Eulogy/Elegy

in memory of
simplylivedie.blogspot.com


shining solitude, the void of the sky, a deferred death: disaster.

- Blanchot,

the last phrase in The Writing of The Disaster.



And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.
(Genesis 6:17)

It is because each photograph always contains this imperious sign of my future death that each one, however attached it seems to be to the excited world of the living, challenges each of us, one by one, outside of any generality.

(Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, 97)


Friendship is not a gift, or a promise; it is not a form of generosity. Rather, this incommensurable relation of one to the other is the outside drawing near in its separateness and inaccessibility. Desire, pure impure desire, is the call to bridge the distance, to die in common through separation. Death suddenly powerless, if friendship is the response that one can hear and make heard only by dying ceaselessly.

(Blanchot, 29)


il n'y aura pas de deuil (there shall be no mourning)

Jean-Francois Lyotard

The man (he was the same one who had administered the poison) kept his hand upon Socrates, and after a little while examined his feet and legs; then pinched his foot hard and asked if he felt it. Socrates said no. Then he did the same to his legs; and moving gradually upwards in this way let us see that he was getting cold and numb. Presently he felt him again and said that when it reached the heart, Socrates would be gone.

Phaedo 117A-118

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal . But lay up yourselves in heave, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through and steal. For where treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Matthew 6: 19-21


He spoke humbly, seeing it is his heart's desire; he spoke briefly, as if fitting; but he will never forget that you needed a hundred years to get the son of your old age, against every expectation, that you had to draw the knife before keeping Issac; he will never forget that in one hundred and thirty years you got no further than faith.

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling


And she innocently showed her four thorns. Then she added:
'Don't hang about like that, it's irritating. You've decided to go. Now go!'

For she did not want him to see her tears. She was such a haughty flower.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince



With failing eyes K. could still see the two of them, cheek learning against cheek, immediately before his face, watching the final act. 'Like a dog!' he said: it was as if he meant the shame of it to outlive him.

Franz Kafka, The Trial


This gift of infinite love comes from someone and is addressed to someone; responsibility demands irreplaceable singularity. Yet only death or rather the apprehension of death can give this irreplaceability, and it is only on the basis of it that one can speak of a responsible subject, of the soul as conscience of self, of myself, etc.

(Derrida, The Gift of Death, 51)

"O King of the age, these are thy children and I crave that thou release me from the doom of death, as a dole to these infants;..."

Shahrazad in The Arabian Nights - Tales from A Thousand and One Nights



"Getrude, do not drink!" But the Queen is thirsty. It is too late! Too late, Hamlet's sword runs the king through, the fifth act is already ending.

Italo calvino, The Castle of Crossed Destinies


We are still-born, and for many years we have not been begotten by living fathers, and that suits us better and better. We are developing a taste for it. Soon we shall somehow contrive to be born from an idea. But enough; I don't want to write more from "underground"...

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground


Death: a mortality as demanded by the duration of time.

Levinas, God, Death and Time.

Fetyukovich:

My client grew up under God's protection, like a wild beast, that is. Perhaps he had yearned to see his father after long years of being apart from him, perhaps a thousand times before, remembering his childhood as in slumber, he had driven away the repulsive spectres that had haunted his dreams as a child, and yeaned with all his soul to excuse his father and to throw his arms about him! And what happens? He is greeted by nothing but cynical sneers , suspicion and chicanery concerning the disputed money; he hears nothing but talk and worldly maxims that make his heart turn over, every day "over some cognac", and at last, beholds his own father trying to take away from him, his son, by means of his son's money, his mistress, - oh, gentlemen of the jury, that is repulsive and cruel!

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 947


Oh! on which side shall I be, when all these transitory things are done away with, when the dead have risen from their graves, when the great congregation shall stand upon the land, and upon the sea, when every valley, and every mountain, and every river, and every sea, shall be crowded with multitudes standing in thick array?

Charles Spurgeon,
"THE HIGH PRIEST STANDING BETWEEN THE DEAD AND THE LIVING." The New Park Street Pulpit


Vladimir: We'll hang ourselves tomorrow. [Pause.]
Unless Godot comes.
Estragon: And if he comes?
Vladimir: We'll be saved.
...

Vladimir: Well? Shall we go?
Estragon: Yes, let's go.
[they do not move.]


Beckett - Waiting for Godot


He had only five minutes more to live. He told me that those five minutes seemed to him an infinite time, a vast wealth; he felt that he had so many lives left in those five minutes that there was no need yet to think of the last moment, so much so that he divided his time up.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

MICHEL: C'est vraiment dégueulasse.
PATRICIA: Qu'est ce qu'il a dit?
VITAL: Il a dit que vous êtes "une dégueulasse".
PATRICIA: Qu'est ce que c'est "dégueulasse"?

MICHEL: That's really disgusting.
PATRICIA: What did he say?
VITAL: He said, "You are really a bitch."
PATRICIA: What is "déguelasse" [bitch]?

final dialogue in Breathless, when Michel is dying.

And now I was buried in the earth. They all went away, and I was left alone, entirely alone. I did not move. Whenever before I imagined how I should be buried in a grave, there was only one sensation I actually associated with the grave, namely, that of damp and cold. And so it was now. I felt that I was very cold, especially in the tips of my toes, but I felt nothing else.

