires of class and gender, is pointing at a particular kind of suffering: not the bruise you can show a doctor, but the dread you can only perform. The line is short, almost antiseptic, and that’s the trick. Its restraint mimics the way “imaginary” fears are often dismissed, even as they quietly govern lives.
The subtext is less “your problems aren’t real” than “your problems are real precisely because they’re self-renewing.” An external evil can end: the war stops, the creditor leaves, the scandal fades. An invented evil is adaptive. It shape-shifts to fit new evidence, recruits fresh “signs,” and thrives on the very attention you give it. The word “incurable” is doing heavy cultural work: it invokes the 19th century’s medical authority while also hinting at moral fatalism, the period’s temptation to treat anxiety, jealousy, or suspicion as character flaws rather than conditions.
As a novelist, Ebner-Eschenbach is also defending realism against melodrama. Imaginary evils are narrative traps: once a character commits to paranoia or romantic catastrophe, the story can’t resolve through facts, because facts aren’t the point. The line warns that the hardest battles aren’t with villains, but with the fantasies we mistake for threats - and then organize our whole behavior around.
The subtext is less “your problems aren’t real” than “your problems are real precisely because they’re self-renewing.” An external evil can end: the war stops, the creditor leaves, the scandal fades. An invented evil is adaptive. It shape-shifts to fit new evidence, recruits fresh “signs,” and thrives on the very attention you give it. The word “incurable” is doing heavy cultural work: it invokes the 19th century’s medical authority while also hinting at moral fatalism, the period’s temptation to treat anxiety, jealousy, or suspicion as character flaws rather than conditions.
As a novelist, Ebner-Eschenbach is also defending realism against melodrama. Imaginary evils are narrative traps: once a character commits to paranoia or romantic catastrophe, the story can’t resolve through facts, because facts aren’t the point. The line warns that the hardest battles aren’t with villains, but with the fantasies we mistake for threats - and then organize our whole behavior around.
Quote Details
| Topic | Anxiety |
|---|
More Quotes by Marie
Add to List
