NEVER LOOK A GIFT HEARSE IN THE MOUTH:

It is a truism that the vanity of the modern age has engendered a reluctance to accept death as an integral part of life. People go to all kinds of lengths to extend their lives or ward off the signs of ageing, and wealthy entrepreneurs are pouring millions into research on "transhumanism", a new field of study whose ultimate goal appears to be finding a cure for death. I remain unconvinced that immortality is necessarily an enviable condition. I've seen The Lord of the Rings, and those elves always look miserable.

Besides, what would a life be with no prospect of cessation? Saul Bellow wrote that death is "the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything". This concept reminds me of the playwright Dennis Potter's final interview in March 1994, less than three months before he succumbed to the cancer that was ravaging his body. Describing his writing process in those final days to Melvyn Bragg, Potter noted that he would look out of his bedroom window to the plum tree below. "It looks like apple blossom but it's white," he said, "and looking at it, instead of saying 'Oh that's nice blossom' . . . I see it is the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be. And I can see it. Things are both more trivial than they ever were, and more important than they ever were, and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn't seem to matter."

What Potter called "the nowness of everything" is not, he claimed, a revelation that one can appreciate without direct experience. But if proximity to death enhances the value of life, so too might a healthy recognition of its necessity. A number of years ago I happened upon a fascinating little ring in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, dating from the 16th century. The ring was enamelled with a skull, and bore the legend "behold the ende" on a hexagonal bezel, with the inscription "rather death than fals faith" around the edge. The "true lovers" knot and inscription strongly suggested that this memento mori had been made to commemorate a betrothal or a wedding. Even on the happiest day of their lives, this couple wanted to be reminded that their time on earth was finite.

Today, our relationship with death is not so immediate. In an age of medical innovation and vaccines that seem to be conjured overnight, it is little wonder that death acquires a sense of unreality. I cannot help but think that the intermittent panic around the coronavirus, a disease with a relatively low mortality rate, is partly down to our reluctance to reckon with a difficult truth. The black death, which peaked in Europe in the mid-14th century and carried away more than half the population, meant that people had to quickly learn how to live in a state of continual bereavement. Death became a part of the culture as much as a metaphysical consideration. It is this period which gave us the tradition of the Danse Macabre: pictorial cycles in which the living are seen either dancing or processing towards the grave, accompanied by skeletons. Often the figures are arranged in order of social ranking, with ecclesiastical and political figures at the head. I think it was Madonna who sagely observed that death (in the guise of coronavirus) is the "great equaliser". If I remember rightly, she was immersed in a marble bathtub strewn with rose petals at the time.

Just as the bubonic plague led to a newfound fixation on death in art and literature, the horrors of the Second World War gave rise to the philosophy of existentialism. In his essay "The Myth of Sisyphus", Albert Camus argued that suicide is the "one truly serious philosophical problem". That is to say, the fact that we haven't killed ourselves is a proclamation of our investment in the condition of existence. There is something darkly comical about this viewpoint, yet perhaps there is some consolation to be found in contemplating the sheer absurdity of being alive. 

To find humour in death isn't to degrade or deny the sanctity of human life, but rather to grapple with its finite nature. 

The wise and good Arwen, who has given up her elvish immortality to be the mortal Aragorn's queen, is overcome at his deathbed and pleads for him to stay with her longer. He refuses, saying that it is right for him to go with good grace and before he grows feeble. Then he tells her:

I speak no comfort to you, for there is no comfort for such pain within the circles of the world. The uttermost choice is before you: to repent and go to the Havens and bear away into the West the memory of our days together that shall there be evergreen but never more than memory; or else to abide the Doom of Men.

Arwen replies that she has no choice:

I must indeed abide the Doom of Men whether I will or nill: the loss and the silence. But I say to you, King of the Numenoreans, not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Elves say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive.

In this new and bitter knowledge, she goes away alone after Aragorn's death, "the light of her eyes . . . quenched . . . cold and gray as nightfall that comes without a star." She dies alone in the dead land of Lorien, where deathless Elves once lived.

For Arwen, otherwise infinitely wiser than we, death is the one unknown, a new and unexpected discovery. Aragorn knows better; he knows, as all mortals should, that comfort is impossible and even unworthy in the face of death. Yet he still holds fast to what Arwen has only known as an abstract theological tenet: that death is truly God's gift.

I cry whenever I reread this passage; it haunts me like no other, though it's hard to explain why. At the heart of it is the phrase "the gift of the One to Men." Tolkien looks unblinkingly at "the loss and the silence" of death, but remains steadfast: Death is our curse, but also our blessing.

He has hidden this particular tale away in an appendix, but the same idea of mortality permeates the whole book. The plot centers on a ring that gives immortality and corrupts its bearer. Much of the book's character interest arises from the interactions between mortal and immortal races, who both mystify and fascinate each other. The structure of the work also echoes mortality itself. I have heard friends criticize the long and leisurely denouement (over a hundred pages), but I've never understood such complaints. Myself, I was grateful for every page, always vividly aware that they would run out all too soon. Those closing chapters are a portrait of mortality: However happily a story ends, it must end, and that itself is our great sorrow. All that is beautiful and beloved dies. The Fellowship of the Ring accomplishes its quest, but with the end of its troubles comes the separation of its members. Gandalf and the High Elves win the war, but their own victory banishes them from Middle Earth. With them "many fair things will fade and be forgotten." Frodo has saved the world but now longs to leave it. This has to be one of literature's saddest happy endings. Tolkien makes us savor the bittersweet, for he knows (like Gandalf) that "not all tears are an evil."

Clearly, mortality is at the heart of this story. The subject has become a hot topic today, with Leon Kass and other "mortalists" arguing against a research culture that sees death and aging merely as foes to be overcome. If medicine succeeds in making man immortal, or even much longer-lived, the mortalists argue, much that makes human life worthwhile will be lost. Kass has used the wisdom of such ancient authors as Homer to illustrate his vision of mortality's benefits. In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien makes a Christian case for the same claim. In Tolkien's world, immortality and long life lead even the noblest creatures to a spiritual dead end, or to outright corruption.

The virtues of mortality are most obvious in the great paradox of the book: that the very mortal Hobbits are the only ones who can resist the Ring's seduction and destroy it. Seemingly the most insignificant and lowliest race of all, they spend their (relatively) short lives in small pursuits. They have little use for lofty "elvish" ideas. As most characters in The Lord of the Rings remark, they are unlikely saviors of the world. In fact, their lowly mortality may be their greatest asset.

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