By DONALD DeMARCO
Early in his Confessions (book I, chapter 6), St. Augustine raises a question that is rich in existential implication and, at the same time, sheds important light on the human condition:
“What have I to say to Thee, God, save that I know not where I came from, when I came into this life-in-death — or should I call it death-in-life?”
Augustine expresses his amazement, as we all might, over the fact that he exists as a unique human being not knowing how he came to be and what may be asked of him. He speaks for all of us, we individual human beings who stand outside of nothingness and, not through our own designs, nonetheless exist, have consciousness, and can question how and why we are here.
In referring to the polarities of “life-in-death” and “death-in life,” Augustine is alluding to the unalterable human condition. We would prefer life to be detached from any trace of death and strive mightily to achieve that condition — sex without tears, life without toil, wealth without work, choices without regret.
But we are haunted by the death factor and cannot break loose from it. St. Augustine is telling us that human existence is a mosaic of life and death, and, consequently, that our only choice is between “life-in-death” and “death-in-life.”
The pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus gave a name to this tendency to move between opposites. He called it enantiodromia (enantios, opposite, and dromos, a quick movement). Nothing is fixed. Life is a contest of opposites: birth and death, health and sickness, hope and disillusionment, giving and taking, day and night, summer and winter, love and hate. In fragment 62 he writes: “Immortals, mortals; mortals, immortals; our life is their death and our death is their life.”
In his dialogue Gorgias, Plato repeats the words of Euripides: “Who knows whether living is not dying and whether dying is not living?”
“If anything is constant in the history of mankind,” states the cultural historian Eric Voegelin, “it is the language of tension between life and death.”
The perpetual question for human beings is whether they should find “life-in-death” or, failing that, lapse into “death-in-life.” T.S. Eliot struggled with that question and it is the central theme of his poem, The Waste Land, considered by many scholars as the most important poem in the English language of the 20th century.
The poem’s epigraph foretells the theme that Eliot weaves in a style that is both prolific as well as perplexing. It refers to the prophetess Sibyl who had been granted any wish she desired. In her haste, she chose immortality, or life without death, rather than eternal youth. As a result, she continued to shrink as she aged until she was diminutive enough to fit into a small jar. In a voice that was barely audible, she cried out, “I want death.”
For Eliot, the Waste Land is inhabited by people who prefer death to life. This is what is implied in the poem’s opening line: “April is the cruelest month.” April, of course, signals the beginning of spring, and with it, the regeneration of life. But the people of the Waste Land prefer death and find, in their bleak situation, nothing but death.
Water, symbolizing that which gives life, and rock, symbolizing authority, are both lacking. What life can emerge, Eliot writes, “Out of this stony rubbish? And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water.”
The eminent literary scholars F.R. Levis and F.O. Matthiessen see Eliot’s masterpiece as involving a tension between two kinds of people, those of a Christian type who see life-in-death, and a secular type who see death-in-life. For the Christian, Easter follows Good Friday. For the secularist, there is no resurrection, and death, not life, becomes the predominant factor of human existence. The Christian lives by the supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and charity. The secularist falls back on sensuality, stupefaction, and superstition.
Novelist John Updike has eloquently captured the futility of Eliot’s death-in-life mood when he makes the following insightful remark: We live in “one of those dark ages that visits mankind between millennia, between the death and rebirth of gods, when there is nothing to steer by but sex and stoicism and the stars.”
Literary critic Cleanth Brooks Jr. in his analysis of The Waste Land makes the comment that “men dislike to be aroused from their death-in-life.” Claire Olivia Miller’s 1974 study is entitled, The Waste Land: T.S. Eliot’s Search for Life-in-Death.
Pope St. John Paul II, in his encyclical, Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life) draws attention several times to the conflict in the contemporary world between a Culture of Death and a Culture of Life.
If we look at the encyclical in Augustinian terms, we see that at the root of this clash is the existential choice on the part of individual human beings to prefer a “death-in-life” mode of existence to that of a more Christian “life-in-death” approach.
While it is palpably true that there is a contemporary clash between the Cultures of Life and the Cultures of Death, we should attach responsibility not so much to the two cultures as cultures but to the collective choices made by individual persons.
The tradition from Augustine to John Paul II is telling us that human existence is an unbreakable dyad of life and death. The purpose of our existence is to find life-in-death, while resisting the dark temptation of seeing death as its dominant feature. St. Augustine had sampled the bitter taste of death-in-life. His conversion, as it is for all of us, is in finding joy and meaning in the experience of life-in-death.
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a senior fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, Conn., and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review.
(His latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That Is Going Mad; Poetry That Enters the Mind and Warms the Heart; and How to Flourish in a Fallen World are available through Amazon.com. Some of his recent writings may be found at Human Life International’s Truth and Charity Forum. He is the 2015 Catholic Civil Rights League recipient of the prestigious Exner Award.)
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