Tenebrae exteriores

‘. . . that we mortals should dread the tomb—that’s only natural. And it’s when we are nearing the end that what may be called the real takes on another colour, sir. You look at those about you and can’t any more so surely rely on what they are, if you take me. As you once could. There is so thin a crust, sir, in a manner of speaking, between being awake and asleep—very fast asleep indeed. A sip of a doctor’s drug, and not only the lantern goes out but everything it shone on. I had that experience myself not more than a month or two since—only a decayed tooth, sir: outer darkness, and then the awakening. If that comes. It is like as if we were treading a flat fall of untrodden snow and suddenly it is thin ice—cat ice, as we used to call it when we were boys—and we are gone. Not, mind you, that the waters of death, however cold they may be, are not—well, the waters of life. Faith is faith. . . .’

 

Walter de la Mare,  ‘Strangers and Pilgrims’ (1936)

Sleep and death

Καθεύδοντα καὶ νεκρὸν, τὸν ἐν ἁμαρτίαις φησί. Καὶ γὰρ δυσωδίας πνεῖ, ὡς  ὁ νεκρὸς, καὶ ἀνενέργητός ἐστιν, ὡς ὁ καθεύδων, καὶ οὐδὲν ὁρᾷ, ὡς ἐκεῖνος, ἀλλ' ὀνειρώττει καὶ φαντάζεται.

Chrysostomus Homil. xviii in Epist. ad Ephesos, pag. 851.

Dormientem et mortuum eum dicit, qui in peccatis est. Etenim tetrum odorem spirat, ut mortuus, et non potest operari, ut qui dormit, neque quidquam videt, ut ille, sed somniat et varia sibi fingit.

trans. Johann Caspar Suizer

By him that sleeps and the dead he means him that is in sin, for he both gives off a noisome stench, like the dead, and is inactive, like one that is asleep, and like him sees nothing, but is dreaming and hatching illusions.

Universality of the belief in hell (6)

According to Jochelson (1), among the Koryak there exist two conceptions of the abode of the departed. One soul of the deceased may rise to the Supreme Being, this idea being very indefinite, but another one goes to the underground world, that of ‘people of the ancient times’, peninelau, and the description of the future life of the departed is based on their life in this world. The peninelau live in the underground world in similar villages and in a similar way to their manner of life on earth, and the new-comer at once finds his place among his relatives. At the entrance to this underworld are found dogs as guardians, and a person who used to beat his dog during his life on earth will be stopped by them, though, in order to propitiate the guardians, he can carry in his mittens the fins of fishes, of which they are very fond.

M. A. Czaplicka, Aboriginal Siberia: A Study in Social Anthropology, Oxford, 1914.

(1) Memoir of the Jessup North Pacific Expedition

The language(s) of the dead

De Lingua etiam et sermone Mortuorum oriuntur quaestiunculae. Mortuorum Dialogos finxere multi, sed qua lingua colloquuntur mortui, nescio. Materna, inquies, seu vernacula, qua usi sunt in terris: ut Graeci loquantur Graece: Latini Latine, et sic de caeteris gentibus. Sed tempora mutantur, et populi, et linguae, de saeculo in saeculum. Hodierni Romani Veterum Latinorum non callent linguam: nec quamcunque Latinitatem, vulgus Italorum: Qui confabulabuntur hi populi cum suo Romulo, aut Numa? Celtarum et Scytharum linguas non retinent hodie, qui easdem sedes per occidentem et septentrionem incolunt. Denique quid fiet a nobis, incolis hujusce Insulae, qui tot habuimus origines et linguas? Britannice loquemur in corporibus aëriis: vel Saxonice, vel Normanice, vel ut hodie fit mixte et composite? Alteram fore suspicor Linguarum confusionem, Babelis illa graviorem, si in hunc modum vita futura ordinanda esset. 

