Bizarre Literary Deaths

Yukio Mishima [1925-1970]
Japanese Author

Committed seppuku (hara-kiri) and was beheaded during failed attempt to take over a Japanese garrison.

"If we value so highly the dignity of life, how can we not also value the dignity of death? No death may be called futile."





John Berryman [1914-1972]
American Poet
Jumped from a bridge over the Mississippi River; reputedly waved at passersby on way down.

"We must travel in the direction of our fear."





Sergei Esenin [1895-1925]
Russian Poet

Cut wrists, wrote a final poem in own blood (called "Do svidania drug moi" or "Goodbye my friend") and hanged self in a hotel room in Leningrad.

"Don't waken the dream that is dying/Don't stir the aim that has failed./Life brought me too early to trial;/The loss, the defeat—what availed?"





Edgar Allan Poe [1809-1849]
American Author
Died of "acute congestion of the brain" several days after he was discovered lying unconscious in a Baltimore street, wearing someone else’s tattered clothes.

"In an instant I seemed to rise from the ground. But I had no bodily, no visible, audible, or palpable presence."





Hart Crane [1899-1932]
American Poet
While en route to New York aboard the S.S. Orizaba, leapt into the Caribbean Sea; reputedly said "Good-bye everybody."

"... we have seen/The moon in lonely alleys make/A grail of laughter of an empty ash can . . ."





Sherwood Anderson [1876-1941]
American Author
Complications of peritonitis in Colon, Panama, after ingesting a toothpick along with a hors d’oeuvre at a cocktail party.

"Everyone in the world is Christ and they are all crucified."





Euripides [480-406 B.C.]
Greek Playwright
Mauled by a pack of wild dogs owned by Archelaus, the King of Macedonia, according to legend.

"A bad beginning makes a bad ending."





Virginia Woolf [1882-1941]
British Author & Critic

Filled pockets with stones and drowned self in the River Ouse.

“If we didn't live venturously, plucking the wild goat by the beard, and trembling over precipices, we should never be depressed, I've no doubt; but already should be faded, fatalistic and aged.”





Leo Tolstoy [1828-1910]
Russian Author

Gave away entire fortune, froze to death in a railroad station on a cold winter night.

"Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself, it will do more than if you paralyze it by encumbering it with remedies."





Ambrose Bierce [1842-1914?]
American Author

Disappeared in Mexico while reporting on Pancho Villa’s rebellion. May have been murdered by bandits.

"Life. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay . . ."


(source: alternativereel)
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Alessandro Moreschi - the only recorded castrato

Alessandro Moreschi

1858 -1922)

The Castrati were men who were forcibly castrated at an early age in order to ensure that they would not experience the hormonal changes of puberty that lead to the lowering of the male voice. This meant that as adult men they sang like a modern soprano (they retained their boy soprano voices).

After the Catholic Church ensured that all nations banned the practise, Pope Leo XIII took the remaining Castrati into the care of the Sistine Chapel Choir to guarantee them a quiet life (at the time they had become the subject of ridicule).

Moreschi is the only castrato to be recorded solo. In this recording he is 44 years old.

1902 recording of Bach/Gounod - Ave Maria

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The following is taken from a BBC News Magazine feature, "Singing In the Pain"
by Sean Coughlan (2006):


Castrati were the singing superstars of the 18th Century. But, as a new exhibition illustrates, theirs is a tale with some modern parallels.

They look rather innocent in the museum display case - like a pair of old-fashioned shears. But these "castratori" were the implements used to castrate boys - who were making an irreversible sacrifice for their singing careers.


It might seem more like tears in their eyes than Stars in their Eyes, but this was the uncomfortable route to stardom taken by thousands of poor families who wanted their sons to become rich and famous musical stars.

In 17th and 18th Century Italy, about 4,000 boys were castrated each year, from the age of eight upwards, with the aim of making a fortune as opera singers and soloists with choirs in churches and royal palaces.

