Marcus/Marilyn (he/she), 22. Like Minds & Death Note fan + SERIOUSLY down bad for Nigel Colbie ♠️ | @makinplans.4.nigel on Insta + @marcusxnigel on TikTok | Personal tag is #rambles of a nigellous man
Using the order in which each spread is presented in the scene where Alex finally reads through Nigel's book, this is the fifth spread.
Memento Mori
The entire left page is occupied by the image of a skull within an oval frame. Beneath the skull is a banner containing some motto, but the text is barely visible, much less legible. Although I have conducted countless searches over the past few years, scrolled through endless feeds of skulls, seeded my Pinterest and Cosmos algorithm with related images in the hopes that the exact match might appear at random, I have come up with exactly nothing. Perhaps I will stumble across it three years from now, at the least expected moment, but I can’t count on it.
What I can tell you about this image is that it is part of a vast array of works that fall under the category of “memento mori”. I am sure that at least some of you are familiar with this concept, but for the sake of thoroughness, let’s break it down just a bit. Memento mori is a Latin phrase that can be translated literally as “(you must) remember to die”, but it is more commonly understood to mean “remember death” or “remember that you will die”.
I do not have the time or space to delve into the long and layered history of this concept as a popular theme in human art and philosophy. Suffice it to say that death in its universality is always on the human mind and we have been making art to wrestle with the fact of death for as long as art has been made. More formal contemplations of death have been approached from a philosophical and/or religious standpoint since antiquity and across all cultures. For some, the reminder of death is also a reminder to live life fully, making the most of the limited span we have (see also: carpe diem, "eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die", "laissez les bon temps roulez", and yes...YOLO).
For a general overview, try this article: Memento Mori Art: Symbolic Meditations on Death.
The rise of Christianity and its ideology that mortal incarnation is merely a test, with success leading to a reward after death also gave rise to a very specific iteration of memento mori art (visual, literary, and musical) in the European world. The pieces we see in Nigel’s book are drawn largely from the Western canon, much of which espouses the Christian message that the fleeting and impermanent pleasures of life are sinful distractions from the true purpose of (Christian) humans: to contemplate God, deny the illusory and corrupting joys of mortal life, and await salvation after death.
Memento mori art commonly features skulls, bones, or entire skeletons and corpses, but also other objects that symbolize the passage of time and inevitability of decay—wilting flowers, coffins, hourglasses, dying or extinguished candles, etc. They also frequently include mottoes admonishing the viewer directly—the banner beneath the skull on this page almost certainly holds such a message.
In lieu of an exact match for the image Nigel used, here are several similar examples of the skull used in memento mori art, just a few out of the plethora of pieces that exist.
This final image (below) is an ancient Roman mosaic from the ruins of Pompeii, predating Christianity. The mosaic also includes a butterfly (commonly used to symbolize the soul) and a wheel of fortune flanked by the fine clothing of a wealthy person on one side and the rags of a beggar on the other. The inevitability of death is combined with the message that the fickle fortunes of life can change quickly for anyone.
The book page depicting the same mosaic is an excerpt from Freemasonry and the Ancient Gods, the book that writer/director Greg Read cites in the DVD commentary track as his source for the Maraclea myth. That excerpt can be found in this post: [Texts: My Beloved Maraclea]. As their name implies, the Freemasons trace their lineage to the guilds of masons and architects of the Middle Ages, and this ancient mosaic holds several symbols they revere: the skull itself is the weight of a plumb line hanging from a level with a square above it—practical tools used by masons to build sound structures and taken by the Freemasons as symbolic manifestations of their principle beliefs.
Based largely on Read’s use of this book as a major source of inspiration, as well as the fact that the Maraclea myth isn’t exactly widely discussed in printed publications, I tend to assume that this book would have been part of the library of materials available to Nigel through his father and the Order. The full text of the book can be found here on the Internet Archive if you’d like to peruse it for more insight into what other ideas Nigel may have incorporated as part of his personal mythology.
Le Miroir de la Vie et de la Mort
The main component of the right-hand page is a copy of a 17th century French engraving by an unknown artist. It is housed in the Musée Carnavalet in Paris, though I’ve not been able to find a direct link to it in their online archives. Like many works in the public domain, it can be found through those parasitic websites that sell prints of public domain art—the art is free to use, but their photographic/reproduction image of it falls under copyright.
The title translates exactly how you might guess: The Mirror of Life and Death. This work is an example of the Vanitas (vanity) subgenre of Memento Mori art, most popular in the 1600s. As the name implies, these works are intended as a reprimand against the vain pursuit of material things like wealth and beauty. The mirror reveals the truth (death) that lurks beneath the illusory and ephemeral nature of youth, beauty, and all the luxuries and lures of worldly incarnation, coupled with the messaging that one should eschew these fleeting things fated to fade and die, and instead center your life on Christian virtues: humility, austerity, and piety.
The verse written at the bottom states this message explicitly:
Original:
Mondains qui faictes cas des beautez d’un visage
Scachez que les aymer ce n’est pas estre sage,
Puis que le temps enfin les doibt faire perir,
Nous n’auons icy bas chose aucune asseuréé,
Tout change et nostre vie a si peu de duréé
Quen commencent a vivre on commence at mourir
Translation:
You worldly souls who prize a lovely face,
Know that to love such beauty is unwise,
For time must bring it to an end at last;
We have no certainty in this earthly life—
All things change, and our days are so fleeting
That to begin to live is to begin to die.
This site (in French) has an excellent collection of artworks depicting “La Mort Bipartie” (bipartite death—half living, half dead figures), as well as a brief but interesting look at the trends and influences underlying the depiction of skeletons and anatomical imagery in art: Plus Que Nu (More than Naked).
A few more examples:
Small Figure - Skeleton?
