I read this a long time back somewhere -
A person dies twice. The first time is when they die. The second time is when the last person who remembers them dies.
A person dies twice. The first time is when they die. The second time is when the last person who remembers them dies.
It also seems, that the best way to be remembered is either to write or to win battles. On the other hand, building long lasting monuments (like some contemporary billionaires) seems to be quite inefficient when it comes to remembrance of a person, historically speaking. The only exception I can think of is the Eiffel-Tower, dude made a wise decision naming it after himself.
Irvin D. Yalom - Staring at the Sun (2011)
> I have let go of the wish, the hope, that I myself, my image, will persist in any tangible form. Certainly there will come a time when the last living person who has ever known me dies. Decades ago, I read in Alan Sharp’s novel A Green Tree in Gedde a description of a country cemetery with two sections: the “remembered dead” and the “truly dead.” The graves of the remembered dead are tended and adorned with flowers, whereas the graves of the truly dead were forgotten; they were flowerless, weed infested, with tombstones askew and eroded.
Alan Sharpe - A Green Tree in Gedde (1965)
But when at last the threads of memory rot and the
rememberers themselves are tombed, then the liberated
dead move in silent flit to the old open field of the truly
buried, and there in sight of the living they relax and at last
rest.
Who will believe my verse in time to come
If it were filled with your most high deserts?
Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say “This poet lies;
Such heavenly touches ne’er touched earthly faces.”
So should my papers, yellowed with their age,
Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be termed a poet’s rage
And stretchèd meter of an antique song.
But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice—in it and in my rhyme.I am pretty sure Yalom can be ruled out a source : I learned about the saying around that time, and sure his writing couldn't have reached me so quick.
Furthermore, I find Dutch sources dating earlier ( online poems and obituaries ).
The saying as I know it is more succint, it is either :
You are not really dead when your name is still used/referenced ( Pardon my English ), or :
You are only really dead when your name is not used/referenced anymore.
I do agree with your assesment that it is probably cross-cultural ( and much older ), a bit of a canon.
He will have said it multiple times in his career e.g. Love's Executioner (1989) - I (perhaps misleadingly) quoted a later book that let me chase the source. As an existential philosopher/psychologist writing self-help books about death I can imagine he might be the modern populariser because people struggling with death/mortality might reach for his books. They contain many ideas/aphorisms about death intended to help.
Irvin D. Yalom - Love's Executioner (1989)
> You know, there is no one alive now who was grown-up when I was a child. So I, as a child, am dead. Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That’s when I will be truly dead—when I exist in no one’s memory. I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people. When that old person dies, the whole cluster dies, too, vanishes from living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Whose death will make me truly dead?
More seriously, it's a theme as old as mankind. For example, Ugo Foscolo in "Dei sepolcri" (1806):
"Non vive ei forse anche sotterra, quando
Gli sarà muta l’armonia del giorno,
Se può destarla con soavi cure
Nella mente de’ suoi
[...]
Sol chi non lascia eredità d'affetti
Poca gioia ha dell’urna; e se pur mira
Dopo l’esequie, errar vede il suo spirto
Fra ’l compianto de’ templi Acherontei,
O ricovrarsi sotto le grandi ale
Del perdono d’lddio: ma la sua polve
Lascia alle ortiche di deserta gleba
Ove nè donna innamorata preghi,
Nè passeggier solingo oda il sospiro
Che dal tumulo a noi manda Natura"
Does he not perhaps also live underground when
The day's harmony will be mute to him,
If he can awaken it with gentle care
In the minds of his [own]
[...]
Only he who leaves no legacy of affections
Has little joy of the urn; and if he looks
After the funeral, he sees his spirit
Wander amidst Acheron's lamented temples,
Or seeks shelter under the vast wings
Of God's forgiveness: but his dust
Leaves to the nettles of deserted soil
Where neither the enamored woman prays,
Nor the solitary passer-by hears the sigh
That Nature sends to us from the tomb.