Was an American photographer who committed suicide at the age of 22. Her work often featured herself, naked and in bare architectural interiors. She experimented with movement through the use of long exposure times, to create ethereal images in which she emerged from or dissolved into her architectural surroundings.

In theatre we expect words, they are the tools with which plot and psychological states are expressed. Malcolm asks Macduff to ‘Give sorrow words’. But there are points when the high poetry of tragic theatre can’t suffice, when we seek something beyond poetry. ‘Words, words, words’, what use are they.

It is a dilemma which theatre has sought numerous solutions for, aware of the need to sometimes use silence as a crucial device. Silence on stage is very different to silence in a painting. Silence is inherent in painting, where as sound in the form of spoken words is inherent in theatre. As such they both use sound as a value to hold in opposition to our expectations. For theatre the silence is a surprise, for painting the suggestion of a sound which cannot come plays the same role, both are setting up noise values which contradict their inherent qualities. Think the silent scream in painting.

In theatre the role of silence is often to appear where we expect words to provide elaborate descriptions of mental states or plot development.

In tragedy silence is often what follows the onslaught of staged words over a duration of a few hours. As with many things in theatre the value of silence is due to its relation to what has come before, it is an art which relates to us through the constant shift between poles, in sound, space and time in particular. In painting it is the constant and unchanging qualities of sound, space and time from which we draw value.

Hamlet is the most loquacious character in all of Shakespeare’s plays. Fittingly his last words as he passes away are ‘The rest is silence’.

And Cordelia’s silence bookends the tragedy of King Lear. When asked by Lear what she cam say to declare her love, like her sisters, in return for a stake of the kingdom she replies ‘nothing’. It is her refusal to articulate her love and enter the game played by her father and sisters, that opens the door to all that follows.

A few hours later Lear returns on stage with all his daughters, as he started. They are all dead, leaving Lear to follow after them. Before his death, with Cordelia in his arms he laments:

‘Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life?, and thou no breath at all?

Her silence is the silence of death, and Lear’s silence follows. The characters that are left are marked by their inability to either articulate the scale of the tragedy that has preceded them or to express an effective way forward.

George Elliot talks of the pain in life which cannot be expressed in words. “there is much pain that is quite noiseless, and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence.”

Seneca idea of stoicism, bequeathed to early Christian Martyrs sees silence become a method of denying pain. The heroism of a figure refusing to despair in the face of ultimate pain or grief is held up as the ultimate form of nobility and honour. In David’s Brutus, Brutus is the silent dignified silence in opposition to the extreme outpouring of grief in the mother and daughters. But a psychological complexity exists within the picture. It is clear that Brutus is hiding an inner turmoil, look at the mechanics of his body and his twisted toes. He has sentenced his sons to death and now sits whilst their bodies are returned. His sacrifice for the greater good of the republican state does not appear like a price worth paying. The Christian Martyrs who are capable of remaining calm and serene whilst holding their own heads was an ultimate proof of belief to Christian viewers. To us now such blind and excessive belief seems ludicrous and comic.

Silence is often used as a device to suggest that sorrow or grief goes beyond words. In Sophocles a messenger gives a lengthy speech passing on detailed information of a loved ones death. When they exist we expect an articulate and elaborate display of suffering. Instead the listener just exists the stage.

Theatre presents us with sensitive, intelligent and multiple methods of expressing grief. Silence is one device, and often one that we wish we could use in our personal lives, we desire the kind of nobility and control of a Shakespearian character. If we do articulate our feelings we try and find eloquent and sensitive methods, the equivalents of those from tragic plays. In reality we normally enter into excessive and inarticulate expressions of our feelings, broken, fragmented and nonsensical. Words tend to fail us.

Many tragic plots are bound on the relationship between mortals and a divine force, be that the Greco Roman gods or the omnipresent God such as that in Christianity. Conflict is normally found when the two worlds collide, when a mortal challenges, disobeys, threatens or breaks the trust of the divine force. Think Adam and Eve with the apple or Marsyas challenging Apollo to a musical duel. In many cases it’s about desire or free willing seeing and individual have aspirations which go against that of a greater system. There is inevitability in the human condition of our ability to have choice which is leads to such peril, this remains a truism regardless of belief. As Milton summarises, we are ‘sufficient to have stood but free to fall’. It is certainly true that the loss of one belief does not bring an end to the kind of peril and conflict represented by the relationship between a moral and a divine power. We have developed, in our increasingly secularised society, new ideas of suffering and hope, new dangers.
In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon the chorus cry: ‘Zeus whoever you are’. There uncertain highlights that the specific nature of the greater force which threatens us, which causes us to be fearful, which presents dangers, is not necessarily important, it is the danger itself and our innate tendency to seek it that is crucial to tragedy.

