Bert Keizer Top 10

We are looking for 5 fictional books the reading of which would or might in some manner improve a young doctor’s ethical awareness. The outcome of reading such works is uncertain of course, we are not talking about a vaccination programme, but there is at least a likelihood that certain tales might enhance a young doctor’s sensitivity in the right direction. Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Illich inevitably crops up in this connection, as do The Boys from Brazil when there is even the faintest whiff of cloning in the air, so let us consider these 2 staple titles as already mentioned. Proust is another inevitable candidate, but you might as well recommend the Bible (I do forthwith) but who is going to read it? Proust and the Bible are too bulky. Turning the question upside down: what books should a young doctor NOT read because they might endanger her or his ethical finesse? Well, I would skip Céline, though I doubt if even that hailstorm of relentless misery would in any way harm one’s ethical antennae. If bulk is a problem, why don’t we turn to poetry? Mixing, or confusing, all these considerations, I have come up with the following suggestions, four poems, and a set of very short letters. touching on that aspect of life one so often finds neglected in medical practice: tenderness, empathy, fellow-feeling, the talent to let a sufferer know that you know she is suffering. I think these are works about which it would not be evidently silly to harbour the hope that they might stir a young doctor in the right way, even though this whole business of stirring is not what I believe literature is about.
1 Philip Larkin – The Mower The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found A hedgehog jammed up against the blades, Killed. It had been in the long grass. I had seen it before, even fed it, once. Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world Unmendably. Burial was no help: Next morning I got up and it did not. The first day after a death, the new absence Is always the same; we should be careful Of each other, we should be kind While there is still time.
2 A.E. Houseman – Easter Hymn If in that Syrian garden, ages slain, You sleep, and know not you are dead in vain, Nor even in dreams behold how dark and bright Ascends in smoke and fire by day and night The hate you died to quench and could but fan, Sleep well and see no morning, son of man. But if, the grave rent and the stone rolled by, At the right hand of majesty on high You sit, and sitting so remember yet Your tears, your agony and bloody sweat, Your cross and passion and the life you gave, Bow hither out of heaven and see and save. Houseman’s kind lament for the dead Jesus, and at the same time his supplication for the suffering of mankind.
3 Omar Khayam re-done by Edward Fitzgerald number xxxvi For in the Market-place, one Dusk of Day, I watch’d the Potter thumping his wet Clay: And with its all obliterated Tongue It murmur’d – “Gently, Brother, gently, pray!” Khayam’s (or Fitzgerald’s) murmur speaks for itself.
4 Emily Dickinson letters 595-599 One of the first things we feel when approaching other people’s sorrow is we’d better stay away, for fear of tripping over, or standing on, things unnoticeable to us, but endlessly dear to the bereaved. To share a person´s grief instead of usurping it takes a rare type of selfconfidence which Dickinson amply possessed as may be read in these short notes to Mrs. Hery Hills on the loss of her child, Samuel, who died on february 23d in 1879. 595 “Come unto me”. Beloved Commandment. The Darling obeyed. 596 The power to console is not within corporeal reach – though its’ attempt, is precious. To die before it feared to die, may have been a boon - 597 Dear friend, The only Balmless Wound is the departed Human Life we had learned to need. For that, even Immortality is a slow solace. All other Peace has many Roots and will spring again. With cheer from one who knows. 598 (written in response to an Easter present) Dear friend, The Gift was sadly exquisite. Were the actual “Cross” so divinely adorned, we should covet it. Thank you for the sacred “flowers” – typical, both of them. Gethsemene and Caba are still a traveled route. Emily. 599 Sweet Mrs Hills, We think of you and know you think of us. To come – from Heaven – is casual – but to return – eternal. Emily.
5 John Clare The Nightingales Nest The inimitable amalgam of coumtry lore, ornithology and reverence for Nature’s works add up to Clare’s particular tenderness as he gently shows the reader the nest while fully aware of the bird’s apprehensions about the human intrusion.
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