Memento Mori : Remember you are mortal

About Memento Mori : Remember you are mortal

Memento mori in Latin literally means "Remember you will die".



Tombstones from the late 17th-18th c were traditionally engraved with memento mori or Hora fugit (meaning "the hour flees"). Accompanying these lines were images of HOURGLASSES, SKULLS, BONES and WINGED DEATH'S HEADS. The GRAVESTONES thus ask passersby to remember not only the deceased but their own mortality as well.

Historical memento mori themed art :

(I) "Dance of Death"
(II) "Triumph of Death". As the French social historian Philippe Ariès comments, this image of "collective" death recalls both the processions honoring a prince's arrival and royal funeral processions.
(III) The era's most individualized and grittily realistic memento mori motif occurs in double-decker tombs. The top carvings portray the deceased lying dressed in full regalia; but the carvings beneath present the deceased as exposed transi, or decaying corpses.
(IV)
"Three Living and the Three Dead". Three well-dressed men are out hunting, and as they approach a cemetery three dead men attack them. The living survive the encounter, PRAY BEFORE A CROSS, and resolve to change their lives .

BECAUSE LIFE IS SHORT, one should enjoy its pleasures while they last.
Ambiguities permit momento mori images to be used and manipulated in popular modern-day culture. They can fuel HORROR FILMS and give an ironic edge to ROCK BANDS. The GOTHIC. Yet the tradition also retains possibilities for more probing, reflective efforts like the episode of television's X-Files, where Agent Scully confronts her diagnosis of a brain tumour. Remembering one's death can still exert a TRANSFORMING POWER.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori