Anthropomorphism and Zoomorphism

06 Monday Mar 2017

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, Beast Literature, Myths

Tags

allegorical animals, anthropomorphism, La Fontaine, lycantrope, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, mythical animals, mythological animals, Pourquoi tales, therianthropy, zoomorphism

Griffin fresco in the “Throne Room,” Palace of Knossos, Crete, Bronze Age. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Griffin

The red Griffin “rampant” was the coat of arms of the dukes of Pomerania and survives today as the armorial of West Pomeranian Voivodeship (historically, Farther Pomerania) in Poland.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When the griffin or other mythical/mythological animal is featured on a crest in a climbing position, he is called “rampant” (ramping, crawling).

Anthropomorphism

fables
beast epics
speaking animals

Animals in literature are, for the most part, humans in disguise, or anthropomorphic. As Jan M. Ziolkowski writes, “beasts override genre.”[1] Fables and fairy tales are genres, but beast literature is not.

Fables and Beast Epics

However, although beasts override genre, speaking animals are associated first with fables, such as Æsop’s Fables and Jean de La Fontaine’s, and, second, with beast epics, such as Reynard the Fox, or Le Roman de Renart, which narrows a much broader area of knowledge. Anthropomorphic animals are humans in disguise. In the Roman de Renart, all animals have a name. In fact, Renart was so popular that foxes ceased to be called goupils in French. They became renards. Reynard the Fox is entitled Le Roman de Renart, where renard is spelled with a “t.” Renart is a trickster whose nemesis is the wolf named Ysengrin.

Le Roman de Renart, a French beast epic, is rooted in the Ysengrimus, a lengthy––6,574 lines of elegiac couplets––Latin mock epic written in 1148-1149 and attributed to Nivardus of Ghent. In the Isengrimus, Renart is Reinardus and will become the most famous and beloved animal in European beast literature. Renard is the fox of the “Fox and Crow” and other “fox” fables. In fact, the Roman de Renart, the first “branches” of which were written in the late twelfth century by Pierre de Saint-Cloud, is an outer fable containing inner fables (Ausserfabel and Innerfabeln), including Æsopic fables.[2] Æsopic fables preceded the Roman de Renart by a more than a thousand years.

Speech

“dire sans dire”
Aesopian
George Orwell

The main characteristic of anthropomorphic animals is their ability to speak a human language. Animals are very useful to writers because, when all said and done, animals have not said a thing. Jean de La Fontaine’s (1621-1695) fables have been described as a “dire-sans-dire” (to say without saying). They are “enveloped” tales, writes German scholar Jürgen Grimm. Therefore, anthropomorphism is an oblique literary discourse, a fiction within a fiction.

Russian satirist Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin (27 January 1826 – 10 May 1889) first used the word aesopian to describe a language unclear to outsiders, thereby allowing authors to say what they please with relative impunity. In 1945, George Orwell wrote an allegorical novella entitled Animal Farm. His animals are humans in disguise, hence their saying what they will not have said. Their own tongue is a language, but it is not a human language. Babe, the protagonist, a piglet, of a 1995 Australian film directed by Chris Noonan and produced by George Miller, is an anthropomorphic animal. The film is an adaptation of Dick King-Smith‘s 1983 novel: The Sheep-Pig.

The Story

La Fontaine did make each of his animals speak, but he also emphasized the power of fiction, in which he may have further distanced his speaking animals. In the Preface to his first collection of fables, books one to six, La Fontaine notes that Jesus of Nazareth spoke in parables. Parables are stories and, as such, they empower speech. To illustrate the power of stories, La Fontaine’s wrote a fable entitled Le Pouvoir des fables (2.VIII.4). It contains an inner fable about a speaker the people of Athens would not listen to until he turned to fiction, a story about Cerēs, the Roman goddess of agriculture. The moral of the “Power of Fables” is that we are all Athenians. La Fontaine writes that if Donkeyskin, a fairy tale, were told to him, it would give him enormous pleasure. The world is old, writes the fabulist, yet it is like a child we must amuse.

