‘Lettre à D. Histoire d'un amour’ by André Gorz

In September 2007, Austrian-born French philosopher André Gorz ended his life together with his wife Dorine, who had been suffering from chronic pain due to medical malpractice and was dependent on her husband’s care. A year before their joint suicide – both were in their eighties at the time – Gorz published Lettre à D., a public love letter to his wife which narrates and reviews their shared history. Throughout the entire book, however, Gorz’s narrator does not express any suicidal intentions. And yet, in the wake of the spouses’ actual death, commentators in the media read the book as a farewell note in which the motivation for their self-chosen departure could be found. In addition to Dorine's physical suffering, commentators emphasized the intimacy of their relationship as well as their inseparability and unwillingness to outlive each other, which almost inevitably would lead to their joint death. This was mainly due to a passage at the end of the book, in which the narrator repeats (in a slightly modified form) the love confession that opened the book and then gives a vivid image of his own existential suffering caused by the idea of outliving his ill wife.

It was this passage which contributed considerably to the fact that Gorz’s book was received as a touching piece of literature that expresses true love, but also that the joint suicide of Mr and Mrs Gorz received a sympathetic response in the media. And even though there was no assisted dying involved, neither in Gorz’s book nor in his death, both have repeatedly been referred to in the right-do-die discourse. Even organisations active in this field took up the couple's joint suicide in written statements. On the one hand, they quoted from the aforecited passage about the couple’s unwillingness to outlive each other, thus expressing their appreciation for André Gorz's motive to die so as not to have to suffer the loss of his wife. In addition, EXIT Deutsche Schweiz praised Gorz’s critical examination of the modern apparatus of medicine. Drawing on Ivan Illich, Gorz sets out in his book a technocritical approach, referring in particular to medicine, which he describes as encroaching, harmful, and depriving people of their autonomy. Dorine’s refusal to get further treatment thus becomes a gesture of self-empowerment, which ultimately ends in their joint suicide, what makes the book appreciated by right-to-die advocates.