![]() A symbol points towards a “deeper reality” beyond itself, whilst at the same time may be considered to be identical with that reality (Tillich 1955). The Greek sýmbolon specifically referred to objects of faith connecting the supernatural to everyday life (Becker 1994: 5). A symbol might thus be considered something that unites several meanings into an entity. The word “symbol” comes from the Greek sýmbolon, which consists of συν- (syn-) "together" and βολή (bolē) "a throw", hence meaning "to throw together" (Collins English Dictionary). ![]() Throughout history death has had a symbolic presence. The aim of our paper is to analyze the relations between light and death in Bergman's movie, to understand how light can help not only to define death but also to express the experience of dying."ĭeath is inevitable in human existence and at the core of religious traditions. In this film, the Swedish filmmaker seems to have found an abstract way of expressing death through light. This film tells the tragic story of three women waiting for a fourth woman to die although she doesn’t want to. ![]() This correlation between light and death is clearly showed in Ingmar Bergman’s movie, Cries and Whispers. We only see a human being who is dying we just observe the traces and effects of death on a body. As the eye does not see literally the light but only the world enlightened by the beams of the sun, we do not see, so to speak, death. In this sense, therefore, the concept of death is based on a similar concept of invisibility to the one which composed the relation between vision and light. Indeed, death is never visible as such it is only perceptible via external signs to which death cannot be reduced. Then, how can the cinema show this non-existence on screen? How can this absence be represented trough a visual medium? If cinema, which capture time’s duration, can show someone dying or even stages it, death might seem to be the limit of illusion. Death is what turns the being into the non-being, and the presence into absence. And death still is what transforms every man on earth into a passive subject, a disabled victim of a sentence he cannot control. "If the reflection of death has grown more complex over the last centuries thanks to medical progress, the philosophical answers, from Plato to Jankelevitch, remain the same: metempsychosis, migration of the soul, after-life, nothingness…. In fact, the Danse itself is the ultimate perversion of dancing as an expression of joie de vivre. ![]() Instead of sensual pleasures that belong to life – and were often considered sinful – the Danse presents a perversion of the senses in that it turns these pleasures from delight into horror. Great play is made of the fact that ultimately we shall all see, hear, and smell the approach of Death – and then feel his chilling touch or the point of his dart. Presentations of the Danse with its living and dead protagonists often revolve around the senses of the dying. One popular theme within medieval death literature and imagery is the Danse Macabre or Dance of Death. Whereas some blessed souls might die in a sweet aroma of sanctity, for ordinary mortals death was a more sordid affair: medieval artists, authors, playwrights and preachers pulled no punches when it came to picturing death and its aftermath as a warning the living. According to medieval thinking, the advent of death greatly affected the senses of the dying and of those around them. Death is the end of all things, or at least all things relating to this life, and thus also of the senses.
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