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Diptych of Discourses #1
Urne Burial
Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are. Written after the discovery of over forty Bronze Age burial urns in seventeenth-century Norfolk, Sir Thomas Browne's profound consideration of the inevitability of death remains one of the most fascinating and poignant of all reflections upon the vanity of mankind's lust for immortality.
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1658
About the author
Thomas Browne
467 books115 followersSir Thomas Browne (1605–1682) was an English polymath and author of works on various subjects, including science, medicine, religion and esoteric.
Browne's writings display a deep curiosity towards the natural world, influenced by the scientific revolution of Baconian enquiry. Browne's literary works are permeated by references to Classical and Biblical sources as well as the idiosyncrasies of his own personality. Although often described as suffering from melancholia, his writings are also characterised by wit and subtle humour, while his literary style is varied, according to genre, resulting in a rich, unique prose which ranges from rough notebook observations to polished Baroque eloquence.
After graduating M.A. from Broadgates Hall, Oxford (1629), he studied medicine privately and worked as an assistant to an Oxford doctor. He then attended the Universities of Montpellier and Padua, and in 1633 he was graduated M.D. at Leiden.
Browne's medical education in Europe also earned him incorporation as M.D. from Oxford, and in 1637 he moved to Norwich, where he lived and practiced medicine until his death in 1682. While Browne seems to have had a keen intellect and was interested in many subjects, his life was outwardly uneventful, although during the Civil War he declared his support for King Charles I and received a knighthood from King Charles II in 1671.
Browne's writings display a deep curiosity towards the natural world, influenced by the scientific revolution of Baconian enquiry. Browne's literary works are permeated by references to Classical and Biblical sources as well as the idiosyncrasies of his own personality. Although often described as suffering from melancholia, his writings are also characterised by wit and subtle humour, while his literary style is varied, according to genre, resulting in a rich, unique prose which ranges from rough notebook observations to polished Baroque eloquence.
After graduating M.A. from Broadgates Hall, Oxford (1629), he studied medicine privately and worked as an assistant to an Oxford doctor. He then attended the Universities of Montpellier and Padua, and in 1633 he was graduated M.D. at Leiden.
Browne's medical education in Europe also earned him incorporation as M.D. from Oxford, and in 1637 he moved to Norwich, where he lived and practiced medicine until his death in 1682. While Browne seems to have had a keen intellect and was interested in many subjects, his life was outwardly uneventful, although during the Civil War he declared his support for King Charles I and received a knighthood from King Charles II in 1671.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 65 reviews
June 5, 2013
This was the book that got me hooked on Sir Thomas Browne. I bought it at random in 2007 in Bluewater, and sat in the food court waiting for my girlfriend to finish shopping, and I vividly remember how stunned with pleasure I was from reading the following sentence:
I repeated it excitedly to Hannah and her friend when they got back (in fact I was babbling ‘conclude in a moist relentment!’ for days), but sadly it didn't seem to meet with general approval. The whole essay is a masterpiece of this kind of writing – baroque sentences, crafted with extreme care and absolute precision, guided by a strange and unusual mind.
It's essentially a meditation on the inevitability of death, which Browne was moved to write after the discovery of some Bronze Age urns in a nearby archaeological dig. I know that sounds like the kind of morbid philosophising that's been done a hundred times before and since, but it's never been done with such an overpowering air of melancholy intelligence. It's never been expressed like this. Browne is one of the greatest prose writers the English language has ever known; even for his time (and he was a contemporary of Shakespeare) he stands out as exceptional. For a reader like me, who adores rococo clauses full of unusual vocabulary choices, this kind of thing is like crack. Among the words I learnt from Urne-Burial are exility, testaceous, incrassate, exenteration, incremable, arefaction, exsuccous, archimime, diuturnity and decretory. Take me now.
The very brief Note which precedes the essay in this slim Penguin edition says reassuringly: ‘Even in his lifetime Browne's allusions and vocabulary must have offered challenges, but then as now the rewards are very great.’ Hear, hear. For me this is one of those perfect gems of English literature that you're thrilled to discover, and annoyed that no one told you about sooner.
Some being of the opinion of Thales, that water was the originall of all things, thought it most equall to submit unto the principle of putrefaction, and conclude in a moist relentment.
I repeated it excitedly to Hannah and her friend when they got back (in fact I was babbling ‘conclude in a moist relentment!’ for days), but sadly it didn't seem to meet with general approval. The whole essay is a masterpiece of this kind of writing – baroque sentences, crafted with extreme care and absolute precision, guided by a strange and unusual mind.
It's essentially a meditation on the inevitability of death, which Browne was moved to write after the discovery of some Bronze Age urns in a nearby archaeological dig. I know that sounds like the kind of morbid philosophising that's been done a hundred times before and since, but it's never been done with such an overpowering air of melancholy intelligence. It's never been expressed like this. Browne is one of the greatest prose writers the English language has ever known; even for his time (and he was a contemporary of Shakespeare) he stands out as exceptional. For a reader like me, who adores rococo clauses full of unusual vocabulary choices, this kind of thing is like crack. Among the words I learnt from Urne-Burial are exility, testaceous, incrassate, exenteration, incremable, arefaction, exsuccous, archimime, diuturnity and decretory. Take me now.
The very brief Note which precedes the essay in this slim Penguin edition says reassuringly: ‘Even in his lifetime Browne's allusions and vocabulary must have offered challenges, but then as now the rewards are very great.’ Hear, hear. For me this is one of those perfect gems of English literature that you're thrilled to discover, and annoyed that no one told you about sooner.
October 8, 2013
Best free online version to be found, printed and read here:
http://www.luminarium.org/renascence-...
Of course, one could also simply purchase his complete works...hint hint...