Ian Charleson was an actor best known for his role in Chariots of Fire. He died in 1990, aged forty, having being diagnosed in 1986 with HIV. Charleson encouraged the announcement of his illness after his death to help raise awareness of the disease. In 1990 HIV was still widely feared and assumptions were made and prejudices formed if someone contracted it. The epidemic of the 1980’s was tragic in regards to both the lives taken and the public response.
Charleson died eight weeks after having performed the lead role in Richard Eyre’s production of Hamlet at the Olivier Theatre. His performance gained huge critical accliam and Sir Ian McKellen commented that it appeared as if Charleson had spent his entire life rehearsing for the role.
Charleson’s death and its close promiximity to his performance of Hamlet triggered something in me. There is something tragically interesting in the parallel between his real life and the character he was playing on stage. Hamlet is one of the great tragic heroes, and along with King Lear is the ultimate part for any Shakespearian male actor. HIV was one of the great (to use the word in terms of scale not as a judgment of quality) tragedies of the 1980’s. Without being able to fully articulate my sentiments, there seems something moving and poignant about this. Eight weeks after collapsing on stage for the last time with the words ‘and the rest is silence’, Charleson would pass away in a manner far more real, far less theatrical and away from a packed theatre. This is a subject I would like to explore in more depth in work. I think it lends itself to painting very well, which is a cold and cynical, yet honest thing to say.

Tragedy tends to centre around a single central figure, the tragic hero. This figure has been almost exclusively male throughout history, it is a tradition composed by men for men. They are figures for whom words such as courage, pride and honour are excessively used. The hero is normally active. There are exceptions, such as the stoicism of Brutus in the face of having sentenced his sons to the death penalty. Generally the men act and the women wait, such as in Sophocles Electra (or a number of other versions) where Electra waits anxiously and Orestes acts upon his emotions and morals. This type has certainly been subject to variation throughout history. Shakespeare’s Hamlet has the desire to be a classic hero, seeking to avenge the death of his further by killing his Uncle. Yet the narrative sutrcutre of the play centres around his anxiety over the action, he constantly delays committing to the act through a mixture of fear and confusion. His excessive philosophising, melodramatic emotional state and loquaciousness are all traits more commonly projected onto female characters. It is this supposed gender confusion which makes him so fascinating and so human.

The hero tends to be seen a moral and noble, prepared to sacrifice personal gain for the greater good. As such the tragic hero has tended to be a vehicle for the need for the individual to submit himself to the cause of a greater social structure and belief system. Modern obsessions with cynicism and scepticism might see the flaw of the hero as lying in the absurdity of such a sacrifice. Hindsight makes a number of mythical, fictional and historical figures heroic actions appear foolish, blindly forsaking common values due to a belief in a extreme ideology. The Nietzschian superman using grand ideals to justify acts of horror does not seem so great when moved from philosophy to reality.

Heroism now seems an anachronism. It could be argued that the 1977 album by the stranglers was right to claim that ‘there are no more heroes anymore.’ We are happy to chuck the words at people for strong performances on the sports field, who certainly don’t seem to represent the sacrifices traditionally associated with heroism, but instead a watered down version which exists in a realm detached from reality, in that the moral and human cost of failure or reward in victory is greatly diminished. The characters to whom it was used now often seem outdated or their methods and values too singular or ludicrous. The hero is an idea ripe for parody, with us more likely to laugh at than admire his actions.

The key shift in modern literature has been towards the move away from the notion of the hero as a singular, unique character. As such the focus has moved increasingly to the everyday heroes. The shift is metaphysical and speaks of a change in ideology. The traditional structure sees us look up to a hero as the ideal embodiment of human behaviour and values; he was a figure to aspire to. The modern type is someone we can empathise with, a character whose condition and actions are ones that seem to relate directly to our own existence. Whilst generalised this shift from unreachable aspiration to earthly and humble values mirrors a wider shift in tragedy.

