Meaning & Analysis
The proverb literally states that human beings begin their lives crying at birth and end their lives in a state of sorrow or weeping at death.
Insights
Inherent Suffering of Life
The proverb serves as a metaphor for the inherent and inescapable nature of suffering in the human condition. It suggests that sorrow is not an intermittent event but the fundamental state that frames our entire existence.
The Cycle of Sorrow
It portrays life as a cyclical journey of sorrow, beginning and ending in the same state of distress. This implies that the intervening years are also dominated by hardship, a perspective reinforced by the historical quotations.
Universal Human Experience
By using the inclusive pronoun 'we', the proverb asserts that this experience of suffering is universal. It transcends individual circumstances, uniting all of humanity in a shared fate of grief from birth to death.
Fatalistic Worldview
The proverb encapsulates a fatalistic or tragic worldview, where life is predestined for pain. The crying at birth is seen as a presage of the difficulties to come, setting a somber tone for the entirety of one's life.
Literary and Philosophical Context
This proverb reflects a deeply ingrained pessimistic worldview, prevalent in Renaissance and Jacobean literature, which often framed earthly existence as a 'vale of tears'. Shakespeare's use in 'King Lear' powerfully situates this idea within a context of immense suffering, suggesting it as a fundamental, universal truth.
Psychological Framing
The proverb taps into the profound psychological reality of life's two greatest transitions: birth and death. It normalizes the trauma and fear associated with these events, framing suffering not as an interruption of life but as its defining characteristic.
Human Uniqueness in Suffering
The comparison to the animal kingdom, as noted in a 1598 quotation, implies that the capacity for weeping from birth is a uniquely human trait. This suggests that our consciousness and self-awareness are intrinsically linked to an awareness of suffering from our very first moments.
Rhetorical Devices
Parallelism
The balanced structure, repeating 'weeping' at the start of two opposing clauses ('come into the WORLD' and 'hence we go'), creates a powerful rhetorical effect that underscores the inescapable nature of sorrow.
Antithesis
The proverb frames the entire human lifespan through the stark contrast between birth ('come') and death ('go'), emphasizing that sorrow is the constant element at both extremes.
Symbolism
'Weeping' functions as a powerful symbol for all forms of human suffering, grief, and hardship, extending the proverb's meaning beyond the literal act of crying.
Transcription
Quotations
If we consider the whole course of our life, we begin with cries, and end with cares.
We weeping come into the world: and weeping hence we goe: and all our life is nothyng else, but grief, payne, toyle, and wo.
The man that feeling knowes, with cries first borne, the presage of his life.
Such is the state of men! thus enter wee Into this life with woe, and end with miseree.
Who in his cradle by his childish crying Presageth his mishaps and sorrowes nying.
[Other creatures than man] weepe not when they be borne, nor waxe sad when they shall die.
Man alone, poore wretch, she [nature] hath layed all naked upon the bare earth, euen on his birth day, to cry and wraule presently from the very first houre that hee is borne in such sort.
Wouldst have me dye, as I was borne, in whining?
When we are brought forth to the world, we cry and bawle as if we were vnwillig to bee borne; and when we are a dying we are mad at that.
Man comes into the World weeping, lives laughing, and dyes sighing.
We are born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed.
When we first see the Light, we weep; and when we leave it, we groan.
Shakespeare Citations
Thou must be patient. We came crying hither; Thou know'st, the first time that we smell the air We wawl and cry. I will preach to thee. Mark.
Cross References
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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