 Thomas Burnet, De Statu Mortuorum et Resurgentium Tractatus, London, 1727, p. 89, recte 93

The minor questions of the language and speech of the dead now arise.* Many have invented Dialogues of the Dead, but in which tongue the dead converse with each other I know not. In the mother tongue or the vernacular they used in their own countries, you will say, and thus Greeks would speak Greek, Latins Latin, and so on for every other nation. But the times, as well as peoples and languages, are forever changing. Today's Romans, the Italian rabble, would be ignorant of the language of the ancient Latins and any Latinity whatever: by what means will such people talk to their Romulus or their Numa? The languages of the Celts and the Scythians, who inhabit the same homelands in the West and North, no longer survive. What then of us, the inhabitants of this Island, who have had so many different origins and languages? Will we speak British in our aerial bodies, or Saxon, or Norman, or the present-day composite tongue? I suspect that there would be another Confusion of Tongues, worse than that of Babel, if the future life were arranged in this way.

* Burnet has been discussing whether there be a polity of the dead in their aerial state during the interval between death and the resurrection. Will the dead form a promiscuous republic, or will they be separated according to their various nations, e.g. French, Spanish, German, British, etc.?

The Vogouls (3) Theology, eschatology

On the 14th of May [1692], he embarked at Solikamskoi, and crossing the little River of Usolkat, half a League from this City, he entered the Kama again, and crossed that River from Europe to Asia, arriving in the Country of the first Tartars of Siberia, called Wogulski, which is indifferently well people, and a most pleasant Country all along the Banks of the Susawaia, having on it all Sorts of Flowers and odoriferous Herbs; with prodigious Numbers of Deer, and all Sorts of Game. As the Tartars of Wogul upon this River are Heathens, he had the Curiosity to go on Shore to talk with them, concerning their Belief and Manner of Life. (...) M. Isbrant, the Muscovite Minister, asked them if they had any Knowledge of a God, and if they did not believe there was a supreme Being in Heaven, who created all Things, and governs the World by his good Providence, and who gives Rain and fair Weather? They answered, it was not unlikely, seeing the Sun and Moon, which they worshipped, and the other Stars, were placed in the Firmament, and that there was doubtless a Power that ruled them: But they would by no means agree, that there was a Devil, because he had never made himself known to them: Yet they do not deny the Resurrection of the Dead, but know nothing of what is to become of them.

John Mottley, The Life of Peter the Great, Emperor of all Russia. The second edition, with curious Copper Plates, and Maps. London. Printed for M. Cooper, in Pater-noster Row. 1755.

le cimetière oriental

Le cimetière oriental est une des belles choses de l'Orient. Il n'a pas ce caractère profondément agaçant que je trouve chez nous à ce genre d'établissement. Point de mur, point de fossé, point de séparation ni de clôture quelconque. Ça se trouve à propos de rien dans la campagne ou dans une ville, tout à coup et partout, comme la mort elle-même, à côté de la vie et sans qu'on y prenne garde. On traverse un cimetière comme on traverse un bazar. Toutes les tombes sont pareilles. Elles ne diffèrent que par l'ancienneté seulement. À mesure qu'elles vieillissent, elles s'enfoncent et disparaissent, comme fait le souvenir qu'on a des morts (dirait Chateaubriand). Les cyprès plantés en ces lieux sont gigantesques. Ça donne au site un jour vert plein de tranquillité.

Gustave Flaubert, À Louis Bouilhet, Constantinople, 14 novembre 1850

three exclamations

Mets ton masque Sokolov, que tes fermentations anaérobies fassent éclater les tubas de ta renommée et que tes vents irrépressibles transforment abscisses et ordonnées en de sublimes anamorphoses!

Don your mask, Sokolov, that your anaerobic fermentations may set the tubas of your fame blaring and that your irrepressible flatus may transform abscissae and ordinates into sublime anamorphoses!

[...]

Vente, Sokolov, sur ce monde luxueux et dérisoire, et quand dans ces miroirs brisés par tes tracés se dessinent en surimpression les nymphettes se refaisant les lèvres, que ton ubiquité soit le reflet multiplié des vices de la terre. Ô Sokolov, ton hyperacousie fait sursauter ta main. Regarde aux hublots de ton masque embués par ta fièvre paludéenne et créatrice se dessiner épures et graphiques tandis qu'oscilloscopes cathodiques et vu-mètres vascillent, serpentent et fluorescent sur les atonalités de Berg et Schönberg dont le dodécaphonisme s'allie à tes gaz contrapuntiques!

