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Ursula K. Le Guin and Life & Death
The above (and below) are poems read aloud by Ursula K. Leguin.
I think her ideas of mortality and the 'afterlife' (or lack thereof?) are really interesting.
In the Earthsea Cycle, which spends a significant amount of time discussing the afterlife, we get the sense of it being similar to a sort of Greco-Roman idea of a 'land of the dead' (though of course this is a vague generalisation) , where they exist in the shape of their lives, but without memory of it, wandering.
That world and this one are separated by low wall which I have always likened to Hadrian's Wall.
(Walls are two things at once - actual physical barriers that dictate actual limitations, and physical or symbolic barriers the power of which is to induce an imagined limitation whether or not the physical one is impassable. Hadrian's Wall is more a symbolic wall, as is it would seem, the low wall in the afterlife in the Earthsea Cycle)
Originally, as the story goes, that world and this one were the same, had the same qualities, etc. But because of the possessiveness of the deceased, a wall was built to fence off the land, and in so doing the dead, in trying to keep something for themselves, also trapped themselves; the land on their side withered and died, became dust. Its the unnatural and unwholesome nature of this place in the book that haunts you. Its not a heaven, though its not completely a hell; its a purgatory or limbo, created by human folly and possessiveness, and by our own unwillingness to let go.
The afterlife is not really discussed much in her other works that I have read. In one book that was part of the Hainish series, perhaps it was Left Hand of Darkness, there is a point at which it is mused that the other worlds experienced after death are actually just other worlds, people moving from place to place. In the Lathe of Heaven there is a sort of a sense of life being a series of dreams.. but in all this there is a kind of absence; there is no higher order than our own selves. Ars Lunga lacks an afterlife at all - but the multifaceted nature of our lives, and their innate wholeness, is given its full significance, so there is no room left for the fear and sense of inadequacy that might lead to the creation of an afterlife philosophy.
The Young is interesting for the same reasons, and bears a vague similarity to my earlier musings on the afterlife and water.
What do you think of these poems? What do you think is being expressed here, about the nature of life and death? Do you like the poems?
What are your thoughts on the matter?
I think her ideas of mortality and the 'afterlife' (or lack thereof?) are really interesting.
In the Earthsea Cycle, which spends a significant amount of time discussing the afterlife, we get the sense of it being similar to a sort of Greco-Roman idea of a 'land of the dead' (though of course this is a vague generalisation) , where they exist in the shape of their lives, but without memory of it, wandering.
That world and this one are separated by low wall which I have always likened to Hadrian's Wall.
(Walls are two things at once - actual physical barriers that dictate actual limitations, and physical or symbolic barriers the power of which is to induce an imagined limitation whether or not the physical one is impassable. Hadrian's Wall is more a symbolic wall, as is it would seem, the low wall in the afterlife in the Earthsea Cycle)
Originally, as the story goes, that world and this one were the same, had the same qualities, etc. But because of the possessiveness of the deceased, a wall was built to fence off the land, and in so doing the dead, in trying to keep something for themselves, also trapped themselves; the land on their side withered and died, became dust. Its the unnatural and unwholesome nature of this place in the book that haunts you. Its not a heaven, though its not completely a hell; its a purgatory or limbo, created by human folly and possessiveness, and by our own unwillingness to let go.
The afterlife is not really discussed much in her other works that I have read. In one book that was part of the Hainish series, perhaps it was Left Hand of Darkness, there is a point at which it is mused that the other worlds experienced after death are actually just other worlds, people moving from place to place. In the Lathe of Heaven there is a sort of a sense of life being a series of dreams.. but in all this there is a kind of absence; there is no higher order than our own selves. Ars Lunga lacks an afterlife at all - but the multifaceted nature of our lives, and their innate wholeness, is given its full significance, so there is no room left for the fear and sense of inadequacy that might lead to the creation of an afterlife philosophy.
The Young is interesting for the same reasons, and bears a vague similarity to my earlier musings on the afterlife and water.
What do you think of these poems? What do you think is being expressed here, about the nature of life and death? Do you like the poems?
What are your thoughts on the matter?
