When a young man dies, the world looks wrong. Well, more wrong. He was a man of letters (not a Supernatural's Man of Letter), so many writers and readers were this morning at the funeral, coming from every regions of Italy. We were there, crying atheists in a church, looking each other in disbelief
It is the first death which infects everyone with the feeling of being threatened. It is impossible to over assess the role played by the first dead man in the kindling of wars. Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim. It need not be anyone of particular importance, and can even be someone unknown. Nothing matters except his death; and it must be believed that the enemy is responsible for this. Every possible cause of his death is suppressed except one: his membership in the group to which one belongs oneself.—Elias Canetti, Masse und Macht vol. 1, p. 152 (1960)(S.H. transl.)
“There is almost nothing bad that I couldn’t say about humans and humankind. And yet my pride in them is so great that there is only one thing I really hate: their enemy, death.” - Elias Canetti, The tongue set free