Flatulate, Sokolov, at this opulent and derisory world, and when in these mirrors shattered by your skidmarks there coalesces an overlay of nymphettes redoing their lips, may your ubiquity be the multiplied reflection of the world's vices. O, Sokolov, your hyperacousia causes your hand to flinch. Peer through the goggles of your gas mask misted by your malarial and creative fever to draw preliminary sketches and diagrams while the cathodic oscilloscopes and VU meters flicker, snake and glow to the atonalities of Berg and Schönberg whose twelve-tones combine with your contrapuntal gases!

[...]

Tu as vécu Sokolov, me disais-je en inhalant mes gaz, tu as vécu ton inavouable destin. Mais que craindrais-tu de la mort, toi qui ne fus ta vie durant que ferments et putréfactions, signalés, codifiés, séismographiés à jamais par ta main prophetique!

You have lived, Sokolov, I said to myself as I inhaled my own gas, you have lived out your shameful destiny. But why should you fear death, you whose whole life was nothing but ferment and putrefaction, revealed, codified and seismographed by none other than your own prophetic hand!

Serge Gainsbourg, Evguénie Sokolov. Récit, Paris: Gallimard, 1980

Thibault

Mais bientôt les bizarreries s’accusèrent davantage, et il devenait parfois difficile de les excuser, car elles sortaient du domaine de la pensée pour entrer dans le domaine de l’action. Des soins éclairés devinrent nécessaires, à la grande indignation de Gérard [de Nerval], car il ne concevait pas que des médecins s’occupassent de lui parce qu’il s’était promené dans le Palais-Royal, traînant un homard en vie au bout d’une faveur bleue. « En quoi, disait-il, un homard est-il plus ridicule qu’un chien, qu’un chat, qu’une gazelle, qu’un lion ou toute autre bête dont on se fait suivre? J’ai le goût des homards, qui sont tranquilles, sérieux, savent les secrets de la mer, n’aboient pas et n’avalent pas la monade des gens comme les chiens, si antipathiques à Goethe lequel pourtant n’était pas fou. » Et mille autre raisons plus ingénieuses les unes que les autres.

Théophile Gautier, Portraits et souvenirs littéraires, G. Charpentier, Paris, 1881, p. 40

Then, suddenly aware of her hideous equipment: "What are you going to do?" he cried.

"Boil the beast," she said, "what else?"

"But it's not dead" protested Belacqua "you can't boil it like that."

She looked at him in astonishment. Had he taken leave of his senses?

"Have sense" she said sharply, "lobsters are always boiled alive. They must be." She caught up the lobster and laid it on its back. It trembled. "They feel nothing" she said.

In the depths of the sea it had crept into the cruel pot. For hours, in the midst of its enemies, it had breathed secretly. It had survived the Frenchwoman's cat and his witless clutch. Now it was going alive into scalding water. It had to. Take into the air my quiet breath.

Belacqua looked at the old parchment of her face, grey in the dim kitchen.

"You make a fuss" she said angrily "and upset me and then lash into it for your dinner."

She lifted the lobster clear of the table. It had about thirty seconds to live.

Well, thought Belacqua, it's a quick death, God help us all.

It is not.

Samuel Becket, "Dante and the Lobster", More Pricks Than Kicks (1934), The Grove Centenary Edition, Vol. 4, Poems, Short Fiction, Criticism, ed. Paul Auster, Grove Press, New York, 2006, pp. 87-88.

Latmia saxa

Politian (Angelo de'Ambrosini da Monte Pulciano) (1454-1494)

O mihi quanta datis fallacia gaudia, somni!
Invideo, Endymion, Latmia saxa tibi.
Iam si nil sopor est gelidae nisi mortis imago,
Omnia mors superat gaudia: vita, vale.

