The Dead Toreador, by Édouard Manet, c. 1864. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

The Dead Toreador, by Édouard Manet, c. 1864. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Death

Volume VI, Number 4 | fall 2013

Purchase

"The Antiquary's Last Will and Testament" from The English Dance of Death, by Thomas Rowlandson, 1814.

Preamble

Memento Mori

By Lewis H. Lapham

Learning how to die, as Michel de Montaigne once rightly said, is the unlearning of how to be a slave.

More

Hunting Dogs with Dead Hare, by Gustave Courbet. 1857.

Mournful Creatures

By Virginia Morell

Humans may be the only animals who understand our mortality, but when it comes to grieving, we are not so unique.

More

Map

Departures

A million ways to die.

View

Miscellany

Crested ducks are known to perform acts of cannibalism, mallards acts of necrophilia.

c. 1600 | Denmark

Finite Jest

William Shakespeare clowns around among the graves.More

1390 | Japan

Walking in Circles

The dangers of thinking too much.More

1836 | London

In the Name of Love

In one long yellow string I wound, three times her little throat around.More

Charts & Graphs

How They Went

Match the deceased with cause of death.

View

Engraving of a bust of Lucretius.

Sculpture bust of Greek dramatist Euripides.

Black and white engraving of Roman author Petronius.

Black and white photograph of Bolshevik officer Yakov Yurovsky.

Photograph of American editor Brent Cunningham.

Photograph of American author and editor Bess Lovejoy.

Portrait of Chinese Daoist Zhuangzi.

Black and white of Welsh poet and writer Dylan Thomas.

What is death? A scary mask. Take it off—see, it doesn’t bite.

—Epictetus, c. 110

Painted portrait of English physician and author Thomas Browne.

Color photograph of American poet and critic Paul Zweig.

Thomas Browne & Paul Zweig

Purchase