{"id":677,"date":"2010-06-08T11:00:11","date_gmt":"2010-06-08T15:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=677"},"modified":"2014-01-26T22:21:43","modified_gmt":"2014-01-27T03:21:43","slug":"lena-herzog-and-the-lost-souls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/08\/lena-herzog-and-the-lost-souls\/","title":{"rendered":"Lena Herzog and the Lost Souls"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u201cWe do not allow anyone to see it, let alone photograph it,\u201d the director of Vienna\u2019s Federal Museum of Pathology at the Narrenturm told Lena Herzog<\/a> when she first attempted to visit. Herzog was drawn to the collection of what eighteenth-century monks in her native Russia called \u201clost souls,\u201d and what nineteenth-century doctors described as \u201cincompatible with life\u201d\u2014unborn fetuses and newborn infants who, by virtue of nature\u2019s mutations, were unable to survive but who were preserved by early modern collectors as objects of scientific inquiry and private wonder. These human and animal specimens were often displayed next to maps of the earth and of the stars\u2014evidence of a desire to define boundaries and map the unknown.<\/p>\n

Herzog first encountered a similar collection as a student in St. Petersburg in 1988, and her reaction was swift and clear: \u201cWhat I saw was extraordinary and subversive. It defied belief … The Russian Orthodox church declared the souls of these babies \u2018lost\u2019\u2014they had no place in hell, or heaven, or even limbo. They were dead on arrival and had no place to go. Yet what was in the jars shimmered with a strange beauty.\u201d For Herzog, that strange beauty is \u201csomething that shocks with a promise of some answer but gives none.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the jump, a selection of photos that were first published<\/a> in this magazine. Tonight, Lena Herzog will appear in conversation<\/a> with Lawrence Weschler at The New York Public Library.<\/p>\n

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