Oh, slumbers, how many illusive joys you give me! / I envy thee, Endymion, thy Latmian* rocks. / And if sleep is nought but the image of frigid death, / Then death doth surpass all other joys: life, farewell.

* Latmus, a mountain at the mouth of the Maeander, in Caria, where the Moon descended to kiss the sleeping Endymion

Tute, si recte vixeris

Aeschylus in Sicilia moenibus urbis, in qua morabatur, egressus, aprico in loco resedit: super quem aquila testudinem ferens, elusa splendore capitis (erat enim capillis vacuum) perinde atque lapidi eam collisit, ut fractae carne vesceretur: eoque ictu origo et principium fortioris tragoediae extinctum est.

La Mort est inévitable.

Ne crois pas éviter la mort,
Que la Loy divine t’apprête;
Car si ton propre toit ne t’écrase la tête,
Le toit d’un étranger accomplira le sort.

Othonis Vaeni [Otto van Veen's] Emblemata Horatiana (1684)

De poenarum tartarearum latitudine

Etenim oculi, qui nunc colorum venustatem, concinnasque membrorum symmetrias studiose demirantur, multaque quae referre non lubet, nec licet, curiose simul et exitiose observant, tunc solis, lunae, caeterorumque astrorum splendore, suavissima Christi et Sanctorum omnium visione, omni denique quod oculorum sensum quoquo modo capere aut oblectare queat privati, tenebris, fletu, fumo, terrifioque daemonum et impiorum aspectu vehementissime offendentur. Aures, quae vocanti Christo male nunc occluduntur, diaboli suggestionibus late panduntur, musicis numeris ad ciendam voluptatem comparatis distenduntur, ineptas nugatorum facetias, facetasque ineptias, adulatores rursum, alienaeque famae corrosores avide excipiunt, quaeque miserorum clamoribus et fletibus, vivificoque Dei verbo fastidito, ad inanes fabulas se se convertunt, horribili impiorum clamore, ulutata, fletu, planctu, gemitu, suspiriis, maledictis, blasphemisque vocibus mire tunc obtundentur. [...] Gustatus, qui esculentis et poculentis plusque Sibariticis hic male sese oblectarat, quotidie splendide epulando, immoderateque helluando, omni cibariorum et potionum suavitate orbatus, perpetua isthic siti et fame excarnificabitur, aut certe felle et absynthio ex[s]atiabitur. [...] Odoratus, qui exquisitissimis aromatum et unguentorum odoribus hic ad luxum et lasciviam abutebatur, teterrimo foetore isthic affligetur. [...] Ad tactum quod spectat, ut is unus omnium latissime patet, ita ei nusquam non, unde offendi queat, ocurret. Nec impiorum corpora solum enim erunt segnia, crassa, obscura, foetida, deformiaque, verum etiam maxime patibilia. At vero sensuum exteriorum poenae, ad sensum communem, phantasiam, aestimativam, memoriam, caeterasque omnes tam organicas, quam inorganicas animae vires ordine quodam penetrantes atrocissimos isthic cruciatus excitaturae sunt.

Theodor Anton Peltanus, De Inferno et miserando impiorum statu (1569)

Truly, the eyes, which now eagerly marvel at the loveliness of colours and the pleasing symmetries of the limbs, which inquisitively yet perniciously gaze upon many things neither permissible nor decent to mention, but which then shall be bereft of the radiance of sun, moon and other stars, of the most sweet sight of Christ and all the Saints, and, in short, of all that the eyesight might seize upon or delight in howsoever, will be most violently assailed by darkness, lamentation, smoke, and the fearful sight of demons and sinners. The ears, which now are evilly shut to the call of Christ, which yawn wide to the insinuations of the devil, which gape to musical measures composed in order to excite lascivious pleasure, which avidly listen to the absurd witticisms of idle speeches, inane jokes, flatterers and those who gnaw away at others’ reputation, and which turn aside in disgust from the life-giving word of God, preferring vain stories, will then be deafened by the dreadful clamour of sinners, by wailing, lamenting, weeping, groaning, sighing, cursing and blaspheming voices. [...] The taste, which here evilly delights in Sybaritic foods and beverages, every day feasting ostentatiously, gormandising immoderately, there, deprived of the sweetness of nourishment and drink, shall be perpetually emaciated with thirst and hunger, or else glutted on gall and wormwood. [...] The smell, which here abuses the exquisite scents of perfumes and unguents for purposes of luxury and lust, there shall be afflicted with a most noisome stench. [...] With regard to touch, as this is the broadest of all [the senses] in extent, there will be no place it might run whence not to suffer mortification. Not only will sinners’ bodies be sluggish, heavy, darksome, foetid, and misshapen, but also sensitive to pain in the highest degree. And indeed the punishments of the external senses, penetrating in turn to the sensus communis, phantasia, instinctive judgement ([vis] aestimativa), memory and all the other faculties of the soul, both organic and inorganic, will in that place rouse unrelenting torments.

