[even Sicilian banquets produce no sweet savours; not even the music of birdsong nor of lyre can bring back sleep] –
[A] do you think they can enjoy it or that having the final purpose of their journey ever before their eyes will not spoil their taste for such entertainment?
[B] Audit iter, numeratque dies, spacioque viarum
Metitur vitam, torquetur peste futura
[He inquires about the way; he counts the days; the length of his life is the length of those roads. He is tortured by future anguish.]12
[A] The end of our course is death.13 It is the objective necessarily within our sights. If death frightens us how can we go one step forward without anguish? For ordinary people the remedy is not to think about it; but what brutish insensitivity can produce so gross a blindness? They lead the donkey by the tail:
Qui capite ipse suo instituit vestigia retro.
[They walk forward with their heads turned backwards.]14
No wonder that they often get caught in a trap. You can frighten such people simply by mentioning death (most of them cross themselves as when the Devil is named); and since it is mentioned in wills, never expect them to draw one up before the doctor has pronounced the death-sentence. And then, in the midst of pain and terror, God only knows what shape their good judgement kneads it into!
[B] (That syllable ‘death’ struck Roman ears too roughly; the very word was thought to bring ill-luck, so they learned to soften and dilute it with periphrases. Instead of saying He is dead they said He has ceased to live or He has lived. They [C] found consolation in [B] living, even in a past tense! Whence our ‘late’ (feu) So-and-So: ‘he was’ So-and-So.)15
[A] Perhaps it is a case of, ‘Repayment delayed means money in hand’, as they say; I was born between eleven and noon on the last day of February, one thousand five hundred and thirty-three (as we date things nowadays, beginning the year in January);16 it is exactly a fortnight since I became thirty-nine: ‘I ought to live at least as long again; meanwhile it would be mad to think of something so far off’. – Yes, but all leave life in the same circumstances, young and old alike. [C] Everybody goes out as though he had just come in. [A] Moreover, however decrepit a man may be, he thinks he still has another [C] twenty years [A] to go17 in the body, so long as he has Methuselah ahead of him. Silly fool, you! Where your life is concerned, who has decided the term? You are relying on doctors’ tales; look at facts and experience instead. As things usually go, you have been living for some time now by favour extraordinary. You have already exceeded the usual term of life; to prove it, just count how many more of your acquaintances have died younger than you are compared with those who have reached your age. Just make a list of people who have ennobled their lives by fame: I wager that we shall find more who died before thirty-five than after. It is full of reason and piety to take as our example the manhood of Jesus Christ: his life ended at thirty-three.18The same term applies to Alexander, the greatest man who was simply man.
Death can surprise us in so many ways:
Quid quisque vitet, nunquam homini satis
Cautum est in horas.
[No man knows what dangers he should avoid from one hour to another.]19
Leaving aside fevers and pleurisies, who would ever have thought that a Duke of Brittany was to be crushed to death in a crowd, as one was during the state entry into Lyons of Pope Clement, who came from my part of the world! Have you not seen one of our kings killed at sport? And was not one of his ancestors killed by a bump from a pig? Aeschylus was warned against a falling house; he was always on the alert, but in vain: he was killed by the shell of a tortoise which slipped from the talons of an eagle in flight. Another choked to death on a pip from a grape; an Emperor died from a scratch when combing his hair; Aemilius Lepidus, from knocking his foot on his own doorstep; Aufidius from bumping into a door of his Council chamber. Those who died between a woman’s thighs include Cornelius Gallus, a praetor; Tigillinus, a captain of the Roman Guard; Ludovico, the son of Guy di Gonzaga, the Marquis of Mantua; and – providing even worse examples – Speucippus the Platonic philosopher, and one of our Popes.20
Then there was that wretched judge Bebius; he was just granting a week’s extra time to a litigant when he died of a seizure: his own time had run out. Caius Julius, a doctor, was putting ointment on the eyes of a patient when death closed his.21 And if I may include a personal example, Captain Saint-Martin, my brother, died at the age of twenty-three while playing tennis; he was felled by a blow from a tennis-ball just above the right ear. There was no sign of bruising or of a wound. He did not even sit down or take a rest; yet five or six hours later he was dead from an apoplexy caused by that blow.
When there pass before our eyes examples such as these, so frequent and so ordinary, how can we ever rid ourselves of thoughts of death or stop imagining that death has us by the scruff of the neck at every moment?
You might say: ‘But what does it matter how you do it, so long as you avoid pain?’ I agree with that. If there were any way at all of sheltering from Death’s blows – even by crawling under the skin of a calf – I am not the man to recoil from it. It is enough for me to spend my time contentedly. I deal myself the best hand I can, and then accept it. It can be as inglorious or as unexemplary as you please:
prætulerim delirus inersque videri,
Dum mea delectent mala me, vel denique fallant,
Quam sapere et ringi.
