(TV) Ars Longa, Vita Brevis

["Emilie T. Hsu" <ehsu@mindspring.com>]

Corneille -- or the fantastic playwright, Corneille... there is also a young Canadian song-writer who goes by Corneille... but unrelated to Corneille, the playwright.  

I still maintain (perhaps an extremist view) that there are very few things worth living for -- as long as there is one thing, it's enough, though.

Some people can keep themselves alive through hope, but some just figure that it's not enough -- yes, for example, perhaps Stefan Zweig shouldn't have killed himself because the Allied did win, but perhaps it just stop mattering to him anymore.  People may just stop caring about eventual fame because they figure that they shouldn't have cared in the first place.  Or maybe Maurice's friend would have lived, made a ton of money, and then gone to jail for securities fraud. 

Many who committed suicide have already been so great that they can die happy.  Many commit suicide for no reason, for bad reason, and many commit suicide for good reason.  Just like any other human decision -- and people make irrational decisions all the time -- I am just saying that there are many perfectly good reasons for killing oneself.  There are many perfectly good reasons to continue to live as well -- but there are people who seem to live for perfectly bad reason, and we don't usually force them to die.  Who would argue that Hitler's life was not a crime but that his suicide should be?  Or that he should not be ashamed of his life but should be ashamed of his suicide?  

Many die in stupid ways, say, in completely dumb accidents -- but I doubt that people would go to such people's funerals and say "he was stupid and stupidity is a crime" or "stupidity is an illness."  Stupid people commit suicides for stupid reasons, and smart people commit suicides for smart reasons -- but suicide itself is not one thing, it's many things -- it's wrong to lump all who commit suicide together.

Suicide is no crime -- if it is a crime, then the people who live and contribute nothing should be criminalized too, for being lazy and wasting oxygen.  Now, laziness, that's a crime. :-)

We can disagree on Sartre's merits as a philosopher and as a writer -- my opinion is that he was a not particularly interesting philosopher, but quite a nice writer ("Les Mains Sales" is beautifully written, but reading "L'Etre et le Neant" is a chore, and not a particularly rewarding chore -- unlike, say, reading Kant).  But it is a matter of taste.

On the Golden Gate Bridge, Weldon Kees's car was found near the Golden Gate Bridge, his body has never been found -- he's one of those people whose biography starts with their birth-year and ends with a question mark -- he's contributed enough to the world -- his disappearance is as beautiful as his poetry.  I hope that his body would never been found.  

We can't say that people who contribute to the world shouldn't kill themselves just because they should be contributing more -- people are not means to others' enjoyment... 

Bob Quine lived well and died well -- no shame in his suicide.  There is a long list of illustrious people who killed themselves, and Bob is in great company.
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