My own feeling is that death is integral to life, but lost to language. When death approaches, when death happens, that event falls outside the scope of what can be said. To write about it is a kind of magic - an evocation, an invocation, a re-membering of what has been dis-membered. The scattered life, now returned to so many atoms, becomes what atoms are - empty space and points of light. I suppose the writers who find a way of saying what resists all saying find a way into the empty space and the points of light, allowing death to be both the wholly private and personal experience it must be, and yet a collective happening.
C.S. Lewis, whatever you think of his Christianity or his politics, achieved this beautifully in A Grief Observed. It is not simply a matter of understanding one's own situation, but a matter of finding the words to express the human situation, without platitudes or patronising. So when Lewis begins: “No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear”, we are with him, and he is with us.
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This is from a review of literature on death, including Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, which I think is a marvelous book. (Not sure about the play version...)
Lately, elegy's been on my mind. What's been on yours? I have been in the world 22 years, 2 months, and 5 days without my best friend and I miss him every day. Do you ever get over this?
4 comments:
I mostly agree with Jeanette...as I usually do.
I think Joan Didion's book is magic. I've never read a book that so captured the "empty spaces" in language. I did not see the play, but a good friend did and said it was just as heartbreaking as the book. Vanessa Redgrave on stage alone for 90 minutes. I wish I could have seen it.
Politics are on my mind, but it's the season.
I love that phrase--the empty spaces in language.
Thanks for the post.
As the mother of my late husband
said, "You don't get over it, but you get used to it." (And she's lost two of her children. Unimaginable.)
Hey Pamela, I know this comes late .... on a May post that is, but I really enjoyed what you put up. Elegy is always on my mind as well. Just found a really nice piece by Leigh Hunt on the death of children that I thought was quite remarkable, and eloquently written.
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