Moreover, a story is pleasurable and is not easily forgotten.

Nous sommes tous d’Athène en ce point, et moi-même,
Au moment où je fais cette moralité,
Si Peau d’âne m’était conté,
J’y prendrais un plaisir extrême.
Le monde est vieux, dit-on, je le crois; cependant
Il faut l’amuser encor comme un enfant.

“Le Pouvoir des fables ” (2.VIII.4)
The Power of Fables (2.VIII.4)

It should be noted, however, that La Fontaine believed in a “boundless universe,” where tout parle, everything speaks, which is anthropomorphism.

Car tout parle dans l’Univers;
Il n’est rien qui n’ait son langage.
(2.XI.Épilogue)

For in this boundless universe
Ther’s none that talketh, simpleton or sage
More eloquent at home than in my verse.
(2.XI.Epilogue)

Everything does speaks. For instance, Milo Winter‘s illustrations for “The North Wind [Boreas] and the Sun” (“Phoebus and Boreas”) constitutes an example of elements, the wind and the sun, who speak as though they were humans. In short, anthropomorphism resembles a form of personification, which it is in “Phoebus and Boreas .”

the_north_wind_and_the_sun_-_wind_-_project_gutenberg_etext_19994

The North Wind and the Sun by Milo Winter (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Phébus et Borée, Site Officiel

Zoomorphism: les Hybrides

composite animals or hybrid creatures
mythological and mythical animals
aetiological texts
symbolism
giving animal features to anything (e. g. furniture)

Zoomorphism is a more complex concept than anthropomorphism and may be the reverse of anthropomorphism. Mythologies and myths are home to zoomorphic animals that combine the features of a human and an animal or the features of many animals. The centaur of Greek mythology is part human and part beast. Centaurs have the lower body of a horse, but the upper body of a human.

The Minotaur is the offspring of Pasiphaë, the wife of Cretan king Minos and the Cretan bull. He is part human and part bull and so evil a creature that he is kept in a labyrinth built by Daedalus. He is slain by Theseus who finds his way through the labyrinth using Ariadne‘s thread. These two hybrid creatures, the centaur and the Minotaur, may hold a mirror to mankind’s duality. Humans possess a mortal body and an immortal soul.

However, mythology also features composite animals. Cerberus, the vigilant dog guarding the gates to the Underworld is a three-headed dog. J. K. Rowling used Cerberus in her Harry Potter series. Her fifth book in the Harry Potter series is entitled Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Mythological animals have long inhabited the human psyche and are therefore somewhat familiar to readers. To my knowledge, no one escapes Cerberus’ attention, except Psyche. (See Cupid and Psyche, Wikipedia.) Pegasus, the winged horse, is also a well-known mythological being.

Mythologies are origin myths or aetiological. The Bible itself, the Scriptures or “the Word,” could be described as an aetiological text. It features fanciful angels who are human-like but have wings. In Greek mythology, for instance, animals have a lineage or a pedigree, as is the case with the above-mentioned Minotaur. In the growingly popular area of children’s literature, aetiological tales are called “pourquoi” tales. The most famous example of a “pourquoi” tale is Rudyard Kipling‘s (30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) Just so stories.

Zoomorphic beasts may also be symbols. As mentioned above, those who mix the features of a human being may reflect the fall of mankind. Besides, an anthropomorphic serpent talked to Eve.

Mythologies and Myths

J. K. Rowling used not only Cerberus, but the Phoenix, a symbol of rebirth. Symbolic beasts are mostly mythical rather than mythological, but readers and scholars tend to blur that line. The distinguishing criterion would be lineage. By and large, mythological beasts, such as the above-mentioned Minotaur and centaurs have a pedigree.

Mostly mythical animals are the phoenix, the unicorn, the dragon, the griffin and the irresistible Sirens, mermaids mostly. Mermaids have the upper body of a woman and the lower body of a fish. These legendary beings may make an appearance in mythologies, but they are somewhat ubiquitous and often transcultural. The phoenix has often been described as a mythological animal and he has a story as does the Unicorn, but he does not possess the Minotaur’s lineage.

