Michael’s Comments (group member since Jun 19, 2009)

Michael’s comments from the AP Comp & Lang The Things They Carried Discussion group.

Rilke:

Todes-Erfahrung

Wir wissen nichts von diesem Hingehn das
nicht mit uns teilt. Wir haben keinen Grund,
Bewunderung und Liebe oder Haß
dem Tod zu zeigen, den ein Maskenmund

tragsicher Klage wunderlich enstellt.
Noch ist die Welt voll Rollen, die wir spielen.
solang wir sorgen, ob wir auch gefielen,
spielt auch der Tod, obwohl er nicht gefällt.

Doch als du gingst, da brach in diese Bühne
ein Streifen Wirklichkeit durch jenen Spalt,
durch den du hingingst: Grün Wirklicher Grüne,
Wirklicher Sonnenschein, wirklicher Wald.

Wir spielen weiter. Bang und schwer Erlerntes
hersagend und Gebärden dann und wann
aufhebend; aber dein von uns entferntes,
aus unserm Stück entrückes Dasein kann

uns manchmal überkommen, wie ein Wissen
von jener Wirklichkeit sich, niedersenkend,
so daß wir eine Weile hingerissen
das Leben spielen, nicht an Beifall denkend.

Death Experienced

We know nothing of this passing on
that so excludes us. We have no
grounds for showing admiration and love
or hatred to death, whom a mask's mouth

of tragic lament grotesquely disfigures.
The world is still full of roles we act.
As long as we strive anxiously to please,
death also acts, though never to acclaim.

But when you went, a streak of reality
broke in upon this stage through that fissure
where you left: green of real green,
real sunshine, real forest.

We go acting. Afraid and reciting
what was hard to memorize and now and then
raising gestures; but your existence
withdrawn from us and from our play,

can sometimes come over us, like
a knowledge of reality setting in,
so that for a while we act life
transported, not thinking of applause.

(trans. Snow)

Really wanna pick some brains on this; here goes:

One of the peculiarities about O'Brien's treatment of theme is that he focuses on the explicitly painful--loss, fear, death, etc. This seems bizarre: for normally when we are in want, we try to sate ourselves with something pleasurable. When I am hungry, I eat and hunger no more. When I am thirsty, I drink and thirst no more. When I am tired, I sleep and tire no more. But with O'Brien, he is pained and focuses on that pain. Furthermore, it is open to question whether his entrenchment of himself in the explicitly negative actually brings him catharsis.

The question thus is this:

Taking just death, arguably one of the largest sources of pain for O'Brien, as our topic for discussion, is there something to be gained in actively thinking on death?

Think on one's own mortality as well as that of O'Brien.

I, for one, am always reminded of Mozart when I think of this question. In a letter, Mozart wrote that he "thinks about death every day." Yet at the same time, his music is utterly not morbid, being instead richly sublime. And sometimes I fancy that these two facts are intimately related.