LASTING, LEAVING, LEFT: ARS MORIENDI Ginette Paris

James Hillman Memorial

Pacifica Graduate Institute March 2-4, 2012

LASTING, LEAVING, LEFT: ARS MORIENDI

Ginette Paris

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"Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right philosophy, are directly, and of their own accord, preparing themselves for dying and death. If this is true, and they have actually been looking forward to death all their lives, it would of course be absurd to be troubled when the thing comes, for which they have so long been preparing and looking forward."

These words were supposedly spoken by Socrates, who held that philosophy is "the practice of dying."[1] At the hour of his death, Socrates was still teaching, explaining the soul's journey to his student Crito, as the hemlock was killing him.

I know of only one other person who was capable, like Socrates, of discussing ideas until the poison of cancer took his last breath.

James Hillman died on October 27. A month or so before, on September 21, he sent the following email to concerned family and friends:

“We are following a middle road, neither upbeat nor downbeat. And I am more and more convinced that upbeat tends to constellate its counter, so before wishing for recovery in the old sense, one should think twice. It's what's going on now and not what the imagination conjures regarding a so-called future. I am dying, yet, in fact, I could not be more engaged in living. One thing I'm learning is how impossible it is to lay out a border between so-called "living" and "dying".

To the very end, James was engaged in the task of living, relating to the people in his life, sending emails, making phone calls, concluding the many writing projects that had been so important to him. True to his character, he never lost his sharp sense of humor, nor his edge in fighting against a medical establishment, stubbornly refusing the kind of medication that would have deprived him of his ability to think, his ability to relate, his ability to remain engaged in living.

All his life he fought against the technicalities of a psychology that ignores the tragic emotions of pity, bereavement, despair… When his time came to die, he faced those emotions bluntly, directly. All his life he pointed at the problem of our culture's emphasis on youth, control, success, and the obsession of getting above it all, an obsession that make us think of dying as only a medical failure. Contrary to this fantasy of success, he taught us how the soul sends roots down, just as much as it grows branches and expands upward. He called that “growing down”[2] and gave a most moving demonstration of this “growing down” in the way he died.

To use DH Lawrence’s expression[3]James built a magnificent "ship of death". Not everyone wants to die the way he did, working on new ideas, revising manuscripts, up to the very last moment. The art of dying, “Ars Moriendi”, implies that we each build a different ship, finding our own style of dying. As Hillman wrote: “Rise and fall. It is one of the archetypal patterns of life, and one of its most ancient, cosmic lessons. But how one falls, the style of coming down, remains the interesting part”. [4]

To die “in character” takes some force of character, and James undoubtedly had plenty of that.

A few days before he died, his wife Margo McLean sent an email, inviting a few friends and family to get ready for the trip to his home in Thompson Connecticut, because James had moved into his final days, and his death could come at any time. She was suggesting that those of us who would have to travel a long way to come to his funeral needed to get ready. At that time, I was enjoying a sabbatical from Pacifica, and residing in the Laurentian mountains, north of Montreal. Reading Margo’s email that evening, I decided to leave immediately, in the hope of arriving in time for the last farewell. But I then realized that I had left my winter coat in the overhead bin of the airplane, the week before, which meant that all I had to drive 400 miles in a menacing snowstorm was an old lumberjack jacket. Knowing James esthetic sensibility, a man who believed that aesthetics can be as important as ethics, I resolved to postpone my departure until the next morning, to buy a decent black coat. I don't know how to qualify this primitive emotion; is it a cultural leftover from times past, when people dressed in their finest in the presence of death? Is it fear? Is it cowardice in having to say my last goodbye? Is it pure girlish narcissism? I would have needed James to help me sort this out…

I still don’t know how to interpret this emotion; all I know is that it cost me the chance to say farewell while he was still alive. James died while I was shopping! From the store, I left for Thompson. The snowstorm intensified, and instead of the usual 6 hours drive, it took me 14 hours and two days, because some roads, and airports, were closed. When I arrived in Thompson, his body had just left for the morgue and I had missed the vigil.

The first person I saw as I entered the house was Mermer Blakeslee, the wellknown author of fiction and of poetry, a close friend of James and Margo, and a woman I have known and appreciated for a long time. She had spent the last two weeks as one of the team of friends and family who cared for James at home, as he wanted.

To conclude, I will use her words, a poem that she read to James a few days before his death, words that express all that I would have liked to say, had I had the courage to appear in a lumberjack coat.

Mermer, like most of those who knew James, had experienced the two men residing in one body: one is called James, a long time friend that I admire for the way he fought the medical establishment to the very end, giving all those around him, one last lesson in “the art of dying”.

The other personality living in the same body is Hillman, who never, in the face of James’s personal tragedy, betrayed the Hillmanian psychology, his life-work.

Hillman’s legacy is what will continue to live here at Pacifica, getting stronger with each generation of students exposed to these strong ideas, ideas that help us live, and will help us die.

Now, here is Mermer Blakeslee ’s poem, the title of which is:

Letter to James, and Hillman too

James, I love you.

This is no way to start a poem.

Hillman would hate it.

First the divisive, ever-conquering I,

capitalized by default;

its assumed prerogative causing,

in the very structure of the phrase,

the unbearably stark separation from you,

leaving love to build

its thin, translucent bridge.

James, you said we didn’t have to miss you.

I am here, you said, your voice light and deep.

Mermer Blakeslee

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[1][1] Plato, Phaedo, 64A, in The Last Days of Socrates, trans. Hugh Tredennick, London, Penguin, 1980

[2] The Soul's Code. Random house, New York 1996. Chapter 2, "Growing Down".

[3] "So build your ship of death, and let the soul drift to dark oblivion". The Complete Poems of D.H. Lawrence. Wordsworth Editions, first published London, 1994.

[4] The Soul’s Code. Random house, New York 1996. Chapter 2.