Video: Christopher Hitchens "The Last 100 Days"
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
I read the book by Christopher Hitchens "The Last 100 Days" and tried to understand what made him write all these words … he portrayed with severe directness and somewhat cynical mockery of an inveterate skeptic, which would seem blasphemous if it were not the dying person himself who was talking about himself.
On the pages of this strange diary, where the stages were not days and not even events, but those everyday conclusions and philosophical truths that they make a person comprehend anew, he himself admits that the state of health of a cancer patient in the terminal stage is comparable, apparently, only to the tortures of the Inquisition and torments the persistence of suffering. The author does not hide the fact that he notices the loss of clarity of mind and speed of thinking. Why write in such a state?.. It is unlikely that this could distract from the terrible pain. It is unlikely that this helped to console the bright publicist and anti-clerical, who deliberately rejected all consolations with his uncompromising position.
Maybe written speech was an attempt to make up for a lost voice forever (how short and how scary is “forever” for a dying person)?.. The voice of this popular lecturer, radio host was no less recognizable than his face, his voice was his instrument, and before that - the last - of the book, Christopher Hitchens' written speech has never competed with his oratory. And yet this book does not seem to be an attempt to grasp at the last opportunity of the statement …
Maybe he, a convinced atheist, was so moved by the controversy of both kind-hearted and angry Christians, which began in the press and on the Internet, where a whole palette of emotions was addressed to him, from meek prayers for his health to the angry threats of fiery hell?.. The author carefully researches the nature of faith, and rightly notes that it would be humiliating both for man and for God (if he did exist, which for Hitchens is nothing more than a theoretical assumption), if faith were a consequence of the fear of death. He subtly sneers at Pascal's gambit, noting that no matter how impeccably logical in his argument for the necessity of faith, the inventor of the first computing machine, but he, Hitchens, such logic is alien.
And yet, behind the pages of the book "The Last 100 Days" I did not see the proud half-profile of the character in Repin's famous painting "Refusal of Confession. Before execution. " Despite all the similarities in the plot, the book surprisingly shows the triumph of the spiritual principle over death and suffering. Reading the author's honest and open dialogue with himself, his mental arguments with his favorite writers and unloved politicians, involuntarily observing his suffering with a painful impossibility to help, I was more than ever confident in the immortality of the human soul, and I really hope that, where no matter how she - his soul - is now, the author will forgive me for such a perverse interpretation of his position.
Like Virgil, the brilliant publicist Christopher Hitchens reports from the territory of many circles of hell, through which patients pass who find themselves on the other side of the door, above which is written "Leave hope, everyone who enters here." And at the same time, his intonation of a lively, courageous, bright person, an implacable fighter against pretense and sentimentality makes us hope that a person can go through any trials in this way, remaining himself until the last minute. This book can instill firmness of mind in healthy, but disappointed and sad people, it can reveal many important truths to relatives of sick people, it can remind hardened doctors and officials that a patient is still a person until his death hour, still a person, and not a body or statistical unit.
However, I doubt that this book can be a good reading for the patients themselves. The author himself warns against citing one patient to another as an example, because every case history, like every life story, is completely unique. I would not want our cancer patients here, in Russia, to be convinced once again that even in the ideal conditions of an American clinic, so carelessly described by the author and so strikingly different from our reality, even there, the terrible transition is not at all easier, not at all painless. to the last stage.
I would not like that in our country, where cancer is already accustomed to being considered a sentence, this difficult confession was made by those who still have hope, whose diagnosis allows them to fight and win. I am afraid that the similarity of symptoms for curable and incurable cases may cause someone to give up, lose faith, fear. And yet, on some pages, I was overwhelmed by the desire to share what I read with each patient. I wanted to say: people, well, look, here is the testimony of your fellow in misfortune, and after this book the world of the healthy, perhaps, will not be so callous and inconsistent in its reaction to your misfortune?.. Another step has been taken towards understanding, and this the book can become your messenger even in our society deaf to compassion. You could not tell it so vividly - but it was done by a person whose mastery of the word was considered the standard and example for professionals of the highest rank.
His voice didn’t stop. He left behind that imperishable monument, that living appeal to descendants, who ensure special immortality even for writers whose place is only in Elysium, and not in Paradise … Although can we judge the ways of the Lord and do we know His opinion about sins and merits? Christopher Hitchens did more than he seemed able to do, more than the mere duty of a man and a writer demanded. He helped a lot of people, and it was this goal, it seems to me, that was his driving motive. He was able to take care of those who are walled up behind the wall of fear and misunderstanding, and, perhaps, with his book he broke a small bright gate in this wall.
Therefore, when you open the black cover of this small book and see its white pages with a clear print, it seems that you have opened the door to where the eternal light shines in the darkness …
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