Un Voyage à Cythère – A Voyage to Cythera 455

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Un Voyage à Cythère – A Voyage to Cythera 455

L’Amour et le Crâne – Love and the Skull 461

Révolte / Revolt 465

Le Reniement de Saint Pierre – The Denial of Saint Peter 467

Abel et Caïn – Abel and Cain 471

Les Litanies de Satan – The Litanies of Satan 475

La Mort / Death 481

La Mort des Amants – The Death of Lovers 483

La Mort des pauvres – The Death of the Poor 485

La Mort des artistes – The Death of Artists 487

La Fin de la Journée – The End of the Day (1861) 489

Le Rêve d’un Curieux – The Dream of a Curious Man (1861) 491

Le Voyage – The Voyage (1861) 493

Les Épaves / Scraps (1866) 507

Les Promesses d’un visage – The Promises of a Face 509

Le Monstre – The Monster 511

Sur les débuts d’Amina Boschetti – Amina Boschetti 516

À M. Eugène Fromentin – To Eugène M. Fromentin 518

Un Cabaret folâtre – A Jolly Cabaret 521

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Danse macabre (1861)

Danse macabre

À Ernest Christophe

Fière, autant qu’un vivant, de sa noble statureAvec son gros bouquet, son mouchoir et ses gantsElle a la nonchalance et la désinvoltureD’une coquette maigre aux airs extravagants.Vit-on jamais au bal une taille plus mince ?Sa robe exagérée, en sa royale ampleur,S’écroule abondamment sur un pied sec que pinceUn soulier pomponné, joli comme une fleur.La ruche qui se joue au bord des clavicules,Comme un ruisseau lascif qui se frotte au rocher,Défend pudiquement des lazzi ridiculesLes funèbres appas qu’elle tient à cacher.Ses yeux profonds sont faits de vide et de ténèbres,Et son crâne, de fleurs artistement coiffé,Oscille mollement sur ses frêles vertèbres.Ô charme d’un néant follement attifé.Aucuns t’appelleront une caricature,Qui ne comprennent pas, amants ivres de chair,L’élégance sans nom de l’humaine armature.Tu réponds, grand squelette, à mon goût le plus cher !Viens-tu troubler, avec ta puissante grimace,La fête de la Vie ? ou quelque vieux désir,Eperonnant encor ta vivante carcasse,Te pousse-t-il, crédule, au sabbat du Plaisir ?Au chant des violons, aux flammes des bougies,Espères-tu chasser ton cauchemar moqueur,Et viens-tu demander au torrent des orgies

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De rafraîchir l’enfer allumé dans ton coeur ?

Inépuisable puits de sottise et de fautes !De l’antique douleur éternel alambic !À travers le treillis recourbé de tes côtesJe vois, errant encor, l’insatiable aspic.

Pour dire vrai, je crains que ta coquetterieNe trouve pas un prix digne de ses effortsQui, de ces coeurs mortels, entend la raillerie ?Les charmes de l’horreur n’enivrent que les forts !

Le gouffre de tes yeux, plein d’horribles pensées,Exhale le vertige, et les danseurs prudentsNe contempleront pas sans d’amères nauséesLe sourire éternel de tes trente-deux dents.

Pourtant, qui n’a serré dans ses bras un squelette,Et qui ne s’est nourri des choses du tombeau ?Qu’importe le parfum, l’habit ou la toilette ?Qui fait le dégoûté montre qu’il se croit beau.

Bayadère sans nez, irrésistible gouge,Dis donc à ces danseurs qui font les offusqués :« Fiers mignons, malgré l’art des poudres et du rougeVous sentez tous la mort ! Ô squelettes musqués,

Antinoüs flétris, dandys à face glabre,Cadavres vernissés, lovelaces chenus,Le branle universel de la danse macabreVous entraîne en des lieux qui ne sont pas connus !

