should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, And thou no breath at all?' As evidenced in the work of John Donne, death is nothing if not a paradox. Cordelia's actions (refusing to express her love for her father), showed that true feelings lay too deep for words – yet often words are all we have. This is where great literature and
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great writers can help us, providing a voice for emotions otherwise inexpressible. Take Mark Twain's simple elegy to his daughter (who died from meningitis at the age of twenty-four) as an example:
Love came at eve, and when the day was done,When heart and brain were tired, and slumber pressed;Love came at eve, shut out the sinking sun,And whispered, 'I am rest.'
The feelings behind Twain's simple words are so bleak, and so sorrowful, it is difficult to see how they found expression at all. Yet there is something different to the heartfelt emotions expressed above, and the sentimental nature of much writing on death. The over-romanticisation of the maudlin found its apogee in the Victorian era. Oscar Wilde once famously said of the death of Little Nell in Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop that 'one must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without Laughing!' The demise of Beth in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, rings a similar tone in the character's final sentiments that 'the hard part now is the leaving you all. I'm not afraid, but it seems as if I should be homesick for you even in heaven.' The word 'sentimental' only appeared in the early-eighteenth century, coming from 'sentire in mente', literally meaning feeling in idea. As Oscar Wiled again quipped, 'a sentimentalist is simply one
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who wants to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.' In some of the writing in the following pages, including Byron's 'Epitaph to a Dog', Hans Christian Andersen's 'The Story of a Mother' or Shelley's 'Elegy on the Death of John Keats', once gets the immediate impression that the writer is truly paying their 'emotional debts'. Death is not always expected, neat and 'final', and this comes across in much of the writing on the subject.
Death in literature is an incredibly varied thing, just as death is wide-ranging in life. It is an inescapable destiny for each of us as individuals, and as such, has permeated the imagination of the greatest literary minds. Writers on... Death should hopefully demonstrate the ability of this most universal (and least understood) subjects to enhance the readers understanding of a text, its author, its characters and the wider world around us. This collection is intended as a comprehensive introduction, across time and geographical location, to the world's most influential writers, and their thoughts on death. As the following excerpts and quotations will show, judgments on death are as varied as they are universal, as primordial as they are contemporary, and as superfluous as they are indispensable. Thinking about death helps us think about existence - and what is literature, if not an attempt to understand life?
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What is death?
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It brings us no relief or benefit, if, after winning fair fame, we die an ignominious death; for mere death is not the bitterest, but rather when one who wants to die cannot obtain even that boon.
– Sophocles (c. 497 - c. 406 BCE), one of the three great ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. He wrote 123 plays during his life, but only seven have survived in their complete form, including Electra, in which the character of Chrysothemis speaks the words above.
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Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which cannot exist when I do?
– Epicurus (341 - 270 BCE). For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to attain a happy, peaceful and painless life - which could be achieved by understanding the natural world, living modestly and limiting one's desires.
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Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;For those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,And soonest our best men with thee do go,Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.Thou'rt slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,And better than thy stroke ; why swell'st thou then?One short sleep past, we wake eternally,And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
– John Donne (1572 - 1631), 'Death Be Not Proud', a metaphysical poem written around 1610 and first published posthumously in 1633. It is the tenth sonnet in Donne's Divine Meditations, penned predominantly in the style and form prescribed by Renaissance Italian poet, Petrarch.
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BOSOLA: Yet, methinks,The manner of your death should much afflict you:This cord should terrify you.
DUCHESS: Not a whit:What would it pleasure me to have my throat cutWith diamonds? or to be smotheredWith cassia? or to be shot to death with pearls?I know death hath ten thousand several doorsFor men to take their exits; and 'tis foundThey go on such strange geometrical hinges,You may open them both ways: any way, for heaven-sake,So I were out of your whispering. Tell my brothersThat I perceive death, now I am well awake!
– John Webster (1580 - 1634), The Tragedy
