I thank you for the magnificent historical analysis of the illness that has thus merited my preference. Ah! in what gallant terms are such things described![1] I am quite convinced that I made the right choice among all the illnesses that have been accessible to me; and I hope that this will also be, as one previously used to say, "the judgment of history."[2]
If I cannot regret this illness, I would not say the same thing for the allopathic poisons that one has led me to ingest and that I hope you can deliver me from. I judge just as you do the intentions of such remedies. The society that worked so hard to suppress pleasure has also claimed that it suppressed sorrow: although here its success has remained much more questionable. I have begun your treatment.
We must see each other soon to speak of something else. Alice will telephone you.
I have given your book[3] to my English publisher (Verso). He writes me that he will ask for an option from [Editions] Allia. He agreed with me that the subject could impassion the Americans faster than [those] here.
Cordially,[1] "The illnesses of gout are always of the living who are endowed with strong creative, intellectual, sexual or social activity [...] and Hippocrates remarked that it always spared the eunuchs."
[2] Translator's note: when Guy Debord took his life on 30 November 1994, he cited polynevrite alcoolique as the cause of his distress and dated its onset from Autumn 1990.
[3] Translator's note: The Time of AIDS (Editions Allia, 1990).
(Published in Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol 7: Janvier 1988-Novembre 1994 by Librairie Artheme Fayard, 2008. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! January 2009. Footnotes by the publisher, except where noted.)