The castrato's voice was prized for its combination of high pitch and power - with the unbroken voice able to reach the high notes, but delivered with the strength of an adult male.

Composers were enthusiastic about the more complex musical possibilities of these voices - and music lovers turned these exotic figures into the pop idols of their day.

Castrato singers such as Farinelli were adored by female fans

"The best castrati were superstars, adored by female fans. Their voices had a tremendous emotional impact on the audiences of the day," said Sarah Bardwell, director of the Handel House Museum, which is staging the exhibition.


These singers, known by nicknames such as Nicolini, Senesino and Farinelli, and often notoriously temperamental, travelled around the courts and capitals of Europe, pulling the crowds wherever they performed.

And as with today's celebrities, cartoonists lampooned their extravagant appearance, lavish lifestyles and their reputation for tantrums and stormy personalities.

Historian David Starkey draws several parallels with modern pop singers - not least the way young stars are the products of their parents' ambitions.

"The full horror of it is in that display case - those crude surgical instruments.

"But imagine his parents doing it. It's horribly like the child star of today, forced into this artificiality, forced through the shocking mill of Hollywood - to deliver that ineluctable, strange, desirable thing of star quality."

And he says that there are echoes in modern culture of this link between changing physical form as part of performance.

"We're very familiar in modern times with the association between mutilation and art - the idea of human beings changing themselves, the idea of the natural, physical body being something for you to transform," said Dr Starkey.

"This is the idea that art is something sublimely unnatural - and probably the supreme example of this is the art of the castrati.

"It is unnatural in every way, depending on an operation that is an abomination to every man, and yet if it worked, delivered something that, in the opinion of some of the greatest composers of all time, was the supreme human voice - founded on utter and supreme inhumanity."

And rather like many modern pop stars, he says that the androgyny and sexual ambiguity of the castrato singers was part of their appeal.

'Long live the knife!'

A further connection between the 18th Century singing stars and their modern equivalents is that the museum, in the Mayfair house where George Handel lived, was also where Jimi Hendrix lived in the 1960s.

Handel's era was the heyday of the castrati, but the fashion for their musical style faded - and increasingly women began to take the roles originally performed by the castrati.

The last premiere of an opera to feature a castrato was in 1824 - and the last performance of a castrato in London was in 1844. By 1870, the Italian government had banned such castration in the cause of art.

The last-ever performing castrato, and the only one recorded, was Alessandro Moreschi, who was supposedly applauded by crowds with the call "Eviva il coltello" ("Long live the knife!").

The voice of Moreschi, who had become conductor of the choir of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, was captured in 1902 by a gramophone company, when the singer was aged 44.

Described by the exhibition curator, Nicholas Clapton, as sounding like "Pavarotti on helium", these castrato voices had an eerie mix of power and innocence.

The vocal range was of a pre-pubescent boy, but the singer had the lung capacity of an adult - giving it a quality that was different from a woman, a boy or a male "falsetto" voice.

Rather grimly, only a small number of those boys who had been castrated became star performers, with the majority failing to make a career in music - even after this toughest of career choices.

* * *

"the Ogress"

Cover of Le Petite Journal, May 24, 1908, painting of a scene where Jeanne Weber murders a child.

Jeanne Weber, known throughout France as 'the Ogress'.

Born during 1875, at a small fishing village in northern France, Weber left home for Paris at age 14, working various menial jobs until her marriage in 1893. Her husband was a drunkard, and by 1905, with two of their three children lately deceased, Jeanne was also drinking heavily, residing in a seedy Paris tenement with her spouse and a seven-year-old son.

On March 2, 1905, Weber was babysitting for her sister-in-law, when one of the woman's two daughters--18-month-old Georgette -- suddenly "fell ill" and died. Strange bruises on her neck were ignored by the examining physician, and Jeanne was welcomed back to babysit on March 11. Two-year-old Suzanne did not survive the visit, but a doctor blamed the second death on unexplained "convulsions."

