The sin of despair

I suppose I should start with what it is not.

The Catholic Encyclopedia entry on despair is exuberantly Pelagian:

Despair ... is the voluntary and complete abandonment of all hope of saving one's soul and of having the means required for that end.

Whoever wrote that was less interested in defining "despair" than he was in scoring points against Luther, Calvin and Arminius. "Unless a seed dies and falls to the ground," Jesus said. No, no, this writer counters, the seed has the means required to save itself.

Reading that strange definition -- "the voluntary and complete abandonment of all hope of saving one's soul" -- I couldn't help but be reminded of this:

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

"All right, then, I'll go to Hell" -- and tore it up.

It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. ... And for a starter I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.

This is, of course, the moment at which Huckleberry Finn's soul is saved. He immediately changes direction and sets out to act -- the opposite of despair.

The sin of despair also has nothing to do with most suicide. Suicide is a tricky topic for Christianity, whose founder is described in the Gospels as marching inexorably toward his own execution, and who said things like, "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." And then did just that. The medieval teaching that suicide is the unforgivable sin of despair has a hard time reconciling itself with the example of Christ or, for that matter, with the medieval obsession with venerating martyrs.

I'm not really sure where that theological appropriation of the taboo against suicide came from. I imagine some medieval bishop confronted with a jumper on the ledge of his cathedral (the only tall structure in town). Grasping at straws, he stumbles across an idea: "You can't jump because ... because it would be a sin ... an unforgivable sin! Yeah, that's it."

Or maybe it arose out of medieval Christianity's weird, lawyerly obsession with the necessity of timing one's death with a fleeting "state of grace." See for example Act III of Hamlet, where the prince chooses not to kill Claudius after his uncle has been praying, believing that would, according to this theory, send him to Heaven. Setting up the rules like that is an invitation to others to try to game the system -- to receive absolution and the sacrament and then make sure you died before lapsing back into sin. The idea of suicide as an unforgivable sin might thus be a kind of infield fly rule.

Most suicides, of course, are either distraught or depressed, and neither of those conditions seems to involve sin.

By depressed, of course, I don't mean blue, or down in the dumps. I mean suffering from depression -- a vicious disease that, like diabetes, patiently waits for its opportunity to prove fatal. I have never experienced this myself, but I have watched someone I loved suffering from it, and the idea that this suffering was a sin or the consequence of a sinful choice is to me deeply offensive. (If you are fortunate enough to be wholly unacquainted with depression, I would recommend as a starting point William Styron's finely observed Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness.)

Nor does it make sense to regard the condition of being distraught as a matter of conscious choice or a sin. That's like an ER doctor describing a trauma victim's body as choosing to go into shock. Police officers are generally guilty of severe crimes against the English language, but they employ the word "distraught" with a careful and hard-earned regard for what it means, for its practical and legal implications. The idea that God is less just and less merciful than our criminal justice system cannot be right.

So I agree with Joyce Carol Oates when she writes in her essay, "Despair; The One Unforgivable Sin," that it is "mysterious cruelty" to condemn suicide as the sin of despair.

I admire Oates, but the rest of her essay is pure bunk. Oates asks:

Isn't "despair" a malady with which we label people who seem to have decided that life doesn't interest them, just as "narcissism" is the charge we make against people who aren't nearly so interested in us as we'd hoped they would be?

No. I would use the term "narcissism" to describe things like an indulgent essay savoring the piquant, "intense inwardness" of the suffering artist. Oates treats despair like a Goth T-shirt from Hot Topic -- a kind of condescending fashion statement made with little awareness of the way this choice was shaped by the cynical, prefab marketing of despair as a brand.

Oates points to Emily Dickinson as a prime example of the "poetics of despair" with its "keenly heightened inwardness." It's true enough that Dickinson eloquently describes despair -- sometimes passionately, sometimes chillingly dispassionately. But the substance of her poetry has to be reconciled with the sheer, incontrovertible fact of her poems.

In other words: Emily Dickinson did not despair; she wrote. And she kept writing even when no one seemed particularly interested in publishing her poems. You can't despair and write 1,775 poems. You can't despair and write one poem. The act of writing -- because it is an act, and a choice to act rather than to give up and do nothing -- is a rejection of despair.

Had Dickinson withdrawn into the indulgent inwardness of despair, as Oates suggests, then we wouldn't be talking about her now. She would never have written anything. That, of course, would have been a sin.

