KHARON

Thanatology Review

Electronic Journal

Content

Volume 9

Number 3-4 · 2005

Original article


Preventing Suicide

This document is one of a series of resources addressed to specific social and professional groups particularly relevant to the prevention of suicide. It has been prepared as part of SUPRE, the WHO worldwide initiative for the prevention of suicide.

Mental and Behavioural Disorders
Department of Mental Health
WHO, Genf, 2000.

 MAGDOLNA SINGER
MAGDOLNA SINGER

újságíró, mentálhigiénikus, gyásztanácsadó

magdolna@singer.hu

Babies crying in women’s dreams

Interviews with parents losing their fetus or child

Abstract · We present five stories of the interview book intending on the topic of perinatal bereavement. The first interview (Our son, Robi) tells about a dramatic procured abortion and introduces the path which is walked by a women who is forced to have her fetus aborted from unconscious drift and desperate willingness to get free to realization and getting conscious. The second story (Babies crying in women’s dreams) is about a way of a woman who suffered especially much and wanted to find out how her fellow sufferers - through generations - coped with the tragedies of abortions and still-births. The peculiarity of the interview ‘Funeral with guitar and dance’ is that it shows a creative solution for worthy saying goodbye to the fetus left in the hospital that could compensate the omitted funeral and farewell ceremony. The fourth story (In the crossfire of pelting questions) accompanies the hard bereavement work of a mother losing her few weeks old son. The last interview (Our joint life-work with my son) is a confession of a woman whose walk of life is fatally determined by serially losing her children to be born and her only son was born with multiple disorders. This extraordinarily strong woman proves that it is possible to stay standing under the pressure of setbacks and to sublimate painful experience into palatial creation.

 ÉVA PETRŐCZI
ÉVA PETRŐCZI

egyetemi docens, irodalomtörténész, költő

hetpetty@hungarnet.hu

“Kindertotenlieder” – Depiction of child-death in puritan literature.

Abstract · The first version of this study of mine was lectured in the Institute of Literature Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences then it became a chapter of my study book titled ‘Half-saints and half-poets’ discussing Hungarian and Anglo-Saxon puritan literary works. This first version was recently completed by a womanly ‘child-bereavement-song’, a writing of dramatic strength by Alice Thornton. My original intent was only to give a thorough analysis on a previously not processed lament verse of Mihály K. Vári, praeceptor of Debrecen that was written in 1679 on his student, Mihály Köleséri an offspring of an illustrious family of Áron who lived 9 years. By favour of the Dutch Academy of Sciences in spring 2000 I had the occassion to place my message in international context by the studying and at least rough analysis of numerous English and New-England puritan diaries, personal letters and many medical historical, family historical and sociological works. A very important part and real overture of this review is the bereavement verse of Martin Luther on his daughter called Magdalene and the lament of the illustrious Polish poet Jan Kochanowski on the death of his small Orsolya. These documents earlier than the puritan writings are in fact of archetyped character, contain all that will be repeated very often: the emphasis on the virtues, patience and developed intellectual gift of the deceased child. The typically puritan bereavement work and its peculiar literature genre ‘ars bene moriendi’ as a noble and respectful answer to be followed in some aspects even today to child death which is very hard to accept even with a religious spirit became a central part in both versions of my work. In these answers, in these death depictions and leave-takings I found more comfort and hope than in the nice sham of Rückert: ‘They left only for a walk...’