Welcome to Death a la John Donne and the Renaissance mind -- a world of psychological paranoia juxtaposed with resigned mortality and a sense of utter doom. In Ecclesiastes (Yes, the book of the Bible you heathen) the preacher cries "Vanity! All is vanity!" -- Literally, in Hebrew, vanity refers to chaff in the wind. (And before you go calling me a Bible-banger, I'm not even baptised, not that it's any of your affair.) Also, vanus in Latin means empty or vain, and the word is of the same origin as wane (as in the moon) from Old English wanian. Why do I bother you ask? Well, word etymology fascinates me, and I use it at parties to win friends and influence people! But more importantly for my study of Donne and death during this period, I am interested in clues that will help me understand what people thought about death in the Renaissance. And if etymology can help, I'm for it.

My assumption is that your average 16th century plunker had a much more real grasp of death than we do today. Don't forget, the plague of 1603 wiped out a third of the population of London alone. Imagine, bodies everywhere! "Bring out your dead!" is not just a Monty Python line. One day you'd be running a slight fever and start developing a nasty case of hive-like "poseys", (yes, of the ring-around variety), the next you'd find yourself being heaved onto a cart, deader than Dixie (no offense intended). We lead a much more sheltered existence in this day and age, my friends.

Listen to this passage from Meditation 1 (the very beginning) of John Donne's Devotions:

Variable, and therfore miserable condition of Man; this minute I was well, and am ill, this minute. I am surpriz'd with a sodaine change, and alteration to worse, and can impute it to no cause, nor call it by any name. We study Health, and we deliberate upon our meats, and drink, and Ayre, and exercises, and we hew and wee polish every stone, that goes to that building; and so our Health is a long and a regular work; But in a minute a Canon batters all, overthrowes all, demolishes all; a Sicknes unprevented for all our diligence, unsuspected for all our curiositie; nay, undeserved, if we consider only disorder, summons us, seizes us, possesses us, destroyes us in an instant. O miserable condition of Man....

I'm sure you get the picture! But, in case you don't:

So that now, we doe not onely die, but die upon the Rack, die by the torment of sicknesse; nor that onely, but are preafflicted, super-afflicted with these jelousies and suspitions, and apprehensions of Sicknes.... O multiplied misery! we die, and cannot enjoy death, because wee die in this torment of sicknes....

What?! Enjoy death? Where did that come from! My friends, we have only scratched the surface.

Here are some things I've been reading lately:

Bataille, Georges. Erotism: Death & Sensuality. Tr. Mary Dalwood. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1986.

Sawday, Jonathan. The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture. London: Routledge, 1996.

Williamson, George. "Mutability, Decay, and Seventeenth-Century Melancholy." ELH. 2(Sept. 1935): 121-50.

Shakespeare. Hamlet and Measure for Measure -- Two plays with incredible death references and insights.

Flachmann, Michael. His "Fitted for Death" article; I can't quite remember the citation. Incidentally, Michael oversaw my MA thesis when I was at the mighty Cal. State Univ. Bakersfield; he's brilliant.

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"M.O.A.I."

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