The dragon is our most ubiquitous imaginary animal and may be good or bad depending on his environment. In the West he is bad, but not so in the East. Unicorns and Sirens are also transcultural. These mythical animals are zoomorphic, but, in Medieval Bestiary, they are symbols.

The dragon‘s characteristics change from culture to culture. He is feared in the West, but not in China.
The griffin, shown at the top of this post, a lion mostly, with the head of an eagle, is a guardian. In antiquity, he was a symbol of divine power and a guardian of the divine.
The unicorn has one horn and plays various roles from culture to culture. In Western culture, he is emblematic of chaste love and faithful marriage.
Given that he rises from his own ashes, the phoenix is a symbol of rebirth and very popular.

The word zoomorphic is also used to describe pieces of furniture and architectural elements. For instance, the legs of wing chairs often imitate the feet of an animal. Besides wing chairs have wings. Among architectural element, the animal-like Gargoyle is a favourite. He is a waterspout with an open mouth. Bas-reliefs (shallow carvings on a flat surface, such as a wall) may also contain animal-like architectural elements. They embellish buildings. All animal-like creatures inhabiting the medieval bestiary are allegorical or symbolic.

Diophos Painter, white-ground lekythos (500 BCE) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Order of the Dragon was created to defend Europe against the invading Ottoman Turks in the 15th century. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Other Beasts

metamorphosis
theriantropic beasts
lycanthropy

Both the terms anthropomorphism and zoomorphism include morphism. Morphism suggests a metamorphosis, or a transformation in a being’s appearance, which may be a wish human beings share, just as they share the wish to fly. Roman writer Ovid (20 March 43 BCE – CE 17/18) is the author of the extremely influential Metamorphoses and Berber Latin writer Apuleius (c. 124 – c. 170 CE) wrote The Golden Ass, which contains the lovely tale of Cupid and Psyche. Lucius, the protagonist of The Golden Ass, is mistakenly transformed into an ass when attempting to be transformed into a bird.

Beast literature features therianthropic animals, who are the victims of a curse. Beast in Beauty and the Beast is a therianthropic being. Enchantment is central to fairy tales. But shapeshifting animals bring to mind the werewolf (le loup-garou), a lycanthrope, rather than fairy tales.

Animals as Types

In the Preface to his translation of Æsop’s Fables, John Fyler Townsend writes that animals are types, much like the stock characters of the commedia dell’arte.

The introduction of the animals or fictitious characters should be marked with an care and attention to their natural attributes, and to the qualities attributed to them by universal popular consent. The Fox should be always cunning, the Hare timid, the Lion bold, the Wolf cruel, the Bull strong, the Horse proud, and the Ass patient. [EBook #21]

Zoomorphic animals are not types. However, there is commonality between animals and humans, Darwinism is a subject we will not discuss. Mythical and mythological animals may be up to no good, but they are not mutating. Moreover, I consider totemism, animal ancestry, the preserve of anthropologists.

Conclusion

Beast literature is a huge topic. We cannot escape any of the categories mentioned in this post. Yet, anthropomorphism is its chief characteristics because of the prominence of fables and the Roman de Renart, Reynard the Fox. One could define the usefulness of anthropomorphic animals by using Gertrude Stein‘s a rose is a rose is a rose.

Well, at the end of the day, a fox is a fox is a fox, therein the wizardry of a large part of beast literature. However, we remember the story. Dear La Fontaine.

RELATED ARTICLES

Greek Myths and Graffiti Murals, collaboration with Resa McConagy (La Audacia de Aquiles)
Greek Myths and Graffiti Murals, collaboration with Resa McConagy (La Audacia de Aquiles)

_________________________

[I] Jan M. Ziolkowski, Talking Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry, 750 – 1150 (The University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), p. 1.
[II] Jean Batany, Scène et coulisses du « Roman de Renart » (Paris: Cedes, 1989), p. 57.

