The Rights of the Dead

[rowyn]

When Vladimir Nabokov passed away, he was working on the manuscript for a novel, The Original of Laura. His instructions for the incomplete work were that it should be destroyed on his death. It wasn't; some 30+ years later it has been published by his son. (In a rather intriguing fashion, which I won't go into here.)

Much has been made of the ethics of ignoring the wishes of the deceased. The thing that really struck me was that, while I could respect it if his heirs had destroyed the manuscript in accordance with his wishes, I can't imagine that I could have done it myself. If a dying author left me his last writings and said 'destroy these' ... no. I couldn't do it, not unless there were some stipulation like 'these are private and would embarrass me if they were viewed' attached. But apart from that, I don't think I could deliberately destroy someone else's work, even if that was their express wish.

It occurred to me that, in general, I'd have a much harder time respecting the will of the deceased if it involved destroying things. If a rich man wanted his possessions incinerated and his mansion bulldozed upon his death? Urrrgh. Even though I wouldn't dispute his right to dispose of his property as he chose while alive, I can't see myself carrying out that kind of request. It just seems wrong. Like the right of the living to enjoy those possessions supercedes the right of the dead to say "no, you can't". I'm not sure that's actually right. It's just how I feel. What do you think?

Comments

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

Which is why if you wish something of yours destroyed, you must do it while you still live and still own it.

[rowyn]

I was wondering about that, in this case particularly. Was Nabokov able to destroy the book himself, or was he still hoping to finish it and therefore didn't want to? Was he too weak to do it himeself by the time he asked his wife to do it? I don't know. I do know it's not something that'd always be feasible -- a lot of people die suddenly and with no warning or opportunity to prepare. :(

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Well, the point of obeying the deceased's last wishes is to comfort people who are dying and want to think that they'll still have some influence after they're dead.

So denying exceptional requests is bad, but it isn't *that* bad because most people aren't going to have them. You don't want to disobey the requests too often, though, or people will go and do crazy things before they die, like burning down their mansion.

[rowyn]

Hee! Very practical outlook, that.

[seraphimsigrist.livejournal.com]

in the case of nabokov I think
yes let us see the book, indeed amazon
says they are mailing mine which just
came out today.
my dad left many papers,as I mentioned
on my own journal, which he asked me to
destroy but I understood it to not mean
that he would be unhappy if I kept
typed pages of his writings and I kept
most things of that sort(but what was
unpublished then is surely unpublishable now)

I destroyed all notebooks and his extensive
notes on concerts attended etc and probably
some personal notations which I did not look
into.
similarly without direction one way or the other
I destroyed my mother's diaries which were not
literary at all and were mostly practical notes
appointments etc with some notes of feelings etc

the right of the dead I think is not to be shamed
or subject to the voyeurism of their heirs but beyond
that death is an act of trust, first to God to get
us across the river to the other side, but also to
what comes after...it is best to let go of things...

[rowyn]

Yes, destroying something private that the author never wanted to be seen is different from destroying thoughtful essays or fiction. Reading "The Original of Laura" isn't voyeuristic.

I'll be interested to read your thoughts when you've read it. It sounds like an interesting work, bt I doubt I'll get to it myself.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

You know, I had a thought. Wasn't Schultz's last wish that Peanuts be allowed to end with him? He's drawing an awful lot of daily comics for a dead guy...

[jurann.livejournal.com]

Yes, but his next of kin inherited the rights to the franchise, and can technically do whatever they want with it...

[skyflame.livejournal.com]

Kafka also requested that all of his writings be destroyed after his death. Relatively little had been published while he was still living.

[rowyn]

I'm sure part of my difficulty with this request is that I can't understand making it myself. Or the motives behind making it. Does the writer not recognize the value of his writings? Embarrassed by what he thinks is a work below his capabilities? Ashamed because he just doesn't think it's good at all? I don't know. Destroying stuff just depresses me. :(

[skyflame.livejournal.com]

My understanding about Kafka in particular is that he was a member of an informal writers group and hadn't intended most (if any) of the stories for publication. He wrote to entertain his friends, basically.

