[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":89},["ShallowReactive",2],{"book-final-years":3,"pager-book-\u002Fbook\u002Ffinal-years":79},{"id":4,"title":5,"body":6,"description":12,"extension":70,"meta":71,"navTitle":72,"navigation":73,"oldPath":74,"path":75,"seo":76,"stem":77,"__hash__":78},"book\u002Fbook\u002F10.final-years.md","Final Years",{"type":7,"value":8,"toc":66},"minimark",[9,13,34,37,50,63],[10,11,12],"p",{},"Cogswell wrote to his dying days, refusing to let his “toil-established muscles die” (“Retirement” 99). Two full volumes of English translations of the Acadian poets Léonard Forest and Raymond Guy LeBlanc were half completed when he went into hospital in Vancouver for the final time. The last poems he wrote spoke of the injustices of a bureaucratized world that imposes and institutionalizes its structures, a world where power thwarts the masses as it enriches the few. The unpublished poem “Pelagius and Augustine” is particularly salient in that regard. It puts the two medieval thinkers in radical counterpoise, suggesting that in the battle for spiritual authority, the Celtic monk Pelagius lost to Augustine, a one-time disciple of Mani – and so the freedom to love, serve, and choose that Pelagius represented was lost to the stern Manichaeism of Roman fatalism. From the third century forward, Augustine’s Manichean views of good and evil, righteousness and original sin, sexuality and hell dominate western Christianity. Cogswell writes of their differences as follows:",[10,14,17,18,21,22,24,25,27,28,30,31,33],{"className":15},[16],"indent","Pelagius gave human love and all",[19,20],"br",{},"\nHe felt would pay God’s debt, prayer and thought",[19,23],{},"\nFrom all he was. They never were enough",[19,26],{},"\nTo suit the morning star of Augustine",[19,29],{},"\nIn a Roman religion. There was no",[19,32],{},"\nSaint Lucifer more powerful than he.",[10,35,36],{},"To the end, then, Cogswell’s poems were beacons of light that expressed his profound belief in freedom of the imagination and heart. With Christianity gone off the rails, the creative impulse, he concluded, is the only truth. The translation that he was most proud of was “Art” by Theophile Gauthier. Its last two stanzas might stand as a Cogswell epithet:",[10,38,40,41,43,44,46,47,49],{"className":39},[16],"The gods themselves are dead.",[19,42],{},"\nGreat verse, stronger than brass,",[19,45],{},"\n            In their stead",[19,48],{},"\nLives on and will not pass.",[10,51,53,54,56,57,59,60,62],{"className":52},[16],"Write, sculpt, paint, use the knife.",[19,55],{},"\nMay your floating visions come",[19,58],{},"\n            To life",[19,61],{},"\nIn the hardest medium. (40)",[10,64,65],{},"Fred Cogswell died at Vancouver’s Royal Columbian Hospital on 20 June 2004. The day before his death he offered to give up his bed in Palliative Care to a person who couldn’t afford one, concerned that others might have greater need. He died with his poems around him.",{"title":67,"searchDepth":68,"depth":68,"links":69},"",2,[],"md",{},null,true,"\u002Fcontent\u002Ffinal","\u002Fbook\u002Ffinal-years",{"title":5,"description":12},"book\u002F10.final-years","Wyw1b7fzdd-fm26HPezMBCGH9Fw0MUIGgVV5PFHeNDs",[80,84],{"title":81,"path":82,"stem":83,"navTitle":72,"children":-1},"Translation and Cultural Advocacy","\u002Fbook\u002Ftranslation-and-cultural-advocacy","book\u002F09.translation-and-cultural-advocacy",{"title":85,"path":86,"stem":87,"navTitle":88,"children":-1},"Dreaming Against the Quotidian: Cogswell’s Poetry and Poetics","\u002Fbook\u002Fpoetry-and-poetics","book\u002F11.poetry-and-poetics","Poetry & Poetics",1789055433121]