Des quais froids de la Seine aux bords brûlants du Gange,Le troupeau mortel saute et se pâme, sans voirDans un trou du plafond la trompette de l’AngeSinistrement béante ainsi qu’un tromblon noir.

En tout climat, sous tout soleil, la Mort t’admireEn tes contorsions, risible HumanitéEt souvent, comme toi, se parfumant de myrrhe,Mêle son ironie à ton insanité ! »

– Charles Baudelaire

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The Dance of Death

To Ernest Christophe

Proud as a living person of her noble stature,With her big bouquet, her handkerchief and gloves,She has the nonchalance and easy mannerOf a slender coquette with bizarre ways.Did one ever see a slimmer waist at a ball ?Her ostentatious dress in its queenly fullnessFalls in ample folds over thin feet, tightly pressedInto slippers with pompons pretty as flowers.The swarm of bees that plays along her collar-bonesLike a lecherous brook that rubs against the rocksModestly protects from cat-calls and jeersThe funereal charms that she’s anxious to hide.Her deep eye-sockets are empty and dark,And her skull, skillfully adorned with flowers,Oscillates gently on her fragile vertebrae.Charm of a non-existent thing, madly arrayed !Some, lovers drunken with flesh, will call youA caricature ; they don’t understandThe marvelous elegance of the human frame.You satisfy my fondest taste, tall skeleton !Do you come to trouble with your potent grimaceThe festival of Life ? Or does some old desireStill goading your living carcassUrge you on, credulous one, toward Pleasure’s sabbath ?With the flames of candles, with songs of violins,Do you hope to chase away your mocking nightmare,And do you come to ask of the flood of orgiesTo cool the hell set ablaze in your heart ?Inexhaustible well of folly and of sins !Eternal alembic of ancient suffering !Through the curved trellis of your ribsI see, still wandering, the insatiable asp.To tell the truth, I fear your coquetryWill not find a reward worthy of its efforts ;Which of these mortal hearts understands raillery ?The charms of horror enrapture only the strong !

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The abyss of your eyes, full of horrible thoughts,Exhales vertigo, and discreet dancersCannot look without bitter nauseaAt the eternal smile of your thirty-two teeth.Yet who has not clasped a skeleton in his arms,Who has not fed upon what belongs to the grave ?What matters the perfume, the costume or the dress ?He who shows disgust believes that he is handsome.Noseless dancer, irresistible whore,Tell those dancing couples who act so offended :“Proud darlings, despite the art of make-upYou all smell of death ! Skeletons perfumed with musk,Withered Antinoi, dandies with smooth faces,Varnished corpses, hoary-haired Lovclaces,The universal swing of the danse macabreSweeps you along into places unknown !From the Seine’s cold quays to the Ganges’ burning shores,The human troupe skips and swoons with delight, sees notIn a hole in the ceiling the Angel’s trumpetGaping ominously like a black blunderbuss.In all climes, under every sun, Death admires youAt your antics, ridiculous Humanity,And frequently, like you, scenting herself with myrrh,Mingles her irony with your insanity !”

– William Aggeler, 1954

The Dance of Death

To Ernest Christophe

Proud, as a living person, of her height,Her scarf and gloves and huge bouquet of roses,She shows such nonchalance and ease as mightA thin coquette excessive in her poses.Who, at a ball, has seen a form so slim ?Her sumptuous skirts extravagantly showerTo a dry foot that, exquisitely trim,Her footwear pinches, dainty as a flower.The frills that rub her collarbone, and feel,

