Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial, Sir Thomas Browne

August 24, 7pm (GMT+1)

All this means nothing to me; here in the quiet of the Hotel Adrogué I spend my days polishing a tentative translation in Quevedo’s style — which I do not propose to publish — of Sir Thomas Browne’s Urne-Buriall¹.

Greetings, fellow bibliophile! We had a very good first session last week, discussing Borges’ “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”. I thought it would be interesting to continue on the Borgesian line, but reading something else. So for our second session we’ll read Sir Thomas Browne’s Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial, or, a Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns lately found in Norfolk, a very interesting text, hard to label.

If you have a copy of W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, have a peep at chapters 1 and 10, where he discusses this text. The intro by a Sir John Evans, in this edition, provides a good background on Browne and Urn Burial. And since we are working with a very old text, why not have a look at this letter from 1708/09 “Occasion'd by Some Antiquities Lately Discover'd Near Bramham-Moor in Yorkshire”? I know the long s (ſ) can be annoying when reading but if we’ll be snobs let’s be snobs all the way.

Our meeting will take place online on August 24, 7:00 pm (GMT+1). As always, please register below.