Weber was babysitting for her brother, on March 25, when his daughter, seven-year-old Germaine, suffered a sudden attack of "choking," complete with red marks on her throat. The child survived that episode, but she was less fortunate the following day, when Aunt Jeanne returned. Diptheria was blamed for her death -- and for that of Weber's son, Marcel, just four days later. Once again, the tell-tale marks of strangulation were ignored.

On April 5, 1905, Weber invited two of her sisters-in-law to dinner, remaining home with 10-year-old nephew Maurice while the other women went out shopping. They returned prematurely, to find Maurice gasping on the bed, his throat mottled with bruises, Jeanne standing over him with a crazed expression on her face. Charges were filed, and Weber's trial opened on January 29, 1906, with the prosecution alleging eight murders, including all three of Weber's own children and two others -- Lucie Aleandre and Marcel Poyatos -- who had died while in her care. It was alleged that Weber killed her son in March to throw suspicion off, but jurors were reluctant to believe the worst about a grieving mother, and Weber was acquitted on February 6.

Fourteen months later, on April 7, 1907, a physician from the town of Villedieu was summoned to the home of a peasant named Bavouzet. He was greeted at the door by a babysitter, "Madame Moulinet," who led him to the cot where nine-year-old Auguste Bavouzet lay dead, his throat badly bruised. The cause of death was listed as "convulsions," but the doctor changed his tune on May 4, when "Madame Moulinet" was identified as Jeanne Weber. Held over for trial, Weber was released in December, after a second autopsy blamed the boy's death on "typhoid."

Weber quickly dropped from sight, surfacing next as an orderly at a children's hospital in Faucombault, moving on from there to the Children's Home in Orgeville, run by friends who sought to "make up for the wrongs that justice has inflicted upon an innocent woman." Working as "Marie Lemoine," Weber had been on the job for less than a week when she was caught strangling a child in the home. Embarrassed by their own naivete, the owners quietly dismissed her and the incident was covered up.

Back in Paris, Weber was arrested for vagrancy and briefly confined to the asylum at Nantere, but doctors there pronounced her sane and set her free. She drifted into prostitution, picking up a common-law husband along the way, and on May 8, 1908, the couple settled at an inn in Commercy. A short time later, Jeanne was found strangling the innkeeper's son, 10-year-old Marcel Poirot, with a bloody handkerchief. The father had to punch her three times in the face, with all his might, before she would release the lifeless body.

Held for trial on murder charges, Weber was declared insane on October 25, 1908, packed off to the asylum at Mareville. Credited with at least ten murders, she survived two years in captivity before manually strangling herself in 1910.
Serial Killer Central

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With the lights out...

... click "start Dreammachine" and close your eyes.

(although if you have epilepsy, don't)

DREAMMACHINE SIMULATOR

"Flicker may prove to be a valid instrument of practical psychology: some people see and others do not. The Dreamachine with its patterns visible to the open eyes, induces people to see. The fluctuating elements of flickered design support the development of autonomous ‘movies’, intensely pleasurable and, possibly, instructive to the viewer."

—Brion Gysin

* * *

Begotten - dir. Elias Merhige (1991)

So bad she's good

Florence Foster Jenkins
1868 - 1944

From her recordings, it is apparent that Jenkins had little sense of pitch and rhythm and was barely capable of sustaining a note.

Her accompanist can be heard making adjustments to compensate for her tempo variations and rhythmic mistakes. Her dubious diction, especially in foreign language songs, is also noteworthy. Nonetheless, she became tremendously popular in her unconventional way. Her audiences apparently loved her for the amusement she provided rather than her musical ability. Critics often described her work in a backhanded way that may have served to pique public curiosity.

Despite her patent lack of ability, Jenkins was firmly convinced of her greatness. She compared herself favorably to the renowned sopranos Frieda Hemple and Luisa Tetrazzini, and dismissed the laughter which often came from the audience during her performances as coming from her rivals consumed by "professional jealousy."

