User:Jahsonic/I am the Dying Gaul  

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I am the Dying Gaul.[1]

This is my death scene, I was not given an deathbed. I do not represent the most famous death scene. I am outdeathed by Jesus Christ who died on the cross before me and Jean-Paul Marat after me.

I seem to have been born in a culture of death, yet I was not given any last words. This fascination with death in Western culture. Why? Why so pervasive?

Why did Jane write A Death-Scene?

So I knew that he was dying-

Stooped, and raised his languid head;

Felt no breath, and heard no sighing,

So I knew that he was dead.

Why this fasicnation with crime scenes?

Why did Andy Warhol produce The Death and Disaster paintings?

And why is shameful corner of European video-libraries filled with copies of Faces of Death?

Why do we enjoy the slow motion death of Bonnie and Clyde and countles other movie death scenes?

Aristotle has the answer:

Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies. --Aristotle via the Poetics.