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Bergson: The Theme of the Panoramic Vision of the Dying and Juxtaposition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Georges Poulet
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Extract

Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer prize–winning novel the road (2006) addresses the cliché that at the moment of death the endangered individual experiences a “life review” during which his life “flashes before his eyes.” McCarthy's protagonist intuits that “the right dreams for a man in peril were dreams of peril and all else was the call of languor and death” (18). Thus, in the view of McCarthy's unnamed hero, during a crisis one must focus on survival, escape, sustenance, or the successful execution of a plan. However, once all possibilities of survival are exhausted, the dying person will experience either an intense acceleration of cognition due to panic or a slackening of interest due to the acceptance of death. In either of these two scenarios, Henri Bergson posits, all the memories of the individual's lifetime will rush into consciousness. The following essay by Georges Poulet analyzes the development of Bergson's thought on this issue, supplementing Bergson's notions with examples from literature, history, and philosophy.

Type
Criticism in Translation
Information
PMLA , Volume 126 , Issue 2 , March 2011 , pp. 483 - 499
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2011

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