In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

374 CODES COLLAPSED
measure one's forces against the limits of Death: "Man means to climb
Mount Everest-climb it on his own feet. That is the whole point. Only
so does he get that pride in his prowess which is such a satisfaction to
his soul. Life would be a poor affair if we relied always on the machine.
We are too prone already to trust to science and mechanics instead of
exerting our own bodies and our own spirit. And we thereby miss much
of that enjoyment in life which exercising our faculties to the full brings
with it" (18ff.).
If Death is the only and ultimate horizon with and against which to
circumscribe human existence, and if there is no world "beyond" it, then
Death, rather than being a threshold toward or an element of a transcendental
sphere, becomes a part of human existence. In a poem on the
corpse of a soldier killed in action, Fernando Pessoa focuses on this
particular aspect of the vanishing distinction between Transcendence and
Immanence:
Bloodstains on his uniform.
His arms open,
White, blond, and lifeless,
He is staring at the lost heaven
With his tired, blind gaze.
Heaven has vanished for the young soldier precisely at the moment he
expected it to become a home for his soul-that is, at the moment of his
physical Death. The absence of a transcendental sphere leads Pessoa to
an ironic comparison between the soldier's body and his cigarette case.
The cigarette case can still serve a function-but there is absolutely no
function left for the dead body:
His cigarette case
just fell from his pocket.
His mother had given it to him.
Ready to be used
is the cigarette case.
He is the one who is no longer
ready to be used.
(Pessoa, 31).