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Question: What are your thoughts on immortality!? Details inside!.!.!.!?
Beginning with Achilles in The Iliad and continuing throughout the Middle Ages, writers have often ended their work with a simple request for remembrance!. They want their names to be remembered and their works to be read for centuries after their deaths!. Boccaccio ends The Decameron with a simple two word phrase: "Remember me!." In the epilogue to Metamorphoses, Ovid says, "the better part of me, written in the stars, Immortal, my name shall never die!." Shakespeare hints at it several times in his plays!.
***How do we explain this desire to be remembered by our writing!? Do you think modern writers have delusions of immortality!. They may not express it as bluntly as the classical writers have but I'm sure the thought has crossed their minds on occassion!.
Penny for your thoughts!?Www@QuestionHome@Com
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
I think the whole reason people tell stories _is_ because they want those stories remembered!. I don't think anyone sits down to write a story just to entertain themselves--they want to entertain an audience as well, and they want the story to mean something to the audience!.
Storytelling at its heart is communication of ideas--why would you bother communicating those ideas if they didn't matter!? I am not so sure that it's a delusion; I think that people will remember various writers from our time nowadays (the philosophers and dreamers and idea-makers)--but I think that everyone wants to have their stories retold!. That's how storytelling started, after all, as oral memes!.
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Follow-up: I think it depends on the authors!. I think some are very conscious of how history will remember them--you can't tell me Ayn Rand was writing for mid-century housewives, or that Cormac McCarthy writes for a 2000s audience!.
I think some are more conscious of how the people of their time will remember them: I'd argue most genre fic falls into this category!. The Big Idea Novels are more likely to be written by historically conscious authors: Sometimes with good results; sometimes with terrible results!.Www@QuestionHome@Com
I think immortality is a curse!. you live on wile every one around you withers and dies!. death is what makes life worth living, so if you never die, what's the point!?Www@QuestionHome@Com