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Like a lascivious rill against a rock,The charms she is so anxious to conceal,Defend them, too, from ridicule and mock.Her eyes are formed of emptiness and shade.Her skull, with flowers so deftly decked about,Upon her dainty vertebrae is swayed.Oh what a charm when nullity tricks out !“Caricature,” some might opine, but wrongly,Whose hearts, too drunk with flesh that runs to waste,Ignore the grace of what upholds so strongly.Tall skeleton, you match my dearest taste !Come you to trouble with your strong grimace,The feast of life ? Or has some old desireRowelled your living carcase from its placeAnd sent you, credulous, to feed its fire ?With tunes of fiddles and the flames of candles,Hope you to chase the nightmare far apart,Or with a flood of orgies, feasts, and scandalsTo quench the bell that’s lighted in your heart ?Exhaustless well of follies and of faults,Of the old woe the alembic and the urn,Around your trellised ribs, in new assaults,I see the insatiable serpent turn.I fear your coquetry’s not worth the strain,The prize not worth the effort you prolong.Could mortal hearts your railleries explain ?The joys of horror only charm the strong.The pits of your dark eyes dread fancies breathe,And vertigo. Among the dancers prudent,Hope not your sixteen pairs of smiling teethWill ever find a contemplative student.Yet who’s not squeezed a skeleton with passion ?Nor ravened with his kisses on the meatOf charnels. What of costume, scent, or fashion ?The man who feigns disgust, betrays conceit.O noseless geisha, unresisted gouge !Tell these fastidious feigners, from your husk –“Proud fondling fools, in spite of talc and rouge,You smell of death. Anatomies of musk,Withered Antinouses, beaux of dunder,

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Corpses in varnish, Lovelaces of bone,The dance of death, with universal thunder,Is whirling you to places yet unknown !From Seine to Ganges frolicking about,You see not, through a black hole in the ceiling,Like a great blunderbus, with funnelled snout,The Angel’s trumpet, on the point of pealing.in every clime, Death studies your devicesAnd vain contortions, laughable Humanity,And oft, like you, perfumes herself with spicesMixing her irony with your insanity !”

– Roy Campbell, 1952

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Charles Baudelaire - Fleurs du Mal - La Mort / Death 483

La Mort des Amants

La Mort des Amants

Nous aurons des lits pleins d’odeurs légères,Des divans profonds comme des tombeaux,Et d’étranges fleurs sur des étagères,Ecloses pour nous sous des cieux plus beaux.Usant à l’envi leurs chaleurs dernières,Nos deux coeurs seront deux vastes flambeaux,Qui réfléchiront leurs doubles lumièresDans nos deux esprits, ces miroirs jumeaux.Un soir fait de rose et de bleu mystique,Nous échangerons un éclair unique,Comme un long sanglot, tout chargé d’adieux ;Et plus tard un Ange, entr’ouvrant les portes,Viendra ranimer, fidèle et joyeux,Les miroirs ternis et les flammes mortes.


The Death of Lovers

We shall have beds full of subtle perfumes,Divans as deep as graves, and on the shelvesWill be strange flowers that blossomed for usUnder more beautiful heavens.Using their dying flames emulously,Our two hearts will be two immense torchesWhich will reflect their double lightIn our two souls, those twin mirrors.Some evening made of rose and of mystical blue

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A single flash will pass between usLike a long sob, charged with farewells ;And later an Angel, setting the doors ajar,Faithful and joyous, will come to reviveThe tarnished mirrors, the extinguished flames.


The Death of Lovers

We shall have beds round which light scents are wafted,Divans which are as deep and wide as tombs ;Strange flowers that under brighter skies were graftedWill scent our shelves with rare exotic blooms.When, burning to the last their mortal ardour,Our torch-like hearts their bannered flames unroll,Their double light will kindle all the harderWithin the deep, twinned mirror of our soul.One evening made of mystic rose and blue,I will exchange a lightning-flash with you,Like a long sob that bids a last adieu.Later, the Angel, opening the doorFaithful and happy, will at last renewDulled mirrors, and the flames that leap no more.


