19 November 2007

The Meaning of Death

"Man...expresses himself primarily by his action...But this action lacks unity, that is, meaning, until it has been completed...
In a word, so long as he has a future, that is, an unknown quantity, man is unexpressed.

It is therefore absolutely necessary to die, because, so long as we live, we have no meaning...Death effects an instantaneous montage of our lives; that is, it chooses the truly meaningful moments (which are no longer modifiable by other possibly contrary or incoherent moments) and puts them in a sequence, transforming an infinite, unstable and uncertain - and therefore linguistically not describable - present into a clear, stable, certain, and therefore easily describable past.... It is only thanks to death that our life serves us to express ourselves.

Editing therefore performs on the material of the film...the operations that death performs on life."

- Pier Paolo Pasolini, film director

2 comments:

Unknown said...

thx for the post. i`m just writing about the making of time, well, kind of heidegger`s "zeitigung" way, but along of "kahf"sura in qur`an.and listening rachid taha, searching for text of "ya rayah". and this post was coming up, so thx once again. well, i do not agree in every aspect, but its good to feel that im not alone in this register, Hamdulillah. hugs & kisses

Unknown said...

Service pack to my comment: the post gives an exact description of the meaning (function and essence) of death, and is very informative (information meaning here as in a work of art ’news that makes you change’). I was negligent when writing „do not agree in every aspect”, and owe this place (meanwhile I was a bit looking around), well I owe this blog to tell that the context in my head made me confused. Version 1.1 sounds that „… I do agree, and cannot speak of every aspect and consequence of it that is coming in my mind at once, that are to be further evaluated and selected” – or so.
Also this view of „it is only thanks to death that our life serves us to express ourselves” sounded me like the usual ego booster ideology – at first sight. Looking closer it is not only coherent with the beginning statement of the citation, but has a pretty much deeper meaning + for me a special connotation relating to psychodrama.