Given that the kind of revolt against ennui that we might be tempted at first to label heroic can in fact lead to murderous destruction, there are no grounds to affirm Satanic rebellion as an effective countermeasure to the knowledge of the necessary insatisfaction of existence ushered in with knowledge. Hence the temptation to nothingness is, on this account, a more genuinely attractive option even though it refuses being and, on the surface, can even resemble ennui in that both lead the subject toward inactivity. 
The two kinds of inoperativity are, however, quite different, in that the desire for nothingness is still an act of will. Insofar as it is an act of will, though, it dooms itself to impossibility, since the willing subject is condemned, like the poet in 'Obsession', never to achieve the willed-for nothingness without ceasing to be and thus ceasing to be able to perceive the desired nothingness.
The traditional Christian view of good vs evil is significantly complicated by Fondane, who recognizes that 'there is no longer any Paradise in Baudelaire's Comedy; the route to paradise is closed, barricaded; choice is restricted; there is only Nothingness and Hell. By removing redemption, Baudelaire eliminates the choice of fidelity to a loving God, leaving a choice between Satanic revolt and nothingness.
But by identifying the drive to exist with cruelty, he makes it impossible to affirm revolt, given the dangerous political risks it necessarily implies. The choice is then not one of cruelty or non-cruelty but the appropriate victim of the cruelty. Via the path of revolt, what results is what Fondane calls 'exterior cruelty': 'inquisitions, butchers, massacres' which will be the choice of 'simple souls, the masses' whereas 'fine souls will turn against themselves'.
The self-torturing subject resembles Baudelaire's 'L'hèautontimoroumènos' although Fondane does not make this connection explicit. Rather, he highlights the cyclic character of the internal revolt, which leads from ennui to attempted revolt and back to what Fondane labels, following medieval Christian tradition, acedia: 'It is on a vast canvas of ennui that we will embroider cruelties and crucifixions, that we will take down the enemy, the devil, nothingness, and when torture itself becomes powerless, when imagination is exhausted, the primitive fabric will reappear at the surface and it will be acedia.'
Fondane emphasizes that this is not just the mystics' 'absence of God' but is also the absence of the devil as well, 'since there is no longer anything there where ennui, the unchangeable, the Immobile reigns.'
The Fall Out of Redemption
J. Acquisto