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La Mort des pauvres

La Mort des pauvres

C’est la Mort qui console, hélas ! et qui fait vivre ;C’est le but de la vie, et c’est le seul espoirQui, comme un élixir, nous monte et nous enivre,Et nous donne le coeur de marcher jusqu’au soir ;À travers la tempête, et la neige, et le givre,C’est la clarté vibrante à notre horizon noirC’est l’auberge fameuse inscrite sur le livre,Où l’on pourra manger, et dormir, et s’asseoir ;C’est un Ange qui tient dans ses doigts magnétiquesLe sommeil et le don des rêves extatiques,Et qui refait le lit des gens pauvres et nus ;C’est la gloire des Dieux, c’est le grenier mystique,C’est la bourse du pauvre et sa patrie antique,C’est le portique ouvert sur les Cieux inconnus !


The Death of the Poor

It’s Death that comforts us, alas ! and makes us live ;It is the goal of life ; it is the only hopeWhich, like an elixir, makes us inebriateAnd gives us the courage to march until evening ;Through the storm and the snow and the hoar-frostIt is the vibrant light on our black horizon ;It is the famous inn inscribed upon the book,Where one can eat, and sleep, and take his rest ;It’s an Angel who holds in his magnetic hands

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Sleep and the gift of ecstatic dreamsAnd who makes the beds for the poor, naked people ;It’s the glory of the gods, the mystic granary,It is the poor man’s purse, his ancient fatherland,It is the portal opening on unknown Skies !


The Death of Paupers

It’s Death comforts us, alas ! and makes us live.It is the goal of life, it brings us hope,And, like a rich elixir, seems to giveCourage to march along the darkening slope.Across the tempest, hail, and hoarfrost, look !Along the black horizon, a faint gleam !It is the inn that’s written in the bookWhere one can sleep, and eat, and sit and dream.An Angel, in magnetic hands it holdsSleep and the gift of sweet ecstatic dreams,And makes a bed for poor and naked souls.It is God’s glory and the mystic grange :The poor man’s purse and fatherland it seems,And door that opens Heavens vast and strange.


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La Mort des artistes

La Mort des artistes

Combien faut-il de fois secouer mes grelotsEt baiser ton front bas, morne caricature ?Pour piquer dans le but, de mystique nature,Combien, ô mon carquois, perdre de javelots ?Nous userons notre âme en de subtils complots,Et nous démolirons mainte lourde armature,Avant de contempler la grande CréatureDont l’infernal désir nous remplit de sanglots !Il en est qui jamais n’ont connu leur Idole,Et ces sculpteurs damnés et marqués d’un affront,Qui vont se martelant la poitrine et le front,N’ont qu’un espoir, étrange et sombre Capitole !C’est que la Mort, planant comme un soleil nouveau,Fera s’épanouir les fleurs de leur cerveau !


The Death of Artists

How many times must I shake my bauble and bellsAnd kiss your low forehead, dismal caricature ?To strike the target of mystic nature,How many javelins must I waste, O my quiver ?We shall wear out our souls in subtle schemesAnd we shall demolish many an armatureBefore contemplating the glorious CreatureFor whom a tormenting desire makes our hearts grieve !There are some who have never known their Idol

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And those sculptors, damned and branded with shame,Who are always hammering their brows and their breasts,Have but one hope, bizarre and somber Capitol !It is that Death, soaring like a new sun,Will bring to bloom the flowers of their brains !


The Death of Artists

How often must I shake my bells, and kissYour brow, sad Travesty ? How many a dart,My quiver, shoot at Nature’s mystic heartBefore I hit the target that I miss ?We’ll still consume our souls in subtle schemes,Demolishing tough harness, long beforeWe see the giant Creature of our dreamsWhom all the world is weeping to adore.Some never knew their Idol, though they prayed :And these doomed sculptors, with an insult branded,Hammer your brows and bosom, heavy-handed,In the one hope, O Capitol of shade !That Death like some new sun should rise and giveWarmth to their wasted flowers, and make them live.


