Marginalia (October 2015)

In his eight-century treatise De Causa Humanis, Deodatus of Trebizond, philosopher and Cabbalist, tells of a lie as old as human consciousness: that all men die but not all get the chance to born. Akutagawa Ryūnosuke early in the previous century in a counterpoint possible only because he had not known Deodatus of Trebizond, preaches of a utopian country where in the womb babies decide for themselves whether they want or not to be born. Both writers had been dreaming about life and the possibilities they thought it had so injudiciously excluded for as long as they had the consciousness to recognise themselves and the world.