At the top right corner of the right page, there's a small and simple line art of some kind of figure. The size and the angle as well as the relatively low quality of the 1080p movie file mean that I don't have the means to enhance this tiny piece enough to get a crisp image. This blurry edit isn't enough to recognize the source or even to conduct a good reverse image search (I tried).
It’s incredibly hard to tell, but the image seems like a simple drawing that the propmakers added to the margin, rather than a cutout from a book or a photocopy like the larger images and blocks of text in the book. The image evokes a skeleton, perhaps holding a scythe or some other object, very much in the vein of the danse macabre. Yet another subgenre of the Memento Mori category, Danse Macabre art depicts personifications of Death dancing/leading humans—rich and poor, powerful and humble—to the grave that awaits them all. The genre rose to prominence in the late medieval period as a result of developments in Christian eschatology and as a reaction to the decimation of Europe’s populace by the Black Death and high mortality rates in general due to other causes (war, famine, other plagues, etc).
While I cannot say for certain what the figure on the page actually is, you can see from the examples below why I would make the comparison to a danse macabre-style skeleton. Given the rest of the context of this spread and its focus on Memento Mori art, as well as the overall thematic consistency of Nigel’s book, I think it’s a reasonable guess.
The Lock of Hair
Finally we come to the one thing that cannot be researched: the small lock of hair apparently taped into the margin of this spread. This item has been discussed previously, in this post by @kkaoruci from a few years back, where we surmised that there could be a few different explanations for the hair.
Given its inclusion in the book, Nigel must have felt it was important in some way, which narrows down the options based on what we know about Nigel and what he values. The primary candidates among the living are Alex and Helen. As a third option, it could be a lock of hair from some prominent dead ancestor.
The hair is a reddish tone, short and irregular in length, and clearly cut as a single lock based on the very neat straight edge of the top end. Notably, the hair itself is fairly straight rather than curly. It seems to be held in place very simply with transparent scotch tape. These qualities added together don’t paint a detailed enough picture to definitively say where the hair came from, but I think we can rule a few things out.
Given Nigel’s circumstances and the unlikelihood of him having access to centuries-old artifacts, the fact that the hair is simply taped in place, and the lack of any label or framing, I think we can say that the hair doesn’t belong to anyone from the distant past. While the idea of it being a lock of hair from the original Maraclea is very fun, it’s just not particularly plausible here, especially given the lack of historicity of the legend—it’s more a fable than a factual event.
We know Nigel is prone to digging into places he shouldn’t be, like the morgue. It wouldn’t be a stretch to think he could have entered the Colbie family mausoleum and stolen some hair from the corpse of a dead ancestor. They do seem the type to have a prominent, expensive tomb rather than plain graves, so accessing the decomposed bodies would be less difficult than digging up a 6 foot deep coffin. So it is an option, but it raises the question: why? Who would be so important to him that he would go to the trouble of retrieving the hair, but then not even bother to label the hair with any note or identity? Possible, but perhaps not very probable.
If this is the case, the lock of hair would represent yet another manifestation of the memento mori—as an object of remembrance of a deceased loved one. Hair has been incorporated into artwork for various purposes since at least the medieval era, but Victorian Britain popularized its use as a memento mori in jewelry and framed art.
Naturally, Helen is a prime candidate for the owner of the hair—she’s very important to Nigel as a symbol, the repository of his Maraclea plans, the only candidate he knows who could fit the qualifications for re-enactment of the story. Her hair is notably reddish in tone. He’s proven he has no qualms about invading her personal space while she sleeps, so snipping a lock of her hair would be simple and justified in his mind. Keeping a lock of her hair would also serve the purpose of the memento mori object, given that he knew she was going to die as a result of his machinations.
The hitch is that her hair is quite curly, while the lock in the book doesn’t seem to have any indication of curl. If a small piece were clipped from the end of her hair, I would expect it to have curling/waving lines even after being pressed flat in a book. Perhaps it’s possible he ironed the hair straight to make it lay flat, but that seems…hard to explain as something he would do. If he were taking her hair as a tangible symbol of her importance, I would think he’d be more likely to preserve it as it is rather than change its nature. On the other hand, it is also worth noting that curly hair isn’t uniformly coiled across every strand, and the tightness of curl can also be dependent on how it is styled and cared for. In these shots of Helen, you can see some tendrils of her hair are straighter than others, which means that it could be feasible that the hair came from her after all.
That leaves us with one more option: Alex. His hair is reddish in tone much like Helen’s (many words have been spilled about the significance of that resemblance.) Unlike Helen, his hair is fairly straight, with a very slight wave. His haircut is also quite shaggy and irregular, with enough length to enable snipping the lock we see. Alex is both important to Nigel and only a recent development incorporated into his mythology—this could explain the lock being simply taped into a margin without fanfare, as it was only recently added to the pre-existing text. Nigel had unfettered access to Alex while they were still sharing a room, although he only seems to fixate on Alex after the train scene, when he is moved to a different room. We also know Alex doesn’t seem to lock his door, and that Nigel can easily wander in without waking Alex.
Color, texture, length, importance, context, and opportunity can reasonably work for either Alex or Helen as the source of the hair. There is simply no way to know for certain, and there could be other explanations that still work within the parameters we have. It’s up to all of you to decide whose hair Nigel added to his book.
Text and Notes
As usual, the various text excerpts found on this page are entirely illegible. The handwritten notes are in Nigel's handwriting as already established in previous entries. Some of the words on the inner column of the right page are tantalizingly close to being legible, but remain stubbornly elusive.
The rest of the series can be found here:
Nigel's Book Details: Spread One
Nigel's Book Details: Spread Two
Nigel's Book Details: Spread Four
Nigel's Book Details: Spread Six
Nigel's Book Details: Spread Seven and Eight
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