And that is what I mean when I talk about the sin of despair: the decision to do nothing, to give up and leave the world as it is. The prime example of the "poetics of despair" is not Emily Dickinson -- she never gave up. It is, rather, J. Alfred Prufrock, the stunted would-be poet who exchanged his pen for a coffee spoon, despairing even of eating a peach.

Despair comes in many forms. One example I've written about many times is the misquoting and misappropriation of Jesus' paraphrasing of Deuteronomy 15:11a -- "The poor will always be with you" -- as a rationalization for giving up and doing nothing to aid the poor, whether individually or collectively, personally or politically.

Despair looks for excuses not to act and always finds them. Hope, it's opposite, always chooses to act. It's in for good and whole hog. Even if the odds seem insurmountable and the resources inadequate. If all it has is five loaves and two small fish, or five smooth stones, or a wheelbarrow and a holocaust cloak, it will use whatever it's got.

To hope is to act, and to act is to hope. As someone once wrote, hope "never stops at all." Stopping would be a sin, the sin of despair.

Comments

[Bugmaster]

Everything I needed to know about despair, I've learned at despair.com.

"Failure: When your best just isn't good enough".

[pharoute]

Despair is the sin of imcomplete knowledge masquerading as omniscience. "I know how it's going to play out and it's all for naught."

[J]

Thanks, Fred.

[Dahne]

I can't dislike Despair that much. She's not pretty, but she's nice to Delirium, and--

Wait, what were we talking about?

You know, that's an interesting point, about Prufrock being an aspiring poet. I never picked that up, as much as I love that poem.

Also, nearly all of Emily Dickenson's poems can be sung to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas."

[Dahne]

From the Oates essay:

The bleakness of his vision is qualified by a brash, unsettling humor that flies in the face of expectation. Is it tragic that Gregor Samsa is metamorphosed into a giant cockroach, suffers, dies and is swept out with the trash?

What? Of course it is.

[pepperjackcandy]

It's always been my impression that the idea of suicide as a sin started because Paul wrote so poetically of longing for death that early Christians would sort of compete to be the first ones to "depart and be with Christ."

So whoever was in charge at that time (Patriarch, or Pope, or Disciple, or whatever) declared suicide a sin, to stop the recent converts from dying off.

[keith s]

bravo

thanks

[Kitty]

Dorothy L. Sayers described Sloth -- which is what she called Despair - as "the great, sprawling sin." I've always liked that because it emphasizes that despair is quite selfish. It's the conviction that there's no need to do anything because nothing matters anyway. It's the opposite of courage.

Also, thanks for the comforting words on suicide. My uncle killed himself in 2002, after almost a year of being in and out of mental institutions, including one month where he received shock treatments. Shooting himself was simply the final symptom of a long disease, like heart failure or pneumonia in a cancer patient. I can't imagine what it would have been like for my aunt and cousins were they Catholic, and denied a Christian burial service because of the way Uncle Wilbur died.

[Kitty]

Oh, and I wonder if the prohibition on suicide has to do with the need for the early Church to distinguish itself from the Stoics? Suicide was almost a requirement for them, if I recall my college Classical Civ 102.

[hapax]

@Kitty "I've always liked that because it emphasizes that despair is quite selfish"

Yes. Like most sins, it comes down at the end to assuming "it's all about ME."

"I can't imagine what it would have been like for my aunt and cousins were they Catholic, and denied a Christian burial service because of the way Uncle Wilbur died."

I assure that the (modern) Roman Catholic church isn't that heartless. My sister in law was a suicide, and yet received a Burial Mass since she "was not in full mental and moral control" when she shot herself. As the priest wryly observed, it's pretty hard to imagine a suicide case that he would be willing to aver beyond doubt WAS "in full mental and moral control."

Suicide from despair was considered an unforgivable sin because, the theologians felt, it was a sign that the suicide presumed him/herself unforgivable -- in one act, both presumptively appropriating God's role as ultimate Judge, and simultaneously denying God's ability to show mercy -- and allowed no opportunity for subsequent repentence. (Failed suicides could, of course, repent and be reconciled.)

[Pope Easier Rhino I]

It just occurred to me that Dante reserves his greatest punishment for three suicides. Considering who they were, I don't know that suicide was the prime reason, but it's interesting nonetheless.

On a connected topic (don't ask me to explain how the connection works, because I'm not sure myself) I had no idea that the Stoics were pro-suicide. I'd always thought they were pro-bearing-with-it. But I never took Classical Civ 102, so I can't claim any hint of expertise.