Tragedy is often deemed as being above comedy. At the least it is deemed that the two are different genres and that comedy does not have a role to play in tragedy, apart from moments of light relief. Milton said that we should not be ‘introducing trivial and vulgar persons’ into tragedy whilst Sir Philip Sidney advised agasint ‘Mingling Kings and Clowns’

Yet throughout the history of tragedy there exists a close and important relationship with comedy. Tragicomedy was a notion developed by the Roman comic dramatist Plautus and which gathered momentum through Italian theorists in the 16th Century. Another similar tendency is that of Hilarotragodia (tragedy hilarified), where a serious subject is pushed over the edge, to the point of excess and melodrama and a detachment from reality, making us laugh at artifice and pretention. In Opera figures are often very close to the edge, often open for parody or moving towards the absurd.

Perspective and context is what allows a subject to shift from reading as tragic to comic. Chaplain said: ‘life is tragedy when seen in close up, but a comedy in long-shot’. Similarly Puck comments in a Midsummer’s Nights Dream how the austere nature of human endeavour seems so insignificant from distance: ‘Lord what fools these mortals be’.

Comedy certainly makes constant appearances in many tragedies, consider the gallows humour of Mercutio, ‘ask for me tomorrow and you will find me a grave man’. In this instance comedy is far more than a distraction and rather than pushing the tragedy over the edge it reaffirms and amplifies the strength of emotion.

Can comedy actually have a vital role in tragedy? Hegel pointed out that all historical events occur twice and Marx commented that the first time they are tragedy and the second time farce. Repetition is an interesting factor. It is certainly true that repetition or historical distance can allow any event to be perceived as comic. Signs are instable and when represented to us, without any change in appearance, they can become comic merely due to our awareness that they are a replica, and thus detached from the values originally held. Yet we cannot presume that further repetition leads to entropy. What about a third, fourth or fifth repetition? The process not necessarily lead to further emptying but to continued change. The change need not be in a downward linear motion through a preconceived hierarchy of genres or emotional keys. Beyond tragedy can be comedy, but beyond this comedy can be a new tragedy. Comedy can arise from tragedy due to the very fact the moment is detached from the values which made us feel pity and fear. The comic can then become tragic is we are able to push it beyond or break it from the factors that made us smile or laugh. The two need not be seen in direct competition and we certainly should not presume that one is below the other. Instead the two have a close relationship, and can be central players in the formation of each other.

It is the nature of academics, particularly historians, to search for difference. Yet continuous tendencies exist in the human condition, and more specifically in tragedy. Tragedy has an inherent interest in the tension between oppositions, finding interest in the moment when those polarities converge. Virtually all accounts and philosophies of tragedy account for this in some form or another. In the play themselves it is light meeting dark, divine power vs human reason, good meeting evil and traditional belief meeting modern scepticism. These provide the moments of crisis necessary to tragic plot. Tragedy is about the conflict between these oppositions and the inevitable yet unpredictable ramifications.

The French revolution, World War One, The Holocaust, historical fatalism, Hiroshoma, the ‘death of god’, nine eleven: all have been held up as symptomatic of the increasing inability of tragedy to insight pity and fear in the viewer. How can fiction have an impact when real life serves up so many instances of human suffering which are direct products of human behaviour? To suggest that such an array of events is unique to modern society is naive. It is rather that our awareness of the mass of events has grown, due to the increasingly effective forms of communication and technological which have shrunk the world. More than ever we are aware of the causal link between human weakness and our suffering, rather than being able to attribute suffering to external divine forces.

We are so overloaded with an awareness of suffering in real life that we struggle to feel pity and fear for that, let alone for the fictional. Once you strip away the Marxist overtones Guy Debord’s ‘Society of the Spectacle’ is an accurate, if convoluted, account of the process by which we have become divorced from feeling. We watch and witness events of horror, but are increasingly detached. Our sense have been overloaded and drowned.

It is such a situation that led German philosopher Theodor Adorno to state in Cultural Criticism and Society (1951) that ‘writing and poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric’. Or ‘no poetry after Auschwitz’. Whilst often used as a misrepresentation of Adorno’s wider ideas it does accurately portray a widely held belief. How can we hope to justify tragedy, or even create successful forms of it, when the level of human suffering asa result of human behaviour is so seismic in real life. One argument could be that the safe distance of fiction actually allows us to engage with events and suffering more closely, for we are always aware that however real the events and feelings may seem they are fictional. Yet for the purpose of this discussion and an understanding for the kind of path much modern tragedy has taken, we should take the notion of the loss of feeling as a truth. The challenge becomes to find a new form of tragedy, in style, content and impact. We are no longer moved by the same things in the same ways by the same means.

