Suicide

[noema]

Suicide, perhaps the most complex of all human acts, has always intrigued people and particularly writers who, in their attempt to understand the philosophical implications of such a tendency or an act, are often accused of aestheticizing it. Of course, the fact of suicide, epidemiologically speaking, is of serious sociological importance when we consider the rise in global suicide rates, particularly since the year 1998, which has been termed, with deliberate jocular fancy I suppose, the year of the 'Suicide Boom'. But then, we have those recurrent instances where the artist's committing suicide imparted new, yet often forceful, levels of meaning, creating considerable biographical interest when subjecting her work to literary and theoretical analysis. In what can be termed 'reverse mimesis' life imitates art, even pursues its intrinsic death-logic to a culmination in voluntary death. I'm specifically thinking of writer such as Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, John Berryman, Sergei Yesenin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Yukio Mishima and to a certain extent Ernest Hemingway, only to name a few. While studying their work, with the theme of suicide in mind, one is confronted with the contingency that makes formulating definitions impossible. The dominant, primal question is: 'What or who is a suicide?"

I would be very glad if you shared your views about suicide, its implications in the arts, its importance in cultures and societies. Also, I would be extremely thankful if you refer to, in the passing, instances of suicides in fictional and non-fictional works that you might have read. I myself have managed to read quite a number of books on this matter but of course, I discovered that it's not humanly possible to know everything that has been read or said on suicide. You could allude to the obvious ones such as the suicide of Goethe's Werther. You could also refer to yourself.

[chasestalling]

there are two sorts of suicide in fiction i think are worth noting.

the suicide as a sort of a stylized, romantic act, where the character shamelessly draws attention to oneself; and the more discreet kind, where it's never made clear if the deceased had indeed committed suicide, and if he or she had, one would be heartless to condemn, considering the circumstances.

with respect to the latter the narrator has more less this to say of the deceased. i paraphrase: 'her death (suicide) was a protest against the ugliness of life and in this her beauty, though physically a travesty, exceeded her peers by leaps and bounds.'

[noema]

Indeed, suicide has been often interpreted as an aesthetic resistance. The dead body of the suicide becomes a site of protest against all those forces that wouldn't let the subject sustain its notions of beauty or order. In death, the suicide attains a wholeness of being that she was denied in life. But then, sometimes suicide is also committed with an afterlife in view and a greater degree of spirituality is involved in this case.

The character belonging to your first category obviously sees suicide as a cry for help, not necessarily leading to death. The paradox is, in some cases these appeals, in momentary lapses of control, do lead to death accidentally and cannot be called 'suicide' at all because we do not have the sanction to characterize them as completely intentional. And hence, we are confronted with the problem of defining suicide.

[kelby_lake]

there are two sorts of suicide in fiction i think are worth noting.
s.

with respect to the latter the narrator has more less this to say of the deceased. i paraphrase: 'her death (suicide) was a protest against the ugliness of life and in this her beauty, though physically a travesty, exceeded her peers by leaps and bounds.'

Where's the quote from?

[Jozanny]

Interesting post noema. I may have read a number of works by writers who killed themselves, but off-hand, I cannot recall many literary character suicides which have had much of impact, unless one counts David Mitchell's Cloud Altas and AS Byatt's Little Black Book of Stories, at least by inference, some of her characters die because they have no other choice in their destiny. There is Othello, of course, who may stand out since he is Shakespeare's man of color, at once magnanimous and terrible in his implosion of patriarchal inclusion and violation.

From what I understand on the basis of The Rolling Stone editor's comments, Hunter Thompson took his own life for the same reason I would, because his body was failing to the point of overtaking his identity.

I think this is the only time, as an act, that it is justified. Any other reason, is, I suspect, futile, since life has to die. I am not sure what you mean, exactly, in posing your last question, but it seems to me suicide is about defiance, although Byatt's metaphors mute this to an acceptance, in a rather complicated way.

[Pecksie]

It's an interesting subject. Many writers in history have had suicidal tendencies, although not all of them carried them to fulfillment. Shelley comes to mind - he didn't kill himself, although there is some circumstantial evidence that he may have prevented his friend Williams from trying to keep the boat in which they drowned afloat. Also, suicide features prominently (both consciously and unconsciously) in his writings, visions (as recorded by his friends) and in the lives of the people around him, including his first wife.

In Albert Cohen's "Belle du Seigneur", suicide is the only way that remains open for the main characters, a mixed religion, adulterous couple in the heyday of fascism. The same happens, albeit for different reasons, with the eponymous character in "Anna Karenina". I'm sure there are many more examples out there...

Interesting suicides in literature (though not of main characters) are those of Svidrigailov in "Crime and Punishment" and the highly sentimental suicide-cum-murder of the little boy in "Jude the Obscure".

[Jozanny]

As is common, soon after I read Pecksie's post, I thought of Madame Bovary's death scene, and Kate Chopin's always muted masterpiece, The Awakening, but I was never much moved by Emma's vanity, nor her hunger for aesthetic absolutes; it is Flaubert's mastery which holds my fascination, not the characters he treats like do-do's, or in Salammbo, like brawn and guts in 19th century machismo; he does not, to go to noema's point, turn death into a glossy centerfold.

Tolstoy simply failed to move me with Anna Karenina's death. She is an outlier for me, in this instance.

Both Chopin and Byatt, do, however, sacrifice the realism of ending life for metaphorical intent--now this thread has me thinking.

