Tag Archives: death

03/26/24

Death With Interruptions – A Permanent Curse Suspended in Limbo

“As in a game of chess, death advanced her queen. A few more moves should open the way to a checkmate, and the game will end.” (186)

Is the wish for immortality a blessing or a curse? That answer seems simple.

What begins as a celebration devolves into the unknown. Humanity’s fear of death is nothing compared to its fear of life.

In this new world, religion stands without purpose, the government is at a halt, and the ‘maphia’ (emphasis on ‘ph’ so as not to be confused with mafia with ‘fi’) starts to infect the community. Eternal life breeds new challenges that humanity hadn’t dared to consider, and one must “not foster false hopes” (8) of immortality.

Death may be gone, but pain is not. Those on the brink of death are suspended in a listless, forever undying state: a permanent state of limbo. The removal of death is not a blessing. It stirs doubt within the population because what is there to live for if you cannot die?

Amongst my brief summary (and subtle existential ramblings), this book is truly a hypnotic mind-fuck. The suspension of death is not typically something one thinks about–but these ‘what ifs?’ are genuinely the point with works of speculative fiction.

 

Narratives At Play

The beginning presents itself as the philosophical pondering of death’s vacation and, underneath it, the satirical nature of death’s vacation. It is a commentary on humanity’s futile existence. It is an absurdist case study.

“for it is not the same thing to bury a human being and to carry it to its final resting place a cat or a canary, or indeed a circus elephant or a bathtub crocodile…” (18).

The funeral directors, once having a market of corpses, now find the coffins empty. They complain over their new jobs of burying animals in elaborate ways–a strange complaint in this time of uncertainty. This is just one of the many absurdist themes in the novel. There is no longer any point. Death is gone, and people will start to wish to be dead. Immortality is a curse, which we will soon see.

 

Around more than halfway, death herself becomes a character. The tone switches into a melancholic existence.

This is where I started to connect emotionally with the novel. I am truly interested in the personification of death. I am intrigued by the paradoxical nature of death: being alive yet not feeling ‘alive’ in the way humanity does.

A cellist’s pre-death warning keeps bouncing back to death, something that has never happened before. Curious (and a bit worried), death takes it upon herself to investigate.

Death can find herself in the human world, sitting amongst the audience at the orchestra. What began as the journey to condemn the cellist to death reveals itself into death learning to live. It is such a beautiful narrative that focuses on the futility of life. As death watches the cellist, the readers find themselves entranced by the simple man. The way “a man and a dog asleep, perhaps […] dreaming about each other, the man about the dog, the dog about the man…” (170) is something so mundane it truly captivates death.

My stomach was in knots as I watched the impending countdown of the man’s life, the dog one day searching for his owner to no avail. It is genuinely the inevitability of death and its effects on others that is so heartbreaking. This man, unmarried, a simple cellist, accompanied only by man’s best friend, will leave his buddy. I don’t know why, but this broke something in me.

But all is not tragic as Death finds herself alive, setting a blaze to the cellist’s death letter and falling asleep (something death never could do). And with death alive, “no one died” (238).

If I reread this book, I think I will die from sadness. (Ps. I was on the verge of losing it if the dog died)

 

“For the first time in her life, death knew what it felt to have a dog on her lap” (172)

 

Discussion Question

In this land with no death, some cross the border to let the dying die. The morality of killing is blurry in a land without death, yet the limbo state of the dying is permanent. Reflecting on a world in which you have to decide whether to let someone you love live in pain or die, which would you choose? What are the moral implications of either choice?

 

The only certainty we have is life and eventually death: https://www.arthistoryproject.com/subjects/death/

“Self-portrait with Fiddling Death”– Arnold Böcklin

 

03/5/24

The Hour of the Star, starring Macabéa, the Typist, Virgin, and Coca-Cola Fan. Et tu brute?!

“But who am I to rebuke the guilty? The worst part is that I have to forgive them. We must reach such a nothing that we indifferently love or don’t love the criminal who kills us. But I’m not so sure of myself:  I have to ask, though I don’t know who can answer, if I really have to love the one who slays me and ask who amongst you slays me. And my life stronger than myself, replies that it wants revenge at all cost and replies that I must struggle like someone drowning, even if I die in the end. If that’s the way it is, so be it” (Lispector 72)

 

How do I even try to comprehend this novel?

 

Macabéa, the titular character who is not named until at least halfway into the novel, is strange. Frequently described as dumb, Macabéa is someone who “doesn’t know herself except from living aimlessly” (Lispector 7). If she were to contemplate her existence wondering, “Who am I?’ She would fall flat on her face” (Lispector 7). Within these opening remarks from the narrator, we can infer his self-righteous nature. He cannot fathom the very being of Macabéa, or at least he cannot understand her.

“It’s a fear that those whose sense of self is rooted in knowing often have about those perceived to be unknowing” (Minor)

The entire creation of Macabéa in the narrator’s eyes reminded me of Nadja; Breton also created a woman to redirect his insecurities. Thus, the narrator portrays his own self-isolation onto Macabéa. He claims that he “ha[s] to seek a truth that is beyond [him]” (Lispector 12). It is a desire to understand the girl who exists as nothing. But nothing is something; the very nature of there being nothing implies its very existence.