An Tartarus sit aliquid, utrum vero nihil?

Q. An Tartarus sit aliquid, utrum vero nihil?

R. Est aliquid nempe locus cruciatus Luc. 6 [sic.]. Est nihil de quo Plato in Phaedone. Sic ᾅδης est aliquid; ut cum dicitur, descendit ἐις ᾅδην. Est etiam nihil: ut fingitur esse domus Plutonis. Plasmata enim rationis, quae Aristot. opponit πράγμασιν, referimus ad nihil.

Rodolphus Goclenius, Disputatio de nihilo, quae non est de nihilo,
vagans per omnes disciplinas

Q. Whether Tartarus is something or in fact nothing

A. The place of torment is surely something (Luke [16.23]). It is the nothing about which Plato [tells] in the Phaedo. Thus ᾅδης [Hades] is something; as when it is said, he descended ἐις ᾅδην [into Hades]. It is also nothing: as it is imagined to be the house of Pluto. For, the fictions of reasoning, which Aristotle opposed πράγμασιν [to concrete realities], we ascribe to nothing.

A streame of brimstone

That then there is damnation, and why it is, and when it is, is cleare enough; but what this damnation is, neither the tongue of good Angels that know damnation by the contrary, by fruition of salvation, nor the tongue of bad Angels who know damnation by a lamentable experience, is able to expresse it; A man may saile so at sea, as that he shall have laid the North Pole flat, that shall be fallen out of sight, and yet he shall not have raised the South Pole, he shall not see that; So there are things, in which a man may goe beyond his reason, and yet not meet with faith neither: of such a kinde are those things which concerne the locality of hell, and the materiality of the torments thereof; for that hell is a certaine and limited place, beginning here and ending there, and extending no farther, or that the torments of hell be materiall, or elementary torments, which in naturall consideration can have no proportion, no affection, nor appliablenesse to the tormenting of a sprit, these things neither settle my reason, nor binde my faith; neither opinion, that it is, or is not so, doth command our reason so, but that probable reasons may be brought on the other side; neither opinion doth so command our faith, but that a man may be saved, though hee thinke the contrary; for in such points, it is alwaies lawfull to thinke so, as we finde does most advance and exalt our owne devotion, and Gods glory in our estimation; but when we shall have given to those words, by which hell is expressed in the Scriptures, the heaviest significations, that either the nature of those words can admit, or as they are types and representations of hell, as fire, and brimstone, and weeping, and gnashing, and darknesse, and the worme, and as they are laid together in the Prophet, Tophet, (that is, hell) is deepe and large, (there is the capacity and content, roome enough) It is a pile of fire and much wood, (there is the durablenesse of it) and the breath of the Lord to kindle it, like a streame of Brimstone, (there is the vehemence of it:) when all is done, the hell of hels, the torment of torments is the everlasting absence of God, and the everlasting impossibility of returning to his presence.