The Unicorn

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll and John Tenniel

The Phoenix: on the Importance of Symbols & Myths

12 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by michelinewalker in Bestiaries, Myths, Symbols and Emblems

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Aberdeen Bestiary, Ave Phœnice, Évangéline, Job, Lactantius, mythology, myths, pays de Québec, symbols and emblems

“The Phœnix,” The Aberdeen Bestiary

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Aberdeen Bestiary

If the myth of the phœnix did not exist, we would probably invent it. Mythical creatures are usually born of a human need, which, in this case, is the need for rebirth. Moreover, given that the Phœnix is a transcultural and nearly universal figure, we can presume that the need for rebirth is widely and profoundly rooted in the human imagination.

Our phœnix is the mythical singing bird that is reborn from its ashes. It [le phénix] is associated with a 170 elegiac-verse poem written by Lucius Cæcilius Fiminature Lactantius, an early Christian author (c. 240 – c. 320) and an advisor to the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine I. The Ave Phœnice is about the death and rebirth of a mythical bird, a bird that rises from its own ashes. This poem was retold in English as The Phœnix, an anonymous Old English poem composed of 677 lines, based on Lactantius’s Ave Phœnice.

Given that the phœnix rises from its ashes, it constitutes a powerful symbol that one can associate with survival, as is the case with Évangéline and Maria Chapdelaine‘s mythic “pays de Québec.” The phœnix is a source of hope to the inhabitants of lands decimated by wars or natural disasters. As a symbol of rebirth, the phœnix also brings hope to those who, like Job, who have lost everything. This is how it appears in the Hebrew Bible:

I thought I would end my days with my family/ And be as long-lived as the phœnix. (Job.29:18) [i]

Mythical and Mythological Animals

Although it appears in the Bible, I am tempted to consider the phœnix as a mythical rather than mythological figure. Mythological figures have ancestors and descendants, or a lineage, which can hardly be the case with the immortal phœnix. However, given that it can rise from its ashes and is therefore immortal and godlike, this distinction may be rather artificial and insignificant. In other words, whether mythical or mythological, the phœnix is a more powerful symbol than the dragon, the unicorn and the griffin, creatures that also lack a lineage, or mostly so.

In beast literature, he is zoomorphic in that he combines features borrowed from many animals, except obviously human features. Remember that Machiavelli’s centaur was half human and half horse. Our phœnix is an animal, albeit legendary.

In Greece, the phœnix (purple) was an “Arabian bird, the only one of its kind, which according to Greek legend lives a certain number of years, at the end of which it makes a nest of spices, sings a melodious dirge, flaps its wings to set fire to the pile, burns itself to ashes and comes forth with new life.”[ii]

The Phoenix (Bestiary.ca)

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica “in ancient Egypt and in Classical antiquity, [the phœnix] was a fabulous bird associated with the worship of the sun. The Egyptian phœnix was said to be as large as an eagle, with brilliant scarlet and gold plumage and a melodious cry.[iii] Besides, it had a life span of no less than 500 years and “[a]s its end approached, the phœnix fashioned a nest of aromatic boughs and spices, set it on fire, and was consumed in the flames. From the pyre miraculously sprang a new phœnix, which, after embalming its father’s ashes in an egg of myrrh, flew with the ashes to Heliopolis (“City of the Sun”) in Egypt, where it deposited them on the altar in the temple of the Egyptian god of the sun, Re.”[iv] The Egyptian phœnix symbolized immortality.

Phoenix depicted in the book of mythological creatures by F. J. Bertuch (1747-1822).

F. J. Bertuch (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In Islamic mythology the phœnix was identified with the ‘anqā,’ also a bird, but one that “became a plague and was killed.”[v]

Fantasy Literature and elsewhere

The phœnix was used by J. K. Rowling in the fifth book of the Harry Potter series: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phœnix, 2003. It is also featured in Jean de La Fontaine, “Le Corbeau et le Renart,” (Book I.2), or the “Raven and the Fox,” where the Fox tells the crow that because of its beautiful voice, it is a phœnix among the guests of forests: “Vous êtes le phénix des hôtes de ces bois.” In French, blackmail is translated by le chantage. The fox makes the corbeau sing and the cheese drops.

