Letter from the philosopher Andre Gorz to his wife Donire Kier
BEFORE SUICIDING TOGETHER IN 2007
It was October 23, 1947 when André Gorz, one of the greatest exponents of political ecology, saw Dorin Keir playing poker at a dance in Paris, in the Place Saint-Sulpice, not knowing that the traveler would become the unique and great love of your life.
Time later, the chance reunited them. She was alone with her dancing. Seeing her, Gorz ran to catch up; He did it and they never separated again.
letter
Dorine Keir and André Gorz
Until that day everything was uncertain, especially for Gorz, who did not have much faith in love. "I could not spend more than two hours with a girl without getting bored and making her feel".
Dorine, on the other hand, was an Englishwoman who made her life in Paris. He came from a family that broke up when his father had to enlist in the First World War. When he was four years old, his mother fell in love with an adventurer and, at the time of the break, two years later, it was he who took charge of her.
Of extremely discrete personality, Gorz (Vienna, 1923- France, 2007) belonged to the French culture, living mainly in Paris, where he founded - together with Jean Daniel - the weekly Le Nouvel Observateur and collaborated with the philosophical circle of Les Temps Modernes, with Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
His intellectual life always fluctuated between journalism and philosophy. At age 60, a degenerative disease was detected in her, and Gorz decided to retire and take care of her. "I asked myself what was the accidental thing to give up to concentrate on the essentials". In addition, he believed that in order to truly understand the events of those times (the fall of the Berlin Wall was very close), it was necessary for him to have more time for reflection, something that was scarcely allowed by journalism. They did not think about it anymore and moved to the countryside.
Andre
Dorine Keir and André Gorz
Fuente
«You have just turned eighty-two years old. You've shrunk six inches, you weigh no more than forty-five pounds and you're still beautiful and desirable. Fifty-eight years ago we lived together and I love you more than ever. (...) I need to reconstruct the story of our love to capture all its meaning. Thanks to her, we are what we are, one for the other and one for the other (...) I write to you to understand what I have lived, what we have lived together ».
Thus begins Letter to D. Story of a Love (2006), a confession of almost 90 pages that an old man André Gorz dedicates to his life partner, after being diagnosed with endometrial cancer and aranoicditis, the latter caused by inflammation in one of the three membranes that surround the brain and spinal cord.
"We were you and I, children of precariousness and conflict," Gorz wrote, "We were made to protect each other. We needed to create together, one for the other, a place in the world that had originally been denied us. But, for this, it was necessary that our love was also a pact for all life. "
folosofo
Dorine Keir and André Gorz
The letter is a recount on that love story that lasted almost six decades with his personal and intellectual accomplice. However, the full text is a claim of the author with himself, realizing that between what he thinks and his personal life there is a distance that did not travel with his partner. Gorz, like many writers, was comfortable in the strategy of failure and annihilation, not in affirmation and success. But it was in the twilight of his life that he had to admit that the most important thing, after having written so many books, essays and articles, was that 'invisible link' that they both built. "Why are you so little present in what I have written if our union has been the most important thing in my life?"
All of Gorz's writings deal with the human. But Letter to D. goes further. "What I wanted to highlight," the thinker once said, "is that the only human wealth is sensitivity. When this is eliminated, then there is only nonsense, only material wealth, instrumental, but not human. Dorine taught me that. "
Dorine Keir and André Gorz
"We'll be what we do together," André told Dorine. And there's no doubt about that. They always wanted to die together, on the same day and in the same way. So it was. On September 22, 2007, a lethal substance was injected over the bed that held them for almost six decades.
They died at their house in Vosnon, once again: embraced.
The text ends as it started and it would be unfair - we suggest - not to reproduce the entire paragraph.
"You just turned 82 years old. And you are still beautiful, elegant and desirable. 58 ago we live together and I love you more than ever. I recently fell in love with you once again and I have again in me a devouring emptiness that only satiates your body pressed against mine.
At night I see the silhouette of a hoHe walks on an empty road and in a deserted landscape, walking behind a hearse. It's you who carries that chariot. I do not want to attend your cremation; I do not want to receive a jar with your ashes. I hear the voice of Kathleen Ferrier who sings 'Die Welt ist leer, Ich will nicht leben mehr' (The world is empty, I do not want to live anymore) and I wake up. I spy your breath, my hand caresses you. Neither of us would like to have to survive the death of the other. We have often said that, in the case of having a second life, we would like to spend it together. "