John Donne, sermon Preached to the Earle of Carlile and his company, at Sion [? 1622], Mark 16:16 "He that beleeveth not, shall be damned"

Fresco in the porch of the Church of St. Nicholas - Udricani (1735), Bucharest

Dorotheos of Gaza on encystment within the passions

Doctrina XII, De timore et poenis inferni (Migne, Patrologia Graeca, 88, 1752)

Through the body, the soul is distracted from its passions and is comforted, it eats, drinks, lays itself down to rest, keeps company, finds diversion in loved ones. But when it goes out of the body, the soul remains alone with its passions, and ultimately it is tormented by them forever, dwelling upon them, consumed with their agitation, rent asunder by them, so that it is no longer able to remember God. For remembrance of God comforts the soul, as it says in the psalm: I remembered God and was gladdened [Ps. 76:4]. But the passions do not allow the soul even this. Will you learn by a parable what it is I say? Let one of you go and shut himself up alone in a dark cell, and for three days let him not eat, drink, lay himself down to rest, meet anyone, sing psalms, pray, or remember God in any wise. Then shall he learn what the passions do to him. And this while he is yet here, but how much more so after the soul goes out of the body, and will have given itself up to the passions and will be alone with them.

Hê thlipsis hê aporrhêtos

As to those that fall away from God, I wonder where it is they exist, those that are far removed from Him that is everywhere, and verily, O brothers, is it a wonder full of great trembling, one that requires the reasoning of an illumined mind,



in order properly to understand this thing and not to fall into heresy as a result of ignorance of the words of the Holy Ghost. They, too, will wholly have existence within the universe, but outside of the divine light and even outside of God.



For, just as those that cannot see the shining sun, although they are wholly bathed in its light, end their days outside of the light, severed from any sense or sight of it, so too in this universe is the divine light of the Trinity,



and in its midst the sinners that are enclosed in darkness, unseeing, bereft of any divine sense, but consumed and chastised by their conscience, will know for all eternity unspeakable affliction and ineffable pain.

St. Symeon the New Theologian, Hymns, I, 215-231

(English translation: Alistair Ian Blyth)

Two sub-hells: Nyôfunjo and Nôketsujo

Depiction of the torments of the damned in the Buddhist sub-hell of Nyôfunjo (Dung Pit), or the shifunsho (place of excrement), one of the paintings in the Jigokuzôshi (Illustrated Stories of Hell) found in a Heian period (794-1185) emakimono (picture scroll) kept in the Nara National Museum ("Genkahon"; height 26.66 cm, length 433.42 cm). The text of the emakimono describes the sins and the torments of those who wallow in the Dung Pit as follows:

While these men lived, they considered dirty what in reality was not; they also considered clean what was not, due to the foolishness of their heart. (...) The pit in which they are is deep, and they are sunk in it up to their necks; it smells very bad there. This filth is beyond comparison with anything of this world, and the pains of the damned are unbearable.

(translated by Fernando G. Guttiérez, "Emakimono Depicting the Pains of the Damned," Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 22, No. 3/4 (1967), p. 285)

The scroll also illustrates the sub-hell called Nôketsujo (Place of Pus and Blood):

Those who suffer eternal anguish therein are said to have been of foolish heart and wicked intent during their lives, and to have forced others to eat filthy things:

This is why they are in hell now. An enormous amount of pus fills this place up to the mouth and nose of the damned. There are also terrible insects called Saimôshô that devour the damned to the marrow of their bones, and break their tendons. It is impossible to describe how terrible this pain is.

(translated by Fernando G. Guttiérez, "Emakimono Depicting the Pains of the Damned," Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 22, No. 3/4 (1967), p. 286)

Irremediableness

I fall sick of Sin, and am bedded and bedrid, buried and putrified in the practise of Sin, and all this while have no presage, no pulse, no sense of my sicknesse; O heighth, O depth of misery, where the first Symptome of the sicknes is Hell, and where I never see the fever of lust, of envy, of ambition, by any other light, than the darknesse and horror of Hell it selfe; and where the first Messenger that speaks to me doth not say, Thou mayest die, no, nor Thou must die, but Thou art dead: and where the first notice, that my Soule hath of her sicknes, is irrecoverablenes, iremediablenes.

