The Book Against Death

[droqen]

Re: Elias Canetti's
"The Book Against Death"

recommended to me by joey schutz
thank you, joey

[droqen]

[AB]

[droqen]

first, i skimmed this book. i loosely read the foreword, the afterward. then i returned again to the beginning, with an understanding of the whole, to understand the whole in its many parts.

the last quote from the foreword reads:

I have approached a hundred gods,
and I looked each straight in the eye,
full of hatred for the death of human beings.

what this quote instills in me, i cannot entirely say. i like the passion in it, the intensity, the absurdity of such a position. but not only absurdity -- the feeling of its absolute incontrovertible rightness. why should something so right feel also so absurd? it is, in a way, the way i feel about kill gameplay. it is so blindingly right, and so utterly absurd to say aloud. it is freeing to see a statement in which these two go hand in hand.

obvious correctness, and obvious absurdity.

it is freeing to see another take up such a position. it is more freeing still to allow oneself to take it up.

[droqen]

p179-180

Why does my attack on death fill people with such hatred?

Have they been hired to defend it? Do they know so very much about their own murderous nature that they feel themselves attacked when I attack death?