She was aware of her critics, however, saying "People may say I can't sing, but no one can ever say I didn't sing."
(wikipedia)

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Bizarre Traditions

1. Eating Death

The Aghoris are members of a Hindu sect who worship Shiva, whom they see as the supreme god. Because they believe that Shiva created everything – they consider nothing to be bad. For this reason they engage in a variety of sexual practices, they drink alcohol, take drugs, and eat meat.

Nothing is considered taboo. But the thing that makes their ancient traditions bizarre is that they are also practicing cannibals and their temples are cremation grounds. An aghori lives in the cremation ground and is able to support himself there – his clothing comes from the dead, his firewood comes from the funeral pyres, and food from the river. When a person is cremated, an aghori will coat himself in the ashes of the body and meditate on the dead.

The most shocking aspect of the Aghori life is their cannibalism. Dead bodies that are found floating in the river are gathered up and meditated on. The limbs are then removed by the Aghori and eaten raw.



video - Aghori ritual cannibalism (you have been warned!)

2. Baby Tossing

Every year in Solapur (a region in Maharashtra, India) parents get together to throw their babies off the top of a 50 foot tower. The babies are caught in a sheet held by other villagers on the ground. The parents believe that the practice will give their children long and healthy lives. This is practiced mostly by Muslims but some Hindu families also engage in it. Parents that partake are usually those who have become pregnant after praying at the Shrine of Baba Umer Dargah. Local authorities provide policing for the event despite the fact that national government is opposed to it.

3. Satere-Mawe Initiation Rite

The Satere-Mawe people from the Amazon region of Brazil have an agonizing initiation rite for their boys. In order to become a man, the boy must insert his hand into a glove which is woven with drugged bullet ants which have one of the most painful stings in nature.

The boy must wear the glove for a full ten minutes and he must do this twenty times over the course of several months. A television reporter (Steve Backshall) undertook the ordeal and described it thus:

“I put my hands into the gloves. Actually, it wasn’t that bad: pretty unpleasant, but bearable; just like the single sting, but repeated over and over again. I stuck it out for the full 10 minutes. [... M]y crew took me out of the line-up and off to get some medical tests done[.] That’s when things started to go wrong. I had suffered several hundred stings, and all of a sudden I went beyond pain. First, I started wailing, then, once that had passed, the floodgates opened — deep, guttural sobbing, uncontrollable shaking, writhing, convulsing. I started to drool, and suddenly I wasn’t responding to anything at all. My legs wouldn’t hold me up, and our doctor was shouting at me to keep moving and not to give in to the urge to lie down and let it take me. If there’d been a machete to hand, I’d have chopped off my arms to escape the pain.”

4. Mourning of Muharram

To commemorate the death of Husayn ibn Ali (a grandson of Muhammad), some groups of Shia muslims take to the streets and whip themselves with specially designed chains with razors or knives attached. Other groups slit their heads open with knives (as can be seen in the image above). This awful tradition (called matam) is also practiced by children or forced on them by parents who do the cutting.

Matam is mostly found in Bahrain, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Iraq, and while some Muslims frown upon the practice, many major Muslim leaders endorse it.

Thousands of mourners slit open their heads with swords, big knives and razor blades streaming their blood to signify their grief over the martyrdom of Al-Imam Al-Hussein (p) – the tragedy which caused the sky to rain blood and the earth to bleed – and thus paid rich homage to Al-Imam Al-Hussein (p) who sacrificed everything in defending Islam which is today under obligation to him.
source

5. Hanging coffins

The limestone caves surrounding Sagada in the Philippines are home to the region’s dead. While many people are buried in the caves, a long standing tradition in the area also means that the face of the cliffs are dotted with coffins.

