For all the teachers out there crumpling under the weekend marking-load, Søren R. Fauth feels (the futility of) your pain.
Who is Fauth? If Fauth didn’t exist, Michel Houellebecq would have to invent him. A Scandinavian Germanist with the bitter vim of some of Houellebecq’s best loser characters, but driven by the pettiness of the will as much as any of us, Fauth observes and articulates its emergence with what might be a defence of what Sianne Ngai terms ‘ugly feelings’.
In reality, Fauth is a poet and tenured philosopher specialising in that arch-grandee of philosophical pessimism, Schopenhauer, and is the Danish translator of Thomas Bernhard. He has four collections of poetry, the most recent being ‘Moloch’, an autofictional outpouring of powerful feelings, which takes its origin in a marriage betrayal recollected in the smooth tranquility of rage.
The passage below comes from ‘Digt om døden’ (Poem on the death), which charts the decline of his ailing father’s last years as an opportunity to reflect on all the deaths that make up a life: highly readable, rough translation below.
...
Reading exam papers
Reading Sloterdijk's* monstrous book “You must change your life”**
bored to death over the exam papers
panic at the thought of all that
I will not accomplish
before I die because I have to read the exam papers
because I have to go shopping
because I have to teach
because I have to go to meetings
because I have to talk to other people
the panic is
that I read the exam papers so unfocused
that I am losing several precious hours
before I die
it is intolerable
I should change this practice
change my life on a number of points
change it radically
have done with seeing others
have done with going to meetings
have done with teaching
have done with eating
have done with sleeping waking
practicing ascetic striving
always ascetic
striving
that is my life
completely on board with Sloterdijk's points
should have all the prerequisites to prepare me for death
I have passed all other tests by practicing
just don’t know how
suicide is hardly an option
have use for near-death experiences
decide to postpone for the time being the definitive death
I promise to practice every day
that my father is going to die.
* Peter Sloterdijk : perhaps the most successful living conservative continental philosopher reacting against a post-Frankfurt school worldview
**’You must change your life’ is the essence of Rilke’s advice to a young poet, and the title of one of Sloterdijk’s more recent works. Søren L Fauth’s ‘Digt om døden’ retains the German title; google translate has it as ‘You must end your life’, surely a more bold advice for would-be poets.
Læser eksamensopgaver
læser Sloterdijks monstrøse bog >Du musst dein Leben änden<
keder mig til døde over eksamensopgaverne
går i panik ved tanken om alt det
jeg ikke når
inden jeg skal dø
fordi jeg skal læse eksamensopgaver
fordi jeg skal købe ind
fordi jeg skal undervise
fordi jeg skal gå til møder
fordi jeg skal taler med andre mennesker
panikken gør
at jeg læser eksamensopgaverne så ukoncentreret
at jeg mister flere dyrebare timer
inden jeg skal dø
det er uholdbart
jeg burde ændre denne praksis
ændre mit liv på en række punkter
ændre det radikalt
holde op med at se andre
holde op med at gå til møder
hold op med at undervise
holde op med at spise
holde op med at sove vågne
øvende asket stræbende
altid asket
stræbende
det er mit liv
er helt med på Sloterdijks pointer
burde have alle forudsætninger for at øve mig i døden
jeg har bestået alle andre prøver ved at øve mig
ved blot ikke hvordan
selvmord er næppe en mulighed
har brug for nærdødsoplevelser
beslutter mig for indtil videre at udsætte den definitive død
jeg løver at øve mig hver dag på
at min far skal dø.