ZBORNIK - Matica srpska

ance(s) he should put into the text. How does time demans life?
Sauvagely, outrageously, like revoluting soldiers? With cold mercilesness,
like a tax-collector or a distrainer? Calling to account how
lifetime was used, whether according to expectations? With cool
rationality, like the logics of a lecture demands something? Or
mildly, like somebody who asks his fellow for something, for a favour
e. g., but also with some irony, being aware of it, that this demand,
however mild it may be, brooks no delay, no opposition. The
epitaph does not answer these questions, it poses only them by
using a word of more than one nuances — and everybody has to
answer for himself revealing by this what death for himself means
and what life.
Zsigmond Ritoók
THE SEIKILOS POEM
Summary
The poem seems to be a common place one (carpe diem + life as deposit),
but the understanding of the last word ������� (violently? with cold
mercilessnes? mildly? etc.) gives food for thought.
Key words: Seikilos; life as deposit.
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