And my favorite Emily Dickinson poem to sing loudly (to the tune mentioned previously) in crowded areas is "Because I Could Not Stop For Death." Try it sometime; it gets a wonderful reaction, in my experience.

[Andy]

The sin of despair also has nothing to do with most suicide.

Wow...I think this is the first time I've profoundly, deeply disagreed with you. But I respect you and your though processes and your keen analytical ability, so I will reflect on this further. I am, however, reminded of Tolkien's definition of despair, spoken through Gandalf: [D]espair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not. I agree with this assessment: "To despair-i.e., to utterly abandon all hope or even all possibility of hope-is a prideful and selfish act, because in doing so one assumes that's one's knowledge of reality is clear and complete." And I think -- speaking from some personal experience with depression and suicide attempts, that that is an accurate diagnosis.

[Lanth]

During the medieval and Renaissance periods, suicide was viewed by many as not so much an act of despair but as an act of hubris. That is, or so quite a lot of the thinking went, the act of committing suicide was an act in which you disregarded whatever divine mandate had been ordained by God for your life, its span, and its legacy, and you took the ending of your life into your own hands. To commit suicide was to deny whatever role, purpose, and (I guess) schedule God had planned for your life.

Of course, suicide was still, as you suggest, an awkward concept for Christianity to grapple with. Certain kinds of suicide were exalted while others were not. Take a look at Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra--we're meant to appreciate Cleopatra's suicide because it's an act of defiance by one sovereign against another (Octavius) that has a certain classical and theatrical panache that even impresses Octavius. Meanwhile, Antony's attempt at suicide is clumsy, embarrassing, and just plain *awkward*.

During the Renaissance, the Classically inspired suicide was more likely to be viewed sympathetically as more of a statement, political or otherwise. Other forms of suicide remained a sore point, often viewed as an act of hubris--and I'm sure as a form of despair, as well.

[movablenu]

Suicide was the topic of one of my most frustrating conversations with another Christian. A woman at work was arguing that you can't be saved if you commit suicide. When we pointed out that God's grace should be able to cover mistakes like that, she retreated to saying that you shouldn't try to justify suicide as an 'alright' thing (as though people are really more likely to kill themselves if they think God will forgive them!). When we agreed that suicide was not desirable, she jumped back to the argument that it would almost certainly then be an indication that you weren't saved. Rinse and repeat until our manager told us to get back to work.

[Rich Hailey]

Hmmm. After denying the Catholic definition of despair as a loss of hope, you end by equating despair with lack of action through a loss of hope. Sounds like a circular argument to me.

Yet there is a distinct difference between depression and despair, and a careful reading of the Catholic definition shows that despair is a very limited concept, linked as it is to the loss of hope, not in general, but for your own salvation. Quite obviously, this demonstrates that most depression related suicides do not fall under this definition. So why is suicide a sin?

The origin of the Catholic doctrine of suicide as a mortal sin has two roots. The first is the commandment, Thou shalt not kill. The second is Jesus's pronouncement at the Last Supper that it would have been better for Judas had he never been born. The doctrine goes like this: Judas betrayed Jesus to the Pharisees, but, according to Matthew, suffered from remorse afterwards. He didn't believe that he could be forgiven for his transgression, and so despaired and killed himself. From this doctrine, the early church,knowing absolutely nothing about clinical depression or neurochemistry, defined all suicide as emblematic of despair, and thus, a mortal sin.

So no, it wasn't an argument of expediency, as you so whimsically imagine,but a reasoned extension of Scripture.

So, if suicide is no longer linked to despair, why is it still considered a sin? Well, there's still that pesky 6th Commandment to deal with. 'You shall not commit murder' is pretty straightforward, and if the wrongful taking of life is condemned, then that would also include the taking of your own life.

Incidentally, the passage from Huck Finn that you quote was designed by Twain specifically as an attack on the concept of despair as a mortal sin. But notice that in order to construct this 'decision for damnation,' he was forced to put Finn in a position where his basic ignorance caused him to believe that doing the right thing was actually wrong. In reality, few if any of the folks fighting against slavery felt they were going to be damned for doing so.

This, by the way, is where the act of intellect comes in. Of course, you left that part out of your exploration of the Catholic definition of despair. Catholicism defines intellect as: "...signif[ying] the higher, spiritual, cognitive power of the soul. It is in this view awakened to action by sense, but transcends the latter in range. Amongst its functions are attention, conception, judgment, reasoning, reflection, and self-consciousness. All these modes of activity exhibit a distinctly suprasensuous element, and reveal a cognitive faculty of a higher order than is required for mere sense-cognitions."

