Living in Death

Death’s imposing presence and cruel claim on every human upon the earth, coupled with the inscrutable mystery of what lies beyond death, lay at the root of fertility cults, animism and the birth of religions at different stages in the history of civilisations. The uncertainty of one’s life and the inevitability of death is a dilemma that has tormented the human mind in all ages. One way of resolving the conundrum has been to imagine, if not firmly believe, that the individual self is immortal and deathless, notwithstanding the fact that the physical body must perish. If nothing, it weans one away from the fear of death towards an earnest hope in a blissful afterlife. Living in Death by Dr. T.D. Peter is a scholarly critique on the death poetry of Emily Dickinson and T.S. Eliot. By deftly comparing their styles, diction, and motifs, the author unravels the beauty of contemplating and courting the compelling presence of Death as an unshakeable ontological reality. Some excerpts: "Life and death are but two sides of the same coin of existence. Most have dreaded the inescapable phenomenon of death, some have perceived it with a stoic eye, but few have dealt it with a romantic ardour. Poets have been no exception. T.S. Eliot is one who largely falls in the latter school, while Dickinson stands among the rarest of rare poets who come under the last category.... Eliot treats death with erudition and intellectual élan, with a unique blend of classical scholarship and modern narrative, almost as a stoic observer. On the other hand, Dickinson is a poet who treats awesome Death with a personal and human touch, sometimes ranting and reproving for his coldness and cruelty, often reflecting on his inescapable presence, and at times even visualising a romantic rapport with him as a partner." * * * "Chapter 1 (The Comings) gives an overview of human responses to death—philosophical, psychological, religious, spiritual, historical, and ontological; and a brief sketch of the life and works of Emily Dickinson and T.S. Eliot. It also explains how ontological and eschatological views developed as part of religious beliefs in ancient Greek, Hindu, Buddhist thinking and later in Christianity, Islam and other faiths, wherein the concepts of a life beyond death, immortality, eternity, re-incarnation, heaven and hell became entrenched.... "Chapter 2 (Contemporary Thought on Death in English Literature) briefly traces a historical account of the perception of death in literature and.... an overview of ‘Dealing with Death’...and the ontological possibilities that lie beyond the realm of death.... "The question of death as an inescapable ontological reality has been handled by various poets and philosophers across ages differently. Death is inextricably linked with the fundamental existential issues of life and living, being and non-being, becoming and ceasing to be on this earth. Chapter 3 (Ontological Incursions into Being and Non-Being) discusses the handling of being, non-being, death and immortality from an ontological perspective by Eliot and Dickinson in their poems and show how they are, in effect, ontological incursions or deep searches within the recesses of the poet’s heart and beliefs, that mull the interminable questions of the existential conundrum.... "Chapter 4 (Death and Immortality as an Existential Continuum) demonstrates how Dickinson is a poet who—even as she loves the simple life and companionship on earth more than the speculative pleasures of an unknown paradise—looks upon death differently, more as an existential continuum, an ontological phase that is welcome, if not lovable, and certainly not to be mourned, while Eliot looks at death with metaphysical and intellectual eyes, in a socio-cultural and religious context that essentially aims at the edification and escape of humanity from a world of sin, evil, and damnation. In Dickinson’s death poetry, it is more a matter of resentment and petulance against the cruel ‘marauder’ and his nagging presence that stand out rather than a palpable fear or hatred of Death... "Chapter 5 (Death in Poets’ Hands: Power and Passion) analyses how Eliot and Dickinson differ in their approaches to handling the theme of death and immortality, and how Eliot’s style, content and carriage in relation to the motif of death is rooted in erudition as against emotion in Dickinson, is impersonal as against personal, is powerful as against passionate, uses the lexicon of culture as against the language of heart, and attempts to impress with magical details through random images and symbols as against the depth of feeling and felicity of thought in Dickinson. The power in Eliot’s poetry emerges from scholarship, stoicism, and spiritualism while Dickinson’s strength lies in her candid outpouring of passionate, personal, profound, and intense feelings about death and immortality.... "Chapter 6 (And the Goings): Death is an ontological motif as much in Eliot’s poetry as in that of Dickinson.... What distinguishes the two is the depth of treatment of death and the platform from which they look at evanescence. While for Dickinson the matter of death—or ceasing to be on the living earth—is as close to her heart as the skin of her soul, Eliot uses the mention or description of death essentially as images to reinforce his lamentations on the degeneration of modern man in terms of values, vitality, relationship, faith, and orientation. Where Eliot’s impersonal representation of a dying modern society was vibrant with kaleidoscopic images and comic characters, Dickinson’s personal presentation of death was no less compelling with the plethora of candid emotions and “concisest” conceits.... Eliot lived an eventful life, was quite a minion of the society of his time, and a cynosure in the world of literature and criticism in his own lifetime. Eliot stands aside as an observer or judge of the situation, a reporter of the “heap of broken images” and the “waste land” of desolation around him–– dispassionate but powerful, didactic but detached. Dickinson, quite in contrast, was passive in living her reclusive chores, but passionate about life and death, immortality and infinity. She was a non-entity in the literary firmament while she lived and her immortal poems saw the light of day long after she died."