He is, as Mr Gass has pointed out, one of the true high points of English prose. And, on top of that, this text itself is fascinating and, in many ways, deeply moving in its analysis.
He shows us what this rude, crude and battered language was once capable of.
And, simply to share and wallow in beauty, there is this:
Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man. Twenty-seven names make up the first story and the recorded names ever since contain not one living century. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the equinox? Every hour adds unto that current arithmetick, which scarce stands one moment. And since death must be the Lucina of life, and even Pagans6 could doubt, whether thus to live were to die; since our longest sun sets at right descensions, and makes but winter arches, and therefore it cannot be long before we lie down in darkness, and have our light in ashes; since the brother of death daily haunts us with dying mementoes, and time that grows old in itself, bids us hope no long duration;--diuturnity is a dream and folly of expectation.
Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce callosities; miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days, and, our delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions. A great part of antiquity contented their hopes of subsistency with a transmigration of their souls,--a good way to continue their memories, while having the advantage of plural successions, they could not but act something remarkable in such variety of beings, and enjoying the fame of their passed selves, make accumulation of glory unto their last durations. Others, rather than be lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing, were content to recede into the common being, and make one particle of the public soul of all things, which was no more than to return into their unknown and divine original again. Egyptian ingenuity was more unsatisfied, contriving their bodies in sweet consistences, to attend the return of their souls. But all is vanity, feeding the wind, and folly. Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise, Mizraim, cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams.
In vain do individuals hope for immortality, or any patent from oblivion, in preservations below the moon; men have been deceived even in their flatteries, above the sun, and studied conceits to perpetuate their names in heaven. The various cosmography of that part hath already varied the names of contrived constellations; Nimrod is lost in Orion, and Osyris in the Dog-star. While we look for incorruption in the heavens, we find that they are but like the earth;--durable in their main bodies, alterable in their parts; whereof, beside comets and new stars, perspectives begin to tell tales, and the spots that wander about the sun, with Phæton's favour, would make clear conviction.
There is nothing strictly immortal, but immortality. Whatever hath no beginning, may be confident of no end;--all others have a dependent being and within the reach of destruction;--which is the peculiar of that necessary essence that cannot destroy itself;--and the highest strain of omnipotency, to be so powerfully constituted as not to suffer even from the power of itself. But the sufficiency of Christian immortality frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either state after death, makes a folly of posthumous memory. God who can only destroy our souls, and hath assured our resurrection, either of our bodies or names hath directly promised no duration. Wherein there is so much of chance, that the boldest expectants have found unhappy frustration; and to hold long subsistence, seems but a scape in oblivion. But man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of his nature.
Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us. A small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after death, while men vainly affected precious pyres, and to burn like Sardanapalus; but the wisdom of funeral laws found the folly of prodigal blazes and reduced undoing fires unto the rule of sober obsequies, wherein few could be so mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a mourner, and an urn.
http://www.luminarium.org/renascence-...
Of course, one could also simply purchase his complete works...hint hint...
He is, as Mr Gass has pointed out, one of the true high points of English prose. And, on top of that, this text itself is fascinating and, in many ways, deeply moving in its analysis.
He shows us what this rude, crude and battered language was once capable of.
And, simply to share and wallow in beauty, there is this:
Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man. Twenty-seven names make up the first story and the recorded names ever since contain not one living century. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the equinox? Every hour adds unto that current arithmetick, which scarce stands one moment. And since death must be the Lucina of life, and even Pagans6 could doubt, whether thus to live were to die; since our longest sun sets at right descensions, and makes but winter arches, and therefore it cannot be long before we lie down in darkness, and have our light in ashes; since the brother of death daily haunts us with dying mementoes, and time that grows old in itself, bids us hope no long duration;--diuturnity is a dream and folly of expectation.
Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce callosities; miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days, and, our delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions. A great part of antiquity contented their hopes of subsistency with a transmigration of their souls,--a good way to continue their memories, while having the advantage of plural successions, they could not but act something remarkable in such variety of beings, and enjoying the fame of their passed selves, make accumulation of glory unto their last durations. Others, rather than be lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing, were content to recede into the common being, and make one particle of the public soul of all things, which was no more than to return into their unknown and divine original again. Egyptian ingenuity was more unsatisfied, contriving their bodies in sweet consistences, to attend the return of their souls. But all is vanity, feeding the wind, and folly. Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise, Mizraim, cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams.
In vain do individuals hope for immortality, or any patent from oblivion, in preservations below the moon; men have been deceived even in their flatteries, above the sun, and studied conceits to perpetuate their names in heaven. The various cosmography of that part hath already varied the names of contrived constellations; Nimrod is lost in Orion, and Osyris in the Dog-star. While we look for incorruption in the heavens, we find that they are but like the earth;--durable in their main bodies, alterable in their parts; whereof, beside comets and new stars, perspectives begin to tell tales, and the spots that wander about the sun, with Phæton's favour, would make clear conviction.
There is nothing strictly immortal, but immortality. Whatever hath no beginning, may be confident of no end;--all others have a dependent being and within the reach of destruction;--which is the peculiar of that necessary essence that cannot destroy itself;--and the highest strain of omnipotency, to be so powerfully constituted as not to suffer even from the power of itself. But the sufficiency of Christian immortality frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either state after death, makes a folly of posthumous memory. God who can only destroy our souls, and hath assured our resurrection, either of our bodies or names hath directly promised no duration. Wherein there is so much of chance, that the boldest expectants have found unhappy frustration; and to hold long subsistence, seems but a scape in oblivion. But man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of his nature.
Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us. A small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after death, while men vainly affected precious pyres, and to burn like Sardanapalus; but the wisdom of funeral laws found the folly of prodigal blazes and reduced undoing fires unto the rule of sober obsequies, wherein few could be so mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a mourner, and an urn.
