E. M. Cioran: "Nothing is a better proof of how far humanity has regressed than the impossibility of finding a single nation, a single tribe, among whom birth still provokes mourning and lamentations."
Herodotus about the Thracians: "When a child is born, the kinsfolk sit round and lament for all the tale of ills that it must endure from its birth onward, recounting all the sorrows of men; but the dead they bury with jollity and gladness, for the reason that he is quit of so many ills and is in perfect blessedness."
"The Birth of Tragedy" and the role of a chorus: it embodied a kind of "metaphysical comfort," allowing the audience to engage with the painful aspects of existence through an aesthetic experience and ultimately achieve a redemptive vision of life's fundamental truth.
Professional mourning or paid mourning is a type of public performance in which actors pretend to grieve for the recently deceased, with the goal of being indistinguishable from real mourners. Professional mourners are called wailers (narikače) and are compensated to lament or deliver a eulogy and help comfort and entertain the grieving family, or to improve the public spectacle of the funeral.
Full circle from birth to death.
One of my earliest memories is of a walk with my father during which we came across a small snake basking in the sun. I was terrified. Although we could have gone around it, or moved it off the path, he decided to crush the snake's head with a rock, to appease me. Its little body began to dance and coil in pain. My father's attempt to protect me has made me an accomplice.