In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

IMMANENCE = TRANSCENDENCE (DEATH) 377
cans-launches Martin Heidegger into one of the most complex passages
of Sein und Zeit (Being and Time). Trying to argue that Death is indeed
a part of human life, Heidegger goes so far as to claim that dying and
human existence are coextensive from the perspective of their duration:
"In actuality, Dasein is dying throughout its existence" (Heidegger, 251).
This is the thought which should encourage confrontation with Death,
anticipation of one's own Death in the imagination; it is also the thought
which should encourage acceptance of the possibility of one's nonexistence,
as well as acceptance of the facticity of one's Death. It is just such
a complex existential leap into the future that Heidegger describes with
the metaphor "Vorlaufen in den Tod," or "running ahead into death"
(267).
Even more frequent than the complementary motifs of escaping and
facing Death are the associations between Death (or the threat of Death)
and sexual fulfillment. Mountainous landscapes appear to be the standard
setting for such links. The hero and narrator in Rene Schickele's
novel Maria Capponi, for example, has never known how passionate his
wife can be-until the spring day on which a climbing accident traps
them together in a crevasse. Here, nothing is left but the expectation of
Death and the mutually warming presence of their bodies. [see Mountaineering]
Leni Riefenstahl claims that she discouraged the sexual advances
of both the male lead actor and the director of the film The Holy
Mountain (and prevented them from killing themselves and each other
out of frustration and jealousy)-but she certainly enjoys the eroticizing
effect that the dangers of mountaineering have on the trio. In contrast,
Bertolt Brecht's poem "Entdeckung an einer jungen Frau" ("Discovery
on Behalf of a Young Woman") is a particularly serious variation on the
same motif:
A sober goodbye in the morning, a woman
Standing without emotion on her threshold, seen without emotion.
Then I noticed a streak of gray in her hair,
And I couldn't make up my mind to leave.
Wordlessly I touched her breast, and when she asked
Why I, guest for one night, did not want
to leave the next morning (for this was the agreement),
I looked her straight in the face and said: