Pullman, drawing on Dante, provides one of the most sustaining accounts of the afterlife that I know.
Tag Archives: death and dying
Pullman and Dante on the Afterlife
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Adonais", "Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep", "Upon Nothing", "World", Afterlife, Amber Spyglass, Fragment of Seneca Translated, Henry Vaughan, His Dark Materials, John Donne, John Wilmot, Mary Elizabeth Frye, Percy Shelley, Philip Pullman, Satyr on Reason and Mankind | Comments closed
A Memorial Service for Old Classmates
In “Choir Invisible,” George Eliot aspires to have an uplifting impact on others.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Choir Invisible", Carleton College, George Eliot, remembering the dead | Comments closed
Reading “Jabberwocky” to a Dying Child
Reasons why a mother might read “Jabberwocky” to a dying child.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Jabberwocky", "Moses", death of a child, Lewis Carroll, Luis Alberto de Cuenca | Comments closed
Crucial Support in the Face of Death
In “Women of Brewster Place” a character charges into a scene of despair and refuses to let death triumph.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Anna Karenina, Gloria Naylor, Leo Tolstoy, Women of Brewster Place | Comments closed
Tolstoy’s Kitty and a Dying Patient
My favorite episode in “Anna Karenina” is Kitty showing Levin she can handle a dying patient better than he can.
A Bombed Cathedral, My Lost Child
A bombed cathedral and a George Herbert hymn come to mind as I think of my eldest son, who died 23 years ago today.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Antiphon 1", Coventry Cathedral, death of a child, George Herbert, Psalm 23 | Comments closed
On Proust and Living Life to the Fullest
As I read Proust’s “Swann’s Way,” I imagined what it must have meant to a friend, who read it when he was dying.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Archaic Torso of Apollo", "Lying in a Hammock", In Search of Lost Time, James Wright, Marcel Proust, Rainer Maria Rilke, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Swann in Love | Comments closed
Reading Proust before Dying
A dying friend decided to read, in his last months, Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time.” As I read it, I’m beginning to understand why.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight | Comments closed
Hamlet: Shakespeare Grieving His Son?
In which I explore why O’Farrell’s “Hamnet” opened up wellsprings of grief I didn’t realize were there.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Anne Hathaway, grieving, Hamlet, Hamnet, Maggie O'Farrell, William Shakespeare | Comments closed
