scholarly journals F. M. DOSTOEVSKY AND NIHILISTIC INTERPRETATION OF HOLBEIN'S PAINTING „DEAD CHRIST IN THE TOMB”

2021 ◽  
Vol XII (38) ◽  
pp. 51-66
Author(s):  
Dabiel Miščin
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Fyodor Dostoevsky ◽  
The Third ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Physical Suffering ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Direct Answer

Ever since Hans Holbein the Younger completed his painting, The Dead Christ in the Tomb, in 1522, a question has been looming over it, namely, what message does this dead body convey? Having seen the painting in 1847, the Russian classic writer Fyodor Dostoevsky was also intrigued by this question. In his novel, The Idiot, Ippolit Terentyev seeks to give a systematic and direct answer. The article presents a hermeneutic analysis of his position, and classifies it as nihilistic. Nihilism affects all three levels of Ippolit's discourse - the ontic, eschatological and ontological. Nevertheless, the question remains: can such nihilism be justified from the perspective of the painting itself? Posing this question in the context of Alois Riegl’s periodization of European culture has proven to be interesting. He is of the opinion that, following the era of Christian monotheism, the third and the last period of the development of European culture is the natural-scientific period. This particular period, Riegl believes, began in 1520. If we choose to accept this periodization model, The Dead Christ may be seen as one of the first paintings of the modern era, keeping in mind that Holbein painted it in 1521 and 1522. As regards the issue of the body of The Dead Christ being immersed in physical suffering to the extent that the possibility of resurrection is excluded - as Ippolit presumes - this article offers certain reasons of an anatomical nature which may be interpreted theologically and which deny the validity of Ippolit’s modern, nihilistic hypothesis in regard to the meaning of Holbein's Dead Christ.

The Images of Dante’s Inferno in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The House of the Dead

2021 ◽  
pp. 31-52
Author(s):  
Marina G. Kurgan ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Network ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Personal Space ◽  
Divine Comedy ◽  
The Body ◽  
Dimensional Image ◽  
The Third ◽  
Character System ◽  
The Divine Comedy ◽  
The Dead

The House of the Dead was repeatedly compared with the first part of Dante’s The Divine Comedy even in F.M. Dostoevsky’s lifetime. However, his contemporaries usually focused on general analogies, while later scholars paid more attention to the narrative features or individual reminiscences. This research studies the main aspects of the artistic structure of the Dante code, constructing the space of Hell in Dostoevsky’s novel. 1. The organization of space. Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov, the narrator in The House of the Dead, recreates a three-dimensional image that resembles a gradually narrowing funnel: from a bird’s-eye view, where the prison is seen in its entirety, the focus slowly descends, passing to smaller objects, and finally reaching the “three boards”, which limit Goryanchikov’s personal space. The same principle is employed to construct the space of Hell in Dante’s poem. In The House of the Dead, there is another significant indication of the spatial affinity of Dante’s hell and Dostoevsky’s katorga – active imagery associated with cobwebs and spiders. In the centre of the system of images associated with the designated semantic network is the parade- major, the head of the fortress and the owner of the inmate web. 2. The character system as an element constituting the space of Hell. The character system of The House of the Dead follows the compositional principle of Divine Comedy, where sinners are located in different circles in accordance with their main passion. There are three circles in the prison: the first is formal, according to the court decision; the second is informal, internal, formed by crafts and occupations; the third represents Goryanchikov’s perspective as an exponent of human and humane judgment, which distinguishes another person’s moral state. 3. Torment. The House of the Dead demonstrate a hierarchy in describing the tortures, while freedom becomes a fundamental category to embody the most important motif of physical and moral torment connecting Dostoevsky’s novel with Dante’s experience. The bodily torment ceases to be only the torment of the body to become a pain of the soul, comparable to physical torment, so the soul suffers and burns. Hell as a moral topos was the key for Dostoevsky. In The House of the Dead, he chooses the same way as Dante in The Divine Comedy: vivid corporeality conveys an esoteric metaphor of moral suffering and deep inner movements of the soul.

scholarly journals The disorderly body: considerations of The Book of Numbers, 19 and ritual impurity after contact with a corpse

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 197-205
Author(s):  
Sandra Junker
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Living Body ◽  
The People ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Living Creature

This article deals with the idea of ritual bodily impurity after coming into contact with a corpse in the Hebrew Bible. The evanescence and impermanence of the human body testifies to the mortality of the human being. In that way, the human body symbolizes both life and death at the same time; both conditions are perceivable in it. In Judaism, the dead body is considered as ritually impure. Although, in this context it might be better to substitute the term ‘ritually damaged’ for ‘ritually impure’: ritual impurity does not refer to hygienic or moral impurity, but rather to an incapability of exercising—and living—religion. Ritual purity is considered as a prerequisite for the execution of ritual acts and obligations. The dead body depends on a sphere which causes the greatest uncertainty because it is not accessible for the living. According to Mary Douglas’s concepts, the dead body is considered ritually impure because it does not answer to the imagined order anymore, or rather because it cannot take part in this order anymore. This is impurity imagined as a kind of contagious illness, which is carried by the body. This article deals with the ritual of the red heifer in Numbers 19. Here we find the description of the preparation of a fluid that is to help clear the ritual impurity out of a living body after it has come into contact with a corpse. For the preparation of this fluid a living creature – a faultless red heifer – must be killed. According to the description, the people who are involved in the preparation of the fluid will be ritually impure until the end of the day. The ritual impurity acquired after coming into contact with a corpse continues as long as the ritual of the Red Heifer remains unexecuted, but at least for seven days. 

