Unit 4  Section 2Exercise 9 Stopping suicide Franz Wright
Clinical correlate #6: suicide prevention
Contract for safety
You might wish to familiarize yourself with the scientific literature on suicide prevention efforts. Read the correlates to determine the relative efficacy of common interventions.
In the following pages you will encounter reflections on the part of individuals who have clearly contemplated suicide but who have survived. The first writer tells his story, presumably autobiographical, in the form of a poem. The second is a frank narration, excerpted from a popular book that combines an account of the author's own suicide attempt with other biographical examples and clinical information. Read them in an attempt to understand their motivations for survival, and identify possible protective factors. Decide on the basis of all your readings in this section whether suicide is preventable. Try to articulate how your own attitude towards suicide has evolved, both over the long-term and as a result of these readings.
Read the following poem by Franz Wright.
http://www.juliasroom.com/fwrighttheonly.htm
The only animal
The only animal that commits suicide
went for a walk in the park,
basked on a hard bench
in the first star,
travelled to the edge of space
in an armchair
while company quietly
talked, and abruptly
returned,
the room empty.
The only animal that cries,
that takes off its clothes
and reports to the mirror, the one
and only animal
that brushes its own teeth--
somewhere
the only animal that smokes a cigarette,
that lies down and flies backwards in time,
that rises and walks to a book
and looks up a word
heard the telephone ringing
in the darkness downstairs and decided
to answer no more.
And I understand,
too well: how many times
have I made the decision to dwell
from now on
in the hour of my death
(the space I took up here
scarlessly closing like water)
and said I’m never coming back,
and yet
this morning
I stood once again
in this world, the garden
ark and vacant
tomb of what
I can’t imagine,
between twin eternities,
some sort of wings,
more or less equidistantly
exiled from both,
hovering in the dreaming called
being awake, where
You gave me
in secret one thing
to perceive, the
tall blue starry
strangeness of being
here at all.
You gave us each in secret one thing to perceive.
Furless now, upright, My banished
And experimental
child
You said, though your own heart condemn you
I do not condemn you.
--Franz Wright
(audio? http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1851833)
Study questions
1. The title of the poem comes from Friedrich Nietzsche’s quote, "Man is the only animal who has to be encouraged to live." What does this quote mean to you in relation to the poem? What does the poet say about the human condition?
2. What is the mood of the poem? What is the rationale, do you think, for listing all the things ‘the only animal’ does?
3. How does the poet reconcile himself to living? Where does the poem’s concluding section begin and what shift takes place in these stanzas?
Annotation
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