The coffins can also be found in other places around the world – particularly China where the nearly extinct Bo People (an indigenous minority Chinese tribe) practice this tradition regularly. The Toraja people (featured in item 9) also sometimes hang coffins of young children – though wealthy adults are normally placed in caves.

6. Yanomamö Ash Eating

The Yanomamö are a large tribe of people from Venezuela and Brazil. They have been largely untouched by modern life and so retain many of their ancient customs – one of which is the focus of this item. Yanomamö religious tradition forbids the keeping of any part of the body of the dead; for this reason, when a Yanomamö dies, his body is taken to be burned and the bones are crushed and combined with the ashes.

These are then divided amongst the family and eaten. Because absolutely no part of the body must remain, the vessel that contained the ashes is then destroyed. The tribesmen believe that a person dies because a Shaman or member of another tribe has sent evil on him. This leads to much conflict and inter-tribe battles.

7. Feeding The Dead

Fairly recent discoveries in the Vatican of old Roman burial grounds have uncovered a fascinating tradition that was previously forgotten: the Romans would eat with their dead and even feed them. Many of the graves found contained pipes that led from the outside of the grave to the body within – this was used to pour honey, wine, and other foods into the dead.

Similar pipes in Roman Graves have also been found in England. Ancient Romans would often picnic at the graves of the dead as they believed they were feeding the soul of their departed loved ones. The inscription on the grave above describes the location of a food shop nearby so mourners and visitors can buy food for themselves or the dead.

8. Masai Spitting

This isn’t just regular spitting we are talking about. The Masai tribe (an ethnic African group found in Kenya and Tanzania) have an unusual way of greeting friends: they spit on one another. Furthermore, when a new child is born, the Masai men will spit on it and say it is bad – believing that if they praise the child they will curse it to a bad life.

When greeting elders, a Masai warrior will spit in his hand before offering it to be shaken – as a sign of respect. Masai tribesmen are well known through the media because of their practice of elongating their earlobes.

9. Living With The Dead

Because funerals are an incredibly important aspect of life for the Torajan (an ethnic group in South Sulawesi, Indonesia), it can take many months for a family to raise sufficient funds to pay for the festivities. During this period of months, the dead body is wrapped in clothes and kept under the family home.

The Torajans believe that the deceased soul remains with them until the burial. Torajan funerals are a grand affair which also frequently involve the sacrifice of buffaloes (the more important the deceased the more buffaloes are killed).

When the person is finally ready to be buried for good, their coffin is usually placed in a cave and their effigy is placed at the cave mouth looking out (as can be seen in the picture above).

10. Iyomante Ritual

The Ainu people (an indigenous tribe from parts of Japan and Russia) are a once-suppressed ethnic minority whose religious roots are animist. Because of their worship of nature, they developed a tradition in which bears were killed in order to send their soul to heaven to bless mankind.

This ritual (Iyomante) involves the slaughter of a hibernating mother bear in her cave. Her cubs are raised in captivity for two years and then fatally choked or speared in a sacramental act meant to show religious devotion. The villagers then drink the bear’s blood and eat its flesh. The skull is placed on an upturned spear which is wrapped with the bear skin.

This bizarre type of scarecrow is then worshipped. The Ainu people believe bears are gods walking among humans. Unfortunately, due to a law change in Japan which revoked the ban on the ritual, it is now occurring again in some places.

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"The Asthmatic Escaped II", 1992

"i remember once getting terrified that i could only see out of my eyes.
two little fucking holes. i got really terrified by it.
i'm kind of trapped inside with these two little things to see out of."
- Damien Hirst

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Jans Muskee

(click on images to enlarge)

"caritas", 2008

"you grow mentally", 2005

"Francis", 2001

"here and there", 2000

"Flowing"

"Burning car ", 2008

"Proverbs 4:18 ", 2006



www.jansmuskee.nl

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"Cabinet of Narural Curiosities" - Albertus Seba (1665 - 1736)

Albertus Seba
Dutch pharmacist, zoologist and collector.

