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My brothers, the firstling is always sacrificed. We, however, are firstlings…. [How] could we fail to attract old idol-priests? Even in ourselves the old idol-priest still lives who roasts what is best in us for his feast.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra1
Fascination with death is a well-known phenomenon in various cultures and periods, from the Book of Revelations through Mishima and on to Internet sites set up by teenagers after the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado.2 It lies concealed under the death wishes or murderous impulses of teenagers; 3 a social fashion in late nineteenth-century Vienna;4 self-immolation for God;5 theories that led to Goetterdaemmerung through Auschwitz, or to a Red New World through the purging of millions; and more. Scholars have dealt with this phenomenon, but it seems that it has been poets, called by Ezra Pound the “antennae of the world,” who provide the symbolic expression of man's hidden longings and who present its most authentic and incisive manifestation, at times out of their own suffering. Thus Pearse, thus Mayakovsky, thus Mishima, to name only three. 6
The present article draws upon the work of yet another poet, Avraham Stern, to elucidate the phenomenon I refer to as thanatophilia (Greek: love of death). Stern, like Pearse, was a fairly rare example of the poet-warrior. A founder and charismatic leader of an underground organization, he fought against British rule in Palestine prior to the establishment of the State of Israel. His oeuvre, which consists of only 53 short poems, is more than a particular expression of a thanatophilic character.