Death and the Author: Moments Before Crossing the Bar

Bin Freund, und komme nicht, zu strafen
(I am friend and I come not to harm).
- Matthias Claudius

Sometimes when I have a glass of rye, I reflect on Dylan Thomas last words: "I've just had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that's the record." 

A poet who turned to alcohol because he believed the muse lay in the malts as opposed to his own unconscious, Thomas went inebriated into that good night. 

As for Balzac, he might as well have run coffee through an I.V. as I'm sure he had more than eighteen straight coffees per day - and probably did have the record. 

Or maybe it wasn't the caffeine that did him in, more like the grueling work schedule he gave himself, his long uninterrupted hours of writing. The man accrued countless debts and just after he was married, the grave became his second honeymoon. I wonder if his leg was twitching like an espresso-holic at the end.

Zola, influenced by Balzac died of carbon monoxide poisoning, said to be caused by a blocked chimney. Though he was a scandalous naturalist writer, author of the Rougon-Macquart series and other works, he made a lot more enemies by defending the Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish artillery officer sentenced to prison on Devil's Island for giving French military secrets to the Germans. There was some suspicion of foul play concerning the chimney though no one was found or arrested.

Maupassant, protégé of Zola, author of Bel-Ami and the infamous 'Boule de Suif' went mad and managed to capture his experience in 'Le Horla' before dying in an asylum in 1893.

Madness brought on syphilis was very common in the 19th century. And death was a way out, easier than living. 

Though it is interesting to note that both Keats and Schopenhauer are believed to have had the venereal disease, the former died of tuberculosis and the latter of heart failure. Two very different men but they were both quite apprehensive around women and though Keats wrote poetry and loved Fanny Brawne, he did have his time with whores as did Schopenhauer. Whereas the poet wrote with subtle misogyny, the philosopher dedicated essays to his hatred of the opposite sex. He couldn't stand their gossip and chattering and even threw a cleaning woman down the stairs because of the sound of her voice. Though he looked down upon the fairer sex, one thing he did give them was their ability to empathize. In "Dignity of Women" (Würde de Frauen) he wrote they are "more sympathetic to the suffering of others."

Schopenhauer influenced Maupassant and Friedrich Nietzsche who may have taken the torch of misogyny from the pessimist and imparted it into his own writing. Nietzsche too had sympathy, he just probably didn't want to admit to it and before he collapsed into madness threw his arms around a horse being flogged in the streets of Turin, Italy in 1889. It seemed in that moment strange and profound that Nietzsche who held a kind of disdain for compassion should succumb to it.

The madness was brought on by the same venereal disease as the French short-story writer. 

Nietzsche lived on some ten more years before dying in 1900. 

Another German, poet Friedrich Hölderlin was madder for a long time before passing on, living 36 years in a tower overlooking the Neckar River in Schwabia, present day Baden-Württtemberg (you can actually visit this tower in Tübingen).

Hölderlin was destined for greatness, a classmate of the philosophers Hegel and Schelling in Tübingener Stift, a hall of residence and teaching in the university town. But he was troubled. Of delicate mind and constitution, a bit of a hypochondriac - well, severe is a better adjective. A restless mind, he was a tutor and lived in Frankfurt and returned home on foot from Paris in 1802 after spending time there and before that, Bordeaux. Perhaps he had to leave the country in 1800, first going to Switzerland than France for had he fallen in love with a married woman, Suzette Gontard (née Borkenstein) several years before. When he arrived home in Nürtigen, he learned not along after that she died. 

Syphilis wasn't the cause of Hölderlin's madness. No, he was accused of being a co-conspirator with the French. His relations were also pretty bad with his family and as a result, he became unfit to stand trial or merely survive. A cultured carpenter, a fan of his writings took him and the family took care of him until his dying day. 

Though one wonders what he could have produced had he remained sane. Was the madness a form of self-protection and death a final absolution? How does one deal with the death of the beloved and unfounded charges coming around one at the same time? Without a supportive family, what is there? The grief and the fear together must have caused him to shut down and he lived on as a ghost. Still, for those lovers of German literature, he had produced some of the most brilliant works of poetry that have influenced men such as the controversial philosopher Martin Heidegger and the poets Georg Trakl and Rainer Maria Rilke. 

Trakl too died, one might argue from madness. He was always a bit unstable. When philosopher and wealthy man Ludwig Wittgenstein offered a poetry award for two outstanding poets, it was given to Trakl and Rilke. All they had to do was walk into a bank to procure their funds. Trakl couldn't even do that. 

