The sense of an ending
Christopher Hawtree
LAST WORDS by Karl Guthke
Princeton University Press, £16.99, pp.224
If one were to give full vent to prejudice, it would be to suggest that there could be no less likely a notion than a work of humour, in German, on the subject of death — one, moreover, by somebody affil- iated to the Herzog-August-Bibliothek in Wolfbiittel. Professor Guthke has even gone further than that — and himself translated the work into an English more fluent than that of many brought up in the tongue.
Almost a quarter of his 250 pages com- prises references, and none the worse for that. More than anybody before, he has ranged across Western history to produce something which is no mere compilation along the wild and wacky lines purveyed by the likes of Nigel Rees. He takes the con- siderably more interesting path of setting these last products of collapsing lungs with- in a culture which has yet to shake off a fear of death. Across Europe and both sides of the Atlantic he has sought out more collections of last words than one ever imagined could exist, a process aug- mented by much stray reading (he appears to favour Newsweek over Der Spiegel).
To call this a magpie approach would be wrong, for he neatly quotes Thomas Mann on the serendipity that is scholarship:
there is something almost comical about the ability and willingness to find references to one's own passionate preoccupation in what- ever one reads, and the truth is that pertinent things run into one from all directions, they are played into one's hands virtually in the manner of a procurer.
A single subject — dogs, for example — can make for a world history, and to indi- cate the scope of Professor Guthke's study one need point no further than his discovery that 1913 saw publication of the excellently-titled Pebbles from the Brink - a work exceeded only by 1982 and J.R.Columbo's Colombo's Last Words: The Dying Words of Eminent Canadians (such is the loyalty to the Commonwealth therein that both Queen Victoria and George VI make a showing, the latter with the plausi- ble but dull 'Oh' - the presence of Franken- steins's monster is more puzzling). Such is Professor Guthke's tracing of the path from collections of uplifting expirations (a spirit guyed in many a Shakespeare death- scene) to the uncertainties and banter of burgeoning agnosticism, and such is his way of elaborating curious details that one indeed believes — as rumour has it — that this is yet another alias for the author of Flaubert's Parrot.
We are now willing to accept that neither 'How is the Empire?' nor 'Bugger Bognor' (admirable sentiments both) fell from the dying lips of George V but that it was a 'God damn you' which regaled the doctor as he injected the morphine which would turn His Majesty into a stiff in time for the morning newspapers' announcement. Who but Julian Barnes, However, would trouble to seek out a note by Goethe's valet, Friedrich Krause, which overturns the prevalent belief that the great man's last wish was for 'more light!'? Available since 1928, but conveniently overlooked, is evi- dence that the sage had other preoccupa- tions. The shutter must surely have remained shut for Krause noted that 'at the last he asked for the pot de chambre, and he took it himself and held it firmly to his body until he died.'
Whichever, it perhaps does not matter, for 'Professor Guthke' goes beyond the facts with all the instincts of a novelist. Just as 'The Raft of the Medusa' was shown to contain more than art historians have ever realised, so Last Words is aware of 'the sorry fact of life that the sublime and the ludicrous are usually entangled with each other' and that 'the institution of last does not stand or fall with their authenticity', for it is all a matter of myth and
is myth authentic or unauthentic? Myths are not transcriptions of historical, factual truth. but truths in their own right, truths we live by, for better or for worse, and sometimes very much for the worse.
Such a myth is that a man drowned or hanged sees his life flash by in an instant, a
bit of folk wisdom [which] led German writer Theodor Daubler to realise in a flash of inspiration that the life review of a man being hanged 'can only be Expressionism!"' Surely there are more comfortable ways to excel in Expressionist style.
Less that Teutone, the spirit of 'Profes- sor Guthke' is more akin to that of F. L. Lucas and Francis Birrell whose 1930 col- lection, The Art of Dying was published by the Hogarth Press, dedicated to Virginia Woolf (was this tactful?) and now worth £80. Last Words costs less than that, and the only question which it leaves unan- swered is the way in which — sad day! — the author will bid farewell to this vale of tears. One can be sure that he will, at the very least, have all the nerve of the prison- er who, in front of the firing-squad, was asked whether he had a last wish: 'yes — a bullet-proof vest'. Or, even better, the great collector, Henry Huntington, who lay on a bed, arms outstretched, Rosenbach and Duveen on either side. 'Do you know what I feel like?' he asked. 'What, Mr. Huntington?' 'Christ between the two thieves.'
One can only marvel at the breadth of knowledge displayed by 'Professor Guthke'. His curiosity is boundless (it is a scandal that no English publisher has issued Moacyr Scliar's Max and the Cats). For one giddy moment, one might almost credit as genuine the list of other works 'by the same author', among them 1971's Die Mythologie der entgOtterten Welt: Ein liter- an'sches Thema von der Aufkliirung bis zur Gegen wart.
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