Articles & Essays Book Reviews Creative Writing
Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Volume 19 Number 1, April 2018
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Brilliant, Richard. Death. From Dust to Destiny, London, Reakton Books Ltd 2017. 245 pages ISBN 9781 178023 7251 Hardback price $19.92
Reviewed by
Georgian Technical University. Tbilisi, Georgia
The book Death. From Dust to Destiny by Richard Brilliant was comforting to read in spite of the theme the author deals with. Comforting, because of the way the author treats one of the most mysterious and philosophical aspects of our existence, or rather, its termination, and the way he suggests to reconcile with it. Influenced by the first losses in his life – the death of a contemporary relative, a fifteen year old cousin, killed by a terrible accident during military manoeuvres, and by the death of a grandfather, the author begins to concentrate first on the funeral itself and the components of a formal ceremony in order to distance himself from the family tragedy, and later studying and analyzing “the survivors` behavior that followed, the perception of death and varied experiences of loss, which are subjected to ritual.”
Meditation over how the dead could be peacefully or otherwise, once buried, resolved in the reviewing book about death and its effect on the living.
We all well remember a wise advice “memento mori”. But what does “mors” imply for us and the people around us? The universality of death`s occurrence in human existence, despite the reluctance to accept its apparent finality, demonstrates its central importance in human consciousness. That sensibility manifests itself in various cultural practices, responding to the fact of death and to the unknown consequences following the termination of life, as the author rightly suggests.
Questions about how can a living being become an “I” in existence, how, then, does a physical death leads to a state of “not I” or “no longer I” and where does that “I” go, come into the center of the author`s quest. The nature of absence and its seeming finality reveal fundamental attitudes about the quality and character of being in this world and the mournful evanescence of a former living presence.
According to the scientific concept of the conservation of matter, that the author supports, the molecular entities that first came together to compose a person as a living body and led to the creation of the “I” that came to be, survive after death. Similarly, following one`s physical death, those same elements would preserve in some amorphous form, possibly waiting for reintegration in another “I”, not exactly the same as the original. If this process does in fact occur, then the cycle of renewable being and its potentially everlasting character seems very close to Buddhist belief in the cycle of reincarnation. If so, the state of “I” could never be more than a transitory phase in existence, because such a being, always becoming, would be perennial.
R. Brilliant treats these questions as relevant to the assessment of the human condition and to the development of self-knowledge; they “reflect common concerns: ”where have I come from?” and “where will I be going?” But if so, he assumes that the journey of life seems to lack some adequate or ascertainable definition, even as a pilgrimage to some desirable end.
In the combination of texts and visual images R. Brilliant attempts to reveal the nature of death and the memory of the once living.
R. Brilliant studied sepulchral monuments and grave inscriptions, steles, sarcophagus of Egypt, Tunisia, Asia Minor, Israel, Europe, World Wars and Holocaust memorials, obituaries that track lives in the comprehension that “the relation that most deeply and universally determines the consciousness of our existence is that of life to death; for the limitation of our existence through death is always decisive for our understanding and our estimation of life” [p.33].
Though death is universal and happens to all, it is hard for the remaining to accept the loss of the beloved ones as well as to accept our uncertainty about what will happen after we perish. “Recognition that someone is dead – is not so simple; it requires a certain sophistication, a certain expertise to identify the change in state from life to death.” As Jacque Derrida supposed, because of the memory of the departed, the memory image undergoes an active interiorization. As a result, the departed never fully become absent, remaining so within the survivor, or effected incorporated into the other self, that the affective bonds of friendship never break. The integrative force of affection and memory powerfully bind together the living and dead in an ongoing relationship.
The author writes with deep sympathy and understanding about both the premature deaths of children, symbolizing killing the future, otherwise embodied in these children, and about the grief of the elderly, which is hard to bear because there are so many in one`s age group dying, so many life stories coming to an end, such shrinkage in one`s age category.[72] He speculates about moral trauma for the remaining living because of many ways death can intervene without warning, the pain of wanting the once living to be as they were and the intensity of physical and emotional relationships that can never continue [Matthew Dickman: 84].
Retrospective view of historical deaths from Hector, the Trojan hero, crucifixion of Crist, tragedy of Holocaust victims and massive slaughter in World Wars and other military actions, to victims of genocide and political oppressions all pass before a sympathetic eye of the author as a single tragic moving picture of untimely, cruelly and needlessly terminated lives.