In short, our ability to reason, and our ability to conceive of things beyond what we can touch, taste, smell, hear, or see. Things like loyalty, compassion, honor, and righteousness. In the passage of Huck Finn that you cite, this process is exactly what Finn is going through, and his decision to free Jim in no way resembles the definition of despair, despite Twain's considerable efforts to make us think so. Finn believes he is acting against God, but in truth, through the intervention of his God given intellect, he is acting in accordance with God. That doesn't sound much like the Catholic version of despair,as much as Twain would like us to think it does.

[lalouve]

Burton, in The Anatomy of Melancholy, speaks, IIRC, of the moment of salvation for the suicide: even in the time between stepping of the chair and the rope stretching, there is time for God's mercy.

[MikeJ]

And since nobody else had said it, I will: Hope is not "the thing with feathers." The thing with feathers has turned to be my nephew. I must take him to a specialist in Zurich.

[patter]

If all it has is five loaves and two small fish, or five smooth stones, or a wheelbarrow and a holocaust cloak, it will use whatever it's got.

Delicious! Thanks, Fred.

So, despair is not the voluntary condemnation of the soul; it is not suicide; it is not the condition of being distraught or depressed; therefore it is not a mortal sin. Here, you're saying that none of these are voluntary conditions. Yet for you, despair IS voluntary; it is voluntary inaction. Which is a sin. I guess I'm confused; are you arguing for or against despair as a mortal sin? Or are you arguing for or against despair as voluntary? It would appear that you're saying despair is not a mortal sin; it is the voluntary sin of inaction. So, is choice at the heart of your argument?

[twig]

The idea of suicide as an unforgivable sin might thus be a kind of infield fly rule.

Win. I love this blog.

It just occurred to me that Dante reserves his greatest punishment for three suicides. Considering who they were, I don't know that suicide was the prime reason, but it's interesting nonetheless.

The lowest circle of hell was reserved for those who betrayed their friends. Suicides had a grove.

[Chris]

It just occurred to me that Dante reserves his greatest punishment for three suicides. Considering who they were, I don't know that suicide was the prime reason, but it's interesting nonetheless.

The lowest circle of hell was reserved for those who betrayed their friends. Suicides had a grove.

The three suicides being refered to by Pope Easier Rhino are Brutus, Cassius, and Judas. Being a traitor was the prime reason they are where Dante puts them, but they do all happen to be suicides.

[Rachel]

Also, nearly all of Emily Dickenson's poems can be sung to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas."

And "Gilligan's Island."

*Waits for someone to shoot her*

[Fred]

And also "Amazing Grace" and "House of the Rising Sun."

(Corollary: The Gilligan's Island theme can be sung to House of the Rising Sun. I'm not saying it should be, but it can.)

[hapax]

Also the Coke theme song "I'd like to teach the world to sing," and "Stairway to Heaven."

It's a very common meter.

For real fun, you can interweave the old Christmas carols "Good King Wenceslas" and "Gently Mary laid her child" line by line:

Gently Mary laid her child
On the Feast of Steven
There he lay both meek and mild,
Deep and crisp and even...

And so forth.

[Jack Grey]

I was going to offer a link to Spider Robinson's "Pandora's Last Gift", also an excellent essay on this topic. Unfortunately, I can no longer find it online. If anyone has a working link for it, please post... otherwise, it can be found in the short story collection _User Friendly_.

[damnedyankee]

Meter? I don't even know 'er!

(NOW there will be shooting.)

[Jack Grey]

Meter? You meter, you brought 'er!

::BLAM::

[rm]

In other words: Emily Dickinson did not despair; she wrote. And she kept writing even when no one seemed particularly interested in publishing her poems.

I like this post, but I must correct the record on Emily. From what we know of her, it's not like despair was much of a temptation for her. Her poems are full of light, hope, humor, and happiness -- no, really, just try reading them that way. She had an intense, mystical hope for the afterlife, so all the stuff about death is not unhappy.

And don't even get Emily started on publication. Any poem she wanted someone to read, she put in a letter to that individual. Publication was something like prostitution for her.

[rm]

Okay, I have to correct my correction, since she did look into publishing anonymously. But still.

[Irene]

I'm not Catholic anymore, but I was raised by extremely devout Catholics. I was taught the following about sin and suicide.