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Le Rêve d’un Curieux (1861)

Le Rêve d’un Curieux

À Félix Nadar

Connais-tu, comme moi, la douleur savoureuseEt de toi fais-tu dire : « Oh ! l’homme singulier ! »– J’allais mourir. C’était dans mon âme amoureuseDésir mêlé d’horreur, un mal particulier ;Angoisse et vif espoir, sans humeur factieuse.Plus allait se vidant le fatal sablier,Plus ma torture était âpre et délicieuse ;Tout mon coeur s’arrachait au monde familier.J’étais comme l’enfant avide du spectacle,Haïssant le rideau comme on hait un obstacle...Enfin la vérité froide se révéla :J’étais mort sans surprise, et la terrible auroreM’enveloppait. – Eh quoi ! n’est-ce donc que cela ?La toile était levée et j’attendais encore.


The Dream of a Curious Man

To F.N.

Do you know as I do, delectable suffering ?And do you have them say of you : “O ! the strange man !”– I was going to die. In my soul, full of love,A peculiar illness ; desire mixed with horror,Anguish and bright hopes ; without internal strife.The more the fatal hour-glass continued to flow,

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The fiercer and more delightful grew my torture ;My heart was being torn from this familiar world.I was like a child eager for the play,Hating the curtain as one hates an obstacle...Finally the cold truth revealed itself :I had died and was not surprised ; the awful dawnEnveloped me. – What ! is that all there is to it ?The curtain had risen and I was still waiting.


Dream of a Curious Person

To F.N.

Have you known such a savoury grief as I ?Do people say “Strange fellow !,” whom you meet ?– My amorous soul, when I was due to die,Felt longing mixed with horror ; pain seemed sweet.Anguish and ardent hope (no factious whim)Were mixed : and as the sands of life ran lowMy torture grew delicious yet more grim,And of this dear old world would not let go.I seemed a child, so keen to see the ShowHe feels a deadly hatred of the Curtain...And then I saw the hard, cold truth for certain.I felt that dreadful dawn around me growWith no surprise or vestige of a thrill.The curtain rose – and I stayed waiting still.


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The Raven

By

Edgar Allan Poe

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Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door."'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door-

Only this, and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore-For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore-

Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtainThrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,

"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door-Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;-

This it is, and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;

But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,

That I scarce was sure I heard you"—here I opened wide the door;-Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;

But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore!"This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!"-

Merely this, and nothing more.

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

2Created for Lit2Go on the web at etc.usf.edu

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Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.

"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice:Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore-Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;-

'Tis the wind and nothing more."

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;

Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door-

Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door-Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.

"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore-Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being

Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door-Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,

With such name as "Nevermore."

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke onlyThat one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.

Nothing further then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered-Till I scarcely more than muttered, "other friends have flown before-On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."

Then the bird said, "Nevermore."



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Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store,

Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful DisasterFollowed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore-

Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden boreOf 'Never—nevermore'."

But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;

Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linkingFancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore-

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yoreMeant in croaking "Nevermore."

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressingTo the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;

This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease recliningOn the cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o'er,

But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o'er,She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censerSwung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.

"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent theeRespite—respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore!Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!-Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,

Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted-On this home by horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore-

Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!"Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."



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"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil—prophet still, if bird or devil!By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore-

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore-

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend," I shrieked, upstarting-"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sittingOn the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floorShall be lifted—nevermore!

THE END.



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How Facebook has turned the normal processes of dying and grieving inside out

by JIM ALGIE — Aug 10, 2012 in FACEBOOK

On November 9th, 2010 an old friend posted the following status update on Facebook: “Dying. Pain. Fear. Missing all my old friends, especially from Edmonton. Looking fwd to seeing Pete tomorrow. Also my lovely Maggie – I love and miss you too. Good luck with your Betty Moon gig in LA. Might be my last post but hope not. Sorry for all those I couldn’t write directly. I love you all. If this is the last post, goodbye.”

Over the next few weeks, the death of Chris “Dexter” Bates played out on the social networking website like a macabre reality show. Old friends posted memories and photos. Cancer survivors sent advice and encouragement, while Bates even put up a cell-phone shot of the malignant tumours eating through his neck.

