Description

• Title:
  Two paradigms of suicide or two acts of voluntary death? Heinrich von Kleist and Jean Améry
• Creator:
  Kuczyńska-Koshany, Katarzyna
• Description:
  I compare the suicide deaths of Heinrich von Kleist and Jean Améry (Hans Mayer). I discuss the issue of suicide, considering it as a category of the German language and distinguish the difference between the terms ‘Selbstmord’ [self-annihilation] and ‘Freitod’ [self-inflicted death, voluntary death]. By comparing the two suicides committed on the two verges of modernity (the beginning of 19th century in Berlin and 20th century after Auschwitz), I try to describe them as an experience of the imagination (in the words of Stefan Chwin) and as a specific act of creation: a choice of a voluntary death. Suicide, comprehended as a confirmation of our existential freedom, was a deviation from what was considered the norm in Prussia in 1811 and did not seem possible as anything else than an act of despair, when committed by a death camp survivor. However, Heinrich von Kleist and Jean Améry have set a precedent in the existing cultural and historical paradigms of suicide.
• Object availability:
  free access
• Date:
  2012.01.01
• Type:
  info:eu-repo/semantics/article;
  info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion;
  Artykuł naukowy
• Language:
  Polish
• Source:
  Przestrzenie Teorii; No. 18 (2012); 11-26;
  Przestrzenie Teorii; Nr 18 (2012); 11-26;
  2450-5765;
  1644-6763
• Format:
  application/pdf
• Publisher:
  Adam Mickiewicz University Poznan
• Relation: http://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/pt/article/view/3389/3424
• Subject:
  samobójstwo;
  śmierć;
  śmierć dobrowolna;
  samounicestwienie
• Identifier: http://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/pt/article/view/3389
• Data provider:
  Platforma Otwartych Czasopism Naukowych UAM
• Can I use it?:
  seek permission
• Type:
  text