695
nothing of himself…”.
15
This then, from the man who recognized that there could
be no humanity, only individuals smitten with guilt, existential appeals to some
incarnate conscience, to an (again, imagined, as from the Middle Ages) aesthetic
consciousness, wherein any and all understanding must disambiguate into dust. It is
a mirroring of the only real truth, that nothing exists, including hope vested in the
coming generations, for whatever that’s worth.
76.2 Poets Who Die Young
For Kierkegaard himself, nothing existed after his age of 42. When we attest to all
the poets and philosophers who have died young—Keats, 26; Novalis, 28; Shelley,
29; Thoreau, 44; Avicenna, 57; Aristotle, 62—the ground-zero realities overwhelm
every thinking moment. Our preoccupations with mortality undermine any reconciliatory pretense that should award or tout existence, any more than we can account
for extinction. Our gestures either way are to be lost. “Hell is other people,” declared
Sartre’s Argentinian, Garcin, in “No Exit” which premiered one year prior to the
end of World War II.
As far as can be discerned, life knows no startling conclusions, only suffering
and change, suffering which, as E. M. Cioran elucidates at the conclusion of his
History And Utopia, detests all notions of a Golden Age, declaring from every pang
of its births, “the double impossibility of paradise”.
16
And by the unabashed dictates
of this abrupt truth, it would be a simple matter to summarily discount every cell and
cell division according to the made-up rules of fatalism. Knowing full well that our
seconds are leading to this end, one by one, the essence versus existence debates
that have unceasingly absorbed all those who fail to shed restlessness can do nothing for our cause. That crusade to eliminate pain. To uphold some ideal oath granting life more sovereignty than death. The idealistic embrace is that pillar of
resistance which rejects violence, suffering in any form, granting in ourselves and
in all others, not only the duty to promote tenderness, but the obligation to sustain
its rationale. Where reason may fail to capture ultimate solutions to the world’s
agony, our senses know this paen to relief, medical succor to be the only truth-value,
without surcease, paradox, or the slightest argument. It is plain for all to recognize.
Such transitions that proclaim some beautiful bounty beyond the drudgery of a
Dickens’ world may or may not exist. If they do, it is in spite of ourselves, which
puts an entirely new spin natural selection.
15 Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Translated from the Danish by David
F. Swenson, Completed after his death and provided with Introduction and Notes by Walter Lowrie,
Princeton University Press, Princeton New Jersey,1968, pp. 417, 419.
16 E. M. Cioran, History And Utopia, Translated from the French by Richard Howard, Seaver
Books, New York, 1987, p. 115.
76.2 Poets Who Die Young
nothing of himself…”.
15
This then, from the man who recognized that there could
be no humanity, only individuals smitten with guilt, existential appeals to some
incarnate conscience, to an (again, imagined, as from the Middle Ages) aesthetic
consciousness, wherein any and all understanding must disambiguate into dust. It is
a mirroring of the only real truth, that nothing exists, including hope vested in the
coming generations, for whatever that’s worth.
76.2 Poets Who Die Young
For Kierkegaard himself, nothing existed after his age of 42. When we attest to all
the poets and philosophers who have died young—Keats, 26; Novalis, 28; Shelley,
29; Thoreau, 44; Avicenna, 57; Aristotle, 62—the ground-zero realities overwhelm
every thinking moment. Our preoccupations with mortality undermine any reconciliatory pretense that should award or tout existence, any more than we can account
for extinction. Our gestures either way are to be lost. “Hell is other people,” declared
Sartre’s Argentinian, Garcin, in “No Exit” which premiered one year prior to the
end of World War II.
As far as can be discerned, life knows no startling conclusions, only suffering
and change, suffering which, as E. M. Cioran elucidates at the conclusion of his
History And Utopia, detests all notions of a Golden Age, declaring from every pang
of its births, “the double impossibility of paradise”.
16
And by the unabashed dictates
of this abrupt truth, it would be a simple matter to summarily discount every cell and
cell division according to the made-up rules of fatalism. Knowing full well that our
seconds are leading to this end, one by one, the essence versus existence debates
that have unceasingly absorbed all those who fail to shed restlessness can do nothing for our cause. That crusade to eliminate pain. To uphold some ideal oath granting life more sovereignty than death. The idealistic embrace is that pillar of
resistance which rejects violence, suffering in any form, granting in ourselves and
in all others, not only the duty to promote tenderness, but the obligation to sustain
its rationale. Where reason may fail to capture ultimate solutions to the world’s
agony, our senses know this paen to relief, medical succor to be the only truth-value,
without surcease, paradox, or the slightest argument. It is plain for all to recognize.
Such transitions that proclaim some beautiful bounty beyond the drudgery of a
Dickens’ world may or may not exist. If they do, it is in spite of ourselves, which
puts an entirely new spin natural selection.
15 Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Translated from the Danish by David
F. Swenson, Completed after his death and provided with Introduction and Notes by Walter Lowrie,
Princeton University Press, Princeton New Jersey,1968, pp. 417, 419.
16 E. M. Cioran, History And Utopia, Translated from the French by Richard Howard, Seaver
Books, New York, 1987, p. 115.
76.2 Poets Who Die Young