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War and Peace vocabulary
5 art terms
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memento mori
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synonyms: vanitas ???
tags: [art]
► definition
Definition:A keepsake that reminds someone of their own mortality. This was formerly a very popular custom in many western cultures, an exemplar being the 17th century Puritans of New England. The most common such keepsake was a skull depicted in a person's portrait.
painting: By John Herbert Evelyn Partington - Ambrose Bierce, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14929898
► uses
Uses:
they were glad to yield to her, to restrain themselves for this once precious being formerly as full of life as themselves, but now so much to be pitied. “Memento mori,” said these glances.
Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace: 16 (Book Sixteen). Simon & Schuster.
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The old gravestones are still there, weathered, eroding, with their skulls and crossed bones, memento mori, their dough-faced angels, their winged hourglasses to remind us of the passing of mortal time,
Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid's Tale (1986)
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He brushed the earth away and handed it to me. It seemed fake, a theatrical prop or a desktop memento mori.
Mark Haddon. The Pier Falls and Other Stories (2016)
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