If you die in a state of mortal sin you go to hell.
Suicide is a mortal sin.
There are three conditions for something to be a mortal sin
1)Grave matter
2)Serious reflection
3)Full consent of the will

in other words, in order for a sin to be mortal it has to be a serious matter, you have to KNOW that it is a serious matter, and you have to FREELY choose to do so anyway. It would seem to me that the VAST majority of suicides are people who suffer from mental illness therefore they would NOT meet the third condition and any sin would not be enough to send them instantly to hell do not pass go, do not collect $200.

The suicides that Catholics have traditionally referred to as those which would send you to hell? Oh you know, all those people in perfect mental health that kill themselves on a whim. Cause you know, that happens all the time.

Interestingly enough, I've also heard that it's a sin to pretend to know the right answer about where somebody's gone (heaven/hell/purgatory), as this is information that only God knows.

[cjmr]

Interestingly enough, I've also heard that it's a sin to pretend to know the right answer about where somebody's gone (heaven/hell/purgatory), as this is information that only God knows.

That's the sin of presumption. When applied to oneself at any rate.

[Bugmaster]

Personally, I think that the prohibition against suicide makes practical sense. If your religion teaches that dying is the best thing that could happen to you (eternal bliss !), then your most reasonable course of action would be to kill yourself as soon as possible. Religions tend to disappear when they run out of followers, though, hence the prohibition.

[Salamanda]

"All these modes of activity exhibit a distinctly suprasensuous element..."

That's hot.

[Jeff Weskamp]

"Despair comes in many forms. One example I've written about many times is the misquoting and misappropriation of Jesus' paraphrasing of Deuteronomy 15:11a -- "The poor will always be with you" -- as a rationalization for giving up and doing nothing to aid the poor, whether individually or collectively, personally or politically."

I've heard some Christians use that verse to imply that the poor should either sink or swim. I told them, "Sick people will always be with us, too, but we should still try to treat them medically. There will probably always be murderers, rapists, child molesters, robbers, and thieves, but society must still keep fighting against them."

[Blackadder]

All elaborate rationalizations by Catholics aside, I'm sure the one and only reason that the Church made suicide a sin was to prevent medieval peasants from taking an easy escape route from their parasitic slave masters in the Church and nobility.

[julia]

Despair is not cowardice. It's facing an enemy. Fighting despair is heroic. Losing is a tragedy. Tragedies happen to brave people too.

That said, Joyce Carol Oates really does annoy the crap out of me. I stopped reading her years ago over precisely the gloating way she piles on the agony until her characters break. By itself that's probably not enough to tell you anything about the writer herself, but paired with her deep love of watching large men make each other bleed, I'm calling Issues, and I'd say she's got a damn nerve treating other people's despair as just another blood spectator sport to assess over the top of her glasses.

[hapax]

@Blackadder;
(snicker) that's pretty funny.
Wait -- that WAS a parody of Christopher Hitchens, wasn't it?

[patter]

No LB Friday post.

I despair.

[Geds]

No LB Friday post.

I despair.

Then your only recourse to avoid damnation is to write one yourself...

[Ian]

The Donatist Circumcellions probably had a lot to do with the traditional prohibition on suicide. They venerated suicides who had the courage to take the shortcut to heaven. Jumping off cliffs was popular, though they would sometimes give weapons to strangers and beg for death. They often announced their intention to seek martyrdom well in advance so that they could be treated like kings for a while. Is Augustine's condemning the Donatists the start of the traditional theological prohibition on suicide, or is there something older?

[hapax]

@Ian -- absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, but I've been racking my brains and I can't think of anything older -- except perhaps Paul's words to the Philippian jailer. The suicides in the Scriptures tend to be portrayed disfavorably, but that's not exactly a prohibition.

[magistra]

There is a whole category of would-be suicides who do seem to be motivated partly by a desire to hurt other people - those who aim to make someone else sorry when they're gone. Even worse, there's the parent who kills their children along with themselves, so the other parent can't have them. Such suicides do seem to me sinful acts. In contrast when you have depression (as I have had), the immensity of your own suffering seems so great that it blocks out all sense of the anguish others might feel at your death. All you want is for your own pain to stop. Suicide in that situation has nothing to do anymore with your own sense of self-importance, because you feel so worthless you have no significance to yourself. Whereas Stoic ideas of suicide are all about your own self-importance - you control yourself, no-one else does.

