Existence Negavtive (work in progress)

Category: Writing and Poetry

With the bargaining habits of Lucifer we are all, I am sure, quite familiar. As death is no fallen angel, however, our capacity to properly grasp the intricacies of his economic policy is, I shall concede, markedly impeded. It could almost be argued that beauty is eternal – but most probably not. The preceding notwithstanding, a pact with death is quite similar to one forged with the king of the flies save for a few inconsequential trivialities. Whreas Lucifer is wont to grant a wish in exchange for the eternal damnation of one's soul, Death demands the cessation of the existence of one's soul. For you see complete erasure is Death's ultimate aim. It is thus that our hero (yes – we shall call him that although he has no knowledge whatsoever of our having done so – blissfull ignorance, the bane of all but the poet) came to do business with Death.

A dizzying numbness grasped at Theodore, wrent him asunder. He had not yet reached the bottom of the stairs when the spasmodic pangs of an all-enveloping nausea crucified him to the wall. Life issued from his mouth. He vomited out his soul, his breath – his everything. Again and again and again – a horrendous concoction of bile and his very essence. He fell to his knees, gazing skywards, towards a deity whom he had never embraced, and begged his succor.

"My God, What have I done that I deserve to suffer so? Am I Job that you test my faith? I have none. I never have. Is it for this that I am punished? I can no longer bear the interminable anguish, the endless dolor that is existence. I no longer want it. Life – I no longer desire it. You who gave it to me – I order you to take responsibility for your cruel mistake. Dis-imbue me of life, de-animate me, render me once again unborn."

You must understand that it was not death that Theodore Z. sought, but rather non-being, "existence negative" let us call it. Nemo Polyphemia's definitive treatise on the aberrant tendencies of the pre-dead entitled " Torquemada and the Macabre" defines "existence negative" (xθ)-1 as "a state of transcendental misappropriation often confused with benign dimentia or acute panic but not necessarilly". And so it goes.

Polyphemia's treatise on the aberrant tendencies of the pre-dead is dedicated to his mother and to Niccolo Machiavelli – in order particular no. The text is no longer in print. The last known extant copy was taken from the shelves of the Krakow City Library and never returned. Numerous telegrams stamped "urgent attention required" were sent to the home of one Ladislav Grossman, 237 Pilsudskiplatz, Kashimir demanding that the tome be returned forthwith and that a sizeable fine be paid. The last of the letters was postmarked October 8, 1944. Ladislav Gossman had been killed at Treblinka some two and a half years previously . The following poem written in the margins of pages 237 and 238 of Polyphemia's treatise mysteriously came to light in 1948:

Would that I had one thousand tongues that I might extol beauty eternal.

Would that I had one thousand tongues that I might ever sing of adoration

perpetual. Alas nevermore and evermore, exalting in the unmatched magnificence

of exhiliration, undulating in brilliant rythmic pirouettes upon a sea of

nostalgia I am, I fall, I rise, I fall. Oscillating, undulating, oscillating,

undulating, I rise, I fall, I sink, I fall deeper ever deeper into the recesses

of tomorrow's oblivion. Transcendent ever, transcendent over upon

blackened wings the tortous inevitability of yesterday. And then and when

the whirling vortex compelling an unseen compulsion, retreating from me,

retreating from below retires his fury, and I lie and I live.

The silence which met Theodore's plea…(unfinished)