Illness and Death
Rosenzweig suffered from the muscular degenerative disease Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease) and towards the end of his life had to write with the help of his wife Edith, who would recite letters of the alphabet until he indicated for her to stop, continuing until she could guess the word or phrase he intended (or, at other times, Rosenzweig would point to the letter on the plate of his typewriter). They also developed a system based on him blinking his eyes.
Rosenzweig's final attempt to communicate his thought, via the laborious typewriter-alphabet method, consisted in the partial sentence: "And now it comes, the point of all points, which the Lord has truly revealed to me in my sleep, the point of all points for which there—". The writing was interrupted by his doctor, with whom he had a short discussion using the same method. When the doctor left, Rosenzweig did not wish to continue with the writing, and he died in the night of December 10, 1929, in Frankfurt, the sentence left unfinished.
Rosenzweig was buried on December 12, 1929. There was no eulogy; Buber read Psalm 73.
Read more about this topic: Franz Rosenzweig
Famous quotes containing the words illness and/or death:
“One always has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and unusual.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck
And on the king my father’s death before him.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)