March 7, 2023
This sounded interesting but I just found it to be tediously boring. Read the majority of the book except the last pages as I just didn't want to read anymore.
November 3, 2014
This little book does double duty: first, it gives me a pocket-sized bit of Browne to carry around should I ever need to ponder death, fame, legacy and salvation. Of this I have little to say, except that it's just as good as people say stylistically, and a bit better than they say in content (i.e., this is not teenage nihilism), unless you're the kind of person who assumes that if a good writer disagrees with you, s/he is obviously being ironic.
Second, it gave me a tiny bit of Sebald at the start. I've read one and a half of Sebald's books; one was nothing special the other was utter guff. And here we have some more guff. The difference between Sebald (and other writers like him, including even some I quite like--I'm looking at you, Marias, and your 'Dark Back of Time') and Browne is that Sir Thomas takes an event in the real world to ponder things of immediate importance to most people (here, death, fame, legacy, salvation), and also consider what previous very smart people have actually said about it. A Sebald takes an event in his mind as an opportunity to ponder events that happened to himself, and also to make up stuff that could hypothetically have happened but almost certainly did not (Browne attending the dissection painted by Rembrandt), which can then help him make a point that is either obvious or uninteresting (to me).
I know this is a thing that people do right now: look at this coincidence! How fascinating! Isn't life sad? But if the coincidence probably didn't happened, and you're not interested in the 'fascinating' thing (e.g., dissection), and you don't think life is sad, this kind of essayism has nothing to offer you other than style.
Conclusion:
I'd rather read Browne than Sebald.
Second, it gave me a tiny bit of Sebald at the start. I've read one and a half of Sebald's books; one was nothing special the other was utter guff. And here we have some more guff. The difference between Sebald (and other writers like him, including even some I quite like--I'm looking at you, Marias, and your 'Dark Back of Time') and Browne is that Sir Thomas takes an event in the real world to ponder things of immediate importance to most people (here, death, fame, legacy, salvation), and also consider what previous very smart people have actually said about it. A Sebald takes an event in his mind as an opportunity to ponder events that happened to himself, and also to make up stuff that could hypothetically have happened but almost certainly did not (Browne attending the dissection painted by Rembrandt), which can then help him make a point that is either obvious or uninteresting (to me).
I know this is a thing that people do right now: look at this coincidence! How fascinating! Isn't life sad? But if the coincidence probably didn't happened, and you're not interested in the 'fascinating' thing (e.g., dissection), and you don't think life is sad, this kind of essayism has nothing to offer you other than style.
Conclusion:
I'd rather read Browne than Sebald.
December 30, 2012
I am still stunned after having read this magnificent essay. It begins slowly as a scholarly discussion of funeral customs of the ancients and, in its culminating chapter, is as profound as Ecclesiastes in denouncing the vanity of wanting to leave behind towering monuments to our former selves. Never in all my days of reading have I seen such deep scholarship wedded to such humility and an overwhelming sense of goodness:
And what is that poetical taunt? "They that seek thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?"
Pious spirits who passed their days in raptures of futurity, made little more of this world, than the world that was before it, while they lay obscure in the chaos of pre-ordination, and night of their fore-beings. And if any have been so happy as truly to understand Christian annihilation, ecstasies, exolution, liquefaction, transformation, the kiss of the spouse, gustation of God, and ingression into the divine shadow, they have already had an handsome anticipation of heaven; the glory of the world is surely over, and the earth in ashes unto them.I cannot help but think that I will return to this work again, perhaps several times. It is as profound a devotional book as any written by the saints and acknowledged holy men of previous times: "Happy are they whom privacy makes innocent, who deal so with men in this world, that they are not afraid to meet them in the next; who, when they die, make no commotion among the dead, and are not touched with that poetical taunt of Isaiah."
And what is that poetical taunt? "They that seek thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?"
November 12, 2020
Moved to gwern.net.
October 12, 2020
Continuing my death reading for Horrorween 2020
November 19, 2012
I wonder why we modernize Shakespeare’s spelling, and Marlowe’s and Ben Jonson’s, and the King James Bible’s spelling too, but always leave Thomas Browne’s intact? Reading Browne as-is, we hold him at a distance from ourselves: he’s like us in his concerns and interests, maybe, but we want the reminder of his antiquity.
In Urne-Buriall, Browne has a 100-page-long Yorick-I-knew-thee moment inspired by the recovery of old burial urns, possibly Roman era, dug up in a field. After a catalog of ancient and contemporary burial customs, Browne moves into a general meditation on mortality itself and our ignorance of the next world. The book, according to scholars, is the first half of a diptych completed by one of Browne’s more esoteric pieces, The Garden of Cyrus, which I haven't read yet.
Browne's prose never disappoints:
”A Dialogue between two Infants in the womb concerning the state of this world, might handsomely illustrate our ignorance of the next, whereof methinks we yet discourse in Platoes denne, and are but Embryon Philosophers.”
”But man is a Noble Animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing Nativities and Deaths with equall lustre, nor omitting Ceremonies of bravery, in the infamy of his nature.”
In Urne-Buriall, Browne has a 100-page-long Yorick-I-knew-thee moment inspired by the recovery of old burial urns, possibly Roman era, dug up in a field. After a catalog of ancient and contemporary burial customs, Browne moves into a general meditation on mortality itself and our ignorance of the next world. The book, according to scholars, is the first half of a diptych completed by one of Browne’s more esoteric pieces, The Garden of Cyrus, which I haven't read yet.
Browne's prose never disappoints:
”A Dialogue between two Infants in the womb concerning the state of this world, might handsomely illustrate our ignorance of the next, whereof methinks we yet discourse in Platoes denne, and are but Embryon Philosophers.”
