Death Wail in Literature
The death wail is mentioned in many literary works:
"She began the high, whining keen of the death wail...It rose to a high piercing whine and subsided into a moan. Mama raised it three times and then she turned and went into the house..." John Steinbeck's short story "Flight", set in Santa Lucia Mountains
Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions, set in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe)
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Famous quotes containing the words death, wail and/or literature:
“It is conceivable at least that a late generation, such as we presumably are, has particular need of the sketch, in order not to be strangled to death by inherited conceptions which preclude new births.... The sketch has direction, but no ending; the sketch as reflection of a view of life that is no longer conclusive, or is not yet conclusive.”
—Max Frisch (1911–1991)
“Wise men ne’er sit and wail their woes,
But presently prevent the ways to wail.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“A book is not an autonomous entity: it is a relation, an axis of innumerable relations. One literature differs from another, be it earlier or later, not because of the texts but because of the way they are read: if I could read any page from the present time—this one, for instance—as it will be read in the year 2000, I would know what the literature of the year 2000 would be like.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)