Refusing the Immortal

"Only in autumn days, as summer slowly faded, would their confidence again be dashed by doubts and misgivings at symptoms of decay, which told how vain were all their efforts to stave off for ever the approach of winter and of death."-The Myth of Adonis, page 390, James Frazer.


While enjoying the long weekend, I happened upon a copy of Pan's Labyrinth; having never seen the movie and having been told that it contained a wealth of mythology, I took it upon myself to give it a try, disturbing creatures and all. 


While entire tomes could be written about the material displayed in Pan's Labyrinth, what struck a particular cord with me was a Fairy Story Ofelia told to her unborn brother. The tale goes a little something like this:

Many, many years ago in a sad, faraway land, there was an enormous mountain made of rough, black stone. At sunset, on top of that mountain, a magic rose blossomed every night that made whoever plucked it immortal. But no one dared go near it because its thorns were full of poison. Men talked amongst themselves about their fear of death, and pain, but never about the promise of eternal life. And every day, the rose wilted, unable to bequeath its gift to anyone... forgotten and lost at the top of that cold, dark mountain, forever alone, until the end of time. 


How many times has mankind lamented death and aging, how many times have the poets and the artists portrayed a wasted life? In my estimation, the count would number in the thousands. And yet when given the chance to end pain, aging, and death; the journey is often met with fear. Refusing immortality is a theme I've found in both Ovid and Henderson the Rain King. Immortality is presented within an easy distance, but the person to whom it is presented refuses the gift or fails to reach it. This persistent failure to achieve immortality has a perplexing quality about it; what we yearn for most we can never acquire. But perhaps it is not that the desire for the gift of immortality is insufficient, but the poisonous thorns that surround it...

Often times, there is a price to pay for an endless, ageless life. Hercules gained his immortality only through a fiery rebirth, Ariadne suffered heartbreak for her place in the stars, and Callisto had to give up her very humanity to live in the heavens with her son. The Sybil of Cumae was granted her heart's desire, but in return lost her youth. Perhaps even more telling of the price of immortality are the stories where the gift fails to be received by its seeker. The Epic of Gilgamesh describes the intense need to remain in life, as so stated by the hero when he finds that his attempt to stay awake for 6 days and 7 nights has failed:
O woe! What do I do now, where do I go now?
Death has devoured my body,
Death dwells in my body,
Wherever I go, wherever I look, there stands Death!

Luckily for Gilgamesh, Utnapishtam takes pity and tells him where the plant of immortality resides, and yet, after his long and perilous journey, the plant is only stolen by a serpent. The great and heroic story of Gilgamesh thus ends with a lesson, one cannot defeat death. The great price of immortality would seem to be beyond the purchase of humanity. Certainly poor Henderson takes notice of the steep cost, here was a man with the potential to be a king, and thus have his name become immortal..and yet there is the fatal price to pay for such glory. It would seem that immortality cannot be reached without a most dire return. Which leads me to ponder the question of rules in respect to immortality.


It can be easily said that the gift of an eternal life requires an equal return, the question is why. What about the lonely rose sitting so prone at the top of the mountain demands life? Why must there be thorns on the rose? The answer is easily put; death. An immortal life suspends death, suspends the person or animal who attains the immortal from the normal cyclic motions of the universe. To look at it from Mircea Eliade's point of view, the cosmogonic cycle cannot be completed with death. Those rituals of renewal, of rebirth, cannot take place without the completion of the circle. Immortality thus breaks the strands of time and threatens the overall well-being of the universe. With no apocalypse, how can there be a new Eden? There is also the issue of suffering associated with Immortality, if the eternal subject is caught in a time of suffering, then they are doomed to continue in their suffering. Middles bring about misery, the full wrath of the stage of rape without any hope of moving forward to indifference or even returning to the stage of conviviality. The Sybil of Cumae has certainly found herself caught in this web, she continues her pain in her immortal life; she has broken with the normal cycles of the universe. but perhaps Henderson, the lucky fellow who so wisely refused immortality can sum up why the passage of time is necessary. 


"But maybe time was invented so that misery might have an end. So that it shouldn't last forever? There may be something to that."-page 314. As Henderson said, time keeps the cycles moving, and to be suspended from time to is prolong and dam the evolution of the cosmos. As Eliade states "...a true beginning can come only after a real end." Immortality denies ends and by doing so denies beginnings. So in truth, Immortality is less like eternal life, and more akin to eternal stasis, limbo in the great wake of time. This, then, is the reason for the poisoned thorns, if a life is to be put on eternal hold, there must be some sort of compensation for the break in time. The lonely rose of Ofelia's tale was meant to be so, the threat of death acted as a deterrent for the greater tragedy of Immortal life. 

 But do not fret the implications of achieving immortality, the rules that surround eternal life can be easily slipped past. While physical immortality is problematic, immortality within the arts is all too easily attained. Should you wish for your name to persist throughout the ages, simply turn to mythology. Ovid achieved his place in time, and so may anyone, if they have sense enough to write down their stories. When bodies lay in their graves, mythologies will prance around the headstones and dance along the roads, singing of immortality to anyone who listens.