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The inevitability of death-that of others and our own-is surely among our greatest anxieties. Mortality's Muse: The Fine Art of Dying explores how art, mainly literary art, addresses that troubling reality. While religion and philosophy offer important consolations for life's end, art responds in ways that are perhaps more complete and certainly more deeply human. Among subjects treated: the ars moriendi or "art of dying" tradition; the contrast between past and more recent cultural values; the religious consolation's value but shortcoming for some people; the role of art in offering a secular consolation; dying as a performing art; the philosophic ideal of good death; the lively appeal of carpe diem or living for the present moment; the elegiac sense of life; and the two opposite parts Mortality's Muse has played in dealing with war, the most senseless and unnecessary cause of death.
The idea of an aesthetic sense of life forms the basis of these discussions. Human beings are makers in the largest sense of the word, and art represents everything they make-civilization itself with all its greatness and failings. Our civilization may ultimately be nothing but an evanescent blip in the cosmos. Even so, the creation of beauty, meaning, and purpose from disorder and suffering defines us as human beings. In the words of Robinson Jeffers, even if monuments eventually crumble and all art perish, yet for thousands of years carved stones have stood and "pained thoughts found the honey of peace in old poems."
List of contents
To the Reader
Preface: The Burden of Mortality
Chapter One: Two Cultures: One of Death and One of Life
A Culture of Death: Flesh in Decay
A Culture of Life: Flesh Forever Young
Between Two Worlds
Chapter Two: A Mighty Fortress is Our God: The Religious Consolation
Religious Belief
Worship and Prayer
Hell and Damnation
Imagine a Heaven
The Here and Now
Chapter Three: The Role of Art: The Secular Consolation
Poetry: Deceiver or Redeemer?
Tragic Art: Noble Suffering in Defeat
Tragic Art: Noble Suffering in Triumph
The Jester's Trump
A Muse of Many Faces
Art's Role
Chapter Four: Dying as a Performing Art
La Belle Mort
The Death of Jesus
The Death of Socrates
The Death of Charles I: Royal Martyr
David Hume's Own Death
Chapter Five: Partying Among the Tombs
Hedonism Among the Ancients
The Renaissance Flowering of Carpe Diem
The Genteel Carpe Diem of Victorian Britain
The Aging of Carpe Diem
Chapter Seven The Art of War
The Heroic Tradition
The Other Side of War
Choosing Sides
Conclusion: Last Words
Appendix: Recommended Reading
Bibliography
About the author
By D. T. Siebert
Summary
D.T. Siebert's Mortality's Muse demonstrates how art, literature in particular, addresses that most fundamental of human fears-mortal anxiety. Various aspects of culture and thought come into play: from the psychological, theological, and philosophical to the literary, all brought together under the idea and ideal of the aesthetic.
