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

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"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.

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The Afternoon Meal, by Luis Meléndez, c. 1772

Last Meals

By Brent Cunningham

The choice of the final meal contains a curious paradox: why mark the end of a life with the stuff that fuels it?

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Map

Departures

A million ways to die.

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Miscellany

Slaves in ancient China during the Zhou dynasty were sometimes buried alive with their recently departed masters in order that they might continue to serve them in the afterlife.

1951 | Wales

Protest Song

Dylan Thomas rages against the dying of the light.More

1849 | Cape Cod

Natural Law

Henry David Thoreau meditates upon a shipwreck. More

c. 58 BC | Egypt

The Fable of Hell

Diodorus Siculus observes an Egyptian funeral.More

Charts & Graphs

Spoiler Alert

Murders, accidents, and suicides from novels and films.

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Portrait bust of Greek dramatist Aeschylus.

American writer Barbara Lazear Ascher.

Photograph of American short-story writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe.

Engraving of a bust of Lucretius.

Black and white photograph of English poet and librarian Philip Larkin.

Color portrait of Greek poet Anacreon.

Black and white image of Greek biographer and writer Plutarch.

It is not my design to drink or sleep; my design is to make what haste I can to be gone.

—Oliver Cromwell, 1658

Painted portrait of English physician and author Thomas Browne.

Color photograph of American poet and critic Paul Zweig.

Thomas Browne & Paul Zweig

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