This was a far cry from Facebook’s status quo as a vanity press, gossip mill and a place to post photos of your lunch. Terminal illnesses have never fallen under the cache-all banner of social networking, but Bates, a stalwart of the Edmonton and later the Toronto underground rock scenes, clung to punk’s first commandment: There are no taboos. On his Facebook page he scorned censorship as “fundamentally wrong and morally weak”, hence the photo of his neck, hence the news that by November 12th he had five tumours consuming his throat and pressing against his windpipe so the doctors had to put in a tracheotomy tube.

Later that night, the bassist for groups like SMJ, GOD, and the Demon Flowers wrote: “Survived my carotid blowout; scary as fuck like a gore flick. NOT how I wanna go. Cancer has covered whole area so it is a matter of time. Just wanna go to sleep before that happens. Gotta go for tonight, love to all. Have a wake for me guys wherever you are.”

As it became clear that his days were numbered in single digits, old friends put up photos of them together in cheerier times, comics he’d drawn, and they shared their favourite memories from the early ‘80s when, out on the Canadian prairies, punks were on a par with rats and roaches, and rednecks in pickup trucks would stop their vehicles to hurl verbal abuse at us or chase us down the street with baseball bats.

Candy Wardman posted: “chris the memories i have of you. i remember one day when we were walking down 109 st and some person driving by threw food at us screaming stuff i was about to respond when you said to me don’t lower yourself to their level like black flag’s song “rise above” i took that moment and have carried it with me and apply daily to my life even now. your energy transcends all time. thank you for your friendship, wisdom, and love.”

Digital memorials The death of the Bangkok-based journalist Torgeir Norling in early 2010 created a similar cache of reminiscences. His Facebook page became a digital funeral home. Instead of donating flowers, colleagues from around the world posted some of his stories like “Sri Lanka’s Road to Peace,” photos of him in the field, and homages to a journalist who had survived danger zones the world

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over only to be run down and killed by a green minibus on a zebra crossing in Bangkok, just across the street from one of the city’s supposedly luckiest and most spiritual places, the Erawan Shrine.

Richard Lloyd Parry, the Tokyo-based, Asia editor of The Times and author of the recent, true-crime chiller The People Who Eat Darkness, posted the following reminiscences on Tor’s Facebook page: “One of Tor’s charms was the habit he had of popping up in the most difficult places at times of maximum anxiety – but always with an incongruous air of slightly absent-minded calm. Baghdad exploding, East Timor melting down, Rangoon under the truncheon – inevitably, at a moment when everyone else was flapping like chickens, Tor would appear on the scene with that smile of faint surprise, no more concerned than a man caught out in the rain without an umbrella. Many people are drawn to the tragic places, and are moved to anger by their injustice. Tor was too, but he never panicked, never posed, never affected a bogus heroism, and never made it all about him. Viking cool; tiger calm. I mourn him, and pray for Jum and Trym.”

Only a week before his death, Tor’s mother Elisabet became friends with him on Facebook. For her and her family, his page became the default setting for dealing with their grief. Through the website they followed in the virtual footfalls of a life-long nomad who visited more than 70 countries and felt most at home when he was on the road. Given the Norwegian’s stoical demeanour, few of his closest friends and colleagues could have known that he was one of the last foreign journalists to leave East Timor. Putting his own life in peril, Tor hid a Timorese leader in his hotel room as Dili went up in smoke and down in flames.

On her son’s page, Elisabet’s post revealed how the normally private process of grieving was turned inside out by the website: “We want to thank everyone for taking part in our grief after Torgeir died so suddenly. All the comforting words and respectful compliments, the pictures, stories and comments have been, and will be, of invaluable comfort to us in this difficult period of life. We are overwhelmed by the response from so many good friends throughout the world. Thank you for sharing with us a part of Torgeir’s life that we, as parents, knew mostly from the outside. Thank you for being his friends. Geir and Elisabet.”