”But man is a Noble Animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing Nativities and Deaths with equall lustre, nor omitting Ceremonies of bravery, in the infamy of his nature.”
September 29, 2020
Förgäves hoppas den enskilde på odödlighet eller att förskonas från glömska medelst jordiska åtgärder. Svårt att inte uppskatta en bok som har fotnoten "Syndafloden."
Tabesne cadavera solvat / An rogus haud refert.
Tabesne cadavera solvat / An rogus haud refert.
March 11, 2020
Sjukt att den var skriven på 1600-talet!
May 1, 2019
Fascinating articulation.
“It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him he is at the end of his nature; or that there is no further state to come, unto which this seems progressional, and otherwise made in vain. Without this accomplishment, the natural expectation and desire of such a state, were but a fallacy in nature; unsatisfied considerators would quarrel the justice of their constitutions, and rest content that Adam had fallen lower; whereby, by knowing no other original, and deeper ignorance of themselves, they might have enjoyed the happiness of inferior creatures, who in tranquillity possess their constitutions, as having not the apprehension to deplore their own natures, and, being framed below the circumference of these hopes, or cognition of better being, the wisdom of God hath necessitated their contentment: but the superior ingredient and obscured part of ourselves, whereto all present felicities afford no resting contentment, will be able at last to tell us, we are more than our present selves, and evacuate such hopes in the fruition of their own accomplishments.”
January 28, 2018
The ultimate treatise on urns fire burials and what people practised it! This books was recommended to me by a close friend (you also have to look for the excellent portrait of Sir Thomas with his eyes directly looking at you). Incredibly good prose with lots of references to Roman writers like Tibullus. You can't put this little book down once you start reading. It's a grim subject but the ultimate book on urn burials believe me. Absolutely recommended!
May 1, 2024
If one were to stop reading after Chapter Two, Sir Thomas Browne’s localized, dryly archeological/historical Discourse of the Sepulchral Urnes Lately found in Norfolk (1658) would probably not still be read today. Ultimately, however, Browne’s Hydriotaphia is not just an archeological exposition of some uncovered urns that he ends up (ironically) classifying incorrectly as Roman; it is a study—both in the contemporary sense of knowledge acquisition and creation as well as the 17th century sense of “a state of contemplation or musing” (OED)—on living life in the face of inevitable death. This deeper study is mediated through the earlier contemplation of burial practices throughout history and the burial urns at Norfolk.
Chapter 5 marks the turn where the distant theoretical—speculation on the discovered urns, historical discussion… —becomes tinged with hints of how we should process the information and analyses given in previous chapters.
What we can take away from all the discussion of burial practices, says Browne, is that life should not be lived in pursuit of everlasting glory. The logic behind that claim is that there is no guarantee of anyone’s “monuments”—whether his name, his physical grave, his works, or some combination—actually persisting into the future: “What prince can promise such diuturnity unto his relics…In vain we hope to be known by open and visible conservatories, when to be unknown was the means of their continuation and obscurity into protection” (Browne 322). The “minor monuments”—those urns recently discovered at Norfolk—represent the remains of no noble princes, yet by chance were preserved well enough for future folks to find (Browne 322). On the flip side, Browne adds, there must also be great men whose bodies and works are now lost to “the opium of time” (323). If there is so much chance in the preservation (or not) of one’s monuments, why strive at all to be remembered past your death?
Here Browne appears to adopt a nihilistic take. If Death is the inevitability that makes all life “a sad composition” and if we shouldn’t thus strive so hard to be remembered past our own deaths, then it appears that no end, no ultimate good at all is striven towards (Browne 322). However, Browne interjects, that is not so. Just because life is shaded with death, just because “we begin to die when we live” does not mean that life is meaningless; rather, “many pulses made up the life of Methuselah… Our days become considerable like petty sums by accumulations” (Browne 322). Death is not a moment, but a process. What you do while in the process of dying (i.e. living) matters because these deeds add up over the course of years. There is implicitly then a “right” way to live, and Browne’s ethics are revealed to be as teleological as Aristotle’s or Bacon’s. So, according to Browne, what exactly should you do as you live/as you continue dying? And why? What justifies it all?
“Diuturnity is a dream and folly of expectation”; renown and monuments are not the ends to which Browne’s ethical system ultimately grounds itself, though apparently many men fall into the trap of living life to seek renown (324). Indeed: “[t]o subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their productions, to exist in their names, and predicament of chimeras, was large satisfaction unto old expectations, and made one part of their Elysiums, But all this is nothing in the metaphysics of true belief. To live indeed is to be again ourselves, which being not only an hope but an evidence in noble believers” (Browne 326).
God solves the “chimeric” issue of material diuturnity since “the sufficiency of Christian immortality frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either state after death, makes a folly of posthumous memory” (Browne 325). Immortality in God’s heavenly kingdom outshines any great pyramid, any monument that is subject to the passage of earthly time.
God is the guarantor, the end that justifies the means of dying even as one lives. Because He “hath assured our resurrection, either of our bodies or names” and in each life “is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us” (Browne 325). By this end is life justified, and is behavior made right or wrong. To live a good life for Browne is to live as a good Christian.
*all cited page numbers refer to Norton Anthology version of Hydriotaphia
Chapter 5 marks the turn where the distant theoretical—speculation on the discovered urns, historical discussion… —becomes tinged with hints of how we should process the information and analyses given in previous chapters.
