By AMANDA DE ALMEIDA ROMÃO*
The poems and songs, especially in the voices of Marina Lima and Adriana Calcanhotto, will continue as proof of the persistence of their memory in all of us.
After several days of thinking about Antônio Cícero, waking up with excerpts of his compositions in my head, I realized that I had to write. I do this not to distance myself from his songs, nor because I believe that those who are still alive should have a final word about those who have passed away, but because the letter left by the composer and philosopher before committing euthanasia questions us about what a life with dignity is.
Albert Camus opens The myth of Sisyphus saying that there is only one truly serious philosophical question and that is suicide, because judging whether or not life is worth living is answering a fundamental question of philosophy. Camus also reminds us that “we cultivate the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking” (CAMUS, 2019, p.15),1 which would explain the body's retreat from annihilation. But despite this, cases of suicide are not rare — this kind of leap into the absurd, according to Camusian philosophy.
This was the case with Antônio Cícero, who judged that his life was no longer worth living. In the letter he left, he says “(…) as I have been an atheist since adolescence, I am aware that the one who decides whether my life is worth living or not is me. I hope to have lived with dignity and to die with dignity.”2 What made his life unbearable was suffering from Alzheimer's, preventing him from doing what was essential to him: writing good poems and philosophical essays, concentrating on reading and socializing with friends.
Dignity, for Antônio Cícero, had these qualities, because he understood that living is not just a habit but an exercise of the spirit — with this word I do not refer to the transcendent plane, but to that which is produced in human life and is not reduced to what is material, such as the meaning of life itself. This movement shifts dignity from the value of life (often considered intrinsic) to the conditions of that life itself, taken here in a particular sense.
In this sense, the elaboration of what constitutes a life with dignity encompasses all of us, including those who belong to the less favored economic classes and are generally deprived of this time to take care of themselves due to exhausting work hours. On this point, it is worth considering the need for the anti-capitalist struggle so that the elaboration of “dignity” itself becomes less abstract for those who do not have many financial resources, so that it is not thought of strictly as ensuring bread on the table, but rather as creating multiple meanings for life, such as creating stories, forms of art, ways of organizing collective revolt, etc.
However, if suicide appears to be the only way out for the subject, I emphasize the field in which it should be thought of: not from the perspective of morality, but from the perspective of the power struggle. That Antônio Cícero went through some difficulty and overcame it is obvious, as it is for any person in their daily lives, but that at a given moment his condition with his memory prevented him from being who he is, awakened the limits of his own conscience, determined the definitive gesture. From this conscience to this decision there is an entire unfolding that is impossible to describe, in perpetual silence for us. It is a power struggle because it is not enough to resort to any adjective to describe this gesture, neither to praise it nor to condemn it; it is necessary to think of it as an event.
Em logic of sense, Gilles Deleuze writes about what it means to want the event: “‘For my taste for death, says Bousquet, which was a failure of the will, I will substitute a desire to die that is the apotheosis of the will.’ From this taste to this desire, nothing changes, in a certain way, except a change of will, a kind of leap in the very place of every body that exchanges its organic will for a spiritual will, which now wants not exactly what happens, but something No. that happens” (DELEUZE, 1969, p. 175, our translation).3
Gilles Deleuze calls this change of will, this leap, volitional intuition or transmutation. We could think of it as the affirmation of life in the death of Antônio Cícero, his gesture that prevents the progression of Alzheimer's and the consequent failure of the will to oppose it to a desire to die, to affirm life under certain conditions. Here, I refrain from making value judgments about the material conditions that allowed him to end his life with dignity in Switzerland; I merely emphasize the fact that even in excellent financial conditions it is possible for someone to remain with their body on earth without the slightest elaboration of a deeper meaning of life. With this, once again, I bring “dignity” closer to a philosophical and/or spiritual development of life and less to belonging to a high economic class.
This transmutation of will is not resolved by the subject's decision; it requires a mechanism capable of carrying it out: the permanence of one's own desire in this difficult decision, the authorization of the medical team, the support of family and close friends, the moment before death which in this case gives the chance for a lucid farewell to the world. In the lyrics of one of his most famous compositions, Antônio Cícero says that he awaits events and reminds us that "all love is worth how much it shines". In his final decision, he did not embody the waiting, but became the master of his own event.
The poems and songs, especially in the voices of Marina Lima and Adriana Calcanhotto, will continue as proof of the persistence of his memory in all of us, his admirers, without ever being able to answer where Antônio Cícero holds us, where he escapes and what he wants from us.4
* Amanda is a master's student in philosophy at the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp).
Notes
- CAMUS, Albert. The myth of Sisyphus. Translated by Ari Roitman and Paulina Watch. Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2019.
- Available at «https://www.cartacapital.com.br/cultura/a-carta-deixada-por-antonio-cicero-antes-da-morte-assistida-na-suica/».
- DELEUZE, Gilles. Logique you sens. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1969.
- CICERO, Antonio, LIMA, Marina. Events. In: LIMA, Marina. Marina Lima. Los Angeles: EMI-Odeon, 1991. 1 LP. 1 CD. Track 6.
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