/lit/ - Literature

25th of October, my appointment with death.

Have you ever wondered what becomes of those who have no family or friends when they die? Most likely not.
I had never asked myself that question either, as I had never been confronted to this problem.
Society has a way of solving issues on its own, sweeping them under the massive rug on which we stand, unaware.
During a lonely evening, I was browsing the internet for volunteering missions, half drunk. I was looking for meaning, friends, or symply to help a fellow human being. Or so I was thinking.
I've always struggled with the idea of volunteer work. Do we not do it for ourselves first? For the benefit of knowing we are useful, knowing that we help, in essence ; knowing that we are good.

I rejected that idea, how vulgar would it be to help others in order for one to feel good about one's self. I despised the very idea of volunteering for that precise reason. Meanwhile, I wasn't helping anyone, though.
Isn't it wicked to question the motives of those who help, when you're doing nothing other than sitting in your comfortable office chair?
Damn you for torturing me so. I will volunteer and that's the end of it, I said to myself. Damn your childish dilemmas and you primitive philosophy.

As I scroll down, I stumble upon the mission of which I will speak now.
As it turns out, when people die alone, without anyone to grieve and pay for their funeral, the city has to pay for and organise the event.
Or so, at least, it is how it happens in my country.
We put the lonely corpse in a tomb for 5 years, way out, south of the city. What happens after those 5 years, I do not dare to know.
No one is present at the wake, no one, even to say goodbye.
The mission was about this very unfortunate state of affairs. As a volunteer, I would be present at the funeral, and I would say a few words to calm the grievance of a lonely soul.

I thought it was important, maybe a better use of my time would have been to help the living, yes. But the very idea of standing alone on the day of the great departure touched the bottom of my soul, the ultimate abandonment, the pinnacle of my fears.
Having no one to even see your body being engulfed by the earth. A few hours of one's time for the consecration of an entire life, even that is too much.

I speak of the dead, but as I write these words, they are very much alive, the funeral is a month from now.

I planned their funeral in my calendar, I ticked the square for that day that is probably not very special to them, themselves, they may have planned something, they may have ticked that very square on their calendar, all in vain. Provided they have one, of course.

They are still alive, somewhere, unsuspecting that I know the day on which they will be burried. Of course I don't know who they are. but the cold laws of statistics tell me that there will be four bodies to be buried on that day.

1/2

>>16375219
Just read the English libretto with it anon, it will be even more amazing, I listened to parts of act 2 reading the libretto and I can say I had developed desires to die heroically devoted to my eros, and could see why it was Mishima's favourite work of Wagner's. But that said, taking such a view of it, is unhealthy for the mind while watching. The work has a long history of death and debauchery, and for good reason too, there is the sense that at any moment there can be a releasement from the building up, into a debauchery--; and many have not toddered this divinest of humanly lines heroically, but given in. Likened to the perfect balance of the greatest extremes possible here, Wagner has it, and taking Schoenberg as a musical variant of the mental weakling, he forgets the heroic and the structure of it, devoid's it of its true meaning and turns it into purely a fest of sex, it is the end as he sees it, and without a balancing or higher morality, given in, and ends his life in the rising degeneracy's of Hollywood. I am not to make a moral judgement of the work Tristan itself, but it undoubtedly focuses on such "immoral" things to the furthest possibility.

It reminds me of that quote by Nietzsche posted a little while ago from The Birth of Tragedy:
>In vain we look for a single vigorously developed root, for a spot of fertile and healthy soil: everywhere there is dust and sand; everything has become rigid and languishes. One who is disconsolate and lonely could not choose a better symbol than the knight with death and devil, as Dürer has drawn him for us, the armored knight with the iron, hard look, who knows how to pursue his terrible path, undeterred by his gruesome companions, and yet without hope, alone with his horse and dog. Our Schopenhauer was such a Dürer knight; he lacked all hope, but he desired truth. He has no peers.

>>16311949
>In vain we look for a single vigorously developed root, for a spot of fertile and healthy soil: everywhere there is dust and sand; everything has become rigid and languishes. One who is disconsolate and lonely could not choose a better symbol than the knight with death and devil, as Dürer has drawn him for us, the armored knight with the iron, hard look, who knows how to pursue his terrible path, undeterred by his gruesome companions, and yet without hope, alone with his horse and dog. Our Schopenhauer was such a Dürer knight; he lacked all hope, but he desired truth. He has no peers.

>>16171422
>Our Schopenhauer was such a Dürer knight

I'm not an authority on the subject but maybe the only hope for this thread not to become skewed; one difference I understand;

Catholicism is, from what I understand, more focussed on suffering, and the fruits of suffering as it is on earth; basically, while the Orthodox would have relatively simple iconography, (and kept more in one traditional style) and bare cave walls associated with it's aesthetics, the Catholics have traditionally been much more lavish and tougher with theirs. In the words of the late Terry Davis: You take your kids to church and there's the savior of mankind, bleeding everywhere, horribly mutilated and on a cross. real Catholic theology is almost painful to learn about and engross oneself in, and this is reflected in their dogma.

Orthodox are definitely more inward focussed and beyond the world; if there would of have been a conquest or persecution of Christians in history, Catholics would of have been more likely to fight back while the Orthodox would be more likely to just endure even the worst of tortures before budging as much as a word in their faith.

Between the two orthodoxy is definitely the most hardcore, when I first started getting into Christian history I assumed I was ready to accept the most hardcore, baseline version of Christianity; I was kind of surprised with how wrong I was. in my uninformed opinion the progression from mainline Catholicism to traditional Catholicism to Orthodoxy is kind of the way to go. Look up old orthodox calendars honoring all Orthodoxy's martyrs, the documentary on a lady named Agafia, research the lives of early ascetics who literally walled themselves in and youtube documentaries on Orthodox monks alive today.
>>13721088 Also the mainstream Catholic church was lost to Rome as a nation somewhere in history, the protestants are right about this, I think, and as of now has been jesuit/secret society/illuminati/ZOG/whatever controlled opposition for the longest time. Current pope is def chomo weirdo.
>>13721097 Related, Orthodoxy was never tied to one political entity, or at least not nearly as much.