Dialogue of Frederick Ruysch and his Mummies.
Choir of deaths in the study of Frederick Ruysch
Alone in the eternal world, which is turned
Every created thing in thee, death, rests
Our naked nature
not happy, but safe
From the ancient grief.
Deep night
In the confused mind
serious thought obscure
the hope, the desire, the spirit arid
fail Lena feels:
So you may have fear and anguish dissolved
E l ' age and slow vote
Without boredom consumes.
We lived: and what a scary ghost,
And sweaty dream
A baby boy wanders nell'alma
confused memories:
This memory n'avanza
Del our live, but this subject is far from
The remembrance.
What were we?
That was then bitter
What was the name of life?
What mysterious and wonderful
Today is life to our thoughts, this is
What de 'live with the thought
The unknown death appears.
As death
Living shelters, so shuns
From the vital flame
Our naked nature
not happy but safe,
However, Which blessed
Deny to deny death and to 'dead fate.
Ruysch outside the studio, looking for chinks of the door. Damn.! Who taught music to the dead, singing of midnight as the Roosters? In truth I cold sweat, and nearly dead are more of them. I do not think because I have preserved from corruption, that I raised. In fact: with the whole philosophy, I tremble from head to foot. Mal has that devil that tempted me to put these people in the house. I do not know what to do. If I leave here closed, I know that do not break the door, or do not come PEL keyhole, and I come to find the bed? Call for help for fear of 'dead, I is not good. Street, let's courage, and try a little scary to them.
entering. Sons, to play that game? you do not remember being dead? is that tub that noise? maybe you're arrogant visit of the Czar, and I think no longer subject to the laws of this before? I imagine that I had the intention to be hoax, and not true. If you raised, I rejoice with you, but I did not so much that I can make the cost to live like the dead, and therefore get out of my house. If it is true what they say vampires, and you are one of those, look for more blood to drink, I am not willing to let me suck my own, as there have been liberal in that fake, that I put in my veins. In addition, if you will continue to be still and silent, as you have been so far, keeping in good agreement, and in my house you will not miss anything, and if not, I feel the air of the output shaft, and I'll kill you all .
Dead . Do not get angry, I promise you that we'll all be dead as we are, without you kill us.
Ruysch. So what is that tub fantasy that was born there now, to sing?
Dead . A little while ago on precisely midnight, has been accomplished for the first time that year and the great mathematician, of which the ancients write so many things, and likewise this is the first time that the dead speak. And not only us, but in any cemetery in any tomb, down into the seabed under the snow or the sand, open air, and wherever they are, all the dead, about midnight, they sang as we that song you've heard.
Ruysch. And the last to sing or to speak?
Dead . Have to sing over. Have the right to speak for a quarter of an hour. Then come back to silence, even to the extent that it appears again in the same year.
Ruysch. Cotesta If it is true, I do not think I have to break the sleep again. Talk freely even together, I'll just stay here by me, and I listen with pleasure, curiosity, without disturbing you.
Dead . We can not speak otherwise, that answering to some person alive. Who does not have to be replicated to the living, who finished the song, is pacified.
Ruysch. I'm really sorry, because I imagine it would be a great solace to hear what who among you would say, if you could talk together.
Dead . Even when we could not feel anything, because we would not say that.
Ruysch. A thousand questions come to mind you. But because time is short, and leaves no room for choice, give me to understand in small, feelings that you tried in body and soul at the point of death.
Dead . Their point of death, I would not be noticed. The other deaths. Neither do we.
Ruysch. How do not you n'accorgeste?
Dead . Verbigrazia, as you do not ever realize that the moment you begin to sleep, how much attention we want to ask.
Ruysch . But falling asleep is a natural thing.
Dead . And to die is not it natural? Show me a man or an animal or a plant that does not die.
Ruysch. I am not surprised as you go singing and speaking, if you find you do not die.
So one of the blow not noticed,
went fighting, and had died
says an Italian poet. I thought over this matter of death, your peers will know something more than the living. But then, returning to the firm, did not feel any pain at the point death?
Dead . That pain has to be the one to which those who feel it, if not n'accorge?
