ABSTRACT. After first dealing with the theoretical background of suicide notes and farewell letters, with their history, semantics, and “differential diagnosis,” we deal with the particular case of poets, writers and artists and do not fail to see that theirs are richer in symbolic values, with regard to at least nine lexical units: frustration, anxiety, unhappiness, disorientation, hopelessness, negative self-evaluation, void, the desire to disappear, the sense of failure.

Keywords: suicide note; farewell letter; semantics; differential semantics