Even the ageless Cinderella narrative has phœnix-like dimensions. The word Cinderella (Cendrillon) is derived from ashes: cinders and cendres. Through the mediation of her fairy godmother, the ash-girl, reduced to that role by jealous sisters and a mean stepmother, a second wife, becomes the princess of fairy tales.

Christian Symbolism

Moreover, we cannot leave aside the phœnix as a Christian symbol. For Christians, the immortal bird represents the resurrection of Christ. On the third day, Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead as the phœnix rises from his ashes. In the liturgical year, Christians go from Ash Wednesday to the Resurrection: Easter.

Mere Mortals

We cannot escape death as we are mere mortals, but life is nevertheless perpetuated. Outside my window there are naked trees, but they will again be adorned. And even if one’s land is a paper land, a literary homeland, that too is a land. In 1889-1890, Henri-Raymond Casgrain, the author of Pèlerinage au pays d’Évangéline was President of the Royal Society of Canada and quite lucid. Yet there is no “real” Évangéline. She was created by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in 1847.

The manner in which humanity copes with its condition often leads to mythification and once the myth is in place, it can be as real and powerful as is Évangéline to Acadians and her “pays de Québec” to Maria Chapdelaine.

Phoenix, from Aberdeen Bestiary

[i] Donald Ray Schwartz, Noah’s Ark: an Annotated Encyclopedia of Every Animal Species in the Hebrew Bible (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc., 2000), p. 400, p. 405, pp. 408-409.

[ii] “phœnix,” in Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, revised by Adrian Room (London: Cassel House, 2001[1959]).

[iii] “phœnix.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 31 Jan. 2012. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/457189/phoenix>.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Ibid.

composer: Igor Stravinsky (17 June 1882 – 6 April 1971)

piece: “The Firebird” first performed for Sergei Diaghilev‘s Ballets Russes (1910)

performers: Vienna Philharmonic (Salzburg Festival, 2000)

conductor: Valery Gergiev

photograph: Igor Stravinsky

©Micheline Walker
1 February 2012
WordPress

From Lupercalia to Valentine’s Day

02 Tuesday Feb 2016

Posted by michelinewalker in Feasts, Love, Myths

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Capitoline Wolf, Lupercalia, Rhea Silvia, Rome, Saint Valentine, Valentine, Valentine's Day, Vestal Virgin

Capitoline Wolf. Traditional scholarship says the wolf-figure is Etruscan, 5th century BC, with figures of Romulus and Remus added in the 15th century AD by Antonio Pollaiuolo. Recent studies suggest that the wolf may be a medieval sculpture dating from the 13th century AD.

Romulus and Remus suckling Lupa (Photo credit: Google Images)

This post was published in 2013. My new post on Candlemas is a continuation of this older article.

The above image shows Romulus and Remus, born to Vestal Virgin Rhea Silvia and the god Mars or the demi-God Hercules. Amulius had seized power from his brother Numitor and had forced Rhea Silvia, Numitor’s daughter, to become a Vestal Virgin so she would not bear children.

After the birth of Romulus and Remus, Amulius threw the babies into the river Tiber and sent their mother to jail. However, Romulus and Remus were saved by shepherds and fed by a she-wolf, Lupa, in a cave called Lupercal, perhaps located at the foot of Palatine Hill. They were then discovered by Faustulus, a shepherd.

The feral twins killed Amulius when they learned about their mother, but Romulus killed Remus who wanted Rome founded on Aventile Hill rather than Palatine Hill. Whence, the existence of Lupercus (from lupus: wolf), the Roman god of shepherds, and that of the Lupercalia, a yearly Roman festival honoring Lupa.

Romulus and Remus being given shelter by Faustulus, oil by Pietro da Cortona (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Lupercalia & Candlemas

In ancient Rome, the Lupercalia (Lupercus) took place between February 13th and 15th. This “pagan” feast is sometimes associated with Candlemas, celebrated on February 2nd, using the Gregorian calendar as opposed to the Julian calendar, called O.S., old style. In the Gregorian calendar, feasts were celebrated about 12 days earlier, than in the Julian calendar. The Eastern Church reflects this discrepancy.

