India, Oct. 30 -- Art of the Western world, especially, has always had a soft spot for suffering. Pain makes for good drama, and artists have long treated misery as their most reliable muse. This is so in the crucifixions depicted in medieval frescoes and in the wastelands of Beckett. In the Bible, Job is stripped of everything but still praises God and hangs on to hope, thus translating agony into proof of faith. The same tendency is seen in literature where hope, even faint and cracked, is given a special seat in the house of despair, as if to suggest that meaning will arrive if we suffer long enough. But what if suffering is not instruction, not even a test; just a constant state of mind? What if the sky never really clears?

Nietzsche...