IN THE LIGHT OF TRAGEDIAS, DEATH Bedros Dağlıyan
Türkçe
DEATH IN THE LIGHT OF TRAGEDIAS Bedros Daghlian
I can't stop thinking about death. Death! How it makes me shudder... I never used to think about death in my childhood, it would never even come to my mind... Now it is just a bitter truth... Maybe it is an absolute power or even God himself... Death is at the door! Who knows why we fear death? That's why we wait for an ark from Noah that can take us all in... That ark is getting bigger and bigger; what if we don't fit in...
The mountains of fear are getting bigger and bigger... We are afraid of people with sticks on the streets. Not a day goes by without death catching a person at the door... I wonder if fear also takes revenge on those who frighten... Can you tell me who gets their share of that fear? Maybe now is the time to pray...
We're all waiting for death. There is not a single day that we do not receive news of death. There is not a day that goes by that we don't hear the news that a friend has died; perhaps we are ashamed to be alive... How many cancerous people we hear about, one after the other... This is a more painful situation, as if it tests us... Death, that abominable possibility, seeps into the times and moments we live. Is it worse not to die, but to be humiliated, to be incapacitated, to abandon humanity in the face of power... Is this a duel between the strong and the weak? People are dying faster than animals now... This is a state of satisfaction, masturbation, even pleasure in killing... When I ask people who kill why, do they say this? It's about achieving the first one; after that, it doesn't matter how many people there are... Millions are not so far away anymore...
The instinct to kill, which started with Cain killing his brother Abel and continues to this day, has brought us to this day... Animals also get their share of this pleasure of killing. They look at the human being who killed them and expect help. And that creature called man kills with an infinite desire as if he is getting sexual pleasure, and then filming it and sharing it, isn't it? The next thing you know, people are blown up by a sudden explosion. The mothers, fathers and children left behind are still waiting for mercy from the murderers...
I'm getting sadder and sadder, we're getting sadder. I choose to think like Jesus. More tolerance... I want more to be able to enjoy life, to share in the happiness of joyful people, to be able to reach the peak of aesthetic art, to enter the most wine-like states of ecstasy in awe while reading a poem to someone, of course...
In Shakespeare's immortal play *Macbeth*, as soon as Macbeth kills King Duncan, he appears on stage with a bloody dagger in his hand. Tommaso Salvini, the great and unforgettable performer of his works, wrote in a newspaper: *This scene describes an unreal event. It is unnatural, because the first act of a murderer is to conceal his crime. This scene was actually written with this very idea in mind. In a way, it wants us to feel as if it is not real even though it seems real... Moreover, he makes him see visions, which shows his fear of losing the throne after the murder of the king rather than remorse.
We have taken death so much for granted that death has become alien to us.
However, nowadays, murders are not hidden at all, on the contrary, they are carried out as if they were very glamourous, an event to be proud of or even a show. Good people talk about their good deeds, and murderers talk about the massacre they have committed with passion.
This Sunday, we are going to listen to the poet and writer İlyas Orak, who shares with us his views and thoughts on tragedies and art, which are precisely about these... While he combines various theatrical examples of cinema and theatre with historical realities and conveys them to us, we suddenly find ourselves writhing in pain in an environment where massacres and murders are rampant.
Today's murders are committed with more brutal methods than Shakespeare's murderers Hamlet and Othello, yet... Writers used to come across the characters they created only after they created them. He shudders when he comes across them, moreover... The most important time for a writer is when he defends himself against a different opinion, whereas... If he surrendered and no longer writes, or even doesn't want to write, he has given up being a writer, being an intellectual, and therefore spreading light.
I know that every event that seems frightening to us is nothing but a disgusting and plain truth. We are among those who know how the truth hurts the most... While every event that happens around us is banished to images and verses instead of being a reality that causes us pain, our eyelashes scratch our pupils with fatigue every time we read. Prohibitions hurt our skin so much that we find ourselves melting like the burning candles of kerosene-scented grocery stores. We don't or can't throw light around... We are covered in black soot.
Loneliness makes us face our fears. We're always waiting for the scene where we'll be sacrificed to murder. Our thoughts become so caustic that we're afraid of the words we write.
You know what? It's high time to reread tragedies, epics, even elegies... Nightmares force me to do so; what about you?
