I don't either, really. Just being melodramatic. I'm pretty sure he didn't want to die -- maybe near the end, he did.
Only when the physical suffering was so unbearable he wanted to pass on- so he wouldn't be suffering the ravages of consumption. But really what he would have liked was to have recovered, married Fanny and gone on with his poetry.
The other comment: well, for me, it's just the easiest way for me to accept the tragedy of his dying (how prolonged and suffering it was) and his death. He was a gift to us, for all time, so why did he need to suffer the pain and the heartbreak?
He was indeed a gift Ennis- I think of him that way too- his poems touch my heart in a way no other poet can.
I know in the "Vale of Soul-Making" letter to George he writes of how necessary a world of pain is to make a soul, how the heart must "feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways." But I still find it very difficult at times to get my mind around it all.
He was trying to understand what suffering was for, why it occurred. One could also look at Negative Capability and go on from his premise (Vale of Soul Making) that in the physical condition- being human ( but also animals suffer remember) on this Earth the suffering has reasons and then move towards Negative Capability and see it that there is the Mystery. No reason for suffering- it is by default of being in the phsycial state, that our nerve cells and bodily systems both enable us to feel both pleasure and pain. Those finger tips that stroke a lover's face and bring pleasure, also can be burnt in a fire and bring pain. Two sides of the same coin. It is something I have pondered upon the last few years and just before I read John's letters and Negative Capability, Vale of soul Making etc I came to the conclusion that there is no reason- it just
is.