Death, Eternal Recurrence and the Castro Way of Life

"I die just about every day," said Castro in an interview with Venezuelan state television broadcast Thursday night, in reference to the rumors. "But it's really a lot of fun for me, and it makes me feel healthier."

Serious props to Fidel for pointing out the importance of speculative repetition in the media as a spell to maintain the stasis of being. Just as the terror warning system protected during the tender few years after 9/11, so too the PRC announces the imminent demise of their government every few months. Fama, the muse of Rumor, is perhaps best personified by Virgil

Extemplo Libyae magnas it Fama per urbes:
Fama malum quo non velocius ullum; Mobilitate viget,
viresque acquirit eundo; Parva metu primo;
mox sese attollit in auras, Ingrediturque solo,
et caput inter nubilia condit. . . . .
Monstrum, horrendum ingens;
cui quot sunt corpore plumae Tot vigiles oculi subter,
mirabile dictu, Tot linquae, totidem ora sonant, tot subrigit aures.

Straightway throughout the Libyan cities flies Rumor;--
the report of evil things than which nothing is swifter;
it flourishes by its very activity and gains
new strength by its movements; small at first
through fear, it soon raises itself aloft and sweeps
onward along the earth. Yet its head reaches the clouds. . . .
A huge and horrid monster covered with many feathers:
and for every plume a sharp eye, for every pinion
a biting tongue. Everywhere its voices sound, to
everything its ears are open.


Rumor, in her non-flying time, lived in a room with a thousand windows that peered out to every corner of the earth. I'd like to cite Wikipedia and Google for my scholarship. Academe can suck my balls...