The course of a particular: on the ethics of literary singularity

Twentieth Century Literature, Fall, 2004 by Jon Kertzer

Dying may take a lifetime, but death is instantaneous. The desire to isolate the final second of life by filling it with all the significance that is about to vanish appears in proverbial notions such as prophesying with one's dying gasp, like John of Gaunt in Shakespeare's Richard II; or having one's life flash before one's eyes, as in Ambrose Bierce's story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and in A. M. Klein's poem "And in that drowning instant," which condenses not only an individual life but the Jewish diaspora into its glimpse of a "preterite eternity" (Poems 609). Literature is full of fine death-bed scenes, and none more poignant than Bottom's theatrical death throes in A Midsummer Night's Dream:

     Thus die I, thus, thus, thus.
        Now am I dead,
        Now am I fled;
     My soul is in the sky.
        Tongue, lose thy light;
        Moon, take thy flight.
     Now die, die, die, die, die. (5.1.295-302)

The joke is that the last moment goes on and on and on, yet when the noblemen scoff,

     Demetrius: No die, but an ace, for him; for he is but one.
     Lysander: Less than an ace, man; for he is dead, he is nothing.
     (5.1.303-304)

they illustrate how death is painful proof of a uniqueness that language strains to express. Through their wordplay, dying becomes gambling--a bet that we all lose--and singularity (the ace, or single spot on the die) is proclaimed only as it is nullified.

Compare this bombastic display of mortal singularity with three other examples. The first concludes Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych," when Ivan's prolonged suffering grants a charitable insight that ultimately redeems him from the futility of his life. As he feels his son kissing his hand, he is surprised by a joyful intuition, which is expressed as falling, as light, as release from pain, and as the euphoric temporality of dying:

          There was light instead of death.
          "So that is it!" he suddenly said out loud. "What happiness!"
          All of this took place in an instant, but the significance of
     that instant was lasting. For those present his agony continued for
     another two hours. Something rattled in his throat, his emaciated
     body twitched. But gradually the wheezing and the rattling ceased.
     (283)

A similar pattern appears more ironically in Yuri Olesha's story "Lyompa," which again entices the reader toward the unimaginable, in this case by inventing the odd word that serves as the title. Critically ill, Ponomarev turns away from all the bubbling, snorting sounds that animate his house. In contrast to a young child, whose world is expanding explosively as he discovers a bewildering fertility of things that he cannot name, Ponomarev feels reality contracting:

     First, the number of things on the periphery, far away from him,
     decreased; then this depletion drew closer to the center, reaching
     deeper and deeper, toward the courtyard, the house, the corridor,
     the room, his heart.... Death was destroying things on its way to
     him. Death had left him only a few things, from an infinite
     number.... The vanishing things left the dying man nothing but
     their names. (142, 144)