American School of Classical Studies at Athens. June 23, 2022. D. B. Levine
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings,
The powerful of the earth—the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,—the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods—rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old Ocean’s gray and melancholy waste,—
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.
These lines from William Cullen Bryant’s poem Thanatopsis summarize the universality and ubiquity of death. Eventually we will lie down with ‘patriarchs of the infant world’ along with the powerful rulers of old, on a magnificent couch, in one mighty sepulcher: the earth. All souls share this bond; all will join the tribes that slumber in ‘the sad abodes of death.’
The ties we have formed during our seminar have been productive – in our joyful examination of mortuary ideas practices and the material culture that these have produced. We have come together and bonded over our love for Greek landscapes, seascapes, and the multifaceted Mediterranean life that has embraced us during our journey. We must admit that Death has brought us together, and now sadly, we must go our separate ways, rich in the experiences we have shared contemplating the many ways that humans have reacted to the deaths of their fellows, and have memorialized them. Memory has been our central theme.
And memory will carry us forward. Memory of the places we have seen, the friends we have made, and the bibliographies we have discovered. Yes, bibliographies.
Human lives are like books. We write and are written. We learn from others as we read the stories of their lives. Our own works are dependent on others, who are sources of our knowledge, and who support us as we assert ourselves before others.
Bibliography.. and Biography. We have seen how the people in Greece have “written” the stories of human lives: in art and graves. The variety and multiplicity of artistic creations and architectural monuments to the dead have caused us to marvel at human grief, but also to admire human ingenuity. The living remember the dead in a seemingly endless number of ways.
Creating and experiencing the Thanatopsis seminar of 2022 has been a pleasure and an honor for me. I have been delighted to get to know you in our short time together. Today is the second anniversary of my open heart surgery, and boy am I glad that I survived. Of course, I owe my life to the advice that Judith yelled at me as I went into the pre-op room. She yelled, “Don’t die!” And since I always follow her advice, I didn’t. Thanks, Sweetheart, for telling me what to do. By surviving that procedure I have been able to make είκοσι new best friends, to explore and laugh with them, to learn from them, and to walk with them.
Please notice that I have resisted my annoying habit of making puns on this grave occasion. After all, I don’t want to beat a dead horse. Just let me say that you all have shown much dedication to our mission and have been dead set on making sure that all goes smoothly.
Back to scholarship. The dead but immortal Prussian-German philologist Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1848–1931) famously used a vampiric turn of phrase to describe how philologists and archaeologists must labor in order to understand the past and to bring it back to life. Recalling Odysseus’ underworld sacrifices in Odyssey 11, meant to give sensibility to the shades who drank the blood of the slaughtered rams, Wilamowitz said the following about death, in a long-remembered speech at Oxford University on June 4, 1908:
Yet let us be honest. We ourselves, when once Dryasdust has done his work within us, and we advance to the shaping of our scientific results—from that time forth we do just the same, we use our free formative imagination. The tradition yields us only ruins. The more closely we test and examine them, the more clearly we see how ruinous they are; and out of ruins no whole can be built. The tradition is dead: our task is to revivify life that has passed away. We know that ghosts cannot speak until they have drunk blood; and the spirits which we evoke demand the blood of our hearts.
According to Wilamowitz, scholars of the ancient world can only speak intelligibly about defunct ancient cultures by drinking blood… the blood of our hearts. Of course, Wilamowitz uses metaphor here. Indeed, we need metaphors to explain things; metaphors are especially useful to help us express the mysteries of death and the afterlife. And a life without metaphor would be like…
This seminar and our adventures in this country have changed us all. The land and our deep pursuit of Thanatopsis have made us stronger, wiser, and more experienced. We will never forget our time together here. Greece is now part of us. Let us acknowledge that on us all, especially on those who have gotten tattoos, Greece has left an indelible impression.
Finally, and most importantly, let us be grateful to those who have helped us to make the most of our time here: to Niamh and the Staff of Loring Hall, to the scholars who have taught us, to our outstanding bus driver Christos, to the American School staff in the Archives, the Library, the Wiener Lab, and the Computer Lab, to the School’s Director and Assistant Director — and last but not least, the to amazing cook Takis, who, unseen below our feet, made sure that we did not perish from hunger.
Let us bring this tiresome speech to an end on a hopeful note, with the last words of Bryant’s Thanatopsis:
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
I wish you all a good night and pleasant dreams.
Thank you.
THIS JUST IN: THE INTERNATIONAL WORLD THANATOPSIS FEDERATION SOCIETY ASSOCIATION HAS RECEIVED OUR RECOMMENDATIONS FOR GREECE’S CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE WORLD FUNERARY PRACTICES MUSEUM EXHIBITION. I EXPECT TO HEAR GOOD THINGS FROM THEM SOON. MEANWHILE, YOU SHOULD SOON RECEIVE MEMBERSHIP CARDS FROM THEM.
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