Memento Mori

The New York Times Obituary Section on the weekend September 7-9 featured a grimly diverse list of deaths: Eric Lessing, photographer, died at 95, William Jordan, impressionist, was dead at 91. Amanda Kyle Williams (Keye Street/Stranger series), the crime writer, at 61. Randy Weston, Jazz pianist, at 92. Mac Miller, rapper at 26.

Not mentioned, of course, are countless less famous people around the world, who died at ages young and old, of causes expected and unexpected. Some had lived full lives, others were cut tragically short.

In Canto III of the Inferno Dante sees a huge train of folk chasing a swirling banner and utters the famous line, “I had not thought that death had undone so many” (which T.S. Eliot later used in The Wasteland).

Andy Warhol once remarked that in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. How will that be possible if from seventy to one hundred million people die every day?

Mac Miller, whose promising music career ended prematurely, is a reminder to all of us that Death is looking over our shoulder. Just eight weeks ago, Mac. shot his final music video, which included a scene of him carving the words memento mori on a coffin.

Schopenhauer wrote, “We are like lambs in a field, disporting themselves under the eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then another for his prey.”

The painting that illustrates the theme of this post is a still-life of an Hourglass, Skull, and Tulip (1671) by the Flemish artist Philippe de Champagne, court painter to Louis XIV known for his profound psychological portraits. The still-life is in the tradition of so-called vanitas art that flourished in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century and depicted collections of objects symbolic of the transience of earthly things and the inevitability of death.After his paralyzed daughter was miraculously cured at the nunnery of Port-Royal, De Champagne converted to Jansenism, a theological movement that emphasized original sin, human depravity, grace, and predestination.

Pascal wrote the famous Provincial Letters in defense of Jansenism in a dispute with the Sorbonne. In his famous Pensees, he wrote:“Unable to cure death, wretchedness and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think of such things.”

The reminder that death comes to all of us was expressed in Francois Villon’s line (made famous by Dante Gabriel Rossetti), “Where are the snows of yesteryear?”

Indeed, some of us are either in so much pain, or take our existence so for granted--or likely a mixture of both--that we actually invite death in early. Others live much longer, but is a long life with little to show for it better than a short one filled with achievement?

Prime minister of China Wen Jiabao remarked that he has read the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius a hundred times. Marcus wrote his thoughts to himself and never imagined that they would serve as a guide for generations in the future.He wrote that consciousness of our mortality should determine what we do and what we think.

Seneca echoed the same thought when he said that no man can be surer of tomorrow than any other man.Meaning: Don’t waste time. Take care of yourself. Make the most of your talents while you’re here. Be prepared for the end.

P.S. Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, a multi-billionaire was carried away at age 65.,