Before parting from life of my free will and in my right mind I am impelled to fulfil a last obligation: to give heartfelt thanks to this wonderful land of Brazil which afforded me and my work such kind and hospitable repose. My love for the country increased from day to day, and nowhere else would I have preferred to build up a new existence, the world of my own language having disappeared for me and my spiritual home, Europe, having destroyed itself.
But after one's sixtieth year unusual powers are needed in order to make another wholly new beginning. Those that I possess have been exhausted by long years of homeless wandering. So I think it better to conclude in good time and in erect bearing a life in which intellectual labour meant the purest joy and personal freedom the highest good on earth.
I salute my friends! May it be granted them yet to see the dawn after the long night! I, too impatient, go on before.
Stefan Zweig,
Petropolis, 22. II. 1942
Ehe ich aus freiem
Willen und mit klaren Sinnen aus dem Leben scheide, drängt es mich, eine letzte
Pflicht zu erfüllen: diesem wundervollen Lande Brasilien innig zu danken, dass
es mir und meiner Arbeit so gut und gastlich Rast gegeben. Mit jedem Tage habe
ich dies Land mehr lieben gelernt, und nirgends hätte ich mir mein Leben lieber
vom Grunde aus neu aufgebaut, nachdem die Heimat meiner Sprache für mich
untergegangen ist und meine geistige Heimat Europa sich selber vernichtet. Aber
nach dem 60. Jahre bedürfte es besonderer Kräfte, um noch einmal völlig neu zu
beginnen. Und die meinen sind durch die langen Jahre heimatlosen Wanderns
erschöpft. So halte ich es für besser, rechtzeitig und in aufrechter Haltung
ein Leben abzuschließen, dem geistige Arbeit immer die lauterste Freude und
persönliche Freiheit das höchste Gut dieser Erde gewesen. Ich grüße alle meine
Freunde! Mögen sie die Morgenröte noch sehen, nach der langen Nacht! Ich, allzu
Ungeduldiger, gehe ihnen voraus.
Stefan Zweig,
Petropolis, 22. II. 1942
~ ~ ~
NB A new biography of Stefan Zweig by George Prochnik, was published to universal acclaim in 2014.
ISBN 1783781149
ARTHUR KOESTLER
To whom it may concern.
The purpose of this note is to make it unmistakably clear that I intend to commit suicide by taking an overdoes of drugs without the knowledge or aid of any other person. The drugs have been legally obtained and hoarded over a considerable period.
Trying to commit suicide is a gamble the outcome of which will be known to the gambler only if the attempt fails, but not if it succeeds. Should this attempt fail and I survive it in a physically or mentally impaired state, in which I can no longer control what is done to me, or communicate my wishes, I hereby request that I be allowed to die in my own home and not be resuscitated or kept alive by artificial means. I further request that my wife, or a physician, or any friend present, should invoke habeas corpus against any attempt to remove me forcibly from my house to hospital.
My reasons for deciding to put an end to my life are simple and compelling: Parkinson's Disease and the slow-killing variety of leukaemia (CCI). I kept the latter a secret even from intimate friends to save them distress. After a more or less steady physical decline over the last years, the process has now reached an acute state with added complications which make it advisable to seek self-deliverance now, before I become incapable of making the necessary arrangements.
I wish my friends to know that I am leaving their company in a peaceful frame of mind, with some timid hopes for a de-personalised after-life beyond due confines of space, time and matter and beyond the limits of our comprehension. This 'oceanic feeling' has often sustained me at difficult moments, and does so now, while I am writing this.
What makes it nevertheless hard to take this final step is the reflection of the pain it is bound to inflict on my surviving friends, above all my wife Cynthia. It is to her that I owe the relative peace and happiness that I enjoyed in the last period of my life - and never before.
Arthur Koestler
~ ~ ~
NB: For a much acclaimed biography of Koestler see "Koestler: The Indispensable Intellectual" by Michael Scammell. ISBN 9780571255993
VIRGINIA WOLF
On 28 March 1941, Virginia Woolf put on her overcoat, filled its pockets with stones, walked into the River Ouse near her home, and drowned herself. Woolf's body was not found until 18 April 1941.
In her last note to her husband she wrote:
"Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier 'till this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that - everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been. V"
~ ~ ~
NB: For a recent biography of Virginia Woolf see "Virginia Woolf: Art, Life and Vision" by Frances Spalding. ISBN 1855144816
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