Summary:

This book's title is from a Goethe poem, "The Holy Longing," translated from German in its entirety by Robert Bly: "And so long as you haven't experienced / this: to die and so to grow, / you are only a troubled guest / on the dark earth." Ten intensely personal essays tell of the suffering and everyday presence of pain of a severely disabled writer who has advancing multiple sclerosis, and of how, "in a very real sense, and entirely without design, death has become [her] life's work." (p. 13)

Beginning with her father's sudden death when she was a child, the essays describe her aging mother's expected death and the family's decision to take her off life support; her caretaker husband's diagnosis of metastatic cancer with uncertain prognosis; her own attempted suicide; death of friends, pets, including her beloved dog; and a young pen-pal executed on death row. If that weren't enough, a coda, her foster son's murder and again the decision to remove life-support, provides "[t]he end. For now." (p. 191)

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David Slavitt has written his own response [Part I, "Meditation" (pp. 1-58)] to the five poems (chapters) that comprise the Old Testament's "Book of Lamentations," which he has translated here from the Hebrew [Part II, "Lamentations" (pp. 59-85)]. The poems appear in Hebrew and in English, on opposite pages. In addition there is a "Note on Translation" (pp. xiii-xiv) and a "Bibliographical Note" (pp. 87-88).

Five poems--The Book of Lamentations--express Israel's brokenness, bewilderment before God, and sorrow at the catastrophes that have beset the Jewish people through the ages. Slavitt's meditation and notes on translation prepare the reader for far more than a prosaic historical account of the destruction and biblical plights of the Jews. "A translator wants to be faithful to the original work but then discovers how fidelity to the word can mean a betrayal of the sentence." (p. xiii)

"As a boy, I knew next to nothing of Tish'a b'Av," begins the author's meditation. We learn, as he did, about "[this] worst day of the year"(p. 6)--the day in 587 B.C. that the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, and six centuries later on the same day, when the second temple was destroyed. Annually Tish'a b'Av is devoted to grieving "every terrible thing that happened in this world "(p. 6): Zion, Jerusalem, the Holocaust. Except for The Book of Job (see annotation in this database) and Lamentations, reading even the Torah, the most sacred text in all Judaism, is forbidden on this solemn day.

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Dominating the image, a vengeful Satan with arms outstretched stands upon Job's prone body dispensing boils from a vial with his left hand while shooting arrows at him with his right. Job's head is thrown back and his hands are lifted off the ground in a sign of agony. His weeping wife kneels at his feet. The background is minimal yet dramatic with its dark swirling clouds, bright setting sun, and Satan's huge blood red wings.

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This collection of 36 poems, some of which have been published individually in various literary magazines, is primarily about dead--or nearly dead--family members: a brother and sister lost to cancer; the speaker's palsied, nearly blind father dying of Parkinson's disease; his mother's struggle with chronic arthritis and heart disease.

The collection is divided into three untitled sections. The first deals primarily with the aging and death of the speaker's parents; the second with a wider range of abandonment and death, lost loves, dreams, innocence; the third almost exclusively with his sister's six year struggle with breast cancer and dying.

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Responding to the suppression of an historic event barely recalled today--5000 Madrid civilians executed for revolting against the invading Napoleonic French army--Goya painted a monumental canvas. The painter depicts fear and defiance in the enlarged white eyes of the patriots still alive, some shielding their eyes and faces with their hands. Profuse blood seeps from the dead lying in groups all over the ground as the firing squad of well-equipped professional soldiers massed together (only their backsvisible to the viewer), shoot at alarmingly close range unarmed, shabbily dressed peasants.

Strong light from a single lantern illuminates the face and body of one white shirted condemned man on his knees, eyes wide-open, leaning forward, arms outstretched, Christ-like, at the moment he is being shot. The powerless, innocent and grieving victims, next to be sacrificed, are hemmed in by a barren hill behind which looms the outline of barely visible city buildings, including a church.

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This multimedia online documentary is an essay on the ecstasies and agonies of longevity, researched and composed by photojournalist, Ed Kashi and reporter, Julie Winokur. The site consists of written and audio commentaries and a number of short slide shows. The documentary is divided into six segments, each of which is a complete "essay" in itself: Introduction: Julie Winokur on aging; Part 1, Youth in age: The spirited side of longevity; Part 2, Sentenced to life: Growing old behind bars; Part 3, Helping hands: New solutions for elder care; Part 4, Vanishing heritage: Tribal elders face modern times; and Part 5, Surviving death: Losing a mate with dignity.

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The Voyage of Life series is an allegory of the four stages of man: childhood, youth, manhood, and old age. In each painting, accompanied by a guardian angel, the voyager rides in a boat on the River of Life. The landscape, corresponding to the seasons of the year, plays a major role in telling the story. In childhood, the infant glides from a dark cave into a rich, green landscape. As a youth, the boy takes control of the boat and aims for a shining castle in the sky. The last two pictures reverse the boat's direction. In manhood, the adult relies on prayer and religious faith to sustain him through rough waters and a threatening landscape. Finally, the man becomes old and the angel guides him to heaven across the waters of eternity.

The wild, untamed nature found in America was viewed as its special character; Europe had ancient ruins, but America had the uncharted wilderness. As his friend William Cullen Bryant sermonized in verse, so Cole sermonized in paint. Both men saw nature as God's work and as a refuge from the ugly materialism of cities. Cole clearly intended the Voyage of Life to be a didactic, moralizing series of paintings using the landscape as an allegory for religious faith.

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Salvadorian writer and activist Claribel Alegria has composed a sequence of poems, 47 sparse love letters to her late husband Darwin "Bud" Flakoll who died in 1995. Neither sentimental nor confessional, the poems draw on the struggles of Circe, Prometheus, and Orpheus as well as themes of unfinished rites, sadness, and symbolic immortality. The translator's preface is a reminiscence of her time with the couple then living in self-imposed exile, in addition to a critical introduction to the poetry.

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Marat, a leader of the French Revolution of 1789, is portrayed just after being stabbed to death in his bath by a fervent revolutionist, Charlotte Corday. The faked letter of introduction with which she fraudulently entered his home is still held in the dead man's hand. Three quarters of the gray-brown bathtub is covered by a wooden board. The background, shades of gray, is entirely bare.

Warm yellow light further softens the horror of the scene. Both dagger on the floor and wound in the breast are barely visible in the shadow. In fact, emerging from a gray-white turban, the dead man's face--eyes closed, mouth partly smiling--appears calm, as in a gentle sleep. The inscription on the side of a wooden block makeshift desk reads "À Marat/David."

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This painting represents the artist’s conception of the life cycle in allegorical terms. Childhood, manhood synonymous with earthly love, and old age approaching death are drawn realistically as each figure reflects Titian’s attitudes toward each stage of earthly existence. A plump angel floats ethereally over two sleeping babies, protecting them, but also mirroring their purity.

To the left, he paints the joys [and exhaustion] of youth, the firmly muscled, mature male, perhaps spent from a sexual encounter, being tantalized by a pubescent girl dressed in provocative style to further endeavors. She holds two flutes and by chance is urging him on with her piped, "Siren’s song."

In the background, at the end of his days, a bearded old, stooped man gazes at two skulls, either in terror or in wonder. The exquisite detailed scenery reflects nature in her glory and decline--lofty, weightless clouds float through an azure sky. Parched trees in the foreground reflect the arid remnants of summer landscapes, as the skulls reflect those of man.

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