[I would rather be delirious or a dullard if my faults pleased me, or at least deceived me, rather than to be wise and snarling.]22
But it is madness to think you can succeed that way. They come and they go and they trot and they dance: and never a word about death. All well and good. Yet when death does come – to them, their wives, their children, their friends – catching them unawares and unprepared, then what storms of passion overwhelm them, what cries, what fury, what despair! Have you ever seen anything brought so low, anything so changed, so confused?
We must start providing for it earlier. Even if such brutish indifference could find lodgings in the head of an intelligent man (which seems quite impossible to me) it sells its wares too dearly. If death were an enemy which could be avoided I would counsel borrowing the arms of cowardice. But it cannot be done. [B] Death can catch you just as easily as a coward on the run or as an honourable man:
[A] Nempe et fugacem persequitur virum,
Nec parcit imbellis juventæ
Poplitibus, timidoque tergo;
[It hounds the man who runs away, and it does not spare the legs or fearful backs of unwarlike youth;]
[B] no tempered steel can protect your shoulders;
Ille licet ferro cautus se condat ære,
Mors tamen inclusum protrahet inde caput;
[No use a man hiding prudently behind iron or brass:
Death will know how to make him stick out his cowering head;]23
[A] we must learn to stand firm and to fight it.
To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness; let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death. At every instant let us evoke it in our imagination under all its aspects. Whenever a horse stumbles, a tile falls or a pin pricks however slightly, let us at once chew over this thought: ‘Supposing that was death itself?’ With that, let us brace ourselves and make an effort. In the midst of joy and feasting let our refrain be one which recalls our human condition. Let us never be carried away by pleasure so strongly that we fail to recall occasionally how many are the ways in which that joy of ours is subject to death or how many are the fashions in which death threatens to snatch it away. That is what the Egyptians did: in the midst of all their banquets and good cheer they would bring in a mummified corpse to serve as a warning to the guests:24
Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum.
Grata superveniet, quæ non sperabitur hora.
; [Believe that each day was the last to shine on you. If it comes, any unexpected hour will be welcome indeed.]25
We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practise death is to practise freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. Knowing how to die gives us freedom from subjection and constraint. [C] Life has no evil for him who has thoroughly understood that loss of life is not an evil. [A] Paulus Aemilius was sent a messenger by that wretched King of Macedonia who was his prisoner, begging not to be led in his triumphant procession. He replied: ‘Let him beg that favour from himself.’
It is true that, in all things, if Nature does not lend a hand art and industry do not progress very far. I myself am not so much melancholic as an idle dreamer: from the outset there was no topic I ever concerned myself with more than with thoughts about death – even in the most licentious period of my life.
[B] Jucundum cum aetas florida ver ageret.
[When my blossoming youth rejoiced in spring.]26
[A] Among the games and the courting many thought I was standing apart chewing over some jealousy or the uncertainty of my aspirations: meanwhile I was reflecting on someone or other who, on leaving festivities just like these, had been surprised by a burning fever and [C] his end, [A] with his head27 full of idleness, love and merriment – just like me; and the same could be dogging me now:
[B] Jam fuerit, nec post unquam revocare licebit.
[The present will soon be the past, never to be recalled.]28
[A] Thoughts such as these did not furrow my brow any more than others did. At first it does seem impossible not to feel the sting of such ideas, but if you keep handling them and running through them you eventually tame them. No doubt about that. Otherwise I would, for my part, be in continual terror and frenzy: for no man ever had less confidence than I did that he would go on living; and no man ever counted less on his life proving long. Up till now I have enjoyed robust good health almost uninterruptedly: yet that never extends my hopes for life any more than sickness shortens them. Every moment it seems to me that I am running away from myself. [C] And I ceaselessly chant the refrain, ‘Anything you can do another day can be done now.’
[A] In truth risks and dangers do little or nothing to bring us nearer to death. If we think of all the millions of threats which remain hanging over us, apart from the one which happens to appear most menacing just now, we shall realize that death is equally near when we are vigorous or feverish, at sea or at home, in battle or in repose. [C] ‘Nemo altero fragilior est: nemo in crastinam sui certior.’ [No man is frailer than another: no man more certain of the morrow.]29
[A] If I have only one hour’s work to do before I die, I am never sure I have time enough to finish it. The other day someone was going through my notebooks and found a declaration about something I wanted done after my death. I told him straight that, though I was hale and healthy and but a league away from my house, I had hastened to jot it down because I had not been absolutely certain of getting back home. [C] Being a man who broods over his thoughts and stores them up inside him, I am always just about as ready as I can be: when death does suddenly appear, it will bear no new warning for me. [A] As far as we possibly can we must always have our boots on, ready to go; above all we should take care to have no outstanding business with anyone else.
[B] Quid brevi fortes jaculamur ævo Multa?
[Why, in so brief a span do we find strength to make so many projects?]30
[A] We shall have enough to do then without adding to it.
One man complains less of death itself than of its cutting short the course of a fine victory; another, that he has to depart before marrying off his daughter or arranging the education of his children; one laments the company of his wife; another, of his son; as though they were the principal attributes of his being.
