weeps.
– Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926), 'Death' from Collected Poems (1918). Rilke was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, described as one of the most 'lyrically intense German-language poets' - renowned for his inherently mystical writings.
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More and more madly poured the shrieking, moaning night-wind into that gulf of the inner earth. I dropped prone again and clutched vainly at the floor for fear of being swept bodily through the open gate into the phosphorescent abyss. Such fury I had not expected, and as I grew aware of an actual slipping of my form toward the abyss I was beset by a thousand new terrors of apprehension and imagination. The malignancy of the blast awakened incredible fancies; once more I compared myself shudderingly to the only other human image in that frightful corridor, the man who was torn to pieces by the nameless race, for in the fiendish clawing of the swirling currents there seemed to abide a vindictive rage all the stronger because it was largely impotent. I think I screamed frantically near the last—I was almost mad—but if I did so my cries were lost in the hell-born babel of the howling wind-wraiths. I tried to crawl against the murderous invisible torrent, but I could not even hold my own as I was pushed slowly and inexorably toward the unknown world. Finally reason must have wholly snapped, for I fell
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to babbling over and over that unexplainable couplet of the mad Arab Alhazred, who dreamed of the nameless city:
That is not dead which can eternal lie,And with strange aeons even death may die
Only the grim brooding desert gods know what really took place—what indescribable struggles and scrambles in the dark I endured or what Abaddon guided me back to life, where I must always remember and shiver in the night-wind till oblivion—or worse—claims me. Monstrous, unnatural, colossal, was the thing—too far beyond all the ideas of man to be believed except in the silent damnable small hours when one cannot sleep.
– H. P. Lovecraft (1890 - 1937), an American author who achieved posthumous fame and critical acclaim through his works of horror fiction. Virtually unknown and only published in pulp magazines before he died in poverty, he is now regarded as one of the most significant twentieth-century authors. The Nameless City (first published in the November 1921 issue of The Wolverine).
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Than Almitra spoke, saying, "We would ask now of Death."
And he said: You would know the secret of death. But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light. If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life. For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond; And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring. Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity. Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.
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Is the sheered not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king? Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And what is to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink form the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.
– Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931), a Lebanese artist, poet and writer, best known in the English-speaking world for his 1923 book, The Prophet – in which the quotation above appears. It consists of a series of philosophical essays, written in poetic prose, dealing with topics such as love, marriage, freedom, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion and death.
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Life and Death
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You will never find that life for which you are looking. When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping.
– The Epic of Gilgamesh; an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia dating from the 'Third Dynasty of Ur' (c. 2100 BCE). It is often regarded as the first great work of literature, and the first surviving version, the 'Old Babylonian', dates to the eighteenth century BCE.
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Life and death are balanced, as it were, on the edge of a razor.
– Homer, the first and the greatest of the epic poets, thought to have lived around 850 BCE. Nestor, Knight of Gerene, speaking of the peril facing the Achaeans, in 'Book X' of The Iliad (written around 800 BCE).
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If there be light, then there is darkness; if cold,
