Athanasia

     “In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory.” This was a description of J.R.R. Tolkien’s view of the afterlife, is a 

J.R.R. Tolkien

huge theme throughout much of the literature we have read. By “the circles of the world” Tolkien was talking about time, in the end we all fear that one thing, running out of time. We strive to stay alive, to fight to live, however we all know it to be an inevitable fact, we die. How do we, as humans, cope with this realization? We have faith and or believe in an afterlife, or some form of an eternal time. We do this through the church with religious afterlives, but we also do this by trying to create timeless legacies to keep our name and essentially ourselves alive.

     Athanasia as defined by dictionary.com means “deathlessness; immortality.” This adequately sums up humanity’s quest for a timeless life, or immortality. Throughout all of the literature we have read this semester, one constant theme that crops up is the idea of the supernatural and afterlife. We associate these two together because the idea of an afterlife, or immortality, is so foreign we associate it with the supernatural.

         Lenora and William riding on horseback. In this 
         painting we see death through the colors and
         the style. (Notice the horses nostrils and 
         William's hand.)
         

     The first time the class encountered this theme was with Burger’s “Lenora.” This piece showed up to us kicking and screaming with the idea of the afterlife, providing for us a stepping stone into this idea of athanasia. The idea of Lenora being carried away by her lover after a war by itself is a mundane story idea. However, this changes when her dead husband comes knocking on her door to take her to their marriage bed. Even though he was been missing for a while we see his ghost come back to retrieve her and then proceed to take her to his grave. William, the lover, is later revealed as death. Throughout the poem the idea of religion is embodied by Lenora’s mother, however, the idea of Lenora being able to remain with William outweighs her religious upbringing. The idea of the afterlife comes in with the idea of William as a ghost and “the dead travel fast”, this implies, without a doubt, the idea of an afterlife. One can also rip apart that small line “the dead travel fast,” fast being an idea associated with time, then one must beg the question, why are the dead traveling fast? It is because the dead must feel a sense of urgency; it must have not only lonely for Lenora without William, but for William also without Lenora. Tiffanee had a great post entitled Psychological Obsession in which she explored the idea of madness and most importantly the idea of religion within this ballad. It is within this poem we see a change in the style of literature compared to the Enlightenment. Rather than use reason Tiffanee states “her daughter is relying on her sensory ability to see, and feel something else around her,” this is what the Gothic and supernatural were all about, you cannot view the concept of athanasia with any other type of reason other than feeling.

     The idea of ghosts and specters was bound to continue after “Castle of Otranto” and “Lenora.” This concept of supernatural entities persisted in our class reading of Wordsworth’s “The Thorn.” This poem is about the death of an infant and the mother’s lamentation over this death. The narrator looks on to the scene unfolding from afar and pieces a story together from local town myths. There were many great posts about this particular topic, in this case I have chosen to reference Cassiopeia’s fantastic post entitled There Are


William Wordsworth

Superstitions... In her post she wrote “[d]espite continually saying, "I cannot tell how this may be," the speaker tells the haunted tale as he believes it to be true.” This sparked a conversation within the comments on her post describing how this changes the poem. Rose in particular stated “[b]y capitalizing the plant, Wordsworth brings life to it. In Biblical scripture, there are many references to "thorns" as problems or ailments.” Before this Jamasaurus had stated “It could be that her child (the thorn) was a "thorn in her side" so to speak.” If this is the case then the woman must have some concept of afterlife to sit by the grave and mourn every day waiting, perhaps, to again one day see her child. In a post by Toff mandrake entitled Oh Misery! he states “The entire poem reads like a ghost story that the narrator is reluctant to tell.” This ballad does indeed create this vibe, and what is a ghost if not eternal.

We are Seven! Immortalized!
In this image we see the grave from We are Seven,
immortalized in a church yard along with a plaque.

     In Wordsworth other poem “We Are Seven” we see the concept of afterlife through the eyes of children. Children, as a general rule of thumb, see the world defiantly than adults. Until they are thought to think differently, children have a completely different rationalization. When a girl tells a man she has seven siblings and yet two are in the ground, he tries to protest by saying there are only five. However, the young lady remains persistent and says “We are seven.” In a post by Porphyria entitled Natural Communion she states “The graves in this poem are not described as frightening or ominous. Instead, they are “green” and close to the home, as if the departed children never truly left. The little girl spends time with her siblings, communing with the graves as she sits in the grass and sings to them.” This is a great statement and one that express a happier view on the afterlife through the eyes of a child. The adult only views death as death, but the little girl sees her sibling as almost alive. We can see this through the green grass and bright nature surrounding the girl and the graves. One thing that Coyle Permetter points out in his post titled Perspective as it relates to Romanticism (We Are Seven) is that “The very first line "a simple child" gives the reader a sense of curiosity, life, fertility, and pacifism.  This is sharply contradicted by the third line "what should it know of death?"” Indeed what should a child know of death, children are simple right? Wrong. This child sees the afterlife as something to look forward to, a place where she can be with all her siblings.