[Rowena]

I've been depressed. Deeply. Several times.
For me the feeling of despair was certainly part of the whole package. Maybe it even started with it. Looking at the world, being so tired and helpless and feeling incapable. Feeling so aware of how incapable you are, how hard everything is becoming, more and more until the most basic things like getting up and basic hygiene. All days filled with the desperate feeling of not being able.
Maybe you perceive the possibility of this start of despair but not the follow-up of depression? Just the thought "oh I can't, it is bloody useless, let just sit down here." I for myself cannot perceive this without depression. But other people may be differently constructed.

[hapax]

@Rowena: "Maybe you perceive the possibility of this start of despair but not the follow-up of depression? "

Yes, in a way, I was puzzled by Fred's post, because when *I* was at my most depressed, I would have very much liked to have been dead, but I couldn't imagine suicide; it was simply *too much trouble.* I mean, brushing my teeth seemed like a task of inconceivable difficulty; finding a gun or a noose was simply out of the question.

In this context, I guess that actually committing suicide could be construed as a sort of hope -- I mean, it would be an ACT, I would be doing something with the expectation that it would have some result.

I'm sure that's not what Fred meant to convey, but honestly, sometimes no action is better than any action.

[Jesurgislac]

When I've been depressed enough to think of killing myself, it's always occurred to me as an end to action - just the decision not to be, any more. I've never got as far as practical contemplation of ways and means (probably: sharp knife, hot bath, cut wrists, I would think) because even at my most depressed, I've been aware of the number of people I care about whom that action would hurt. I wouldn't be around to know that they were hurt - but they would be hurting just the same, and I wouldn't want to do that to them.

There are two sets of circumstances in which I would consider it perfectly justifiable to kill myself, though: one, if some global catastrophe (nuclear war was what I always thought of) made it overwhelmingly probable that I - and everyone I knew - would die slowly and painfully in the near future. The other is an illness (cancer was what I always thought of) that would mean I would certainly die, slowly and painfully, in the near future. Either way, I think anyone's entitled, faced with a slow and painful death, to decide they'd rather go fast and painlessly. And I suppose you could call that despair.

[Jesurgislac]

Bugger. THREE TIMES. Typepad kept telling me it hadn't been able to post. Lying bloggy software.

[ohiolibrarian]

Despair is the sin of imcomplete knowledge masquerading as omniscience. "I know how it's going to play out and it's all for naught."

I think this might be part of the reason that atheists are not as despairing as many religious people believe they ought to be. Most atheists don't think they know how it's going to play out.
***

About the depression issue, I understand that some medications for depression were of concern because taking them correlated with suicides, especially among youth. The reason for the increased suicides was because severely depressed people were too depressed to even attempt suicide; when they started on the medication, they became less depressed and felt up to looking for guns and taking action.

[treeandleafster]

I'm reminded of the case of Jochen Klepper, a Lutheran German of Jewish origins, who wrote a number of very beautiful and hopeful hymns, but finally comitted suicide along with his family on recieving a deportation notice to Auschwitz. He left a not along the lines of 'It may be a sin but God will forgive me'; after the war there was some debate in the Lutheran church about whether the hyms of a suicide (who acted believing his actions to be on some level wrong) should be adopted for public worship, but I'm glad to say that sense prevailed and it was concluded that, in the circumstances, suicide was at the very least understandable. There are some thing which no-one can be expected to endure.

[clew]

Barbara Ehrenreich's _Dancing in the Streets_ hypothesizes that the (probable) increase in depression starting around 1600 is related to the rise in individualism, which was taking up the slack left by the finally-forbidden ecstatic festivals and carnivals. (I simplify her reasoning too far.)

I once read an article on the political and theological reactions to suicides by children under the age of reason, in the 1600s and 1700s. IIRC the authorities started with the presumption that children couldn't have known enough to commit a mortal sin, and then tried to ignore it, and then declared that it was a mortal sin after all.

[Mrs Tilton]

In other words: Emily Dickinson did not despair; she wrote.

That's a good point. And even if one agree with RM above, if it is not applicable to Dickinson, it certanly applies to Samuel Beckett, whose works are not notably overflowing with light, hope or happiness (humour I'll grant you).

Dahne/Rachel/Fred/Hapax, on the various tunes to which one can sing most Dickinson poems: this is simply the effect of her use of the ballad stanza structure (alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter: de da de da de da de da / de da de da de da). Any verse written to this pattern -- and there is a lot of it -- can be sung to those tunes. Dickinson does seem to have liked it an awful lot, though.