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Eva Ionesco: " you can't keep making a living showing your ass all your life."

In response to the emails I received regarding the child model in a previous post, the girl is Eva Ionesco, daughter of the photographer Irina Ionesco.

Adam Et Eve
Pierre et Gilles, 1981
(Eva Ionesco and Kevin Luzac)

During the 1980s, Eva attended the prestigious acting school Amandiers.

Filmography: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0409561/




* * *

"Atomic Bongos" - Lydia Lunch

Irina Ionesco

Love's Baby Soft advert (circa 1974)

Remarkably, there was never any controversy regarding this ad

Lyudmila Zykina

Lyudmila Zykina

10 June 1929 – 1 July 2009


* * *

Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs stays in jail

Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs will stay in prison after his bid to be released on parole was turned down.

As Justice Secretary Jack Straw was finalising his announcement, reports suggested the Great Train Robber could have been freed within days. The ministry brushed them off as "unfounded speculation".

But Mr Straw said Biggs was "wholly unrepentant" about his actions and had "outrageously courted the media" while on the run from prison.

He said it was "unacceptable" that Biggs had chosen not to obey the law and tried to avoid the consequences of his decision.

The decision goes against the parole board's recommendation that he should be released.

Earlier this month, the board acknowledged that Biggs has no regrets about what he did, but said he could be released because the risks he posed of reoffending were "manageable", but warned that he could attempt to exploit his celebrity status.

Mr Straw said Biggs would have been a free man "many years ago" if he had complied with the sentence given to him.

He said: "Mr Biggs chose to serve only one year of a 30 year sentence before he took the personal decision to commit another offence and escape from prison, avoiding capture by travelling abroad for 35 years whilst outrageously courting the media.

"I am refusing the Parole Board's recommendation for parole. Biggs chose not to obey the law and respect the punishments given to him - the legal system in this country deserves more respect than this.

"It was Mr Biggs's own choice to offend and he now appears to want to avoid the consequences of his decision. I do not think this is acceptable."

Biggs's legal adviser, Giovanni Di Stefano, attacked the decision as "perverse".

He said he was planning to launch a judicial review to try to have it overturned.

"All the other Great Train Robbers served a third of their sentences, why should Ronnie Biggs be any different?" he said.

"Ten years is enough. This shows a side of the British Government that is perverse - it is cruel and unusual punishment."

Biggs, who is being held in Norwich prison, is in Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital after breaking his hip in a fall at the weekend.

He has suffered a series of strokes and is fed through a tube. He communicates using gestures or by pointing at letters on a card.

Biggs, from Lambeth, south London, was a member of a 15-strong gang which attacked the Glasgow to London mail train at Ledburn, Buckinghamshire, in August 1963, and made off with £2.6 million in used banknotes.

He was given a 30-year sentence but after 15 months he escaped from Wandsworth prison in southwest London by climbing a 30ft wall and fleeing in a furniture van.

Biggs was on the run for more than 30 years, living in Spain, Australia and Brazil, before voluntarily returning to the UK in 2001.

* * *

Ronnie Biggs with the Sex Pistols, "Belsen Was A Gas", from the Great Rock N Roll Swindle

Jack Pelter And His Sex-Change Chicken by Indians in Moscow (1984)

Albinism

Albino Study by Clayton Cubbit

Albino Study by Clayton Cubbit

Kalen, Jessie and Nick by Russ Quackenbush. Siblings. Both parents are pigmented.

Jessie by Ross Quackenbush

Ali by Russ Quackenbush

Aaron by Russ Quackenbush



Grace for Cyberspace by Tanyth Berkeley

Claire by Tanyth Berkeley


Stephen by Tanyth Berkeley




LEVAN WEE, vocalist with Singapore band Astroninja:





DIANDRA FORREST, model:





Connie Chui, model:







Shaun Ross, model:




Names and sources unknown:










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