A friend who teaches philosophy at a Lucca secondary school (Yes in Italy philosophy is a standard subject in schools) declared to me that he thought the presence of Death is a scandal. We have accepted resignedly that there can be no life without death, no beginning without an end. However, there are even greater scandals than just the idea of Death. For us all the death of any young person increases the scandal. And if this young person was someone of supreme promise, an artist perhaps that was entering into full flowering of their creative powers then the scandal of Death, including those who have never met such a person or even experienced any of their talent is torturously unbearable.
The war in which Russia has invaded and attempted to conquer a peaceable nation brings horrors daily, horrors which I had thought, at least in Europe had been extinguished after the conflagration of WWII. Tragically, human nature – or rather inhuman nature – does not change very much.
In the middle of not only the scandal of Death but of the various means of inflicting that scandal through the actions of war, in the midst of pictures of burnt-out blocks of flats, of bomb cratered roads, of destroyed art galleries and concert halls, of maimed or killed young (they always seem to be young) soldiers in the midst all this catastrophic madness, I have been particularly affected by the death, through injuries sustained when a Russian missile destroyed the pizzeria she was eating in Kramatorsk, of Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina. Aged just 37 Victoria had documented in her books the atrocities the country next door had inflicted on her people. She had already received recognition and prizes for her work and her last book is due to be published soon. So far I have read nothing of hers but found a Spanish translation of one of her books on Kindle.
To think that Victoria Amelina, after working as a computer programmer only started writing about five years ago and only became a poet last year!
What tragic loss!
The deaths of creative persons, artists, writers, painters, composers, journalists as victims of war had to be one of the most tragic situations in this utterly useless, horrifically violent, monstrous and heartbreaking thing that is affecting not only Ukraine but Europe, indeed our whole planet..
Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.