"We are adhering to life now with our last muscle - the heart"

Djuna Barnes evokes a piercing image of human endurance at its most elemental. The metaphor of the body’s “last muscle – the heart” as the point of attachment to life suggests an ultimate threshold, the brink where all physical and emotional resources have been exhausted save for the essence of existence itself. The heart, both a literal organ and a potent symbol of feeling and vitality, comes to represent what is most resilient within us. It is our core, beating persistently despite fatigue, despair, or trauma.

The choice of language, “adhering”, emphasizes a desperate, clinging tenacity. We hang on, not with hands or reason, but with that enduring, involuntary muscle which owes nothing to conscious will. There’s a sense of life stripped down to its minimum: all the trappings of comfort, intellect, even other bodily strength have fallen away, and what remains is the irreducible impulse to keep living. The phrase calls to mind those who endure conditions of extreme hardship, whether emotional or physical; individuals who, though depleted, somehow persist because the heart continues to insist upon life.

There is also an undercurrent of existential vulnerability. By specifying “our last muscle,” Barnes explores a collective human experience: at certain moments, all that separates us from oblivion is the stubborn heartbeat. Yet, within this tenuousness, there inhabits both fragility and extraordinary strength. The heart, usually hidden, takes center stage as the organ of endurance and hope.

Barnes’s use of the heart as a final anchor to life resonates with themes of love, suffering, and mortality. Even in life’s bleakest interludes, something fundamental resists surrender. Ultimately, the heart becomes both a literal lifeline and a metaphor for passion, perseverance, and the indomitable will to survive despite overwhelming odds.