As we will see, there was a motivation to transform the Lupercalia into a Christian feast. However, the Lupercalia endured until the 5th century CE and was celebrated beginning on the Ides of February, i.e. the 13th, ending two days later, on the 15th.

At the start of the Lupercalia, two goats and a dog were sacrificed. Next, two young Luperci, members of a corporation of priests, were led to the altar and anointed with the blood of the sacrificed animals. Luperci then dressed themselves in thongs, called februa, taken from skin of the of the sacrificed goats and dog and ran around the walls of the old Palatine city carrying thongs and striking the crowd.

Pancake Day or La fête des crêpes

Later, salt meal cakes prepared by the Vestal Virgins were burnt, which is interesting because in France, Candlemas, celebrated on 2nd February, is “la fête des crêpes” or Pancake Day and today, 12th February is International Pancake Day. It would be my opinion that pan of pancakes is the pan of pots and pans, but would that it were the Pan of the “Greek god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, nature, of mountain wilds, hunting and rustic music, and companion of the nymphs” (Pan, Wikipedia).

Pan’s Roman counterpart was Faunus. But Pan protected the flocks from wolves, which would suggest that he was also the counterpart of Lupercus, the above-mentioned Roman god of shepherds who replaced an earlier god named Februus (see Lupercalia, Wikipedia).

A fourth-century Roman depiction of Hylas and the Nymphs, from the basilica of Junius Bassus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Valentine’s Day

However, for our purposes, the ancient and “pagan” Lupercalia was a raucous event which Pope Saint Gelasius I (494–96) wanted to abolish. Senators opposed him so he invited them to run nude themselves. After a long dispute, Gelasius replaced the Lupercalia with a “Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary,” to be observed on Candlemas. It was a noble thought, but eventually a “pagan” feast arose, Saint Valentine’s Day or Valentine’s Day, celebrated on the 14th of February, near the Ides of February. According to Britannica, “[i]t came to be celebrated as a day of romance from about the 14th century.”[i] That would be in Chaucer’s (born c. 1342/43 died 25 October 1400) lifetime.

The many Saints called Valentine

There was a St Valentine a convert and a physician, who may have restored the sight of his gaoler’s blind daughter. According to Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, this Valentine was clubbed to death c. 270. His feast day is the 14th of February. However, there could be other beatified Valentines. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, there are three saints named Valentine, one of whom would the bishop of Terni, formerly Interamna. However, the Roman Martyrology recognizes only one St Valentine, a martyr who died on the Via Flaminia and whose feast day is the 14th of February. (See Saint Valentine, Wikipedia.)

Conclusion

I will break here. We have gone from the Lupercalia to Valentine’s Day and stumbled upon la fête des crêpes (2nd February) or Pancake Day, which is quite a journey. Let us return to the Lupercalia. Pope Saint Gelasius I did abolish disorderly “pagan” festival. However, although there is at least one saint named Valentine, Valentine’s Day is very much as described in Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. It is a “relic” of a pagan feast celebrated in February that remains a celebration of love and friendship and a bit of a carnival. In fact, not only is today, 12th February 2013, International Pancake Day, but it is also Mardi-Gras (Shrove Tuesday), which is the end of the carnival season.

Capitoline Wolf, bronze, 13th and late 15th century CE or c. 500 – 480 BCE. Musei Capitolini, Rome, Italy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

______________________________

[i] “Valentine’s Day”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 14 Feb. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/858512/Valentines-Day>

—ooo—

composer: Jacques Offenbach (20 June 1819 – 5 October 1880)

piece: Barcarolle

performers:

Philippe Jaroussky (born 13 February 1978 in Maisons-Laffitte, France) countertenor

Natalie Dessay (19 April 1965, in Lyon) coloratura soprano

“The Song of Hiawatha,” as Amerindian Lore

29 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by michelinewalker in Aboriginals, American Literature, Myths

