The theme of death runs through the art of the Middle Ages and early Renaissance. One of the most famous depictions of death is Hans Holbein The Younger’s The Dance of Death, a series of woodcuts depicting Death unexpectedly taking people from all walks of life.1
Imagine a world without public health measures – garbage everywhere, animals roaming the streets, no antibiotics, no vaccines, no anesthesia for primitive surgery or dentistry. Women routinely died in childbirth, and children often did not survive childhood. People did live to old age, but it seemed unlikely. Medieval and Renaissance reenactors seem to skip the filth and unsanitary conditions in their fantasy play. If hurt, even the most authentic players run to modern medicine.
Imagine the terror of a people looking at a life they felt they had no control over.
Then came the Bubonic plagues in 14th century Europe. They recurred periodically until the 18th century.2
Death was everywhere, and so was fear and uncertainty. In such a climate, it is not surprising that panicked people sought answers to the mystery of the plagues, and were prepared to accept explanations that we would summarily dismiss.
Do Holbein’s prints reflect a world far away from us?
At first glance they do. Science and technology have given us public health measures, antibiotics, and vaccines. Combined together they give us the possibility of living healthier lives than even 19th century monarchs, feudal kings, or ancient warlords. Largely because of the growth in Asian economies, true poverty has gone from 50% to 10% of the world’s population. No matter what we claim , the vast majority of us do not work as hard as our ancestors given the diminishing level of manual labor. There is indoor plumbing, electricity, washing machines, refrigerators, electric or gas stoves, All remove much of the household hard labor. Women do not die in child birth at the rates they used to, nor do children need regularly die before leaving infancy. Polio, smallpox, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, are rare in most of the world. Even those without high quality health care, most still have far better health care than could be imagined by somebody living before the 1940s.
Today people are horrified by the coronavirus, but the 14th century Bubonic plague killed 25-60% of the people it infected.Just In the United States alone, that would currently correspond to between 82 to 198 million people. Then, as now, the movement of people across countries brought the disease through the world.
Nonetheless, we appear to look at the world as if Holbein’s prints are reality in the world of the coronavirus. We are stunned as we confront a pandemic that we thought could never happen. We act as if a long life is guaranteed, and we are owed it
We want to keep what we have. We have all these supposed absolute needs: travel, television, the Internet. We want new experiences. We compare what we have with what we want, not the absolute magnitude of what we have.
The impermanence of life, and our inability to prevent if from changing bring that all into question. In a world with or without coronavirus, Holbein’s prints show us that life could change at any minute.
We turn to science, much as that earlier generation turned to religious or other explanations. Can science really help us confront this new life experience?
Experts can only tell us the consequences of our actions. Scientists have values because they are people, but their values are no better or worse than ours. Science cannot tell us what is safe, or what we should value. In a democracy, an idiot gets the same vote as the wise individual.
Science tells us that humanity will end some day. Perhaps with the heat death of the universe, maybe when the sun goes supernova. Science, at best, assigns a very low probability to life after death.
Life is fleeting and no technology can change that fact. Life cannot be held onto, it must be experienced as it as lived, and then let go of. We cannot go back to the world before the coronavirus anymore than we can go back to the world of our childhood. Technology cannot help us to accept the future. We can only face the future if we can live with the idea we will have discomfort in life, and we will die.
The ultimate message of Holbein’s drawings, and our fascination with them, is that if we can accept living with the possibility of Death, we will not be afraid to live.
Thank you for this! Very interesting read. This quote struck me through and through- ‘Life cannot be held onto, it must be experienced as it as lived, and then let go of.’
Hallie