We find ourselves looking to the past, searching for something real. There is a nostalgia for and a bereavement off the kind of tragedy we believe used to exist in the past. Our view might be false, but the sense of loss is real. We feel a desire to repeat the feats of tragic heroes, of the Napoleons. It is a pathological desire to find something which we believe to have been lost, it is an act of mourning. Yet even if the search is successful nothing will be the same a second time around. Context has changed, meaning is lost, and it is emptied of its original values. It is the modern idea of entropy, the idea that energy and meaning are always running down.

The result is that when we find a container in which we expect to find something, one of the gems from the past which we believe will hold value, it arrives having been emptied, vacated, hollow. There is a sadness in the vacuousness, which results in a paradox, the lack of feeling is the very cause of our sadness. When our cultural and psychological presumption for feeling is met with nothing, feeling is generated. This opens up the potential for us to find new ways, at one step removed, into the nervous system.

In Beckett’s play ‘play’ repetition is used to generate feeling. The script sees three characters, only speaking when the light is on them, unaware of the other, talking us through their predicament, and the interconnected world and plots of the three. The first run of the play is funny, the theatre is filled with laughter at their perilous state. At the end of the first round the actors obey the simply stage command to ‘repeat play’. The second time around the theatre is deadly silence; an awkward hushes quite melancholy fills the air. The third time around we start to panic, feeling despair and fear that it will never end. Beckett regularly uses repetition. In ‘Waiting for Godot’ the tragedy comes from the very denial of the normal tragic plot. We normally expect the nature of the protagonist to lead to a series of events which will see suffering unfold around them. In the case of these two their very waiting, the very lack of action of change, the continuation of their plight is the tragedy. The in ability for them to find narrative development is their only suffering. Their condition does not change, and it is the lack of change, that makes it seem increasingly desperate.

In Warhol’s images of Car crashes the screen printed technique reminds us of the detachment we have from such events. We view the scene at a safe distance. At this distance we conform to the social expectation to acknowledge that such a scene is tragic, that the inevitable lose of life and destruction of such an event is upsetting, unfortunate. It is something we know we should feel sad about, so we obey convention and express our pity for the victim. Yet as we scroll through the lines of the repeated image we seem to become aware of the farce, of the artificial nature of our feeling. We become aware that we are merely obey a social convention to express pity rather than to actually feel pity. As we realise this the artificial nature of our pity dissolves and we empty ourselves of the falsely constructed emotion. This process of emptying is what makes us sad, this process of emptying is what open us up and allows real pathos and pity in. This paradoxical situation is the central devise, I believe, in generating real pathos in the contemporary audience, it is necessarily at one step removed and selfish.

The fear of nothingness is perhaps the greatest fear a secular society has. It is the association that our existence ends with nothing following. It is awarenss of our mortality and our total lack of importance and divinity in the grand scientific/natural scheme of things. Truer than ever due Macbeth’s words ring@

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

God is dead! Tragedy is dead! Painting is dead!

Such grand pronouncements are now so boringly repeated that must people have stopped listening. George Steiner’s ‘The Death of Tragedy’ (1961) is no less sensationalist than most claims, but it is convincing on a number of levels.

Tragedy has become an anachronism. The Enlightenment gave birth to Rationalism as the central tool of Western philosophy. Darwin’s theories of evolution gave logical justification for a wide spread loss of faith, resulting in an increasingly secular society. Freud provided the psychoanalytical basis for man to place himself at the centre of the universe, subjected to his subconscious desires. It was on the belief in divine form/s of some kind that tragedy was born and developed. When we are stripped of such ideologies can it be possible to form a modern notion of tragedy? As Steiner argues, have the metaphysical grounds on which tragedy exists been removed?

Equally kings and heroes seem like mythological notions. We no longer necessarily see ourselves as mortal being subject to forces much greater than us, as life being a great mystery which stretches far beyond our comprehension. As Hamlet says to Horatio:

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than dreamt of in all philosophy”

A defence to tragedy argues that our beliefs have changed rather than disappeared. Stephen Hawkins ‘A Brief History of Time’ gives a lucid and populist account of the history of the universe, providing an account from physics which makes our position within and awareness of a system far greater than our comprehension as epic and daunting as any which has come before us. Need a Christian view of humanity hold more grounds for tragedy than an atheist or agnostic view?

