And now the leaves suddenly lose strength.

And no matter where goes down,
The sallow lapsing drift in fields
Or squares behind hoardings, all men hesitate
Separately, always, seeing another year gone -
Frockcoated gentleman, farmer at his gate,
Villein with mattock, soldiers on their shields,
All silent, watching the winter coming on.

(Philip Larkin)

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An amazing picture. I think it may be El Greco’s best, displaying the mannerist style in the service of a visionary, metaphysical depiction of the meaning of death in Christian theology.

The Count had been a notably devout christian in the late medieval period. He appears in this painting as a 16th century nobleman; he is being held tenderly by  a father of the church (notice the way he is being held: almost like a child).

When one looks above, the painting itself seems transformed -glowing with an intense, ecstatic light, with all the forms flowing. We see St. John interceding on behalf of the deceased.. and there is a figure up in heaven there looking like King Philip  II of Spain himself, which is odd if it is him, as he was alive when this was painted. Since Orgasz’s (anachronistic) armour is like that of the King’s, as shown in a contemporary portrait, perhaps he was the true subject of the painting we see here.

Finally (not finally really, as there is so much else to see) -see the way Orgasz’s soul, here seen as a child, is moving up a kind of birth canal to heaven. For the vision here is truly of death as the start of the new life

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“His body on the cross was therefore fully and entirely subject to the laws of nature.  In the picture the face is terribly smashed with blows, swollen, covered with terrible, swollen, and bloodstained bruises, the eyes open and squinting; the large, open whites of the eyes have a sort of dead and glassy glint. . . .

Looking at that picture, you get the impression of nature as some enormous, implacable, and dumb beast, or, to put it more correctly, much more correctly, though it may seem strange, as some huge engine of the latest design, which has senselessly seized, cut to pieces, and swallowed up–impassively and unfeelingly–a great and priceless Being, a Being worth the whole of nature and all its laws, worth the entire earth, which was perhaps created solely for the coming of that Being!  The picture seems to give expression to the idea of a dark, insolent, and senselessly eternal power, to which everything is subordinated, and this idea is suggested to you unconsciously.  The people surrounding the dead man, none of whom is shown in the picture, must have been overwhelmed by a feeling of terrible anguish and dismay on that evening which had shattered all their hopes and almost all their beliefs at one fell blow.  They must have parted in a state of the most dreadful terror, though each of them carried away within him a mighty thought which could never be wrested from him.  And if, on the eve of the crucifixion, the Master could have seen what He would look like when taken from the cross, would he have mounted the cross and died as he did?”

Feodor Dostoevsky: Spoken by Ippolit in The Idiot (Penguin 1955, tran. by David Magarshak, 446-7)

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Thus that which is the most awful of evils, death, is nothing to us, since when we exist there is no death, and when there is death we do not exist.

Epicurus

Epicurus’ comment on death has been much studied, and much argued over. The idea seems simple enough: When I live I’m not dead (so no problem), when I’m dead I don’t exist and so don’t experience death (so no problem). In his Mortal Questions, Thomas Nagel makes the point that such thoughts cannot compensate for the lost life that would have been (especially poignant in the case of early death). We cannot comfort ourselves with the thought that the aeons in which we shall not exist are no different from those that preceded our birth. We are, now, and soon shall not be, ever again – and we know this. It makes a difference.

The Epicurean view did not comfort Philip Larkin (see the previous post, or click on the ‘Larkin’ tag  for his unblinking contemplation of the unthinkable).  Still, I do think that the Epicurean position does have some merit: it’s meant as a tool to counteract the very horror Larkin (and Nagel?) feel: death is not something you will ever experience, so live your life and stop worrying about it. It just doesn’t do the job for them; that doesn’t make it wrong, or foolish.

Some more Epicurean wisdom:

Nothing to fear from God

Nothing to feel in death

Evil can be overcome

Good can be achieved.

Cheer up! it may never happen. Well …cheer up, anyway.

Cartoon reblogged from Chaospet

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I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
– The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused — nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear — no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

Philip Larkin

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