The thing about dying
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The composer Leoš Janáček was in the autumn of his life when he turned to "Věc Makropulos" (The Makropulos Case). An opera that deals intensively with death, dying and the question of the meaningfulness of an endless, this-worldly life. Janáček, around 70 years old at the time and longingly in love with his much younger muse Kamila Stösslová, critically questioned an endless life. To mark the revival of the opera (see page 20), we confronted artists, scientists, philosophers and others with the question:
"I'm looking forward to the hour when I can leave my body. Dying means leaving behind everything that you are deeply not. I am not my body, I only have it. I am also not my thoughts, I only have them, just as I am not my pants or my shoes, I only have them. I am deeply homesick for the dimension from which I came to earth and to which I will surely return after death. To a realm of light, unconditional love, kindness and perfect wisdom."
André Heller
"The thought of having to say goodbye to everything that means so much to me at some point scares me. But life, like music, exists in the 'now' and you can't hold on to it. And that's a good thing. And as the Marschallin says so beautifully in the first act of Der Rosenkavalier: 'And in the how - that's where the whole difference lies'."
Simone Young, conductor
"Unanswerable. On the one hand, I mature unpleasantly quickly from contemporary to contemporary witness (and Böhm, Windgassen, Waechter and della Casa easily beat Rudolf II by three centuries in my immortal league). I would love to see them again. On the other hand, the thought of leaving my daughters alone in these times is only bearable with repression. And I would also like to hear a few more rings with Thielemann. So let's say: I've already fathered, planted without end and not just messed up. So let's see if we can do without Makropulos for a while longer."
Heinz Sichrovsky, journalist
"I agree with Woody Allen: 'Eternity lasts a long time, especially towards the end'! I think it would be much nicer to experience 'life' again and again in new forms and with new experiences in a cycle of rebirth. Every moment contains eternity anyway, we simply have to reflect on this 'moment' again and again!"
Ruth Brauer-Kvam, actress & director
"I have already touched immortality with the fandango of my little life, which is at home in music. Every day, cheek by jowl. Like my daily bread, I have consumed the immortal works of Mozart, Verdi, Berg, Debussy and Schubert, Wolf, Beethoven and many others. And so it is enough for me to disappear into this ether one day. In this infinite and immortal universe of energy ... an energy of laughter and love."
KS Sir Simon Keenlyside, singer
"It is the challenge of my profession as a director to be confronted with death again and again. Hardly any opera can do without it. Separating the artistic from the personal doesn't work - I'm fully aware of my mortality. Nothing can be done about my mortality, it is our fate to die. But this knowledge of certain death gives our life value, it is unique and special. Without death it would be arbitrary and at some point unbearable. According to Kirpal Singh, death is the solution to a great riddle. I would like to add "or not" to this. (Kirpal Singh: spiritual master of Sant Mat, president of the World Fellowship of Religions (1894-1974))"
Nikolaus Habjan, director
"As a palliative care physician, I am familiar with transience. Be careful what you wish for. Does an endless life mean endless ageing or an eternal life as a vampire from the moment of the bite? Which point in life would be the right time to opt for an endless life? Staying a child forever, forever youthful, forever adult or forever 'just right' old? Wouldn't that be stagnation? A life without beginning and end is a life without tension, without melody, without crescendo and decrescendo. A society of immortals seems to me to be doomed to failure. I'd rather live until death."
Eva Katharina Masel, Head of the Clinical Department of Palliative Medicine at the AKH
"Death is the mother of all desires. What drives us? Bram Stoker's Dracula describes the subject precisely and poetically, perhaps most beautifully expressed by Erich Kästner in the final sentence of the film script for Münchhausen (who, like Dracula, does not age and does not die):
'A demigod I was, but only half a man, now I want everything and demand the rest.'"
Florian Boesch, singer
"Would I like to live an endless life in this world, that is, live endlessly without death? No. Because in ten generations no one would understand my jokes (sometimes that's hard enough today), because death gives us a horizon and thus the preciousness of life, because life is a cycle, not just an endless state. But what about this world? For me, this is the only stage, this world, now, without stage technology, without lighting and unfortunately also without a prompter. Nevertheless, a brief moment on this stage is all we have - "all the world's a stage", as old Shakespeare already knew."
Philipp Blom, writer & historian
"Of course there are advantages to being immortal, because you can pursue all your dreams and don't have to worry about your health. But I personally would find it terrible to live endlessly. Because even if you're constantly making new friends, you always have to watch them all die. Apart from that, you meet people all the time, but they were born in completely different generations. Don't you feel like a stranger at some point? Maybe one day your own family would die out and that would make me sadder than leaving myself."
Sarah, pupil
"Before deciding on an endless life, it is advisable to take a look into the future. In just a few decades, it could become quite uncomfortable on this planet due to the climate crisis and its consequences. Irrespective of this, in around 2.5 billion years the sun will initially become so strong that all the oceans will evaporate. If we wait that long again, it will begin to go out. But even much earlier, this life would be infinitely boring, because everything available in abundance would lose its appeal."
Bernhard Weingartner, physicist
"I like living, I like people, mostly anyway. I have a job with meaning and there is so much beauty and love around me. For me, these are the traces of God in the world. I try to walk in these footsteps. But at some point the search for traces comes to an end, then my curiosity wants to know more. "Hey dear God, what does it look like in heaven? I would like an answer to all my questions!" So it's not an endless here and now, I don't feel like a curious person being taken seriously."
Bernhard Messer, pastor of Lichtental/Schubertkirche
"I believe in the natural course of life and that we should, can and may use the time we have here as intensively as possible. The great dream of immortality is a utopia for the very reason that a life is only worth living through a concrete meaning, but no meaning in itself has infinity. In other words, if a meaning is fulfilled or brought to a climax, it will inevitably be followed by its erosion and fading, as no one can hold on to an ideal situation forever. So an infinite life would inevitably lead to stagnation at best. And that's why it doesn't interest me. Only people with an excessive ego believe that they have to enrich society with their existence forever - but I'm not one of them."
KS Piotr Beczala, singer