“It has been my misfortune to lose four of my nearest relations in different parts of the world. It has been also a subject of regret to me that their remains lie so far off. I care little for the fate which happens to their bodies; and yet, had such a practice as cremation been in use, it would sometimes have been a comfort to feel that I had their ashes with me. Collected in an urn, they might either repose in columbaria, like those at Rome, or in a mortuary chapel in my own house.”
This citation brings to my mind a beautiful epigram of Count Platen, who, as you undoubtedly know, was called the favorite of the ladies. It is impossible to translate it, and therefore I will content myself with mentioning the contents. It entreats the sacred flames to return, and to purify the air which death has contaminated; it requests those about to bury to reduce to ashes the body of their friend; and it rejoices that the remains of our beloved will again rest in a clean and decent urn near our abodes.
There are many authors who, in their works, have expressed themselves in favor of cremation. Among the first to do this was A. F. Ferdinand von Kotzebue, a German writer of note, who glorified incineration in his novel “Die Leiden der Ortenberg’schen Familie.”
There are those who are afraid that cremation will do away with all that is mortuary in poetry and song. For instance, they say: “What will become of Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard? Allusion to burial runs so inseparably through its verses that nothing would be left of them were it eliminated.” As a work of art Gray’s masterpiece will live forever; but if reason or common sense is applied to it, I doubt whether it has a right to exist, even now. I admit that the poem is beautiful, that it is grand; but it is all sentiment—nothing more.
There is now already a new literature, prose as well as poetry, accumulating. The “Cremazione dei cadaveri” already has its poets—principally in Italy. Professor Giambattista Polizzi of Girgenti dedicated (in March, 1873) a poem on cineration to Signora Emilia Salsi when her husband, Doctor Giuseppi Salsi, died and was cremated. He praised incineration as the best mode to dispose of the dead, and to preserve the remains of the departed. In January, 1874, Civelli’s printing house at Milan, Italy, turned out 22 stanzas on incineration, in the Milanese dialect. The anonymous author is a patron of cremation. Dr. Moretti of Cannero published an excellent poem on cremation in the Annali di Chimica of 1872. A German author, writing under the pseudonym of “Dranmor,” sent forth some very good verses on the same subject, as did also the celebrated Dr. Justinus Kerner.
Mr. William Eassie laments:—
“It is a matter of regret that those of our own poets who have been in favor of burning the dead did not enshrine their proclivities in verse. Southey, for instance, wrote that the custom of interment ‘makes the idea of a dead friend more unpleasant. We think of the grave, corruption, and worms; burning would be better.’ But he left us no poetry on the subject.”
The objections to cineration put forward by the sentimentalists are really of no consequence at all; they are far too trivial to be worth even only superficial consideration. I have only mentioned them, because I am aware of the strong hold that sentiment has on most people, and because they allowed of a comparison between burial and cremation, which is decidedly in favor of the latter.
Dr. E. J. Bermingham of New York City hits the nail on the head by saying:—
“We believe the abhorrence entertained by many, of cremation, depends to a very great extent on the universal tendency of individuals and nations to resent any interference with established customs, to reject any innovation simply because it is an innovation.”