Making an Exhibition of Ourselves: Using the Dead to Fight the Battles of the Living

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiffany Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
The Body ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
American Military ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
Dead Bodies ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Osama Bin Laden ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Nuremberg Trials

In October 2011, graphic images of a blood-stained and dead Muammar Gaddafi were sent around the internet. For some time after his death, his dead body was displayed at a house in Misrat, where masses of people queued to see it. His corpse provided a focus for the Libyan people, as proof that he really was dead and could finally be dominated. When Osama bin Laden was killed by the American military in May that same year, unlike Gaddafi, the body was absent, but the absence was significant. Shortly after he was killed a decision was taken not to show pictures of the dead body and it was buried at sea. The American military appear to have been concerned it would become a physical site for his supporters to congregate, and the photographs used by different sides in a propaganda war. Both cases reflect an aim to control the dead body and associated meanings with the person; that is not unusual: after the Nuremberg trials, the Allied authorities cremated Hermann Göring—who committed suicide prior to his scheduled hanging—so that his grave would not become a place of worship for Nazi sympathizers. These examples should remind us that dead bodies have longer lives than is at first obvious. They are central to rituals of mourning, but beyond this, throughout history, they have also played a role in political battles and provided a—sometimes contested—focus for reconciliation and remembrance. They have political and social capital and are objects with symbolic potential. In The Political Lives of Dead Bodies the anthropologist Katherine Verdery explores the way the dead body has been used in this way and why it is particularly effective. Firstly, she observes, human remains are effective symbolic objects because their meaning is ambiguous; that is whilst their associated meanings are contingent on a number of factors, including the individual and the cultural context, they are not fixed and are open to interpretation and manipulation: ‘Remains are concrete, yet protean; they do not have a single meaning but are open to many different readings’ (Verdery 1999: 28).

Dead Bodies, Affective States and Volatile Icons

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-101
Author(s):  
Daniella Kuzmanovic
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
The Body ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Affective States ◽  
Public Figure ◽  
Turkish Nationalism ◽  
Dead Bodies ◽  
The Dead

Dead bodies are symbolically effective in the context of politics, and enjoy a particular connection with affect. The mass-mediated mobilizations around Hrant Dink and the dead body of Dink suggest that there is indeed something about Katherine Verdery’s insight. Dink was a Turkish citizen of Armenian descent, editor, civic activist and a controversial public figure in Turkey. He was assassinated in 2007. Rather than focusing on the Armenian aspect in context of Turkish nationalism in order to grasp the efficacy of Dink and of his dead body, this article dwells on the intertwinement between his dead body and experiences of state subjects in Turkey. I argue that the efficacy of Dink, the semantic and affective density generated by way of the dead body, is produced in a conjuncture where neither meanings around the body and the person it embodied, nor of the state will stabilize.

Death as Transition in Judahite Mortuary Practices

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Suriano
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Final Stage ◽  
The Body ◽  
Mortuary Practices ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Insight Into

Death is transitional in the Hebrew Bible, but the challenge is in understanding how this transition worked. The ritual analysis of Judahite bench tombs reveals a dynamic concept of death that involved the transition of the dead body. The body would enter the tomb during primary burial; there it would receive provisions as it rested on a burial bench. Eventually the remains of the dead would be secondarily interred inside the tomb’s repository. This final stage, the repository, is marked by the collective burial of bones. The transition of the dead, therefore, involves the body in different conditions, first as an individual corpse and then as a collection of bones. The process of burial and reburial inside the bench tomb offers new insight into the idea that postmortem existence in the Hebrew Bible is predicated on the fate of the body.

scholarly journals The Dead Body as a 'Lieu De Mémoire'. The Body-Object and the Living Body in Caitlin Doughty’s Nonfiction

Linguaculture ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-101
Author(s):  
Cristina-Mihaela Botîlcă
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
First Century ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Post Mortem ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Personal Memory ◽  
Living Body ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Twenty First Century

Between Pierre Nora’s lieux de mémoire and Paul Ricoeur’s body-object there appears to be a relation of community and personal memory. Before death, the human body holds three meanings: material, symbolic, and functional, but post-mortem the body also becomes a place where both community and individual can update their relationship with death and mortality. In the twenty-first century, secularization of death practices inevitably leads to a secular view of the body. In Cailin Doughty’s nonfiction, the body seems to stand at the crossroad between spirituality and secularization, so between the meaning of the body and the body as a lieu. This paper will discuss how Nora’s and Ricoeur’s interpretations of memory and body apply to Doughty’s representation of the dead body within a death denying twenty-first century Western society.

