writing in the dust

With regard to the sharpest and most melting sorrow, that which arises from the loss of those whom we have loved with tenderness, it may be observed, that friendship between mortals can be contracted on no other terms, than that one must sometime mourn for the other’s death: And this grief will always yield to the surviver one consolation proportionate to his affliction; for the pain, whatever it be, that he himself feels, his friend has escaped.

Samuel Johnson, in The Rambler, 15 May 1750. Sometime I’d like to do a literary survey of this theme — the connection between friendship and grief. Ben Myers was the first person who drew my attention to the frequency of this connection, which is maybe most powerfully portrayed in Augustine’s Confessions.