What we can take away from all the discussion of burial practices, says Browne, is that life should not be lived in pursuit of everlasting glory. The logic behind that claim is that there is no guarantee of anyone’s “monuments”—whether his name, his physical grave, his works, or some combination—actually persisting into the future: “What prince can promise such diuturnity unto his relics…In vain we hope to be known by open and visible conservatories, when to be unknown was the means of their continuation and obscurity into protection” (Browne 322). The “minor monuments”—those urns recently discovered at Norfolk—represent the remains of no noble princes, yet by chance were preserved well enough for future folks to find (Browne 322). On the flip side, Browne adds, there must also be great men whose bodies and works are now lost to “the opium of time” (323). If there is so much chance in the preservation (or not) of one’s monuments, why strive at all to be remembered past your death?
Here Browne appears to adopt a nihilistic take. If Death is the inevitability that makes all life “a sad composition” and if we shouldn’t thus strive so hard to be remembered past our own deaths, then it appears that no end, no ultimate good at all is striven towards (Browne 322). However, Browne interjects, that is not so. Just because life is shaded with death, just because “we begin to die when we live” does not mean that life is meaningless; rather, “many pulses made up the life of Methuselah… Our days become considerable like petty sums by accumulations” (Browne 322). Death is not a moment, but a process. What you do while in the process of dying (i.e. living) matters because these deeds add up over the course of years. There is implicitly then a “right” way to live, and Browne’s ethics are revealed to be as teleological as Aristotle’s or Bacon’s. So, according to Browne, what exactly should you do as you live/as you continue dying? And why? What justifies it all?
“Diuturnity is a dream and folly of expectation”; renown and monuments are not the ends to which Browne’s ethical system ultimately grounds itself, though apparently many men fall into the trap of living life to seek renown (324). Indeed: “[t]o subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their productions, to exist in their names, and predicament of chimeras, was large satisfaction unto old expectations, and made one part of their Elysiums, But all this is nothing in the metaphysics of true belief. To live indeed is to be again ourselves, which being not only an hope but an evidence in noble believers” (Browne 326).
God solves the “chimeric” issue of material diuturnity since “the sufficiency of Christian immortality frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either state after death, makes a folly of posthumous memory” (Browne 325). Immortality in God’s heavenly kingdom outshines any great pyramid, any monument that is subject to the passage of earthly time.
God is the guarantor, the end that justifies the means of dying even as one lives. Because He “hath assured our resurrection, either of our bodies or names” and in each life “is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us” (Browne 325). By this end is life justified, and is behavior made right or wrong. To live a good life for Browne is to live as a good Christian.
*all cited page numbers refer to Norton Anthology version of Hydriotaphia
August 6, 2020
Om inte den där förruttnelsepassagen i Houellebecqs gamla elementarpartiklar gjorde det så är jag (väl) nu övertygad: BBQ är det rimliga hinsides. Men, måtte det dröja och hela den biten.
"Om vi börjar dö medan vi lever, och ett långt liv endast skulle förlänga döden, är vårt liv sorgligt sammansatt; vi lever med döden och dör inte i ett enda ögonblick" (s. 70).
Man bör ju inte förakta ett sorgligt sammansatt liv men det vore kanske önskvärt om dödsångesten kunde dämpas på något sätt. Att läsa hjälper, tror jag.
"Om vi börjar dö medan vi lever, och ett långt liv endast skulle förlänga döden, är vårt liv sorgligt sammansatt; vi lever med döden och dör inte i ett enda ögonblick" (s. 70).
Man bör ju inte förakta ett sorgligt sammansatt liv men det vore kanske önskvärt om dödsångesten kunde dämpas på något sätt. Att läsa hjälper, tror jag.
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February 21, 2020"Few people love the writings of Sir Thomas Browne, but those that do are the salt of the earth."
Så skriver Virginia Woolf i en recension av en utgåva med texter av Thomas Browne 1923. På annat håll skriver hon att Browne har ”banat väg för den psykologiska romanen, för självbiografier och självbekännelser och alla som fördjupat sig i det enskilda livets märkvärdigheter”. Den tysk-brittiske författaren W.G. Sebald ägnar ett helt stycke åt Browne i sitt melankoliska mästerverk ”Saturnus ringar” och skriver där bland annat: ”För honom framstår det som ett under att vi står oss ens en dag”. Andra som hyllat honom är Samuel Johnson, Thomas de Quincey, Coleridge, Charles Lamb, Herman Melville, Thoreau och Borges. I den svenska litteraturen har han bland andra haft en flitig läsare i Frans G. Bengtsson.
Ja, det är som litterär förebild läkaren Thomas Browne (1605-1682) har gått till historien. Detta trots att hans verk knappast kan kallas skönlitterära. Snarare verkade han i en tradition från Plutarkos, Seneca, Lucretius och inte minst Montaigne. Med melankoliskt stämda texter som tänjde på naturvetenskapens gränser, som inte räddes blanda myter med fakta, högt med lågt och personliga iakttagelser och reflexioner med empiri och forskning. En essäistisk stil med osviklig nyfikenhet och djärva tankevurpor. Addera glimten i ögonvrån och ett par rävar bakom öronen och du har kanske en hum om vad som väntar.
Browne studerade fysik och anatomi i Oxford och medicin i Montpellier, Padua och Leiden. Hemkommen bosatte han sig i Norwich där han verkade som läkare fram till sin död. Han debuterade 1643 med ”Religio Medici” (på svenska 1948 och 1995), ett verk som förärades en plats på den katolska kyrkans index över förbjudna skrifter. Tre år senare kom ”Pseudodoxia Epidemica”, där Browne undersökte ”vulgära och vanliga misstag” grundade i ”den mänskliga naturens allmänna skröplighet”. Fritiden ägnade han åt att plocka örter och samla kuriosa.
