The Cultures of Life and Death in Poetry, by Donald DeMarco

By Donald DeMarco, The Catholic Education Resource Center, Dec. 2024

Dr. Donald DeMarco is Professor Emeritus, St. Jerome’s University and Adjunct Professor at Holy Apostles College. He a former corresponding member of the Pontifical Academy of Life and author of forty-two books, including How to Remain Sane in a World That is Going Mad, Poetry That Enters the Mind and Warms the Heart, and How to Flourish in a Fallen World. He and his wife, Mary, have 5 children and 13 grandchildren.

Donald DeMarco. “The Cultures of Life and Death in Poetry.” Crisis Magazine (April 2, 2013).

Reprinted with permission from Crisis Magazine.

We are all familiar with Blessed John Paul II’s description of the Culture of Death in his 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae.  The good Pope, of course, was not the first to notice and give expression to this phenomenon.

We are all familiar with Blessed John Paul II’s description of the Culture of Death in his 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae.  The good Pope, of course, was not the first to notice and give expression to this phenomenon.

In 1922, T. S. Eliot released to the world his account of the Culture of Death in the form of a modernist poem of 434 lines.  He called it “The Waste Land.”  Despite the fact that its message is cloaked in obscurity, scholars regard it as perhaps the most important poem of the 20th century.

The epigraph (though written in a mixture of Latin and Greek) makes plain the essential meaning of the poem.  It refers to a prophetess known as the Sybil who had been granted any wish she desired.  Unfortunately for her, she made the mistake of choosing not to die rather than for eternal youth.  This poor creature continued to shrink as she aged until she was small enough to fit into a jar.  In this tiny, confined environment, she was crying out in a barely audible voice.  When asked what she wanted, she replied, “I want death.” ….