(There is some dispute about this idea. But he certainly had the opportunity during his lifetime to get stories published and he didn't spend a lot of time pursuing that, for whatever reason. Possibly his tuberculosis played a part.)

I still have hand-written notebooks filled with poetry sketches, aborted stories, etc. I'm not sure why I continue to hold onto them; maybe my subconcious thinks I'm not done writing and I'll get back to some of those ideas at some point. Maybe I'll hand them over to Katie or someone else down the road. I dunno.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

I sympathize with the thought. In my opinion, any orders to destroy your possessions after your death should be left to cold-hearted professionals who have a professional incentive (reputation to other clients) to carry out your wishes - such as lawyers - not to relatives who might see it as an emotional punch-in-the-gut to be asked to destroy any mementos of your existence.

Of course, having such things destroyed by your lawyer is still likely to be an emotional punch-in-the-gut to your surviving loved ones (or so I see it), but at least it's not as bad as forcing them to be responsible for it (or shoulder the guilt of having failed to carry out your wishes).

[rowyn]

I'm sure part of my problem is that it seems like a crappy thing to want done. :/

[jurann.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with you, really. In fact I'd probably go a step farther even. While there's some kind of strange honor in attempting to oblige the wishes of the recently departed, there's also little sense in destruction of something useful to society, even if it was someone's dying wish. Personally I feel the preservation for society's use is more important than obeying the dying wish. And quite frankly, if someone on their deathbed realizes that their last chance at immortality through the remembrance of society is at jeopardy of being remembered negatively, they probably should have thought of that years sooner and improved their relationship with society in the first place. Just my feelings.

[rowyn]

Yeah, I don't know if it's right, but I can't help feeling that asking for the destruction after your death of something of considerable value is just ... not appropriate. (Destroying something of sentimental value or something private is another matter; I can sympathize with, say, wanting to be buried with your wedding ring on.)

[jurann.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I absolutely agree with you there. The only exception I could think of to the wedding ring thing though is if the wedding ring in question happened to be a national treasure handed down from generation to generation for hundreds of years or something of that sort - you know, having vastly more important cultural/social importance than a mere personal item. But then I suppose it wouldn't be a personal/private item if that were the case. ;D

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I agree, I'd have a hard time destroying stuff. I'm not sure it matters whether the owner is alive or dead, it's still, well, destroying stuff!

[rowyn]

Yes! Except for fireworks. That's different.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Fireworks create pyrokinetic art! Not inherently an act of destruction.

[telnar.livejournal.com]

I see the real question as being what to tell the still living author upon receiving that request. I would have trouble destroying something of value to posterity, but I would also be able to foresee that and would say that I didn't think I could carry out the request when asked.

I think that wanting to be honest with someone close enough to me to entrust me with that sort of instruction takes precedence over trying to reduce the practical hassles he would face before dying (since one likely consequence of saying that is that he would need to find someone more likely to carry out his instructions like an attorney).

[rowyn]

I'd probably talk him out of it. But I'm not sure that's the real question; sometimes you don't get a chance to discuss this sort of thing beforehand. It's not like I have a will, myself, for instance.

[sebkha.livejournal.com]

The interesting question is whether the legal shadow of a dead person -- an entity similar to an immortal corporation -- continues to exist and exercise power after the death of the actual person. If you think of the person and their legal shadow as different entities, it's pretty eerie.

[rowyn]

Creepy!

Giving a will the force of law is pretty much the best way to dispose of the possessions of the deceased, I think. But it's not as clear to me that allowing the terms of a will to dictate anything more than who-gets-what is useful to society as a whole. Terry's got a certain point about how respecting the wishes of the dead is useful in making sure that living people don't do crazy things because they think their wishes won't be respected after they die, though.

[zaimoni.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, the precedent of not destroying literature just because the author made a deathbed request goes back a long ways.

At least, back to Virgil's Aeneid. (Funny, that's by far the easiest surviving work of Virgil's to find...)

[rowyn]

I'm not really sure it's an unfortunate precedent. I wonder how many instances there have been where such wishes were honored? That'd be a lot less memorable than the converse.