The Death of Synge

Abstract

Molly Allgood¹ came to-day to ask where I would be to-morrow, as Synge wishes to send for me if strong enough. He wants ‘to make arrangements’. He is dying.² They have ceased to give him food. Should we close the Abbey or keep it open while he still lives? Poor Molly is going through her work as always. Perhaps that is best for her. I feel Synge’s coming death less now than when he first became ill. I am used to the thought of it and I do not find that I pity him. I pity her. He is fading out of life. I felt the same when I saw M—³in the madhouse. I pitied his wife. He seemed already dead. One does not feel that death is evil when one meets it,—evil, I mean, for the one who dies. Our Daimon is silent as was that other before the death of Socrates. The wildest sorrow that comes at the thought of death is, I think, ‘Ages will pass over and no one ever again look on that nobleness or that beauty’. What is this but to pity the living and to praise the dead?

Extracted from The Death of Synge; Extracts from a Diary Kept in 1909 (Dublin: Cuala Press, 1928), reprinted in Autobiographies (London: Macmillan, 1955) PP. 497–527.