It wasn’t that long ago that people were surrounded by death in a manner that we are not in the West today. How much of an influence was that on the honesty of their writing?
I feel I have plenty to lose. My hope is to retire and enjoy reading in my nook after that. I have a comfortable, middle-class Western European life. How honest does that let me be in my writing?
Imagine you saw death around you, if you knew your life expectancy was short and that death could come suddenly, you might spill it all out with more honesty than I do. I still guard it somehow, because I might be cancelled for whatever reason, and then I cannot enjoy my decades of retirement and reading in my nook, with short naps in between.