Danse Macabre, Follow-Up

What I value most from my little blogging experiment so far is reconnecting with old friends and making new ones through the bonds of similar interests.  One new friend, Lyda82 whose jewelry was featured here, blogged about her culture’s version of the Danse Macabre, their relationship with the dead and what it meant to her own family, in The Killing Fields, Dia de Los Muertos, Death and Love. « Lyda82.  Her blog on her own family's past difficulties and triumphs leaving Cambodia made the whole Danse Macabre very personal and was a lovely mediation on why cultures think on these things.  It is a great blessing to be able to enjoy the peace and freedom of the United States (or any time and place that is peaceful), but it is something that is very easy to take for granted.  Many people initially immigrated to the U.S. because they were fleeing some type of persecution in their homeland.  Most of us are much further removed from the persecution previously suffered by family, but it is a good reminder, both as a means of increased respect for the sacrifices made by ancestors and to get a better understanding of the weight of history to recall the past.  As Lyda says so well this can be done as a celebration of victory.


Cheers! 

Camille Saint-Saëns - Danse Macabre

Best Hallowe'en Song:

My favorite song for Hallowe'en is Charles Camille Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre, and the medieval story behind it is so interesting I thought I would inflict it upon you, dear lambs, for further Hallowe'en study. 

The Dance of Death by Michael Wolgemut (1493)

The Dance of Death (or Danse Macabre in French) was a late medieval allegory involving a personification of Death who summons an assortment of people (pope, king, duke, laborer, child, etc.) to dance with him to the grave, as a reminder to the audience that death comes to us all.  [Picture a very rotund, crabby Orson Wells quoting in a grumpy snarl: "Death comes to us all, yes, even to kings he comes." from A Man for All Seasons.  Best Orson Wells line ever.]  Now to modern people, who act as though they have a severe allergy to the inevitability of death, this sounds hideously morbid and depressed; they would probably imagine dung-covered peasants wearing hair-shirts living in mud huts rhythmically beating themselves on the head with planks of wood wailing about their End or something, but this is only because "modern" minds do not understand the medieval era (not to say the cast of Monty Python didn't know...terribly well-educated.  But watch the wretched Sean Bean movie Black Death - they took so much of Monty Python and the Holy Grail as deadly serious academic research).  People of the medieval period were not Neanderthal cave-men picking their rotting teeth with a stick whilst a swarm of cartoon flies buzzed around their heads waiting for them to drop dead from the plague.  We are talking about the period of Dante and Thomas Aquinas and the dawn of Renaissance art.  Charles Camille Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre is a brilliant musical translation of the allegory: beware of the inevitable end, avoid actions that would bring you shame, but party hard, my still-breathing friends.  There is a mad, joyful abandon in the music.  A very apt Hallowe'en song.

Wikipedia goes on somewhat pretentiously that the allegory "always had a subtle socio-critical element" to it, which I think is a ridiculous observation.  I get annoyed when people, in the middle of a perfectly rational discussion, slap a redundant, vapid, and inherently modern sociological phrase onto everything.  If by socio-critical, the writer meant critical of human frailty then yeah, sure.  The whole point of the Dance of the Dead being that NONE OF THAT MATTERS AT DEATH SO QUIT ACTING LIKE A DIVA ON A RAMPAGE!

Anyhoodle, as our Celtic ancestors advised, this is the best time of year to light a truck-load of stuff on fire, drink a bunch, and dance like mad to great music.

Here is a gorgeous version of the Dance Macabre.