Word of the Day: Thanatopsis

A thanatopsis is, simply put, an essay on Death. It's odd that this should be a literary term rather than a philosophical or religious term, although it can conceivably be either of those. The Greek thanatopsis literally means 'a look at death', from thanatos = 'death' and -opsis = 'eyeing'.

But each of these two components has its own rich back-story.

In Greek mythology, Thanatos (Gk. θάνατος) is Death, son of Night and Darkness. Hypnos (Sleep) is his brother; Morpheus ('He Who Shapes') or Oneiros ('Dream') is his nephew. The word thanatos itself seems to come from the same ancient root as the Anglo-Saxon 'dwindle' – "to decline into nothing, to waste away". Of course, the most common usage of the word in modern times is in euthanasia, 'a good death'.

The Greek ops means 'eye', and from this root we obtain 'cyclops' = 'round eye', 'optics' = 'having to do with the action of the eye', 'ophthalmology' = 'the study of the chamber of the eye', 'autopsy' = '(to see with) one's own sight', 'biopsy' = 'a sight of living material', 'synopsis' = 'to see (all) together'. The eye is the most expressive and perceptive part of the facial anatomy; in classical Greek, ops can mean 'face' as well as 'eye'.

Thanatopsis, then, is not just writing about Death; rather, it is the perception, apprehension, attempted understanding, and acceptance of the idea of Death. It is, in many senses of the phrase, a demonstration that one possesses a 'dark-adapted eye'.