Comments on: I won’t cry for the wasted years

By: John Franklin Sanders

John Franklin Sanders — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 05:25:47 +0000

If my memory helds true, I recall several incidents in the Iliad where weeping at a friends death was very emotional. I also recall reading a story of a woman and her son going to meet her husband and the boy’s father, who was just returning from a Russian slave labor camp in Siberia. The woman and the boy bowed when they saw their him, and he bowed to them, after wards they walked to their home, not saying a word. I believe from the literature that Heian Japan was full of emotions at such times. Whatever it is worth, I suspect that any cultur over time may swing between showing emotional outbursts and restraining such public display.

As a side note, I recently saw an NHK special where they were showing a crew in China interviewing local Chinese for a movie in a small village. They were looking for a small group of people that would cry in the movie, and they were interviewing and testing. There was one old man that was unbelievably good at crying, crying so well that snot came from his nose and hung, suspended from his nose, not having enough mass to fall to the ground. I guess it is something like “he laughed so hard he wet his pants.”

By: Jeremiah Jenne

Jeremiah Jenne — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 16:57:38 +0000

I agree with Sam that for a quick “normative prescription” the Analects is a good start.

There is also Analects 7:10 “子於是日哭,則不歌.” “On a day when the master wept, he never sang.” (Leys, 31) and an interesting anecdote in Analects 11:10 “顏淵死,子哭之慟。從者曰:「子慟矣!」曰:「有慟乎!非夫人之為慟而誰為!」” Translated by Leys as “Yan Hui died. The Master wailed wildly. His followers said: “Master, such grief is not proper.” The Master said: “In mourning such a man, what sort of grief would be proper?”

I’ve also heard somewhere that the shortest full sentence in the bible is: “Jesus wept.”

By: Sam

Sam — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 03:06:02 +0000

But for Confucius (who I have always taken as a normative prescription not an empirical description of ancient Chinese society) sincerity does count:

The Master said, ‘What can I find worthy of note in a man who is lacking in tolerance when in high position, in reverence when performing the rites and in sorrow when in mourning?’

Lau [3:26]

By: bub

bub — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 01:13:41 +0000

Looking at Google, I see ‘professional mourners’ were incredibly widespread; Ireland, Israel, Ancient Egypt… it seems that it really isn’t sincerity that counts. Unless you move it back a step and say that the family sincerely want to give the deceased a respectful sendoff.

By: bub

bub — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 00:55:36 +0000

Related to this is the idea of playing the part of the heavily grieved mourner at funerals in order to give the deceased a good send off. From Graham’s Zhuangzi; Qin Yi is criticised for not showing enough ritualised grief:

“When Old Tan died Qin Yi went in to mourn him, wailed three times and came out.
‘Were you not the Master’s friend?’ said a disciple.
‘I was.’
‘Then is it decent to mourn him like this?’
‘It is. I used to think of him as the man, but now he is not. Just now as I came in to mourn him, there were old people bewailing him as they would wail for their sons, young people bewailing him as they would wail for their mothers. As to how he made them gather here – there were surely some who were saying what they had no urge to say, wailing when they had no urge to wail. This is to hide from Heaven and turn away from what we truely are..”

And there’s the whole “hired mourners” thing that persists at extravagant funerals at least until the end of the imperial system.