23 April 2014
Memento mori
Latin
– translates as: ‘remember that you will die’.
A memento mori is an artistic or symbolic reminder of the inevitability of death. It may include skull and skeleton imagery in art. Centuries ago, many homes would have a skull on display as a memento mori. In the Victorian era, it was common to display photos of dead loved ones. Modern tattoos often picture skulls or other death imagery which may, depending on the wearers beliefs, signify mortality.
One well known memento mori was the skull of the ill-fated Yorick, in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Yorick, a court-jester known to Hamlet, had died. Hamlet comes upon Yorick’s skull in the graveyard. Hamlet, pondering death, holds up Yorick’s skull and forlornly declares, ‘Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy … ‘.
Anagram
mime omen rot
me moron item
memo nor time
I more moment
Today’s aphorism
‘To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bung-hole? … No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel? Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away: O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe, Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw!‘
Hamlet cynically lamenting the circle of life.
– William Shakespeare, Hamlet
On this day
23 April 1564 – birth of William Shakespeare, the Bard. English poet and playwright.
23 April 1616 – death of William Shakespeare, the Bard. English poet and playwright. Shakespeare invented more than 1700 words which are now in common use. He changed nouns into verbs, verbs into adjectives and joining words that normally wouldn’t be joined.
23 April 1928 – birth of Shirley Temple, American actress, singer, dancer and former U.S. ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia. Died 10 February 2014.