06_Otilia Carmen Cojan.pdf

<font size="3"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Abstract</span>: Whether in philosophy, science of religion or literature, the issue of death is still a topic<br>of interest nowadays for its depth and the multitude of meanings and interpretations attributed to it.<br>Regarded as a fact of life, as a challenge of life or as an end envisaged since birth, death seems to<br>hold that human existence is just a mere preamble to it. Philosophers and writers such as Confucius,<br>Henri Bergson, Martin Heidegger, Jean Paul Sartre, John Milton, or painters like Paul Gauguin,<br>Johann Heinrich Füssli, and Hieronymus Bosch have given many representations of death while<br>showing different views regarding this issue.<br>For the Swiss Romand writer Jacques Chessex (1934-2009) death represents the loss of the limits<br>imposed by the existence, even a possibility of being out of time, out of regret, remembrance and<br>memory, the end of an imperfect period which is life, the passage towards the Infinite. Death is seen<br>as absence and according to an idea borrowed from Jankélévitch it represents the infinite void of<br>eternity. But this absence is not the source of fear, but it rather brings the serenity of the mind / spirit.<br>The pain in death is in fact the suffering of others, all who remain alive, must accept the loss of<br>loved ones, becoming accustomed to the situation. There is also in Jacques Chessex’s works an<br>attitude of rebellion, but it is quickly drowned out by the consciousness of the original sin that casts<br>man into the arms of fate. A special case is that of suicide which in the vision of the writer constitutes<br>the only moment when man has the possibility to control his life, even if only for a few seconds.<br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;">Key words</span>: Swiss literature, Jacques Chessex, death, suicide</font>