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August 25, 2007
the truth
I can imagine someone copying out how Felix Arvers died. It was in a hospital. He was dying gently and serenely, and the nun perhaps thought that he was further along in it than he really was. She shouted out some instructions, in a very loud voice, indicating where something or other could be found. She was a rather uneducated nun; she had never seen in writing the word “corridor,” which at that moment she couldn’t avoid using. Thus it happened that she said “collidor,” thinking that this was the proper way to pronounce it. Thereupon Arvers postponed dying. He felt it was necessary to clear up this matter first. He became perfectly lucid and explained to her that it should be “corridor.” He then died. He was a poet and hated the approximate; or perhaps he was concerned only with the truth; or it annoyed him to be taking along as his last impression the thought that the world would continue to go on carelessly. Whatever the reason was can no longer be determined. But let no one think it was pedantry. Otherwise, the same reproach would fall on the saintly Jean de Dieu, who in the midst of his dying jumped up and ran out to the garden, just in time to cut down the man who had hanged himself there, tidings of whom had in some miraculous way penetrated the hidden tension of his agony. He too was concerned only with the truth.
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I had already been afraid before. For example, when my dog died. The one who blamed me once and for all. He was very sick. I had been kneeling beside him all day long, when suddenly he looked up and barked, quickly and abruptly, as he used to do when a stranger entered the room. A bark like that was a signal that we had arranged between us for such occasions, and I involuntarily glanced toward the door. But it was already inside him. Alarmed, I turned back and looked into his eyes, and he looked into mine; but not to say goodbye. He looked at me with an expression of harshness and surprise. He reproached me for allowing it to enter. He was convinced that I could have prevented it. It was obvious now that he had always overestimated me. And there was no time left to explain. He continued to look at me out of an infinite surprise and solitude until it was over.
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I have always shuddered to hear that a dying person could no longer recognize anyone. I would imagine a solitary face that lifted itself up from the pillow and looked, looked for something familiar, looked for something seen before; but there was nothing there.
Rilke - The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
Posted by amin at August 25, 2007 11:16 AM