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

Folkloristics, Henry Schoolcraft, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hyawatha Melodrama, Kevin Deas, Minnehaha, Noble savage, Ojibwa, Peter Bogdanoff, Song of Hiawatha

“The Song of Hiawatha,” The Children’s Own Longfellow, 1908 (Photo credit: Gutenberg #9080)

Mythifying

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (27 February 1807 – 24 March 1882), could create characters that would seem real to his readers. For Acadians who were deported (see Deportation of the Acadians), Longfellow’s fictional Évangéline, the heroine of an epic poem he published in 1847, is real. She spent years seeking Gabriel, her fiancé. When she found him, he was one of the dying she was attending to as a Sister of Mercy. Longfellow gave Acadians a heroic past that elevated them. Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha would not return their homes to North-American Indians, but it would mythicize them by giving them the obligatory glorious past in the person of Hiawatha, a Noble Savage.

The plight of Amerindians was greater than that of Acadians. The Removal Act of 1830 and the Cherokee Removal Act of 1838 deprived a large number of North America’s aboriginals of a territory that had been theirs since time immemorial.

The history of this Cherokee removal of 1838, as gleaned by the author from the lips of actors in the tragedy, may well exceed in weight of grief and pathos any other passage in American history. Even the much-sung exile of the Acadians falls far behind it in its sum of death and misery. (James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokees EBook #45634, p. 130.)

Henry Schoolcraft by Beal Brothers, 1855 (Photo credit: Wikipedia

Henry Schoolcraft by the Beal Brothers, 1855 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sources: Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

The growth of folkloristics and ethnology
The Jesuit Relations
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (28 March 1793 – 10 December 1864)
The Brothers Grimm
Other sources
Manabozho

However, at that time in history, disciplines such as folkloristics and ethnology were emerging. As we have seen in earlier posts, the Brothers Grimm were folklorists.[1] The two brothers scoured German-language lands collecting folklore in the hope that tales would yield a unifying identity to scattered German-speaking Europeans.

As for Longfellow, his Song of Hiawatha would use Amerindian tales told to the rhythm of the trochaic meter of the Finnish Kalevala (see Trochaic tetrameter, Wikipedia), but he could not return to Amerindians the territory that was taken from them. Amerindians had been dispossessed and relocated. He could however ennoble America’s crushed aboriginals. To a large extent, Hiawatha is yet another chapter in the history of the Noble Savage which, according to Stith Thompson, finds its beginning in the Jesuit Relations, the yearly report Jesuit missionaries to New France sent to their superiors in France.[2]

The Jesuits (Thompson: 297-298) recorded the tales told by the Amerindians and, by the same token, were witnesses to what I will call ‘natural virtue,’ virtue that was not related to Catholicism and Christianity. One of our colleagues, Françoise Duhamel, wrote a comment associating the Noble Savage to Romanticism. French Romantic author François René, vicomte de Chateaubriand wrote Atala (1801), René (1802), Les Natchez (1790s) Voyage en Amérique (1826), thus invigorating the concept of the Noble Savage. Chateaubriand travelled to the United States in 1791. As an aristocrat, he was forced to leave France during the French Revolution. He was an émigré.

The Song of Hiawatha did elevate Amerindians. However, Native Americans also became a subject matter in emerging disciplines such as folkloristics and ethnology. In this regard, Longfellow’s main source would be Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, an Indian agent for the American government and an ethnologist. In 1846, eight years after the Cherokee Removal Act, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft “was commissioned for a major study, known as Indian Tribes of the United States, which was published in six volumes from 1851 to 1857.” (See Henry Schoolcraft, Wikipedia.) Britannica refers to two volumes.[3]

Henry Schoolcraft had been married to Jane Johnston (1800 – 1842), the “mixed race daughter of a prominent Scotch-Irish fur trader and Ojibwa mother, who was the daughter of a war chief.” (See Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Wikipedia). She had taught her husband Ojibwa. Jane Johnston is the first American Indian writer.

