{"id":11953,"date":"2009-12-28T15:32:03","date_gmt":"2009-12-28T15:32:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/12\/28\/a-death-poem-for-years-end\/"},"modified":"2009-12-28T15:32:03","modified_gmt":"2009-12-28T15:32:03","slug":"a-death-poem-for-years-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/12\/28\/a-death-poem-for-years-end\/","title":{"rendered":"A Death Poem for Year’s End"},"content":{"rendered":"

As another year slips away, a year that saw the passing of John Updike, here is a fine poem of his to celebrate or mourn the waning days of ought-nine:<\/font><\/p>\n

Perfection Wasted<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market \u2014\u2014
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their tears confused with their diamond earrings,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories packed
in the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That's it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.<\/font><\/p>\n

Commentary<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n

Viewed from a third-person point of view, death seems entirely natural, not evil or tragic.  Deciduous trees give up their leaves in the fall, but new ones arrive in the spring.  Where's the evil in that? We too are parts of nature; we hang for a time from des Lebens goldener Baum<\/em>, and then we drop off.  So far there has never been a lack of new specimens to take our places in a universe that can get on quite well without any of us.   But "imitators and descendants aren't the same."  No indeed, for what dies when we die is not merely an animal, not merely a bit of biology, not merely a specimen of a species, a replaceable token of a type, but a subject of experience<\/em>, a self, an irreplaceable  conscious individual<\/em>, a being capable of saying and meaning 'I.'  "Who will do it again?"  No one!  I am unique and it took me a lifetime to get to this level of haecceity and ipseity.  This interiority wasn't there at first; I had to make it.  I became who I am by my loving and striving and willing and knowing: I actualized myself as a self.  It was a long apprenticeship that led to this mastery.  If I did a good job of it I perfected, completed, mastered, myself: I achieved my own incommunicable  perfection, which cannot be understood objectively, but only subjectively by a being who loves.  In the first instance that is me:  I love myself and as loving myself I know myself.  In the second instance, it is you if you love me; loving me you know me as an individual, not as a specimen of a species, a token of a type, an instance of a universal, an object among objects.  There were all those outside influences, of course, but they would have been nothing to me had I not appropriated them, making them my own.  As a somewhat greater poet once wrote, Was du ererbt von Deinen V\u00e4tern hast, erwirb es, um es zu besitzen.<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n

And so therein lies death's sting: not in the passing of a bit of biology, but in the wasting of that unique and incommunicable perfection, the instant evaporation of that ocean of interiority.  But is the perfection wasted?  Does the magic just cease?  The animal ceases no doubt, but the magic of interiority?  These questions remain open.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As another year slips away, a year that saw the passing of John Updike, here is a fine poem of his to celebrate or mourn the waning days of ought-nine: Perfection Wasted And another regrettable thing about deathis the ceasing of your own brand of magic,which took a whole life to develop and market \u2014\u2014the … Continue reading “A Death Poem for Year’s End”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[184,40,161],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-death-and-immortality","category-literary-matters","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}