He worked as a pharmacist and on the Eastern Front, suffered emotionally and mentally by attending wounded soldiers in a barn near Grodek where the Austrian were badly routed. Ninety men under his care and he wasn't a doctor. One of the wounded, unable to cope with his horrendous pain shot himself in the head. Trakl saw the blood and brain and other bits on the wall and rushed out in a frenzied state of shock to only be greeted by the sight of rotting corpses hanging in the trees - local peasants tried and executed due to being disloyal to the Austrians.

His psyche couldn't handle it and after overdose an cocaine, he fell into a coma, dying in Krakow in 1914.

As for Rilke, there is the myth that the thorn of a rose was his undoing. Roses were especially important to the poet. So of course the story of the unhealed thorn-pricked finger leading to his death would hold more sway over the facts. He died of leukemia. It was a painful and unpleasant but quick death and he passed on in late December 1926.

Poets themselves are often drawn to the mystical in life, to death. Ceasar Vallejo wrote a poem predicting he would die in Paris when it was raining. He did die in Paris. I don't know if it was raining.

But then how to explain the prophecy of Mark Twain who said he arrived in the year of Halley's Comet, 1835 and that he would pass on with the comet upon its return, stressing he would be very disappointed with himself and existence if this wasn't the case.

Well, he wasn't disappointed. I'm sure in some way he stubbornly and unconsciously insisted on this grand exit. Ibsen too was insistent. The Norwegian playwright suffered a series of strokes and the day before he died, a nurse quietly assured a visitor he was improving. "On the contrary" ("Tvertimod!") Ibsen balked loudly and defiantly from his bed and that was the last thing he uttered before his death twenty-four hours later.

Of course, there are suicides when one thinks of creative people. John Berryman threw himself off a bridge while Hart Crane is said to have jumped overboard on a steamship not too long after being beaten up for coming on to a male crew member. Berryman's body met the Mississippi River and Hart's the Gulf of Mexico.

Anne Sexton killed herself and Sylvia Plath (can't forget her), head right into the oven, the kitchen filling with gas.

The most famous author suicide is  Ernest Hemmingway. Boss Shotgun, barrel in his mouth and the trigger went click.

Normally I am sympathetic to suicides but with the latter, I can't take him seriously. In my eyes he was a fraud. A gifted writer and adventurer, I read my way through Hemmingway in my teens. Though here was this bare-knuckler bruiser of a man who hunted in Africa and was war correspondent in the Spanish Civil War, I feel he is more a shadow than a human being. I'm sure he experienced a lot of life but I really don't care for him. Like Picasso, he was exaggerated by his own self-estimation and ridiculous bravado. To this day, many writing students laud him. I tried to re-read some of his writing in my late twenties only to find his work empty and lacking in philosophy. His work often reminds me of a table once decorated with savoury dishes but all we have left is the aroma and the remaining crumbs. (To be honest, I feel as much sympathy for him as I do for Napoleon.)

I'd rather read Paul Celan or Primo Levi, two men who were at concentration camps during the Second World War. Neither was a thrill seeker, in fact Levi was a chemist when the war started. Whereas the poet Celan is dark he is undoubtedly human and Levi, well he has the voice of a man trying to survive, both conflicted and warm, someone with atrocities imprinted in his soul. Though Celan, author of 'Death Fugue',  threw himself into the Seine in Paris and Levi threw himself down the stairs in Turin. They escape the gas chamber and the ovens only to die after they had been killed emotionally by the war.

Turin though... the city where Nietzsche collapsed into madness. How it all comes around, how everything is interconnected for the philosopher's sister Elizabeth, a noted anti-semitic and supporter of the Nazi party continued the Nietzsche legacy by setting up the Nietzsche Archive. When Hitler came to power in 1933, the archive was given funding. Hitler even attended Elizabeth's funeral.

One can't blame Nietzsche for Hitler the way it would be absurd to blame a thorn for a poet's death. Hitler didn't read the philosopher in-depth and only quoted him superficially in Mein Kampf.

Still, life is interesting. Heidegger, whom I mentioned above, was a Nazi for a spell and following the war, wasn't allowed to teach. His influence is unquestionable. He gave a famous interview in Der Spiegel magazine and then died peacefully in 1976, buried beside his brother and parents in his birthplace and hometown of Messkirch, Baden. Full circle, from birth to death.

Heidegger, a fairly painless death unlike many of those mentioned today.