Meditation on mortality. Unamuno, Life 3.5

 Is mortality a liability or an asset? Unamuno suggests that it is both, actually.

¿Enfermedad? Tal vez, pero quien no se cuida de la enfermedad, descuida la salud, y el hombre es un animal esencial y sustancialmente enfermo. ¿Enfermedad? Tal vez lo sea como la vida misma a que va presa, y la única salud posible la muerte; pero esa enfermedad es el manantial de toda salud poderosa. De lo hondo de esa congoja, del abismo del sentimiento de nuestra mortalidad, se sale a la luz de otro cielo como de lo hondo del infierno salió el Dante a volver a ver las estrellas,

e quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.

Aunque al pronto nos sea congojosa esta meditación de nuestra mortalidad, nos es al cabo corroboradora. Recógete, lector, en ti mismo, y figúrate un lento deshacerte de ti mismo, en que la luz se te apague, se te enmudezcan las cosas y no te den sonido, envolviéndote en silencio, se te derritan de entre las manos los objetos asideros, se te escurra de bajo los pies el piso, se te desvanezcan como en desmayo los recuerdos, se te vaya disipando todo en nada, y disipándote también tú, y ni aun la conciencia de la nada te quede siquiera como fantástico agarradero de una sombra.

He oído contar de un pobre segador muerto en cama de hospital, que al ir el cura a ungirle en extremaunción las manos se resistía a abrir la diestra con que apuñaba unas sucias monedas, sin percatarse de que muy pronto no sería ya suya su mano ni él de sí mismo. Y así cerramos y apuñamos, no ya la mano, sino el corazón, queriendo apuñar en él al mundo.

Confesábame un amigo que, previendo en pleno vigor de salud física la cercanía de una muerte violenta, pensaba en concentrar la vida, viviéndola en los pocos días que de ella calculaba le quedarían para escribir un libro. ¡Vanidad de vanidades!

Is this illness? Perhaps, but the person who does not guard against illness neglects health, and man is an animal essentially and substantially ill. What sort of illness would humanity be? Perhaps one like unto life itself, whose prisoner it is, and then death becomes the only health possible. But then this illness, life or humanity, is also the wellspring of all truly powerful health. From the depths of our affliction, the abyss of feeling that arises when we sense our own mortality, humanity rises to the light of another heaven, even as Dante came up from the depths of hell to see the stars

and then we left to see again the stars (†)

Though this meditation on our mortality seems dismal now, in the moment, it will prove a source of strength for us in the end. Retreat into yourself, my reader! Witness within your own gradual unmaking. Slowly the light around you dies. Things go silent, wrapping you in their muteness. Everything familiar slips from your hands; the floor even flees your feet. Memories fade away as if dismayed. As all the world roundabout dissipates into nothing, you too begin to fade, losing consciousness even of the nothing that remains to you, the last ghostly grip of a dark dream.

I once heard a tale of a poor reaper who died in a field hospital. When the priest came to see him and provide last rites, he had to pry his own right hand open: it was clutching a few dirty coins, giving no thought to the fact that it would soon belong neither to the man nor to itself. And thus do we close and clutch ourselves—not our hands, but our heart, which longs to hold the world within its grasp.

A friend once confessed to me that he felt very close to a violent death, though at the time he was in perfect health, and so he was thinking of concentrating and focusing his life, using the last days that remained to him, as he reckoned, to write a book. Vanity of vanities!

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(†) The last line of the Inferno, which is the first and most famous song of Dante Alghieri's Divine Comedy, composed between 1308 and 1320 CE. The first printed edition appeared in 1472, well after the poet's death in 1321. The gist of the plot is the poet's journey throughout the cosmos, starting underground in hell, whence he passes to purgatory, just above earth's surface, and finally to the heavens above. Along the way he meets many souls—demons, angels, spirits of the damned and the blessed—and provides readers with an engaging portrait of the medieval European universe.