”Gravurnor” (”Hydrotaphia or Urn Burial”, 1658), här på njutbar svenska av Arne Melberg, tar sin utgångspunkt i ett femtiotal urnor som hittades i trakterna av Norwich (Old Walsingham). Browne utgår ifrån att det är romerska urnor, fast det egentligen var saxiska, och börjar utifrån studiet av dessa en rafflande historisk/antropologisk undersökning av gravskick och begravningsseder genom tiderna. Former, material och utsmyckning avhandlas. Buxbom, elfenben och porfyr. Någonstans får han rentav in en norsk mungiga. Inget undgår den nyfikne doktorn. Vi lär om bruket att plantera idegranar på kyrkogårdar, om likbål, aska och ”grannar i graven” som ligger ”urna vid urna, nästan som en beröring”.
Han är personlig och ofta poetisk i sina beskrivningar. Urnans form kan till exempel få honom att tänka på livmodern, den gör ”den sista viloplatsen lik den första, inte olik vår födelses urna, den där vi låg begravda i de inre valven av vårt mikrokosmos”. Vi får veta att våra kroppar ruttnar på olika sätt, i olika takt, att ögonen är den kroppsdel som dör först och att en fördel med kremering är att man slipper ”bli uppsliten ur graven och få sin skalle förvandlad till dryckeskärl”. Att ”fuktighetens Metropolis” (aka hjärnan!) är något trögeldad är lite kunskapsmässig grädde på moset.
Associationerna är vilda och texten flitigt kryddad med hänvisningar till Bibeln och andra texter, liksom citat av framförallt antika författare som Homeros, Platon, Plinius, Tacitus, Plutarkos och Ovidius. ”Gravurnor” kan på många sätt ses som en hyfsat nära släkting till Robert Burtons ”The Anatomy of Melancholy”, som för övrigt nyligen översatts till svenska, även den av Melberg (”Melankolins anatomi”, Atlantis 2019).
”Att filosofera är att lära sig dö”, skriver essäns fader Montaigne, och ju längre in i ”Gravurnor” vi kommer desto tydligare blir det att vi här, mer än något annat, har en meditation över livets futtighet och förgänglighet. Och man kan riktigt känna dedikationens och passionens ångor stiga, sida för sida, som om Browne, med målmedveten skärpa, skriver sig upp mot den grandiosa finalens Memento Mori. Tiden är vår fiende, ”Gud skänker ingen varaktighet åt kroppar eller namn” och den ”tyngsta och mest melankoliska börda som kan drabba en människa är insikten att dagarna är räknade”. Den kristna återuppståndelsen är inget att hoppas på. Inget liv efter detta. Browne tycker att vi ”håller till i Platons grotta med våra föreställningar och att vi som filosofer är blotta embryon”.
Elände och för tidigt åldrande plågar oss, vi hoppas förgäves på odödlighet och vem vet om de bästa människorna ens är kända? De mest tragiska förlorar sig i ”intighetens dystra natt” och förbannar, likt Job, den dag de blev födda. Men de allra flesta klänger dock fast vid sina liv med fåfängt hopp, trots att ”[v]år ingrodda vana att leva gör oss oskickade att dö. Att vi girigt håller fast vid livet gör oss till dödens byte”. Vi behöver varken fly eller jäkta. Med tiden kommer allt att ”återbördas till moderjordens urhav”.
Trots att Britannien här är konsekvent felstavat (”Brittanien”) kan jag inte nog rekommendera denna märkvärdiga lilla bok. Dessutom: i ett tjugonde århundrade där tiden ibland tycks gå baklänges, där det finns folk som på fullt allvar hävdar att jorden är platt, kan vi nu tacka Atlantis och Arne Melberg för att världen (eller åtminstone Norden) istället har berikats med några fler woolfska salt of the earth:ers.
Så skriver Virginia Woolf i en recension av en utgåva med texter av Thomas Browne 1923. På annat håll skriver hon att Browne har ”banat väg för den psykologiska romanen, för självbiografier och självbekännelser och alla som fördjupat sig i det enskilda livets märkvärdigheter”. Den tysk-brittiske författaren W.G. Sebald ägnar ett helt stycke åt Browne i sitt melankoliska mästerverk ”Saturnus ringar” och skriver där bland annat: ”För honom framstår det som ett under att vi står oss ens en dag”. Andra som hyllat honom är Samuel Johnson, Thomas de Quincey, Coleridge, Charles Lamb, Herman Melville, Thoreau och Borges. I den svenska litteraturen har han bland andra haft en flitig läsare i Frans G. Bengtsson.
Ja, det är som litterär förebild läkaren Thomas Browne (1605-1682) har gått till historien. Detta trots att hans verk knappast kan kallas skönlitterära. Snarare verkade han i en tradition från Plutarkos, Seneca, Lucretius och inte minst Montaigne. Med melankoliskt stämda texter som tänjde på naturvetenskapens gränser, som inte räddes blanda myter med fakta, högt med lågt och personliga iakttagelser och reflexioner med empiri och forskning. En essäistisk stil med osviklig nyfikenhet och djärva tankevurpor. Addera glimten i ögonvrån och ett par rävar bakom öronen och du har kanske en hum om vad som väntar.
Browne studerade fysik och anatomi i Oxford och medicin i Montpellier, Padua och Leiden. Hemkommen bosatte han sig i Norwich där han verkade som läkare fram till sin död. Han debuterade 1643 med ”Religio Medici” (på svenska 1948 och 1995), ett verk som förärades en plats på den katolska kyrkans index över förbjudna skrifter. Tre år senare kom ”Pseudodoxia Epidemica”, där Browne undersökte ”vulgära och vanliga misstag” grundade i ”den mänskliga naturens allmänna skröplighet”. Fritiden ägnade han åt att plocka örter och samla kuriosa.
