Irregular IndexBooks

"But why one hundred years? Why not three hundred?" Like the 337-years-old heroine of Karel Capek's The Makropulos Affair ( 1922). In the play, one character (a socialist "progressive") describes the disadvantages of a normal life span. "What can a man do during his sixty years of life? What enjoyment has he? What can he learn? You don't live to get the fruit of the tree you have planted; you'll never learn all the things that mankind has discovered before you; you won't complete your work or leave your example behind you; you'll die without having even lived. A life of three hundred years on the other hand would allow fifty years to be a child and a pupil; fifty years to get to know the world and see all that exists in it; one hundred years to work for the benefit of all; and then, when he has achieved all human experience, another hundred years to live in wisdom, to rule, to teach, and to set an example. Oh, how valuable human life would be if it lasted three hundred years." And Emilia Makropulos suggests its longevity would make us worse: "You cannot go on loving for three hundred years. And you cannot go on hoping, creating, gazing at things for three hundred years. You can't stand it. Everything becomes boring. It's boring to be good and boring to be bad ... And then you realize that nothing actually exists ... You are so close to everything. You can see some point in everything. For you everything has some value because those few years of yours won't be enough to satisfy your enjoyment. ... It's disgusting to think how happy you are. And it's simply due to the ridiculous coincidence that you're going to die soon. You take an ape-like interest in everything." From "Under the Sign of Saturn" by Susan Sontag.