Synopsis
The author employs poetry and literature to reflect on the meaning of retirement and whether death is an unmitigated calamity. He concludes it is not better to live forever, and that strangely, death enhances life, rather than negating it.
About the Author(s)
Peter Bien first came to Pendle Hill in 1952 to train for Quaker International Voluntary Service in Holland. He served as a Pendle Hill trustee for many years between 1977 and 2005 and also clerked the Publications Committee. He was professor of English and comparative literature at Dartmouth College, specializing in the modern British novel and modern Greek poetry and prose, especially the work of Nikos Kazantzakis. In the 1980s, together with others from Hanover Monthly Meeting, he helped “invent” Kendal at Hanover, where he and his wife Chrysanthi have resided since 2002. In the summers, however, they happily occupy 120 acres in the Adirondacks, somehow entertaining seven grandchildren and their parents. He is the author of four Pendle Hill pamphlets.
Pendle Hill Pamphlet #368