”Gravurnor” (”Hydrotaphia or Urn Burial”, 1658), här på njutbar svenska av Arne Melberg, tar sin utgångspunkt i ett femtiotal urnor som hittades i trakterna av Norwich (Old Walsingham). Browne utgår ifrån att det är romerska urnor, fast det egentligen var saxiska, och börjar utifrån studiet av dessa en rafflande historisk/antropologisk undersökning av gravskick och begravningsseder genom tiderna. Former, material och utsmyckning avhandlas. Buxbom, elfenben och porfyr. Någonstans får han rentav in en norsk mungiga. Inget undgår den nyfikne doktorn. Vi lär om bruket att plantera idegranar på kyrkogårdar, om likbål, aska och ”grannar i graven” som ligger ”urna vid urna, nästan som en beröring”.
Han är personlig och ofta poetisk i sina beskrivningar. Urnans form kan till exempel få honom att tänka på livmodern, den gör ”den sista viloplatsen lik den första, inte olik vår födelses urna, den där vi låg begravda i de inre valven av vårt mikrokosmos”. Vi får veta att våra kroppar ruttnar på olika sätt, i olika takt, att ögonen är den kroppsdel som dör först och att en fördel med kremering är att man slipper ”bli uppsliten ur graven och få sin skalle förvandlad till dryckeskärl”. Att ”fuktighetens Metropolis” (aka hjärnan!) är något trögeldad är lite kunskapsmässig grädde på moset.
Associationerna är vilda och texten flitigt kryddad med hänvisningar till Bibeln och andra texter, liksom citat av framförallt antika författare som Homeros, Platon, Plinius, Tacitus, Plutarkos och Ovidius. ”Gravurnor” kan på många sätt ses som en hyfsat nära släkting till Robert Burtons ”The Anatomy of Melancholy”, som för övrigt nyligen översatts till svenska, även den av Melberg (”Melankolins anatomi”, Atlantis 2019).
”Att filosofera är att lära sig dö”, skriver essäns fader Montaigne, och ju längre in i ”Gravurnor” vi kommer desto tydligare blir det att vi här, mer än något annat, har en meditation över livets futtighet och förgänglighet. Och man kan riktigt känna dedikationens och passionens ångor stiga, sida för sida, som om Browne, med målmedveten skärpa, skriver sig upp mot den grandiosa finalens Memento Mori. Tiden är vår fiende, ”Gud skänker ingen varaktighet åt kroppar eller namn” och den ”tyngsta och mest melankoliska börda som kan drabba en människa är insikten att dagarna är räknade”. Den kristna återuppståndelsen är inget att hoppas på. Inget liv efter detta. Browne tycker att vi ”håller till i Platons grotta med våra föreställningar och att vi som filosofer är blotta embryon”.
Elände och för tidigt åldrande plågar oss, vi hoppas förgäves på odödlighet och vem vet om de bästa människorna ens är kända? De mest tragiska förlorar sig i ”intighetens dystra natt” och förbannar, likt Job, den dag de blev födda. Men de allra flesta klänger dock fast vid sina liv med fåfängt hopp, trots att ”[v]år ingrodda vana att leva gör oss oskickade att dö. Att vi girigt håller fast vid livet gör oss till dödens byte”. Vi behöver varken fly eller jäkta. Med tiden kommer allt att ”återbördas till moderjordens urhav”.
Trots att Britannien här är konsekvent felstavat (”Brittanien”) kan jag inte nog rekommendera denna märkvärdiga lilla bok. Dessutom: i ett tjugonde århundrade där tiden ibland tycks gå baklänges, där det finns folk som på fullt allvar hävdar att jorden är platt, kan vi nu tacka Atlantis och Arne Melberg för att världen (eller åtminstone Norden) istället har berikats med några fler woolfska salt of the earth:ers.
October 16, 2021
buried in difficult language and dense history is a beautiful little meditation on death, funerary practices, futurity, and remembrance. the prose, when it makes sense, is incredible, particularly in the fifth and final chapter
June 23, 2014
Definitely some of the best prose in the English language. The first four chapters, which reflect on recently discovered burial urns and the funerary customs of the ancients, are really nice, but the fifth chapter is absolutely sublime. I disagree with Browne's opinion that ancient ways of wishing to be remembered in history are "pagan vain-glories," but the language is too artful to even care about his philosophical positions. He did not write this to be a philosophical work, but rather as a baroque art piece about death and the dead.
May 11, 2016
An interesting treatise on burial from the mid 1600's. The author is obviously affected by finding roman burial urns in europe. Within these urns are personal objects. I believe the author was excited to "find" and touch historical artifacts of those that came before. The short work also includes different approaches to burial.
August 3, 2017
beautiful prose that addresses a theme as poignant now as it always has been: the mortality of mankind, the inevitability of death and oblivion, and the ways we humans have tried to deal with that...always touching to see someone so long ago writing about the same stuff we care about today-- it reaffirms our shared humanity.
March 1, 2018
A small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after death, while men vainly affected precious pyres, and to burn like Sardanapalus; but the wisedom of funerall Laws found the folly of prodigall blazes, and reduced undoing fires unto the rule of sober obsequies, wherein few could be so mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a mourner, and an Urne.
December 3, 2010
Weird. Why did I read this?
April 2, 2012
"What Song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzling Questions are not beyond all conjecture."
July 17, 2019
Thomas Browne was a seventeenth century writer and physician who wrote URN BURIAL (1658), a piece of scholarship where he muses about issues like human mortality, the uncertainty of fate and how, if at all, we will be remembered. His erudite essay, with its labyrinthine sentences, complex metaphors and analogies, full of quotes and the names of authorities, has been long considered the pinnacle of Renaissance scholarship.