I lay in my grave, strange to say, I did not expect anything, accepting the idea that a dead man had nothing to expect as an incontestable fact. But it was damp. I don’t know how long a time passed, whether an hour, or several days, or many days. But suddenly a drop of water, which had seeped through the lid of the coffin, fell on my closed left eye. It was followed by another drop a minute later, then after another minute by another drop, and so on. One drop every minute. All at once deep indignation blazed up in my heart, and I suddenly felt a twinge of physical pain in it.

“That’s my wound,” I thought. “It’s the shot I fired. There’s a bullet there…” And drop after drop still kept falling every minute on my closed eyelid. And suddenly I called (not with my voice, for I was motionless, but with the whole of my being) upon Him who was responsible for all that was happening to me:

“Whoever Thou art, and if anything more rational exists than what is happening here, let it, I pray Thee, come to pass here too. But if Thou art revenging Thyself for my senseless act of self-destruction by the infamy and absurdity of life after death, then know that no torture that may be inflicted upon me can ever equal the contempt which I shall go on feeling in silence, though my martyrdom last for aeons upon aeons!”

I made this appeal and was silent. The dead silence went on for almost a minute, and one more drop fell on my closed eyelid, but I knew, I knew and believed infinitely and unshakably that everything would without a doubt change immediately.

And then my grave was opened.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dreams of a Ridiculous Man

When it is really a question of death, the dream speaks another language.

Carl Jung, The Practical Use of Dream Analysis, 107

He is perfectly qualified to talk about destiny by virtue of the fact that no existence is as remarkable as his for its absence of destiny.
You have to be alive to talk about death.

Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories IV 1995-2000, 40

But when Zarathustra was alone, he spoke thus to his heart:
‘Could it be possible! This old saint has not yet heard in his forest that God is dead!’

Friedrich Nietszche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Albrecht Dürer, Knight, Death, and Devil

The death of one being is correlated with the birth of the other, heralding it and making possible. Life is always a product of the decomposition of life. Life first pays its tribute to death which disappears, then to corruption following on death and bringing back into the cycle of change the matter necessary for the ceaseless arrival of new beings into the world.

Georges Bataille, From p. 55-62 of Erotism: Death and Sensuality

Ingmar Bergman, The Seventh Seal, Knight meets Death.

And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped,

And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.

In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.

The Book of Job, 1:19-22

The avenger of blood is stronger than the Angel of Death.

Levinas, Cities of Refuge

Gustav Klimt
Death and Life, 1916

The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.

Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author”

ALBANY

The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

Exeunt, with a dead march

Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 5, Scene 3

(and the reader will die too.)

You were dead and now once again you find yourself alive – ONLY THIS TIME YOU ARE ALONE.

Antonin Artaud, From Art and Death (1925-27)

Then the tin soldier melted down into a lump, and when the servant-maid took the ashes out next day, she found him in the shape of a little tin heart.

Hans Christian Andersen, The Hardy Tin Soldier

Lastly our hearts, whether they be right or wrong,
We leave neither to scientists or doctors
But to those to whom they properly belong.

Auden and MacNeice: Their Last Will and Testament

Char Boy

For Christmas, Char Boy received his usual lump of coal, which made him very happy.

For Christmas, Char Boy received a small present instead of his usual lump of coal, which confused him very much.

For Christmas, Char Boy was mistaken for a dirty fireplace and swept out into the street.

Tim Burton

Abraham:
I am, myself, ashes and dust.

Genesis 18:22ff.

"I am alive. No, you are dead."

Blanchot, The Instant of My Death

If only I knew if I’ve lived, if I live, if I’ll live, that would simplify everything, impossible to find out, that’s where you’re buggered, I haven’t stirred, that’s all I know, no, I know something else, it’s not I, I always forget that, I resume, you must resume…

Beckett, The Unnamable, 417.

Death is a mode of being, and it is on the basis of this mode of being that the not-yet arises.

Levinas, “Death and Totality of ‘Dasein’.

I die. I live. I died to live. I simply live to die; to live.

Alvin Lim, 06 April 2008

simplylivedie.blogspot.com is officially closed and dead.

It simply lived to die.

how it all ended.
how I now must trust that my disappearance will bless you.
as it had for many others.
i tried to speak to you.
i hope in some ways you have heard.
i apologise for my silences.
but that is how I express my inner most indescribable, unspoken feelings.

confidence comes from death.
nothing can be as certain as death.
before we can even talk about life.

Let us share eternity in order to make it transitory.
what remains to be said. - Blanchot

What remains of all that misery? A girl in a shabby (pink tee), on a railway-station platform? No?

Pause.

When I look--

Krapp switches off, broods, looks at his watch, gets up, goes backstage into darkness. Ten seconds. pop of cork. Ten seconds. Second cork. Ten seconds. Third cork. Ten seconds. Brief burst of quavering song.

KRAPP

(sings).

Now the day is over,
Night is drawing nigh-igh,
Shadows--

Fit of coughing. He comes back into light, sits down, wipes his mouth, switches on, resumes his listening posture.

Beckett, Krapp's Last Tape

let me die by saying this -
I love you. (it is said.)