Reflections On Death II

 

See Reflections On Death.

Another enigmatic remark by Aycharaych:

"'The totality of existence will always elude us: and in that mystery lies the very meaning. How I pity immortal God!'"

-Poul Anderson, "Hunters of the Sky Cave" IN Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 149-301 AT XVII, p. 295.

I have discussed this passage before. See here. Aycharaych seems to be saying that it is better to be mortal than to be immortal.

Flandry reflects that he is holding his own against the Old Man near the beginning of A Stone In Heaven and reviews his life when he thinks that his death is imminent near the end. To personify something feared by giving it a humorous nickname is perhaps to return to the earliest forms of animism and polytheism.

I began to post about fictional reflections on death because I had just read an uncharacteristic passage in a James Bond novel. I had a biography of Ian Fleming which I cannot currently locate. I gathered from it that some passages in the Bond novels are autobiographical. In this passage, Bond is in a plane in a storm:

"There's nothing to do about it. You start to die the moment you are born. The whole of life is cutting through the pack with death. So take it easy. Light a cigarette and be grateful you are still alive as you suck the smoke deep into your lungs. Your stars have already let you come quite a long way since you left your mother's womb and whimpered at the cold air of the world. Perhaps they'll even let you get to Jamaica tonight."

-Ian Fleming, Live And Let Die (London, 2004), 16, p. 160.

Two observations:

it does not sound like James Bond, particularly not the Bond who wrote "You only live twice..." and for whom his secretary wrote the epitaph - 

 

"'I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.'"

-Ian Fleming, You Only Live Twice (London, 1966), 21, p. 180;

 

but it definitely is a reflection on death and worthy of comparison with Flandry and Aycharaych.