Über den Tod

"But I curse death. I cannot help it. Even if I should be struck with blindness for so doing, I cannot help it, I refuse death. If I would accept it, I would be a murderer." This book is a collection of notes from Elias Canetti's diaries that define his attitude towards death. As editor Thomas Macho points out in his epilogue, Canetti's thoughts on this topic were multi-sided: "His thinking revolved around two claims that seemed to contradict each other: The first: death should never be forgotten. The second: death should always be resisted. Canetti interdicts the suppression of death but also the acceptance of dying. He demands that death must never be renounced and yet never be acknowledged either, for even a lasting consciousness of mortality does not necessitate an acceptance of the end. His grounds for this paradoxical position: solidarity amongst all living beings. For death and the dead are outnumbering the living to such an extent that the living must be sworn to hate everybody's death as they would hate their own, to make peace with everything but never with death."

"But I curse death. I cannot help it. Even if I should be struck with blindness for so doing, I cannot help it, I refuse death. If I would accept it, I would be a murderer." This book is a collection of notes from Elias Canetti's diaries that define his attitude towards death. As editor Thomas Macho points out in his epilogue, Canetti's thoughts on this topic were multi-sided: "His thinking revolved around two claims that seemed to contradict each other: The first: death should never be forgotten. The second: death should always be resisted. Canetti interdicts the suppression of death but also the acceptance of dying. He demands that death must never be renounced and yet never be acknowledged either, for even a lasting consciousness of mortality does not necessitate an acceptance of the end. His grounds for this paradoxical position: solidarity amongst all living beings. For death and the dead are outnumbering the living to such an extent that the living must be sworn to hate everybody's death as they would hate their own, to make peace with everything but never with death."