Last poems on earth

Abstract

Focusing on different ways of thinking about the future and the end, this paper examines changes in the scale of the farewells taking shape in recent cultural productions. In readings of poems by Roberto Bolaño and the film Melancholia by Lars von Trier, this article suggests that renewed attention to finitude and mortality has had varied effects on temporal experience, with reactions ranging from the pursuit of slowness to the desire for the acceleration of time, including the instigation of destruction. The paper also reflects on the persistence of antagonisms of different sorts within the experience of the anticipation of catastrophe, even as cultural representations tend to stress the generality of the threat. Finally, the paper revisits the question about the problem of the end of the poem.