Muriel's Memento Mori

In her novel Memento Mori, Muriel Spark offered a story where a group of elderly people received mysterious telephone calls telling them, 'Remember you must die'.

Well, that warning became a reality for Muriel Spark last Thursday in Italy, where she passed away at 88 years old.

Massimiliano Dindalini, the mayor of the Tuscan village of Civitella della Chiana, where Spark had lived for almost three decades, announced her death this morning. He said she died in a hospital in Florence on Thursday, 13 April.

Dame Muriel Spark's life could make as great a book as any that could come out of her pen. In fact, she published the first part of her autobiography - Curriculum Vitae - back in 1992.

Why do we mention her here? Well, apart from being a huge personality in the literary world which alone would warrant a little note, she also wrote a biography on Emily Brontë (Emily Brontë: her life and work) in 1953 (in collaboration with Derek Stanford). She also published in 1952 a selection of poems of Emily Brontë and in 1954 a selection of Brontë letters too.

In The Brontë Myth, Lucasta Miller gives her credit for writing an original biography. Nowadays that we are back looking for Emily's love story, from where she would have drawn to write Wuthering Heights, for instance is illustrative to read Muriel Spark's views on the matter. In Lucasta Miller's own words:

it was Emily's poems and novel, not anything that happened in her external life, which formed the "principal facts" of her biography. Spark's Emily has no need for the outside influence of mysitical visitations or inspirational love affairs. Instead, she is a self-created being centred in the universe of her own imagination.

As always is the case with writers, and however much we regret her loss, she will live on in her writings and unforgattable stories.

For further information on the author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie you can visit this biography or this complete bibliography.

Categories: In_the_News, Brontëites