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The Destination of Life

https://congressionalcemetery.org/2022/08/22/why-do-so-many-headstones-face-east/

 “The end of life is death; the meaning of death is rebirth or eternal sleep. Death is not the loss of life, but out of the time.” ----“To Live”, Yu Hua

NELL (without lowering her voice):
Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. But -
NAGG (shocked):
Oh!
NELL:
Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more.

(Pause.) (Samuel, 1957)

    Samuel Beckett's Endgame is an absurd, tragic play about a blind, paralyzed, dominative old man, his elderly parents, and his submissive companion. They are waiting for some kind of uncertain "end" in the abandoned cabin of a post-apocalyptic wilderness. It seemed to be the end of their relationship, the death, and the end of the actual drama itself. The absurdity of life itself aroused laughter and deep despair among people.

    Death and cemetery seem to go hand in hand. Many people believe that cemeteries are built not for the dead, but for the living. The value of cemeteries is not for the dead need a space to store their bones, but for the living need a space to commemorate the dead and to comfort their souls.

    However, in the history of death, Pere-Lachaise Cemetery, in Pairs, was conceived as an elysium, the resting place of mythological heroes and sage. Trees which were once frowned upon in cemeteries as they were thought to restrict the circulation of air were now introduced to serve "as a somber and religious veil" over the grounds (Etlin, 1984). Tombstones were no longer decorated with skull and bones indicating the immanent and perhaps not all too pleasant day of reckoning, as had been the case for centuries, but adorned with smiling angels (JARZOMBEK, 2012). A new word appeared: Sluipweg. Sluipweg delivers what modern cemeteries promise but cannot provide, eternal rest. Adolf Loos believes that only a small part of architecture belongs to the category of art: monuments, because everything else has a practical purpose (1910). However, at here the monument is stripped of its monumental meaning. Visitors constantly step on the stone, grinding away the carved marks, leaving only the eternal soul. In traditional view, the concept of death is built around remembrance, but Sluipweg is different. Sluipweg is thus a path where death is finally given at least a chance to make its escape (JARZOMBEK, 2012).

https://k.sina.cn/article_7072118634_p1a587f76a00100seuo.html

    “There is nothing important in life but death.” This is a famous sentence from the movie Lighting Up the Stars. In director Liu Jiangjiang's view, "death" is not passing away or parting, but a romantic and lively childhood past. In architecture,"dead space" has always been a window and a mirror of the society, through which we can feel the pulsation of an era and peep into the rise and fall of a society, a nation, and a period of civilization. Therefore, where is the destination of life? Italian architect Aldo Rossi has built a city for the dead. In the Cemetery of San Cataldo, life and death are similar. Elements of the house, such as courtyards, corridors, bedrooms, pitched roofs, Windows, walls and floors, are all incorporated into the design of the burial chamber. It is almost impossible to determine whether the living enter a city of the dead or the dead linger in the city of the living. For Rossi, the happiness of life and the silence of death are not opposites. "When I talk about a school, a cemetery, a theater, it is more accurate to say that I am talking about life, death and imagination (1981).”

    From birth, life is on the countdown, but death is eternal. People always talk about decency, but always dare not face death. Anyone who lives to the end, cannot escape the word "destination". To build a garden of joy for the dead, in a dignified way, to eternity.


References 

Beckett, Samuel. (1957). Endgame.

Etlin, R. (1984). The Architecture of Death: the Transformation of the Cemetery in Eighteenth-Century Paris

Hua, Y. (1992). To Live. Harvest, 6.

JARZOMBEK, M. (2012). THE “SLUIPWEG” AND THE HISTORY OF DEATH. Thresholds, 40, 113–120. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43884905 

Loos, A. (1910). Architecture.

Rossi, A. (1981). A Scientific Autobiography.

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