The case for the death of tragedy would state that the metaphysical conventions which underpin tragedy can no longer be met. As such tragedy can be seen as a thing of the past, to have existed in particular historical ages; from Aeschylus and Euripides to Shakespeare and Racine. This does not take into account our ability to abstract ourselves, to become absorbed and affected by a moral and philosophical model which differs to our own.

Another claim is that tragedy has particular stylistic conventions. Its roots are in a drama expressed in the highest poetic forms. It is certainly true that we have developed a literary tradition which has increasingly moved away from that particular mode of expression, with the rise of ‘realism’ being heralded as the final victory for prose over poetry. This is a narrow and limiting view though, to situate poetry and prose as polar opposites is to undermine the complexities and myriad possibilities of language. Equally misleading is the idea that modern and contemporary literature displays a homogenous landscape of prosaic landscape. The most damming attack on poetry, and often cited, is the claim of German philosopher Theodor Adorno in Cultural Criticism and Society (1951) that there can be ‘No poetry after Auschwitz’. It should be pointed out that this statement has been translated and de-contextualised, and therefore has been used to represent a broad view rather than accurately representing Adorno’s philosophy. A broader analysis of the condition of art after the Holocaust is needed than I can provide here. Yet it is clear that that event has, or at the very least should have had, a seismic impact on our conception of humanity, and therefore as a by product art. What is certain is that the moral justifications for depicting images of human suffering has been implicated in the shift in our understanding our of own capabilities and ideologies. What is less certain is that this should result in the total loss of a particular type of poetry, the kind closely associated with tragedy. More realistic is that this has caused a shift, a total reappraisal of the methods by which we express ourselves, rather than a total break. Any hope or desire for a cleaner, absolute break should be tempered by the knowledge that such ideological and polar methods of analysis underpinned the philosophy of those behind the Holocaust.

The call for the end of poetry was quieter, and less significant, than the claims of Nietzche, and much repeated since, of ‘The death of God’. According to thinkers such as Lucien Goldmann tragedy requires a god, for it is ‘a spectacle under the permanent observation of a deity’. Thus the loss of wide spread belief in an increasingly secular society has led to a chasm between the conception of our existence between modern society and our ancestors. Once belief is not an absolute can tragedy exist? The initial defence is again to argue that we are capable of abstracting ourselves. The second is too suggest that whatever our personal beliefs there has not been a total loss of belief in gods in contemporary society. Even if we dismiss both of these arguments, there is plenty of logic in the argument that tragedy can still exist without a belief in god/s.

The role of a belief in a god in a tragedy is that it provides the notion of a divine force, of powers outside of our control which reach over and above us. The purpose of this is twofold. Firstly it is because tragedies look to present questions of the human condition, philosophical in the nature of the search but tending more towards the presentation of a condition than a set of clear answers. Secondly it is because traditionally the gods or god are the central devise to invoke fear, due an understanding of god/s as a universal and (by their nature) omnipotent controlling force. Yet an uncertainty in such a force, or a total dismissal, does not role out the ability to construct tragic narratives which invoke questioning and fear.
Marlowe’s ‘Dr. Faustus’ can be presented to an audience in a number of ways, including as a doctrine on the loss of belief. Faustus spends the whole setting rationalism, science and literature against religion and belief. Fausuts’ fears, and those of the audience, are based both on belief and lack of belief. If there is a god then his doubting could potentially lead to damnation. If there is not a god then he might be left with nothing. Both, surely, are vast concepts and utterly frightening.

‘The reward of sin is death? That’s hard.
Si peccasse negamus, fallimur, et nulla est in nobis veritas.
If we say that we have no sin,
We deceive ourselves, and there’s no truth in us.
Why then belike we must sin,
And so consequently die.
Ay, we must die an everlasting death.’

In many ways we can compare this to the constant philosophising of Hamlet. His constant inaction is due to a fear of what follows life. He stops himself killing King Claudius in Act IIII because when he arrives to strike him Claudius is praying. He still holds belief and still fear the potential for Claudius to find redemption should he kill him there and then. Yet at other points his fear of death is ridden with a fear of the potential of nothingness which follows. When viewing Hamlet in the 21st Century it still runs through us, its constant contemplation of death. In the ‘to be or not to be’ monologue he states:

“To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,”

Or Macbeth’s speech:

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

This rings as true, if not even more fearful, to an agnostic or atheist than someone with firm belief. The lack of potential redemption or afterlife is surely as grand and terrifying a concept as a belief in god. When viewing Michelangelo’s ‘Last Judgment’ viewers spoke of Terribilata, a concept closely aligned to the romantic idea of the sublime, with nature replaced by god. In both cases the viewer is overcome, made fully aware of their lack of significance in the grand scheme of things. We might not, as a society, quiver in fear over the thought of a day of divine judgment, but we might find equal terror in the very lack of such a day.

