Cynical People
Ambrose Bierce
cynic, n. A person who
is prematurely disappointed in the future.
Cynicism seems to march alongside writers and
soldiers, so it is no surprise that one of our most
cynical heroes was both. But when you and your 12
siblings are all given names beginning with the letter
'A', you tend to see the absurdity of all things .
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce (1842-1914?) was a veteran of
the American Civil War, serving for the Damn Yankees.
Yet the horrors of war dulled not his wit nor sense of
humor, though they may have amplified them. The bullet lodged within his skull behind
his left ear – a souvenir of a battle at Kenesaw
Mountain – didn't even slow him down. If anything war intensified his scrutiny
of all life's pleasures and travails, and he made one seem
like the other (or the other way around).
After the war, Bierce settled in San Francisco, a
city known to proof cynics alongside sourdough (which
explain part of your humble editor's disturbing disposition). From
there Bierce exploited the writing trades as a satirist,
short-story writer and journalist. From San Francisco,
he journeyed to London in 1872, finding even more
fertile fields for collecting cynical specimens.
During his career with the poison pen, Bierce (who
also wrote under the pseudonym of William Herman)
created a series of memorable alternate definitions for
words which he later gathered into a collection titled
The Devil's Dictionary, which was the kindling for
this web site. Some classic Bierce incendiaries from
The Devil's Dictionary include:
HAPPINESS, n. An agreeable sensation arising from
contemplating the misery of another.
HAND, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the
human arm and commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.
POSITIVE, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
SAINT: A dead sinner revised and edited.
Aside from the dictionary, Bierce is most remembered
for his eerie tale of a civil war hanging titled An
Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Many of his short
stories were of a supernatural nature, though he often
ridiculed spiritualist and others involved in paranormal
parlor games.
Bierce disappeared in old age riding into to war. At
the age of 71, he headed south to Mexico to fight along
side of the bandit Pancho Villa. Bierce was never seen
or heard from again (he is presumed to have died in the
siege of Ojinega on January 11, 1914). A fictional
account of his last days was told in the novel The Old
Gringo (1985) by Carlos Fuentes, which was later adapted
for the screen and directed by Luis Punzo, starring
Gregory Peck (and unfortunately, Jane Fonda).
If irony is the step-brother to cynicism, then such
an ironic end to a fabled life is only fitting.
[Optimism] is held with greatest tenacity by those most accustomed to the mischance of falling into adversity, and is most acceptably expounded with the grin that apes a smile. Being a blind faith, it is inaccessible to the light of disproof – an intellectual disorder, yielding to no treatment but death. It is hereditary, but fortunately not contagious.
There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another – the classification is for advantage of the lawyers.
A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
From women this ancient faith [of the great God Stomach] commands but a stammering assent. They sometimes minister at the altar in a half-hearted and ineffective way, but true reverence for the one deity that men really adore they know not. If woman had a free hand in the world's marketing the race would become graminivorous.
An absolute monarchy is one in which the sovereign does as he pleases so long as he pleases the assassins. Not many absolute monarchies are left, most of them having been replaced by limited monarchies, where the sovereign's power for evil (and for good) is greatly curtailed, and by republics, which are governed by chance.
In this country the gallows is chiefly remarkable for the number of persons who escape it.
It is related of Voltaire that one night he and some traveling companion lodged at a wayside inn. The surroundings were suggestive, and after supper they agreed to tell robber stories in turn. "Once there was a [tax collector]." Saying nothing more, he was encouraged to continue. "That," he said, "is the story."
Every time Europe looks across the Atlantic to see the American eagle, it observes only the rear end of an ostrich.
[An order] which, originating in the reign of Charles II, among working artisans of London, has been joined successively by the dead of past centuries in unbroken retrogression until now it embraces all the generations of man on the hither side of Adam and is drumming up distinguished recruits among the pre-Creational inhabitants of Chaos and Formless Void. The order was founded at different times by Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, Confucious, Thothmes, and Buddha. Its emblems and symbols have been found in the Catacombs of Paris and Rome, on the stones of the Parthenon and the Chinese Great Wall, among the temples of Karnak and Palmyra and in the Egyptian Pyramids – always by a Freemason.
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