Ruysch. Anyway, all convince themselves that the feeling of death is painful.
Dead . As if the death was a feeling, and not the opposite.
Ruysch. And so what about the nature of the soul are combined with the opinion of the Epicureans, as well as those that hold the joint ruling, all, or most, competing in what I say, that is to believe that death is by its very nature , and without any comparison, a vivid pain.
Dead . Now, you ask from our side on some and to others: if man is not entitled to noticing the point where operations vital to a greater or lesser extent, the more that are not broken, or sleep or hibernation or syncope, or for any reason, as we avvedrà than in they are to cease operations altogether, and not for a short space of time, but in perpetuity? Besides this, how can it be a feeling that death is taking place in vivo? indeed, that death itself is its capacity for feeling alive? When the power to hear is not only weak or poor, but reduced to something so small, that she is missing and you cancel, you believe that the person is capable of a strong feeling? fact that this extinction of the right to feel, believe it should be a great feeling? You see also that even those who die of acute and painful evils in sull'appressarsi of death, more or less time out of mind, becomes quiet and rest so that we can know that their life, reduced to small quantities is no longer sufficient for the pain, so that it ceases before that. So say our part to anyone you think you have to die of grief at death.
Ruysch. Epicureans will perhaps suffice to Cotesta reasons. But not to those who judge otherwise of the substance of the soul, as I have done for the past, and I will from now on much more, having heard the dead speak and sing. Why is estimating that the die consists of a separation of body and soul, will not understand how these two things together, and almost conglutinate together so that constitute the one and the other one person, can be separated without great violence, and an unspeakable suffering.
Dead . Tell me the spirit and perhaps set it to the body with some nerve, or some muscle or membrane, that of necessity one has to break the spirit when we leave? or perhaps it is a member of the body, so that n'abbia to be crashed or severed violently? Can not you see the soul as it leaves the body, as is only inhibited to stay, and there can be no longer a place, not because of any force that the tears and eradicate? Tell me again, perhaps when you step in, she feels you stick or fasten vigorously, or as you say, conglutinare? So why hurry hear the door, or try a feeling veementissima want to say? Have affirmed, that the entry and exit of the soul are equally quiet, easy and soft.
Ruysch. So what is death, if not pain?
Dead . Pleasure rather than anything else. Know that death, like sleep, is not done in an instant, but gradually. It is true that these degrees are more or less, more or less, depending on the variety of causes and kinds of death. In the last moments of such death shall not include pain or or no pleasure, nor even as you sleep. In other precedents can not generate pain because pain is a living thing, and the human senses at that time, that is begun which is death, are dying, that is to say, extremely attenuated forces. It may well be the cause of pleasure, because pleasure is not always a living thing, and indeed perhaps the most beloved human consist of some sort of languor. So that man's senses are capable of pleasure also in the extinction, since very often the same languor is pleasure, especially when it frees you from suffering, because you know that the cessation of any pain or discomfort, and pleasure herself. So the languor of death should be more grateful that frees man from the second most suffering. For me, if the hour of death is not well positioned very carefully to what I felt because I was forbidden by doctors to tire the brain, but I remember that the way they felt, was not very different from the pleasure which is caused to men from the languor of sleep, over time you are asleep.
The other deaths. Even as we seem to remember.
Ruysch. Both as you say, although all those with whom I had occasion to think over this matter, judged very differently, but I can recall, not appended their own experience. Now tell me the time of death, while feel that sweetness, I believe him to die, and that pleasure was a courtesy of the death, or even immaginaste something else?
Dead . Until I was dead, I do not believe ever to have escaped that danger, and if nothing else, until the last point that I may think, I hoped that I had gained a life time or two, as I estimate it to happen to many people, when they die.
The other deaths. The same happened to us.
Ruysch. So Cicero says that no one is so decrepit that you promise to live almanco a year. But how do you find you at last, that the spirit had gone out of the body? Say how you knew to be dead? They do not answer. Sons, not m'intendete? It will be past the quarter hour. Tastiamogli a little. They are doubly dead well: it is not a danger that I have to be afraid again: torniamocene to bed.