Tor’s widow, Supattra “Jum” Vimonsuknopparat, was stunned by how fast the word spread through Facebook about his demise at the age of 37. Understandably, in the wake of his death, and having to identify the body, she was a nervous and emotionally exhausted wreck.

So Facebook became a buffer zone between her and the barrage of callers and sympathizers. Utilizing the events function on the website, she and some close friends announced the cremation ceremony and posted a map of the temple in Khlong Toei. For those mourners who attended the three nights of last Buddhist rites, replete with chanting monks, and a Western-fermented wake on the final evening, the strangest part was that the messages on the virtual forum plumbed depths that the real-time gathering skimmed over. In person, all the mourners looked as if they’d just returned from a gruelling session with the dentist and, still numb with anaesthesia, the pain had yet to burrow into those cavities and crevices left by his death. Few of the mourners had anything more than the usual RIP-by-rote clichés to repeat.

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Last bytes Online, the discussions were much more intense. It was the same with Chris Bates. In the special unit for palliative care, where Bates moaned in one of his final posts that four of his other “roommates” had died in the past 48 hours, his sister updated everyone on his deteriorating condition and visiting hours. This was about as darkly educational as Facebook gets with Sara relaying or dispensing medical advice on a host of symptoms like “terminal agitation in the dying”.

She posted: “Just got off the phone with Chris’s nurse and the Drs decided to increase all of his meds again today – trying to stay ahead of his pain and agitation. Up significantly with the dilauded (doubled) and the antipsychotic (doubled since the increase of yesterday) and also an increase in the modazilam. Rest comfortably brother.”

Meanwhile, another bedside companion, Viva Viletone, a music journalist and host of the Internet’s “Rock N Talk” show, ratcheted up the molar-grinding suspense which had many of us refreshing his page every 30 minutes or so. “Just letting Chris’s friends know that I have been reading him your comments. He is heavily sedated/can at times hear & reacts faintly… He has been hanging on for the love.”

At this point, Chris and I had had almost no contact for more than 20 years. A few offhand insults we flung at each other at one of my gigs had festered into a musical rivalry that metastasized into a seemingly unmovable boulder of a grudge. Which is typical enough of the stags-butting-antlers bravado that young musicians resort to when they’re putting down their rivals or pandering to their insecurities by badmouthing other bands.

In 2009, he sent me a friend request, which I accepted as both a matter of etiquette and an act of either forgiveness or repentance, depending on who had wronged whom; but we still hadn’t exchanged so much as a link or an emoticon.

Facebook gave us one last chance to reconnect and reconcile. Hoping that either Sara or Viva would read it to him, I posted a long, meandering message expurgated here: “Remember the last time we crossed paths at a Jerry Jerry gig for the Battle Hymn of the Apartment album and you ridiculed my bass-playing? Well, I finally forgave you for that about 14 seconds ago and conceded you were probably right… ha ha… seriously, man, when I think about all those ego feuds and band rivalries, they seem petty and embarrassingly juvenile to me. I hope we’re all bigger and wiser than that now. In Thai slang, the entertainment industry is called maya – a Sanskrit word for ‘illusion’ which is an apt description of all that youthful egomania. During your performing and recording career, you rocked, entertained and inspired countless fans and fellow musicians. Those were gifts, not illusions, and we’re all grateful to you for them.”

That was one of the last messages he would ever hear. Five days later Sara posted: “Chris Bates died today on December 1st aged 44.”

Sara’s post opened more floodgates of sorrow, relief, and a hard-won hopefulness captured best by Louanne Dal Bello: “I was thinking about what a gift it is for him to have had the chance to

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read how people saw him, felt about him and about his illness. I’m going to be better at telling the people who have crossed my path at how lucky I feel to know them, even if it was just in passing.”