scholarly journals How to handle the deceased body of COVID-19: an insight from Indonesian muslim burial handlers knowledge, perception, and practice

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tri Bayu Purnama ◽  
Siti Khadijah ◽  
Idris Sadri
Keyword(s):  
Personal Protective Equipment ◽  
The Body ◽  
Protective Equipment ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Universal Precaution ◽  
Qualitative Design ◽  
Safety Standards ◽  
Depth Interview ◽  
The Dead

Introduction: Handling the remained body affected by COVID-19 in Indonesia is still an issue as it is done by community. Aim: This study aims to explore the handlers knowledge, perception, and practice in handling the remains. Method: This study elaborates qualitative design in exploring the handlers knowledge, perception, and practice in handling the remains dealing with universal precaution during the handling of the deceased body of COVID-19. The data is obtained through in-depth interview with guides. Result: The majority of participants were acknowledged that the universal precaution is a precautionary conduct which remains general and non-technical. Technicality on the universal precaution such as personal protective equipment and safety standards for infectious substance on the dead body are still incomprehensive. The perception of each handler of the body is still obscure. It was showed by cautious/apprehensive sense predominated the handlers in handling the dead body. Conclusion: Improving the knowledge and strengthening the network of the handlers among the community play an important role in interrupting the chain of transmission of COVID-19 in the community.

Mortuary Customs Of The Meiteis Of Manipur: A Historical Study

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 113-119
Author(s):  
Dr S. Jayalaxmi Devi ◽  
Dr Oinam Ranjit Singh ◽  
Dr Th. Mina Devi
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Funeral Rites ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Local Dialect ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
The Dead

The rites of passage are the rites and ceremonies that mark a critical transition in the life cycle of an individual from one status to another in a given society. It covers birth, marriage and death. Death is the last crisis in the lifecycle of an individual. Siba means death in local dialect. It is believed that when the soul leaves the body permanently the man dies. The paper is an attempt to throw light on death and related customs of the Meiteis. There were four kinds of funeral systems such as disposal of dead body in the wild place, in the fire, in the earth (burial) and into the water (river). Disposal of dead in the fire (cremation) in Meitei society commenced from the time of Naophangba. But, the practice of cremation was prevalent among the Chakpas from the very early times. In ancient times, dead body was exposed; the dead body was kept throwing about in the Sumang (the space in front of the house) in the Khangenpham and a bird called Uchek Ningthou Lai-oiba which took away the dead body to a river called Thangmukhong in Heirok. Usually, funeral rites were considered as unclean; therefore, the performers had to wash and cleanse their body. They believe in a future life and in the survival of the soul. The data are based on available primary and secondary sources.

Green death: sustainability and the administration of the dead

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shiloh R Krupar
Keyword(s):  
Human Remains ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Body ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Equity Issues ◽  
The Dead ◽  
To Come ◽  
Utilitarian Ethic

This article explores changing American death care – the handling of the dead body and its materiality beyond death – in the context of US-based power relations over administration of human remains. The article briefly surveys efforts to make the afterlife of the dead more ‘sustainable’. I argue that this expanding governance entails intensified bioremediation: the reuse and reprocessing of dead bodies/parts, intensified forms of material-biological extraction, and the conversion of afterlife to forms of biovalue beyond death. First, some disposal efforts encourage an economy of body/parts and a utilitarian ethic of ‘no remains’. Accordingly, the afterlife is not ‘the end’ but a renewable material resource and opportunity to economize the body in death and put the dead body to work. Second, a range of practices now reimagine death as an opportunity for personal legacy and redeem the dead body’s decomposition as natural/as part of the natural world. Bioremediation in this case conceptually recuperates death into life so that death is not wasted; instead, the corpse serves as a material input for nature and a vehicle for personal ‘biopresence’. The article then considers some of the paradoxes and costs of greening the dead and outlines future research directions that might advance our understanding of the ways new sustainable disposal and commemorative technologies of the dead entrench racism and impact civil, consumer, and environmental rights. How bodies affect our environments today will impact people and landscapes in years to come. Because US governance of the dead has historically entailed the differential treatment of bodies after life, the article critically reflects on ‘death equity’ issues that operate across the living and the dead. The article concludes by querying how conduct for the dead might advance social justice through a material politics of human remains.

Materiality and Embodiment

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoë Crossland
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
The Body ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Forensic Archaeology ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study ◽  
Embodied Agency

The ideas of materiality and embodiment are explored in this article. It considers the contribution of archaeology to the interdisciplinary study of materiality and embodiment, focusing especially on the emergence of the archaeology of the body since the late 1980s. Human bodies have been a focus of archaeological study for a long time, with two divergent modes of analysis. What follows in this article is a review of some of the ways in which archaeologists have attempted to overcome these disciplinary limitations, by deploying a range of anti-foundationalist perspectives to theorize the embodied agency of past people. It further explores how questions of materiality have entered into the debates around embodiment. Finally this article presents two case studies. The first considers the use of apotropaic devices in seventeenth-century England, and the second looks at how the agency of the dead body is portrayed in discourse around contemporary forensic archaeology. An analysis of relations after death in forensic archaeology concludes this article.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document