Minnie Dibdin Spooner

Lucy Gray by William Wordsworth

The Golden Staircase ~ 1906

            The footsteps in the snow provide a chilling supernatural and otherworldly element to the poem “Lucy Gray” also by Wordsworth. After Lucy was lost in the snow on her way home she perished, never to be seen again. Her parents searched in vain however, all that remained was her footprints. To this day her footprints are still left in the snow eluding to her ghost, and in turn the notion of the spirit world. This poem has a strong tie with nature and as Cassiopeia put it in her post entitled One with nature, “the poem links Lucy's presumed death with the idea that she lives on through nature.” This was great insight and we see this through the use of Wordsworth’s imagery in lines such as; “I chanced to see at break of day; The storm came on before its time; And thence they saw the bridge of wood; That whistles in the wind.” I wanted to link this idea with an idea from another post, by keeping her ghost tied in with nature she remains to have a sense of “aliveness.” In Cricket’s post entitled Where is Lucy? He makes a point that within the poem itself they state "Yet some maintain that to this day She is a living Child." He goes on to say “her being apart of nature now and being preserved as an innocent child.” Here we can bring new light on the situation and see nature as a “preservative” for both the dead, and for literature itself.

I found this eerie video rendition of Lucy Gray.

 "John Keats is perhaps the brightest star, "the crown of his countries desire" as Robert Bridges puts it." (Smith) One poem the class read that failed to be adequately talked about in the blog was Keats’s “This Living Hand.” Because of the poem’s short nature it is included here:

This Living Hand

This living hand, now warm and capable  

Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold

And in the icy silence of the tomb,

So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights

That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood

So in my veins red life might stream again,

And thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—

I hold it towards you.

                                                  John Keats

Here we see Keats speaking about his out of body experience where he is conversing with his dead/alive self, in the hopes that his “veins red life might stream again.” This is another example of athanasia and the idea of deathless or immortality. By experiencing death in the plane of worlds, living and dead, Keats paints a vivid imagine in just a few short lines.

Modern Image of When I have Fears that may Cease to Be
From This Blog Click Here

     In Keats’s poem “When I have Fears that may Cease to Be” we see a connection once again between literature and nature and an aspiration to become Timeless. We see this in lines like: “When I have fears that I may cease to be; Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!” Here we see through the use of Keats’s wording the connection between time and nature. In Not_Eitak’s post entitled Death = Comfort Food? they state “Keats does share that he is afraid of death more or less because he does not want to die unsuccessful or unloved.” This comment reverses back to the idea of time and how we as humans fear the idea of time running out. This causes us to strive to immortalize ourselves through literature, and nature.        Perhaps the most in your face poem about death would be Rossetti’s “After Death” which is a blatantly obvious commentary about the afterlife, as suggested both in the poem and within the title. Here we see the narrator…DEAD…and offering commentary to another person, at first assumed to be a lover, but thoughts about this are crushed when she says “He did not love me living; but once dead He pitied me; and very

Christina Rossetti

sweet it is To know he still is warm though I am cold.” Here we see a view of death were death creates new emotions in the people still living, although he did not love her before, he loves her know and it is too late. We see this same idea in Daydreamer’s post After Death when he says “It ends the poem with a sense of hope that the woman’s death was not in vain. Her death may be the coming alive of this unknown man.”

     After the Great War, otherwise known as World War 1, we see a change in the town of literature regarding death, this is because World War 1 was the first war to encompass new technologies and tactics such as trenches, photography and weapons. This caused mass destruction on a scale otherwise unheard of before the time. In Kipling’s “Epitaphs of War” we see many examples of these written in short poetic lines in the form of an Epitaph. MeguhD made a great point in her post titled Kipling in regards to Kipling being English; she said “these Epitaphs could mean more considering England was in the war from the beginning. Unlike America who joined in just the last year.” This was a very good point because not only was he English but overall England was closer to the war making it a lot more real. These Epitaphs provided insight into the ideas of death after the war, when people from all religions, races, and places, came together to pick up the pieces.

     In the end the ideas of death and timelessness was an important part of the class. The idea of athanasia was an important and throughout the text we see it tied with the ideas of nature, time, and immortality. The writers present in this class all used their ability to achieve these states of timelessness. It truly provided a gateway through the Impossible, Perverse, and Strange. "Death is a bad thing by virtue of its ability to frustrate the subjectively valuable projects that shape our identities and render our lives meaningful." (Preston)

Works Cited
Smith "John Keats: Poet, Patient, Physician." Reviews of Infectious Diseases 6.3 (1984): 360-404.Jstor. Web.

Ted M. Preston and Scott Dixon International Journal for Philosophy of Religion , Vol. 61, No. 2 (Apr., 2007), pp. 99-117 Who Wants to Live Forever? Immortality, Authenticity, and Living Forever in the Present