[chasestalling]

Where's the quote from?

from nabokov's pale fire

[polgara]

Dare I mention Ophelia whose "death was doubtful"? Or do most people agree with Queen Gertrude's version of her death ?

[noema]

From what I understand on the basis of The Rolling Stone editor's comments, Hunter Thompson took his own life for the same reason I would, because his body was failing to the point of overtaking his identity.

I think this is the only time, as an act, that it is justified. Any other reason, is, I suspect, futile, since life has to die. I am not sure what you mean, exactly, in posing your last question, but it seems to me suicide is about defiance, although Byatt's metaphors mute this to an acceptance, in a rather complicated way.

Hey Jozanny, your reference to Hunter Thompson reminded me of David Foster Wallace and also by extension to Kurt Cobain's 'it is better to burn out than fade away'. I agree with your view that the fear generated from the prospect of something overtaking one's 'identity' (which is a very complex composite of experiences) can lead to self-killing. Actually, this would be called egoistic suicide opposed to the so-called martyrdom, or the suicide-culture that exists in some groups in the Middle East, where a suicide bomber is often seen as a hero of sorts doing his bit for his people. In the case of the later, the person committing suicide, has to sacrifice his 'identity' to the glorified cause. In this regard, we can also think of the Roman suicides, particularly of Nero, or the famous harakiri or seppuku of the Japanese officials committed mostly to avoid public disgrace.

[JBI]

It's not a new concept - it existed somewhat, I think, in Greek thought, and transcended to us in the form of Lucricia, via the Romans. The romanticism centers on the finality, and decisiveness of the act, and the simple fact that it cannot be reversed, no matter what. When someone commits suicide, they are committing the most reckless thing we can think of, and we therefore react strangely.

[noema]

It's not a new concept - it existed somewhat, I think, in Greek thought, and transcended to us in the form of Lucricia, via the Romans. The romanticism centers on the finality, and decisiveness of the act, and the simple fact that it cannot be reversed, no matter what. When someone commits suicide, they are committing the most reckless thing we can think of, and we therefore react strangely.

I agree with you when you say that it's not new. It was never invented as such. It was always there. In a certain sense our lives oscillate between the Eros and the Thanatos. Plato talks about it in one of his dialogues (Phaedo, I think). And then, Socrates' death is a suicide to the extent that he willingly espouses death in Plato's Apology.

Suicide is irreversible. All forms of death are so. Several Romantics perceived death as an aesthetic act to transcend the mundane and the material. I'm tempted to repeat Keats' cliched lines:

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death
...
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain


A person who commits suicide is different from a suicidal person. The feeling of strangeness that suicide in general produces in us arises out of unknowability of the act itself, I think.

[Josef K.]

sorry for grammar, syntax, spelling mistakes.

I think suicide is a form of protest against others's success, a consequence of personal failure and the failure to transform this failure into creative action which supplements the psychological/existential lack of "posistive" meaning. We shouldn' t forget that Nietzsche [1844-1900], who had many health problems during his mentally ballanced life, accused Socrates of sickness - he wanted to die because he probably couldn' accept life in all its forms.

[noema]

Nietzsche wrote the first part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra in only ten days after a period of illness and depression caused probably due to the apprehension regarding his relationship with Salome. Meditating upon or envisioning one's own death can often lead to deep insights into life and existence and more often than not produces unique artistic inspiration.

Suicide is a protest no doubt. It is also a serious moral problem. It is discouraged by all religions, as far as I know, and a person who has attempted but failed to commit suicide is looked down upon as 'mentally ill' by the society. In literature and film, of course, the responsibility to justify the suicide of a character lies solely with the author/film-maker if he thinks it necessary to justify it at all. One instance where the author chooses not to justify or clarify the suicide of a character is Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim where Captain Brierly takes his won life without any apparent rhyme or reason.

[librarius_qui]

I tried to suicide two characters. None of'em turned out dead, but one of them did jump!

Archibald had decided to commit suicide. It was night. He left home, went to the nearest and sufficiently high bridge. Climbed the wall. He hesitated, thinking with himself “what am I doing here?! I … fear heights!...”, but he centered himself. Looked down. Darkness. Was in silence, for a while.

“I’m ready”, he said, encouraging himself, and with his eyes, by then, courageously closed. He heard the pipe of a train, coming from the way ahead … With his eyes closed, he asked … “Do I jump to be smashed by the train, or to be broken on the train’s wagons roofs?” It was too late: the train was there, already, fifty miles an hour, under the bridge. Archibald jumped!

He fell on sacks of sand or something like. “But! … What?!” Sacks with some kind of stuffed softness enough to have held his fall. He thought with himself “where must this train be heading to? …” and, after some silence, he thought again … “I think I’m travelling on, and moving away …”.

He ended up in Bristol. Took a ship to the Americas.

He decides to jump. But the narrator saved him
In another story, two passer-bies convince the lad not to jump. In that other story, the boy was desperate about a girl, who had rejected him.

***

In the Satyricon, there's a tale of a soldier, who was about to commit suicide, after having failed to his duty. It happens in the new testment, as well. (On both occasions, the men are held, and convinced not to commit suicide ...) I'll try to find the chapter to you, in the Satyricon. [Satyricon, fragments CXI-CXII.] In the "Apostles", it's in fragment 16, 27 of the fifth book.

There's Cleopatra's case, as well ...


Cheers!

librarius


Besides my restrictions to mentioning it,
I can't help bringing the writing of the suicide of Denethor, son of Ecthelion (book III, chapter VII). VERY DIFFERENT, though, from the present media description. I will say no more about this.--