"Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs" – Richard II (III.ii.141)

It may be a deep look into my psyche that I grew up playing in cemeteries. I learned to ride a bike on the paths, I laid out in the grass to read, and I even learned how to drive on the roads of some of the bigger ones in the Chicagoland area. Cemeteries are a place of refuge to me, and a place to go for peace and to enjoy the sculptural art. I haven’t written at all on my blog about this art form so with cosmic tension going on all around the world, I’m going to practice self-indulgence and write about some of my favorite cemetery art.

Wheat on a headstone at Westerly Burying Ground in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, Mike Ball (2011)

My absolute favorite image is found on graves are depictions of broken things because of the emotional connotations of associating death with breaking. A link of chains with one broken can represent either a family contacted to the one who has died or the severing of soul from body. Brokenness also represents a life cut short. In particular a rose in different stages of bloom indicate about how old a young woman was at her death: just a bud is used for a child 12 or under; a partial bloom is a teenager; and a full bloom is normally someone in their early/mid twenties or died in the “prime of life”.

On the other end, wheat indicates that someone live a long life and died at the right time. The right time of course is subjective but whomever chose the image for the grave marker clearly believed it was such. This image is interesting because of the implied grim reaper. In case you didn’t know, a scythe is a tool for reaping wheat or grains (reaping being the actual act of cutting in the harvesting process). The idea of the grim reaper taking the person to the afterlife is present with out actually showing a skeletal figure.

The cadaver tomb of Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln Cathedral,
died 1431 Photo © Richard Croft (cc-by-sa/2.0)

The movement in the British Isles to statuesque burial markers is found in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The tradition of marking important graves with a stone slab emerged just before then in the late Old English period. The early sculptures often displayed a serene image of the deceased sleeping on a pillow, or with a fabric spread over an inert figure. Erwin Panofsky points out it is not until after the Black Death that tombs “attempted to represent the actual condition of ‘being dead'” (Tomb Sculpture 56). It is then that we get the double-decker transi tomb or cadaver tomb; he earliest known transi tomb in England belongs to Bishop Richard Fleming. This type of tomb depicts a stately figure of the deceased on the upper level, often with hands in prayer to help the soul through purgatory, and an image of decay directly below. Just like the motif in literature, the tombs often showed worms and vermin consuming the corpse and stood as a grim reminder that of momento mori.

Inez Clarke Monument, taken August 2019

Graceland Cemetery is a 121 acre, garden cemetery in Chicago, Illinois and one of the above referenced cemeteries that I “grew up” in. It’s full of iconic names relevant to Chicago history, and outside of the area it is mostly known because of its role in Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files. If I were to lead a tour of Graceland, I would say the two most important stops are the graves of Inez Clarke and Dexter Graves. The grave of Inez Clarke is the statue of a girl which reads “Inez Daughter of J.N. & M.C. Clarke.” What makes this grave special is not only the detail put into the sculpture, but also the urban legends created around her. Historical records about her are scarce and there were decades of debate before her identity and familial associations were tracked down. Her cause of death is unknown but the urban legend says she died when struck by lightning, and every time there is a storm, the statue gets up from her chair and hides until it is over. To add fuel to the mystery of this grave, Helen Sclair, affectionately called in Chicago “The Cemetery Lady”, found records indicating that a young boy named Amos Briggs in actually buried in that plot.

Eternal Silence at Dexter Graves’s grave, taken August 2019

Dexter Graves also is not well known for his individual role in Chicago history, but rather his grave and the sculpture accompanying it. Standing at ten feet tall (three meters), the bronze statue Eternal Silence by Lorado Taft is Graceland Cemetery’s personal depiction of Death personified. Since it was placed in the cemetery in 1909, the bronze statue now exists in a severely oxidized state, but that only adds to its somber look at the passage of time. According to the National Register of Historic Places, the sculpture is based on Taft’s “ideas on death and silence” and the figures on the Tomb of Philip the Bold in Dijon, France. It is also said if you look into the eyes of Eternal Silence you will see a vision on your own death, but as someone who has looked upon his face many times, I can assure you that is just folklore.

Sources

Panofsky, Erwin. Tomb Sculpture: Four Lectures on Its Changing Aspects from Ancient Egypt to Bernini. Edited by H W Janson, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1992.

https://gracelandcemetery.org/

Kiefer, Charles D., Achilles, Rolf, and Vogel, Neil A. “Graceland Cemetery“, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, HAARGIS Database, Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, June 18, 2000, accessed October 8, 2011.