Thrashing taboos Recently connecting with Viva, whom I’ve never met in real time, through a personal message on Facebook, she recalled her astonishment when “the outpouring of love & visitations actually STOPPED the growth of the tumor for a while, which had previously been doubling in size almost every day. I sent you evidence of this fact in his own writing and in his dialogue with nurses. But it was too late to save him. At least he died knowing he really WAS loved.”

Not even the biggest and nastiest drunk at any wake is going to speak ill of the dead. That was another taboo trashed on Facebook after the musician’s death. Some accused him of squandering his talent on drugs; others claimed he should’ve gotten off the pizza, coke and cigarettes diet; one old friend griped that he’d survived Stage 4 cancer without giving up the ghost, so why couldn’t Chris?

With the addition of an obituary from Canada’s biggest English daily, links for the MySpace page of his last group, the Demon Flowers, and various other photos and messages, his page – it was modified so anyone can become “friends” with him – has become a virtual memorial. So has Tor’s. Both of them are like electronic versions of the “funeral books” containing mementos and photos of the deceased that well-to-do Thais give out after the cremation rites.

In a private Facebook message to me, his mother Elisabet wrote: “Once in a while I still go to his page just to see if someone still puts something there or just to remember. I don’t know for how long it is proper to keep this page open, but so far we have not talked about closing it.”

In the language of grief counselling, the most repeated word is “closure”. But how is that possible when people are still reminded of the dearly deceased when they log on to Facebook? As Ken Hansen, another old friend of Chris’s, remarked, “It’s hard to be ‘friends’ with a corpse.” At the same time, who is hardhearted enough to de-friend the dead?

Jum would like to see her late husband’s page remain on the website as a permanent tribute to him. “I think he would have been surprised to see how loved he was by so many people.” Referring to his modest streak, she added, “But I can see him laughing at some of the compliments in an embarrassed kind of way.” Just in case it disappears one day, she has printed out all the pages so their son Trym, now five, can learn about his father when he’s older. For the boy, there has not been, and perhaps never will be, any real sense of closure. Once in a while, his mom said, he still cries at night for his papa.

Jum, who works as a TV producer for the Australia Broadcasting Corporation, has not shared her most personal memories with anyone on Facebook. Some two years after his death she is still trying to fill the void left by her husband’s death. Only three hours before he was run down in early 2010, the couple met in a bar. Even though they hadn’t been on the best of terms lately, Tor gave her a hug and wished her a happy new year.

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“One of the last things he said to me was that he wanted things to be better between us in the future,” she recounted with a quaver in her voice and a gleam of sadness in her eyes which said more than a thousand tweets ever will about the nature of love and grief.

When Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg talks about making the world a “more open and connected place” he’s not just reiterating the party line. Much maligned for its invasions of privacy, inspiring the most vainglorious trivia, and turning people into marketing data, the website exposed its brighter side in the shadow of these two deaths. It’s a new phenomena that has no real-life counterpart except the trend in Taiwan for the terminally ill to have “living funerals” so they can say goodbye to their loved ones in person, which will soon be challenged by the new “If I Die” app that allows users to upload a previously recorded video or text message to their Facebook page after they’re dead.

Just as social media has rewired human interactions and marketing (sometimes confusing the two), it’s now revolutionizing the way we face death and come to terms with grief. After doing a post-mortem of all the messages on Chris’s page that followed his passing, it was clear that David Boroditsky, a friend of his in Canada, had found the key words to describe this darker strain of social networking that challenges the gravest of taboos.

“In our society we are removed from experiencing and sharing death, and most of what we think we know about the process comes from Hollywood,” he wrote on the musician’s Facebook page. “As gruesome as parts of it were, a good death is an important bookend to a life, and something to which we should all aspire. Thanks to everyone for helping Chris have a good death. I hope we all have such friends when the time comes.”

But the question is, where will those mourners and consolers be? For better or worse, most of us have many more ‘friends’ on Facebook than we do in real life.

https://thenextweb.com/facebook/2012/08/11/facebook-‐dead-‐dying/

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Documents

Un Voyage à Cythère – A Voyage to Cythera 455