John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624), Expostulation 1

Петрополь / Petropol / Petropolis

Осип Мандельштам Osip Mandelștam

Мне холодно. Прозрачная весна
В зеленый пух Петрополь одевает,
Но, как медуза, невская волна
Мне отвращенье легкое внушает.
По набережной северной реки
Автомобилей мчатся светляки.
Летят стрекозы и жуки стальные,
Мерцают звезд булавки золотые,
Но никакие звезды не убьют
Морской воды тяжелый измуруд.


Îmi este frig. Primăvara străvezie
Îmbracă Petropolul în scame verzi,
Însă, ca o meduză, a Nevei undă
Mă cuprinde cu lehamite ușoară.
Pe splaiul fluviului septentrional
Farurile automobilelor gonesc,
Zboară libelule și gîndaci de oțel,
Gămăliile stelelor sclipesc aurii,
Însă nici o stea nu va putea omorî
Smaraldul greoi al apei marine.

*

В Петрополе прозрачном мы умрем,
Где властвует над нами Прозерпина.
Мы в каждом вздохе смертный воздух пьем,
И каждый час нам смертная година.
Богиня моря, грозная Афина,
Сними могучий каменный шелом.
В Петрополе прозрачном мы умрем, -
Здесь царствуешь не ты, а Прозерпина.

1916
În Petropol străveziu vom muri,
Unde Proserpina domnește peste noi,
Cu fiece suflare suflul morții bem,
Și fiece ceas ne este sorocul morții,
Zeiță a mării, strașnică Atenă,
Scoate-ți puternicul coif de piatră,
În Petropol străveziu vom muri, -
Aici domnești nu tu, ci Proserpina.

traducere de Alistair Ian Blyth

Note toward the "Malbrough theme" (тема Мальбрука)

Johannes Ravisius, in his Officinae epitome (Seb. Gryphius: Lyon, 1560), gives an extensive catalogue of famous cases of unnatural death recorded in classical antiquity. These include those who met their ends by fever (Febre mortui); by apoplexy (Apoplexia mortui); by bleeding to death (Sanguinis fluxu mortui); by the gout (Podagra [mortui]); by dysentery (Dysenteria [mortui]); by drowning (Aquis submersi); by falling off horses (Equorum lapsu mortui); killed by snakes (A serpentibus occisi), lions (A leonibus occisi), or dogs (A canibus occisi); suffocated by smoke or steam (Fumo aut vaporibus suffocati); dying of merriment and laughter (Gaudio et risu mortui); engaged in a sexual act (In venereo actu mortui); by excessive eating and drinking (Cibo et potu nimio mortui); by hunger and thirst (Siti et fame mortui); struck by lightning (Fulminati seu fulmine percussi); swallowed up by the earth (Terra absorpti); etc. etc.

Ravisius also dedicates a short section (vol. 1, p. 93) to those who died or were slain in the privy (In latrinis mortui aut occisi). In fact, the cases cited all involve murder: Heliogabalus and Cneius Carbo were assassinated while in the jakes at stool; Foelicula, Valerianus, Ireneus, and Abundius were Christian martyrs whose torments culminated in them being thrust down a latrine (in cloacam detrudi).

The subsection "In latrinis mortui aut occisi" is cited by the anonymous authors of Bibliotheca Scatologica (Scatopolis [Paris]: Chez les marchands d'aniterges, l'année scatogène, 5850 [1849], p. 17), who approve "avec plaisir" the mention of debauched third-century Roman emperor Heliogabalus (Elagabalus), but are surprised at the omission of fourth-century heresiarch Arius (perhaps the most notorious case of death in the latrine recorded in history). Moreover, they regret the fact that Ravisius did not also provide a list of famous figures born in a privy: "Ravisius aurait dû donner la liste des hommes célébres qui sont nés là où les précédents sont morts, et il est à regretter qu'il ne l'ait pas fait"

In Histoire de la merde (Paris, 1978), Dominique Laporte, evidently without having consulted Ravisius, and relying on a cursory reading of the entry in Bibliotheca Scatologica, unwittingly creates an apocryphal tome dedicated to the subject of death (and birth) in the privy:

The stercus could be as much a principle of life as death. The literal resonance of this belief is illustrated by Gryphius's work [Gryphius is, in fact, the publisher, not the author -- my note], In latrinis mortui et occisi, from 1593, in which the author proposes nothing less than a comprehensive census of eminent men and women who were born or died in infamous places -- namely, in latrines.