Bielski, Ursula. Creepy Chicago: A Ghosthunter’s Tale of the City’s Scariest Sites, Lake Claremont Press, 2003.

Transi de René de Chalon
Church of Saint-Etienne in Bar-le-Duc, France

Taylor, Alison (2001). Burial Practice in Early England. Stroud: Tempus.

Shakespeare, William. “The Tragedy of Richard the Second.” The Norton Shakespeare, Based on the Oxford Edition, 2nd ed., W.W. Norton, 2008, pp. 973–1043.

I took the polaroid photos of Eternal Silence and Inez Clarke Monument in August 2019 to take with me during my time at UCC. Anyone who stumbles upon this blog is welcome to use them with credit, however I assure you there are much better photos on Graceland’s website.

Public Mourning and Private Grief

On the surface level mourning and grief seem like the same thing, but I’ve always separated them into public v. private spheres. Before getting into the spaces, I want to look at the literal definitions of these words, which are provided here by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Mourning is defined as “the action of feeling or expressing sorrow for the death of a person” or “anxiety, sorrow” (“mourning, n.1”). The action of “expressing sorrow” is key here because of its implication that it can be perceived by another individual. In comparison, the OED defines grief as “hardship, suffering” and “hurt, harm, mischief or injury done or caused by another” (“grief,n.”). This gives the connotation that grief an actual wound that must be cared for, and causes harm to an individual. Of course, a wound can be seen by others, but grief is something that just exists, whereas mourning is an action.

Defining them may seem like a pedantic step, but it plays directly into the distinction of spaces for two. Before explaining their social spheres, I feel it is important to mention that public mourning and private grief are equally important, and my ramblings are not a critique on either. The idea of “performative” mourning and the pressure that social media has created around such may be a post later, but intention with this post is to lay a foundation for how I define the two terms.

Mourning lives in the public sphere because of its ability to be perceived by others and its function as a display of grief. There are two main methods: funerals and monuments.

Mourning dress worn by Queen Victoria, 1894, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Funerals have always been a performance. Beowulf provides us a funeral scene for the titular character, where the poem not only describes the pyre being built, but also tells us about the presence of a woman with the sole purpose to sing and wail for the hero. This display proves for anyone present at Beowulf funeral (including the reader) that he was a greatly beloved king and the magnitude of the loss. Needless to say, this tradition didn’t stop in the Middle Ages. Victorian England is a sight for lavish funerals since it was also used as a status symbol— elaborate funerals and prolonged mourning periods not only showed on’s devotion to a loved one, but also a family’s wealth in that they could afford such. This even includes Queen Victoria, who remained in mourning for her husband until she died. Mourning is still very much a public spectacle in that social media has created a platform for anyone to lament the loss of a loved one or celebrity, and the funerals of the latter are a common topic for media outlets.

Monuments are an equally important sight for public mourning. Being American, the first monument I think of is Reflecting Absence, the 9/11 memorial designed by Micheal Arad. Built in the former foundation of the Twin Towers, it is a pair minimalist recessed

Photo of the 9/11 memorial taken from the World Financial Center, as it appeared in June 2012.

pools etched with the names of everyone who was lost that day. This monument, and most others, exist to remind onlookers of loss and evoke a feeling of sorrow. Monuments can be found in the funeral of Beowulf which was mentioned before. Beowulf’s final words are a request that his people build ‘Beowulf’s Barrow’ so that the Geats can remember him and that anyone who sails by will recognize it. This is certainly a monument because it is not built merely as a grave, but with the direct intention as a mark of his heroics and his death for anyone passing.

All of these points of public mourning are ways of expressing private grief. In my own understanding of private grief, it’s not necessarily hidden, but it is up to the individual to decide how it is shown. In the way monuments and funerals give a open display of a loss to anyone observing, grief is more about the individual than the collective. Public mourning takes up most of my thoughts in this post because it is something palpable, whereas private grief means something different to everyone. It’s as simple as the sentiment that there is no one way to grieve. Yet the cliché still make me think about why we, throughout history, create ways to process loss openly and to continually visit the sense of sorrow in monuments. I don’t believe there is a definitive answer to that question as private grief is the motivation behind public mourning.

Bibliography

“grief, n.” OED Online, Oxford University Press, November 2019, www.oed.com/view/Entry/81389.

“mourning, n.1.” OED Online, Oxford University Press, November 2019, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/122947.

All photos are public domain.