Читать книгу Writers on... Death (A Book of Quotes, Poems and Literary Reflections) - Amelia Carruthers - Страница 5

Introduction

What can one say about death? It is the only certainly yet also the ultimate unknown. There can be no 'experts' on death, for after all, there is simply nothing to know. Doctors, undertakers, priests and authors, may know much about the build up, the act of dying, and the aftermath for those left behind, but when it comes to 'death' itself, they are just as blind as the rest of us. As the saying goes, 'death is the great leveller' – and nowhere is this better expressed than in the world of literature.

Due to its universal (yet also, inherently subjective) nature, the subject of death has appealed to many great authors. 'Death' can be approached in many different ways (literally as well as metaphorically!), and some writers provide highly personalised, emotional accounts of the deaths of close relatives, friends and fictional characters – whilst others merely use death as a means to strengthen narrative, as a symbolic device, or to provide meaning. As John Webster's Duchess of Malfi stated, 'death hath ten thousand several doors for men to take their exits; and 'tis found they go on such strange geometrical hinges, you may open them both ways!' Whatever the author's motivations, there is an

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