I read this book because Max Sebald, one of my favorite authors, felt that Browne, the master of pessimism, shared his own melancholic view of human nature. Both Browne and Sebald perceive history and human nature as the history of destruction: "darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce callosities; miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature", so Thomas Browne declares.
However, it is not only the subject which feels enticing to Sebald. Sebald's prose also follows a process of sedimented analogies, long, convoluted sentences, a sceptical eccentricity which reminds us of Browne. There is so much of Thomas Browne in Sebald's writing!
Ralph Waldo Emerson aptly said that URN BURIAL "smells in every word of the sepulchre ". Sebald greatly admired Thomas Browne, and his first chapter of THE RINGS OF SATURN (1995) is mostly dedicated to Browne. URN BURIAL is a must read for readers who love Sebald's books. I suppose the subject is not very attractive to most readers but Browne's writing is impressive.
I read this book because Max Sebald, one of my favorite authors, felt that Browne, the master of pessimism, shared his own melancholic view of human nature. Both Browne and Sebald perceive history and human nature as the history of destruction: "darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce callosities; miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature", so Thomas Browne declares.
However, it is not only the subject which feels enticing to Sebald. Sebald's prose also follows a process of sedimented analogies, long, convoluted sentences, a sceptical eccentricity which reminds us of Browne. There is so much of Thomas Browne in Sebald's writing!
Ralph Waldo Emerson aptly said that URN BURIAL "smells in every word of the sepulchre ". Sebald greatly admired Thomas Browne, and his first chapter of THE RINGS OF SATURN (1995) is mostly dedicated to Browne. URN BURIAL is a must read for readers who love Sebald's books. I suppose the subject is not very attractive to most readers but Browne's writing is impressive.
April 21, 2021
A book inspired by a lot of crumbling old burial urns (which turned out to be Anglo-Saxon, and not Roman, as Browne thought) does not sound like a light or jolly read. And indeed it isn’t. But who has not known the peculiar sombre pleasure of wandering through umbrageous graveyards and reading the inscriptions on moss covered tombs? I once went inside a friend’s family burial vault where nearly three centuries worth of coffins were stacked, and it inspired a strange mix of feelings in which a sense of continuity between the living and the dead took precedence over a kind of sober pondering on my own mortality. (And of course there was a thrilling frisson of horror too at the proximity of skeletal remains).
Browne was not, I think, the kind of man one would have chosen as a companion for an evening of feasting, wine-bibbing and wild partying. And yet, what a pleasure it would have been to have spent some time in his company – surely one would have felt mind and spirit elevated by his erudite conversation and obvious goodness and humility. And his wonderfully creaky archaic prose is as headily pungent as the dusty mausoleum whose air I once breathed. He was also smart enough to know he didn’t have all the answers. Accepting our limitations and living with mystery make life bearable and mean that this book has a kind of wistful beauty which is by no means depressing.
“A dialogue between two infants in the womb concerning the state of this world, might handsomely illustrate our ignorance of the next, whereof methinks we yet discourse in Plato’s den, and are but embryo philosophers.”
Browne was not, I think, the kind of man one would have chosen as a companion for an evening of feasting, wine-bibbing and wild partying. And yet, what a pleasure it would have been to have spent some time in his company – surely one would have felt mind and spirit elevated by his erudite conversation and obvious goodness and humility. And his wonderfully creaky archaic prose is as headily pungent as the dusty mausoleum whose air I once breathed. He was also smart enough to know he didn’t have all the answers. Accepting our limitations and living with mystery make life bearable and mean that this book has a kind of wistful beauty which is by no means depressing.
“A dialogue between two infants in the womb concerning the state of this world, might handsomely illustrate our ignorance of the next, whereof methinks we yet discourse in Plato’s den, and are but embryo philosophers.”
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January 9, 2023Dark, decrepit, a hint of the pagan below the droning of Christian world-rejection, but some moments of sunlight: "in the extasie of being ever." The best prose is in the last chapter, but it's excellent throughout:
"Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us. A small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after death, while men vainly affected precious pyres, and to burn like Sardanapalus, but the wisedom of funerall Laws found the folly of prodigall blazes, and reduced undoing fires, unto the rule of sober obsequies, wherein few could be so mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a mourner, and an Urne."
Browne describes the ancient world: "when even living men were Antiquities; when the living might exceed the dead, and to depart this world, could not be properly said, to go unto the greater number." And later: "The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the Aequinox?" In our individual lives too, I think there is the sunny antiquity of youth, when days to live outnumber days lived, the night in later life, when heaped up years overshadow those to come, and, somewhere in the middle, the equinox where one life turned into the other.
"Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us. A small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after death, while men vainly affected precious pyres, and to burn like Sardanapalus, but the wisedom of funerall Laws found the folly of prodigall blazes, and reduced undoing fires, unto the rule of sober obsequies, wherein few could be so mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a mourner, and an Urne."
Browne describes the ancient world: "when even living men were Antiquities; when the living might exceed the dead, and to depart this world, could not be properly said, to go unto the greater number." And later: "The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the Aequinox?" In our individual lives too, I think there is the sunny antiquity of youth, when days to live outnumber days lived, the night in later life, when heaped up years overshadow those to come, and, somewhere in the middle, the equinox where one life turned into the other.
August 28, 2020
...and forgetting long passed mischiefs; We mercifully preserve their bones, and pisse not upon their ashes.
January 22, 2024
The titular piece is quite astounding.
To return to the rest at a later date - it takes a fair bit of effort to acclimatise to the 17th century syntax.
To return to the rest at a later date - it takes a fair bit of effort to acclimatise to the 17th century syntax.
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April 13, 2022banger
January 9, 2023
less about pottery than I thought.
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