Two years before van Gennep published his book on rites of passage, a young French sociologist had already grasped that death, in traditional societies, is not an instant but a journey. His name was Robert Hertz, and his essay Contribution à une étude sur la représentation collective de la mort, published in 1907 in the journal L'Année sociologique, is still a classic today.
A pupil of Durkheim
Hertz was born in 1881 and belonged to the innermost circle of Émile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss. He was a brilliant scholar who had in mind a major work on sin and expiation. He was unable to complete it: he was killed in action in the First World War, in April 1915. Mauss later edited the publication of his writings, including another famous essay on the pre-eminence of the right hand.
The starting question
Why, Hertz asked, does death almost everywhere give rise to rites that continue long after the moment of dying? Why does mourning last weeks, months, sometimes years? The answer could not be merely psychological. The death of a member wounds society itself, which must reorganise and relocate the deceased into another condition.
The case of the Dayak of Borneo
The essay's main material came from ethnographic descriptions of the Dayak of Borneo, in particular the Ngaju. Among these peoples the treatment of the dead took place in two stages:
- Provisional burial. The body was placed in a coffin or a temporary site, where it remained during decomposition. In this phase the dead person was considered dangerous and restless, and relatives observed strict taboos.
- The final ceremony. After a period that could last even years, a great feast was held (called tiwah among the Ngaju): the bones, now clean, were gathered, purified and placed in the definitive dwelling of the ancestors.
Only with the second ceremony did the deceased truly "arrive" in the world of the dead, and only then did the living leave mourning.
Three parallel journeys
Hertz's most brilliant insight is that, in the intermediate period, three realities make the same journey in parallel:
| Subject | During the intermediate period | At the final ceremony |
|---|---|---|
| The body | Decomposes, is impure | Becomes dry, stable bone |
| The soul | Wanders, restless, between two worlds | Enters the community of ancestors |
| The mourners | Are separated, bound by taboos | Are reintegrated into social life |
The physical transformation of the corpse functions as an image of spiritual and social transformation. The time of dissolving flesh is the time of the threshold.
Finding the pattern elsewhere
Hertz showed that traces of this double time are found in many cultures. The practice of exhuming bones and placing them in an ossuary, widespread in various areas of the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe, follows a similar logic. Even where burial is single, commemorative rites at fixed intervals, such as the thirtieth day or the anniversary, mark a gradual passage.
In the Jewish tradition, for example, the gathering of bones in ossuaries is attested archaeologically in ancient times; in the Eastern Christian world, exhumation after some years has remained in use in various communities.
A bridge to van Gennep
When van Gennep published The Rites of Passage in 1909, Hertz's essay already offered a perfect example of the pattern: separation at death, a long margin during decomposition, final aggregation with the ancestors. The two scholars, though belonging to different circles, reached a common vision by independent routes.
The symbolic value
For those who study esoteric traditions, Hertz's work offers a precious key. In many initiatory rituals the candidate symbolically "dies", passes through a time of darkness and is finally "reborn". Hertz's reading reminds us that this sequence is not a literary invention: it is rooted in the concrete ways human communities have worked through loss.
Death, in this perspective, is not a clean cut but a transformation that requires time, care and the participation of all.
In short
- Robert Hertz published in 1907 a fundamental essay on the collective representation of death.
- His main model was the two-stage burial of the Dayak of Borneo.
- Body, soul and mourners make a parallel journey during the intermediate period.
- The final ceremony reintegrates the living and places the deceased among the ancestors.
- His work anticipates and confirms van Gennep's pattern of rites of passage.