History of Shit, trans. Nadia Benabid and Rodolphe el-Khoury, MIT Press: Cambridge Mass., 2002, pp. 36-7

The concept of stercus as a principle of life and death of course derives from Mikhail Bakhtin's theories of the carnivalesque, in which death and defecation are fundamentally ambivalent, implying not corruption and destruction, as in the moralising view of life, but rather regeneration and rebirth. For Bakhtin, carnivalesque representation of the evacuations of the “material-corporeal substratum” (material'no-telesnyj niz) is a liberating debasement (sniženie) of fear and death. The ‘Malbrough theme’ (tema Mal'bruka) is the term he uses to denote those instances in literature or folklore where the moment of death coincides with the act of defecation (ispražnenie) or breaking wind (ispuskanie vetrov). The throes of death, childbirth and defecation are interwoven in the carnivalesque continuum. As an important variant of the theme Bakhtin also mentions involuntary defecation provoked by terror, by the throes of fear (Tvorčestvo Fransua Rable i narodnaja kul'tura srednevekovaja i Renessanca, Xudožestvennaja literatura: Moscow, 1965; 2nd edition, 1990, p. 167-8).

For Bakhtin the Malbrough theme in particular and scatological images more generally are intrinsically linked with the image of the underworld (s obrazom preispodnej). Within the order of the carnivalesque cosmos, the material-corporeal substratum is contiguous with the bowels of hell. However, again, in this context Bakhtin, like Ravisius, omits to mention what was probably the most famous instance of the "Malbrough theme" in the ancient and mediaeval world after that of the Emperor Claudius, namely the death of Arius, the originator of the heresy that the Son of God was a created being subordinate to the Father, condemned by the Ecumenical Council at Nicea in the year 325. Indeed, "the strange and horrid circumstances of [Arius's] death", as Edward Gibbon puts it in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (cap. 21), were decisive in the defeat of Arianism, and seen as divine intervention. The sceptical Gibbon concludes that "those who press the literal narrative of the death of Arius (his bowels suddenly burst out in a privy) must make their option between poison and miracle."

Arius

Fifth-century Constantinopolitan church historian Socrates Scholasticus describes Arius's demise as follows:

On approaching the place called Constantine's Forum, where the column of porphyry is erected, a terror arising from the consciousness of his wickedness seized him, accompanied by violent relaxation of the bowels: he therefore inquired whether there was a convenient place near, and being directed to the back of Constantine's Forum, he hastened thither. Soon after a faintness came over him, and together with the evacuations of his bowels protruded, followed by a copious haemorrhage, and the descent of the smaller intestines: moreover portions of his spleen and liver were brought off in the effusion of blood, so that he almost immediately died. The scene of this catastrophe still exists at Constantinople, behind the shambles in the piazza: and by persons going by pointing the finger at the place, there is a perpetual remembrance preserved of this extraordinary kind of death. So disastrous an occurrence filled with dread and alarm the party of Eusebius bishop of Nicomedia; and the report of it quickly spread itself over the city and throughout the whole world. The verity of the Nicene faith being thus miraculously confirmed by the testimony of God himself, the emperor adhered still more zealously to Christianity.

The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates, anonymous translator, London 1853, p. 78

The death of Arius combines the main elements of the Malbrough theme: death during defecation; defecation caused by terror. However, its eschatological import could not be farther removed from Bakhtin's concept of the Rabelaisian grotesque. The hellish eruption of Arius's bowels is an image and consequence of the infernal origin of his heretical doctrine. It is ambivalent in that is a divine epiphany, but one of the intestinal, infernal underbelly, devoid (voided) of the fertilising, regenerative virtue and merry carnivalesque ambivalence that characterises the "Malbrough theme".

(c) Alistair Ian Blyth, Bucharest, 2009