What remains after physical death of a body is the spirit of self that the author treats as elements, circulating in the cosmos, which were assembled at birth and lived until death. But what becomes with I? He cites Hermes who treats death not as the destruction of things that have been combined, but as the dissolution of their union. He, therefore, understands “death” as a definitive event that marks the termination of life, just as “birth” marks its beginning. Between “birth” and “death” lies the continuum of life, bounded by one`s material emergence from the cosmos to an inevitable, inchoate return. A distinction has, then, to be made between the “who” and the “what” that dies – interrelated but not identical entities. But how does “I” continue to live on the Earth? The author quotes one of the obituaries “A man is not dead while his name is still spoken.” [p.98] To keep the passed away always alive memories are important.
And yet, people find it hard to reconcile themselves with the death of their beloved. The author reviews the myths in which heroes descended into the Underworld and came back, or succeeded in returning their beloved ones from Hades. They reveal the everlasting aspiration of people not to reconcile with the finality of death and at the same time a feeling of connection between the two worlds. The belief has persisted throughout the human history that with divine intervention there is always hope. And how many are the stories about great joy of those on the verge of death who are saved from that death by divine intervention. These stories and myths about returning from the Underworld suggest access to and exit from the underworld, even if only temporary with the exception of those who were granted divinity. The boundary between the “before” and the “after” seems to resemble a fateful hinge, connecting the “here” and the “there”, existing as a momentary pause on the verge of death [p.134]. The author speaks about sepulchral symbolism that has often exploited the motif of the door, closed or left ajar, as a means of expressing an attitude about the relative finality of death, the tenacious grasp of Hades or the potential escape through divine intervention. He recalls Psalm 9:13 where deliverance from the gates of death rests in the Lord`s hands.
O you who lift me up from the
gates of death,
that I may recount all your praises,
that in the gates of the
daughter of Zion
I may rejoice in your salvation.
The last chapter of the book raises the most vital and undecided question: “After all, we die, and then?” As the author rightly reasons, death either destroys us or sets us free. If we are released, the better part of us remains having lost its border; if we are destructed, nothing remains and good and evil alike are removed (Seneca, letter to Lucilius).
As the author argues, consciously, or not, this defence against the extinction of the other, and eventually of oneself, reveals an abiding faith that there is more to a human being than flesh and bone. This residue of the self has been called “soul” or “spirit”, an entity that lies within all of us and survives death. “Spirit” may have no definable physical substance and may not be subject to the laws of nature or be accessible to scientific proof. And yet, belief in its existence has long been held as the essence of one`s being. However, he shares the skepticism of Pliny the Elder who wrote:
All men are in the same state from their last day forward as they were before their first day, and neither body, nor mind has any more sensation after death than it had before birth. But wishful thinking prolongs itself into the future and falsely invents for itself a life that continues beyond death, sometimes by giving the soul immortality or a change of shape, sometimes by according feeling to those below, worshipping spirits and deifying one who has already ceased to be even a man (from “Natural History, VII, 188)
The book ends with philosophical meditation about what remains after death, other than dry bones and fading reputations. It is memories and hope in the continuity of communal and natural life. The continuation of the natural world for those who follow is an assumption that the environment will remain hospitable to their future existence in this world, if not in another. Memory of the deceased can extend an afterlife long after death, but only as a historical character alive in the past, existing through a subsequent intermediaries.
The last part of the book is also a quiet conversation with other thinkers who have left us their vision of our fate after death. R. Brilliant`s argument is that afterlife, of course, is not so much an obvious untruth as a truthful untruth. It evokes our fear and longings. It can be tied to the broader concept of a collective afterlife, as defined by the philosopher Samuel Scheffler. The collective afterlife” posits the survival of the generations of human beings who follow, and on whose future existence of the present living depend. In conclusion the author quotes Brian Copenhaver: Death is not the destruction of things, that have been combined, but the dissolution of their union. … These are the passions of the cosmos, swirlings and concealments. The swirling is a return, and the concealment is a renewal [p193].
The book is beautifully illustrated (135 illustrations, 75 in colour) with multiple images of famous works of art from all over the world and pictures of sepulchral monuments. Photo acknowledgements take two pages.
Quotations range from the books of Ecclesiastes and Ezekiel, Psalms, ancient and modern philosophers to poetry with concluding quotation from Jerusalem Talmud.
References include esoteric books such as The Egyptian Book of the Dead, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, The Maya Book of the Dead, ancient and modern philosophers and such famous modern scholars as Roland Barth and Jacque Derrida.
The book is written with great tact, intellect and gained with age wisdom. It is a mature study of culture as well as deep penetration into one of the most important aspects of our life and its physical termination. It provokes thought and at the same time gives you consolation.