Immortal Words

We’ve discussed immortality in the Science thread, but it occurred to me today that we never touched upon the kind of immortality we as writers hope for—to live on in our words.

It’s a nice thought, that what we create from our depths, from our blood, sweat and tears, will never die. We put who we are into our writing and the writing survives.

In 23 BC the Roman poet Horace began the final poem in his Odes with these lines:

I have finished a monument more lasting than bronze, more lofty than the regal structure of the pyramids, one which neither corroding rain nor the ungovernable North Wind can ever destroy, nor the countless series of the years, nor the flight of time.

I shall not wholly die, and a large part of me will elude the Goddess of Death.

And here we are reading his words more than 2000 years later. He lives.

Have you had this thought that, through your writing, some part of you will survive your passing?