“All roads are blocked to a philosophy which reduces everything to the word ‘no.’ To ‘no’, there is only one answer, and that is ‘yes.’ Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing. Man lives more by affirmation than by bread” (Sorenson, From Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables)

Leaving the academic philosophical lecture aside, the book is a more extensive commentary on humanity; what does it mean to be human? Who am I?

Previously, I touched upon the narrator’s desire to understand Macabéa. This one theme is central to the short novel because everyone around her seems to be trying to make sense of her. We see the explosive attitude of Olímpico, the somewhat helpful Glória, or even the mystical fortune teller. Everyone exists around her to eliminate her individuality or, rather, her lack of it; the narrator describes her as “a dispensable cog” (Lispector 21). But she is nothing of the sort. Macabéa’s very own identity contrasts with society’s. We can see her “possess[ing] a keen ability to see beyond the structures that everyone else lives by” (Berry). She existed “ in [an] impersonal limbo, without reaching the worst or the best.” (Lispector 15). To be frank, she just was. 

Macabéa is a being that just exists. She watches the little things, narrowing her view onto a small speck in the entire universe. Living a quaint life can never changed for the girl; “Just as you could be sentenced to death, the fortune teller sentenced her to life” (Lispector 70), and it is when she truly started living that she died. 

This novel may be one of the strangest things I’ve ever read. A closer look envelops all these heavy philosophical topics tucked under 80 pages.

Quick quote about Greta Garbo: “There was a reason, beyond the exertions of the Hollywood publicity machine, that a single line she uttered in one movie—“I want to be alone”—became so fused with her image.”

 

Discussion Question

What truly makes a life ‘meaningful’?

 

Works Cited

Gerry, Rachel. “Writing the Void: A Review of Clarice Lispector’s “The Hour of the Star” Prism Online, 2021, https://prismmagazine.ca/2021/05/27/writing-the-void-a-review-of-clarice-lispectors-the-hour-of-the-star/

Minor, Abby. “That Full Void’: Clarice Lispector’s The Hour of the Star.” AGNI, 2021 https://agnionline.bu.edu/review/that-full-void-clarice-lispectors-the-hour-of-the-star/

Sorensen, Roy, “Nothingness”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2023/entries/nothingness/

Talbot, Margaret. “What Was So Special About Greta Garbo?” The New Yorker, 2021 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/13/what-was-so-special-about-greta-garbo

 

01/29/24

A State of Temporary Limbo – The Shrouded Woman

“And now she desires nothing more than to remain there crucified to the earth, suffering and enjoying in her flesh the ebb and flow of distant, far distant tides; feeling the grass grow, new islands emerge, and on some other continent, the unknown flower bursting open that blooms only on a day of eclipse. And she even feels huge suns boiling and exploding and gigantic mountains of sand tumbling down, no one knows where” (259)

No matter how much you try, one cannot escape the cold grasp of death. It is a fate that Ana Maria so desperately tries to challenge. The “Shrouded Woman” is an unescapable march to the afterlife. The section of the novel presents itself as the tragic retelling of Ana Maria’s tragic life. The all around emotion of this book is despair. There are many instances of “what could have been” – the general structure of this book seeming like a final goodbye, which it is. At the beginning some may call Ana Maria whiny; exhibiting a general distain for life. However, reading deeper, Ana Maria’s life is that of a Shakespearean Tragedy.

Despair fills her entire view: her daughter-in-law dying by suicide; her husband “tolerating” her; the summer romance shared and never again fulfilled. “Isn’t it strange a love that can humiliate, can do nothing but humiliate” (205). Her hopeful wishes are torn down every chance; Ana Maria symbolically is hiding herself (shrouding) in gloom. 

Following the end of the story, we are shown a glimpse into Ana Maria’s relationship with god. This quote is a summary of her pain: “The Garden of Eden! Poor Ana Maria! Your whole life was nothing but a passionate search for that Garden of Eden, lost irretrievably, however, by man!” (254). She is cursed with the journey to find Eden; to find lust, desire, perhaps love. But, at every turn, she is tricked. She cannot find the garden because it has been overtaken by the selfish nature of man. Ricardo will never love her as she loved him; Antonio will always be resentful, barely tolerating his wife; and Fernando, the yearning of a true friend. 

 

Limbo: in an uncertain or undecided state or condition (Merriam-Webster)

This is where Ana Maria is, until the end of the novel. She teeters dead; on the edge of remembrance and disappearance. It is the fate of the Shrouded woman: to recount the live moments of her deadly life. She can rest, knowing that her second death is here.

“I swear it. The woman in the shroud did not feel the slightest desire to rise again. Alone, she would at last be able to rest, to die. For she had suffered the death of living. And now she longed for total immersion, for the second death, the death of the dead” (259)

 

Discussion Question:

The Shrouded Woman is a play on two meanings: one being literally shrouding herself (wrapping the woman up for death) and additionally shrouding the self (hiding from the world). Why do you think Bombal emphasizes this point so hard? It is a further commentary on death and life and the similarities between the two?

 

This painting I have here is one by Claude Monet entitled: “Camille Monet on her Deathbed”. It is a painting of his late wife who tragically died at 32. This painting represents the reality of death: corpses decay as death is inevitable. It is a painting of true despair