[C] I am now ready to leave, thank God, whenever He pleases, regretting nothing except life itself – if its loss should happen to weigh heavy on me. I am untying all the knots. I have already half-said my adieus to everyone but myself. No man has ever prepared to leave the world more simply nor more fully than I have. No one has more completely let go of everything than I try to do.
[B] Miser o miser, aiunt, omnia ademit
Una dies infesta mihi tot præmia vitæ.
[‘I am wretched, so wretched,’ they say: ‘One dreadful day has stripped me of all life’s rewards.’]
[A] And the builder says:
Manent opera interrupta, minaeque
Murorum ingentes.
[My work remains unfinished; huge walls may fall down.]31
We ought not to plan anything on so large a scale – at least, not if we are to get all worked up if we cannot see it through to the end.
We are born for action:32
Cum moriar, medium solvare inter opus.
[When I die, may I be in the midst of my work.]
I want us to be doing things, [C] prolonging life’s duties as much as we can; [A] I want Death to find me planting my cabbages, neither worrying about it nor the unfinished gardening. I once saw a man die who, right to the last, kept lamenting that destiny had cut the thread of the history he was writing when he had only got up to our fifteenth or sixteenth king!
[B] Illud in his rebus non addunt, nec tibi earum
Jam desiderium rerum super insidet una!
[They never add, that desire for such things does not linger on in your remains!]33
[A] We must throw off such humours; they are harmful and vulgar.
Our graveyards have been planted next to churches, says Lycurgus, so that women, children and lesser folk should grow accustomed to seeing a dead man without feeling terror, and so that this continual spectacle of bones, tombs and funerals should remind us of our human condition:34
[B] Quin etiam exhilarare viris convivia cæde
Mos olim, et miscere epulis spectacula dira
Certantum ferro, sæpe et super ipsa cadentum
Pocula respersis non parco sanguine mensis;
[It was once the custom, moreover, to enliven feasts with human slaughter and to entertain guests with the cruel sight of gladiators fighting: they often fell among the goblets, flooding the tables with their blood;]
[C] so too, after their festivities the Egyptians used to display before their guests a huge portrait of death, held up by a man crying, ‘Drink and be merry: once dead you will look like this’;35 [A] similarly, I have adopted the practice of always having death not only in my mind but on my lips. There is nothing I inquire about more readily than how men have died: what did they say? How did they look? What expression did they have? There are no passages in the history books which I note more attentively. [C] That I have a particular liking for such matters is shown by the examples with which I stuff my book. If I were a scribbler I would produce a compendium with commentaries of the various ways men have died. (Anyone who taught men how to die would teach them how to live.) Dicearchus did write a book with some such title, but for another and less useful purpose.36
[A] People will tell me that the reality of death so far exceeds the thought that when we actually get there all our fine fencing amounts to nothing. Let them say so: there is no doubt whatsoever that meditating on it beforehand confers great advantages. Anyway, is it nothing to get even that far without faltering or feverish agitation?
But there is more to it than that: Nature37 herself lends us a hand and gives us courage. If our death is violent and short we have no time to feel afraid: if it be otherwise, I have noticed that as an illness gets more and more hold on me I naturally slip into a kind of contempt for life. I find that a determination to die is harder to digest when I am in good health than when I am feverish, especially since I no longer hold so firmly to the pleasures of life once I begin to lose the use and enjoyment of them, and can look on death with a far less terrified gaze. That leads me to hope that the further I get from good health and the nearer I approach to death the more easily I will come
to terms with exchanging one for the other. Just as I have in several other matters assayed the truth of Caesar’s assertion that things often look bigger from afar than close to,38 I have also found that I was much more terrified of illness when I was well than when I felt ill. Being in a happy state, all pleasure and vigour, leads me to get the other state quite out of proportion, so that I mentally increase all its discomforts by half and imagine them heavier than they prove to be when I have to bear them.
I hope that the same will apply to me when I die. [B] It is normal to experience change and decay: let us note how Nature robs us of our sense of loss and decline. What does an old man still retain of his youthful vigour and of his own past life?
Heu senibus vitae portio quanta manet.
[Alas, what little of life’s portion remains with the aged.]39
[C] When a soldier of Caesar’s guard, broken and worn out, came up to him in the street and begged leave to kill himself, Caesar looked at his decrepit bearing and said with a smile: ‘So you think you are still alive, then?’40
[B] If any of us were to be plunged into old age all of a sudden I do not think that the change would be bearable. But, almost imperceptibly, Nature leads us by the hand down a gentle slope; little by little, step by step, she engulfs us in that pitiful state and breaks us in, so that we feel no jolt when youth dies in us, although in essence and in truth that is a harsher death than the total extinction of a languishing life as old age dies. For it is not so grievous a leap from a wretched existence to non-existence as it is from a sweet existence in full bloom to one full of travail and pain.
The Complete Essays Page 17