To say tragedy is dead is presumptuous. The conventions in which it exists have changed, with stylistic tendencies no longer so singularly linked to the kinds of elaborate language we associate with classical modes of tragedy. Content has also shifted, largely due to the rise of rationalism and the existence of a world view which is far more fragmented and plural than ever before. We should also be careful to not position the past as a homogenous whole, with their methods and ideas of tragedy singular. The notion of tragedy has been shifting and evolving from the moment Aristotle tried to tie it down to doctrine. Rather than dead we should perhaps see tragedy is the living dead, a figure killed of and having come back to life, a zombie character (The kind of character, suitably, so central to many tragic plots). We are in the process of trying to kill it off, of murdering it or attempting an autopsy of a body which is not yet full empty of life. We will continue to find no guises for tragedy, for the essential and intrinsic qualities which are eternally relevant to the human condition, all that changes is the way in which these qualities, in style and content, should look to manifest themselves.

Death is central to tragedy, it stages our desire and dread and our own mortality is our greatest and most consistent dread. This is universal. As Hamlet states:

‘oh that this too too solid flesh would melt’ hamlet

Tragedy makes a case for a particular death being unique and special. The tragedy of the unknown death or mundane death is a more modern preoccupation. This is not to say that a death cannot be deemed tragic if the particular person is not previously unique. What realism does is to take the humble death and raise it to a level where it has the quodos and pathos of the unique death. It is capable of drawing our attention to the unique nature of every death. To give heroic qualities to the more mundane individual’s death is a key and important talent of modern tragedy. When we think of events like the two world wars, Vietnam, the Holocaust, the Twin Towers and recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan we are feed mere statistics, which are totally divorced from the pain, suffering and upset that each death causes. If tragedy traditionally staged the deaths of mythical heroes and kings then modern tragedy has often looks to give equally weight and dignity to the everyday death, and to make us realise that such a statement is a paradox. Arthur Miller has both written plays and critical texts which eloquently express this notion. His ‘Death of a Salesman’ being a notable example. This tendency certainly did not start with Miller, the Romantics and the Realists offer other notable examples. Both Worsworth’s ‘Lucy’ and Courbet’s ‘Burial at Ornans’ are examples of the humble being raised to a point of significance.

In Courbet’s work an unknown figure from the community is about to be buried. The mourners circle around the grave, split between those clearly aligned to the religious ceremony and those who where dark clothes and appear to be a community of mourners. The construction of the picture points towards a moment of decision, a questioning what happens to a figure post death, a fleshy descent into the ground or transcendence into spirit. It stages the fundamental importance of such a moment at any funeral for any person.

The question posed by Courbet is another central to tragedy, how do we mourn? It is certainly something which has changed, in practical and metaphysical terms. The ceremony of a funeral, whilst still often holding many of the attachments, no longer tends towards the same depth of engagement with question of life and death, instead it tends to look back of the life that has been. The inquest into death has changed, and we no longer have heroes and Kings to mourn in the same way as we once did. Yet public displays of mourning still exist, and still serve a cathartic purpose. The Death of Princess Diana was one of the biggest events of the 1990’s. The level of public grief seemed to greatly outweigh the magnitude of the death. We were no longer mourning Diana, but instead Diana became a vehicle through which a whole nation found a way to relieve grief, both of a personal and public nature.

We are certainly more detached geographical and spirituality from our dead then we ever have been. The geography of cemeteries has found itself moving increasingly to the margins of our towns and cities, where once they lay at the very heart of a community.

Despite the many changes the fact remains we still die, a little older on average, but we still have a clearly finite life. Our mortality has and will remain the very greatest fear we have. Our very biology, as expressed in Dawkin’s ‘The Selfish Gene’ is built in order to survive, it is our greatest desire and therefore our greatest dread.

We should be careful not to presume that the modern fear of death is unique to our time. The idea that our life is futile, that nothing follows our demise is not new.

Macbeth:
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.