Longfellow also drew his subject matter from the Narratives of John Heckewelder (12 March 1743 – 21 January 1823), a missionary to the Indians, from Ojibwe[4] Chief Kahge-ga-gah-bowh “during his visits at the author’s,” and from “Black Hawk and other Sac [Sauk] and Fox Indians Longfellow encountered on Boston Common.” (See The Song of Hiawatha, Wikipedia.) Hiawatha is an Ojibwa and there can be no doubt that Longfellow knew Amerindian tales. One need only read North American Indian Fairy Tales, Folklore and Legends (Amazon), illustrated by R. C. Armour and published in 1905. Would that this book were online! It may be, but I have not found it.[5]

R. C. Armour’s book features Mudjikewis, Hiawatha’s father in The Song of Hiawatha, the mischievous Paupukkewis (p. 15) whose name is Pau-Puk-Keewis in Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha. More importantly, the book R. C. Armour illustrated, tells the adventures of Manabozho.

For instance, Manabozho is swallowed whole by the king-fish, a sturgeon named Nahma. So is Hiawatha. After giving a name—Ajidanneo (animal tail)—to a squirrel that has entered the fish, depicted in the image at the top of this post, Manabozho-Hiawatha “recommenced his attack of the king-fish’s heart, and by repeated blows he at last succeeded in killing him.” (p. 71) Gulls, whom he calls “my younger brothers” helped open the mouth of the sturgeon to free Hiawatha. As we have seen, for North-American Indians, there is no difference between humans and animals, hence the “my younger brothers” referring to the gulls. Manabozho names the gulls Kayoshk, a word meaning “noble scratchers” (p. 71). Moreover, Manabozho “made the land” (p. 11), in which he would be a creator.

The killing of Nahma is one of Hiawatha’s legendary deeds (geste, in chanson de geste). Two other legendary deeds are the killing of Mondamin, the Corn Spirit (canto v), and that of Pearl-Feather, the sender of death (canto viii). So is, to a lesser extent, the killing of Pau-Puk-Keewis (canto xiv).

Hiawatha by Thomas Eakins (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Death of Minnehaha by William de Leftwich Dodge, 1885. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Temporary Conclusion

Were The Song of Hiawatha a fairy tale, it would end with the marriage of Hiawatha and Minnehaha. Moreover, the wedding-feast is followed by cantos that are looked upon as idyllic.

“As unto the bow the cord is,
So unto the man is woman;
Though she bends him, she obeys him,
Though she draws him, yet she follows;
Useless each without the other!” (Canto x of xxii)

Canto (xi) The Wedding-Feast (appearance of Pau-Puk-Keewis)
Canto (xii) The Evening Star (metamorphoses)
Canto (xiii) Blessing of the Corn-Fields (the food of Amerindians)
Canto (xiv) Picture writing (to be able to write)

However, Hiawatha will lose his friends Chibiabos, the musician (canto xv) and Kwasind (canto xviii). We know moreover that the white man is arriving. Finally, having lost the beautiful Winnehaha, Hiawatha will walk into the sunset to go and rule the kingdom of the Northwest.

“In the wigwam with Nokomis [Minnehaha’s mother],
With those gloomy guests that watched her,
With the Famine and the Fever,
She was lying, the Beloved,
She, the dying Minnehaha.” (canto xx of xxii)

I am inserting a video, a lovely reading of the Pau-Puk-Keewis episode, and will then close because this post is already very long and my computer has slowed down.

Hiawatha was made into three Cantatas by Samuel Coleridge Taylor. This is not the music we will hear. The text and music we will hear is the Hiawatha Melodrama, based on Antonín Dvořák‘s Ninth Symphony: “From the New World,” Op. 95, B. 178.

In short, Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha is a product of its times. It partakes of the intellectual endeavours of folklorists and ethnologists.

Next, we will hear that Hiawatha is Manabozho. These were still the early years of ethnology! We should also tell more about Osseo (canto xii).

RELATED ARTICLES

“The Song of Hiawata,” a Prologue (27 August 2015)
The Jesuit Relations: an Invaluable Legacy (22 May 2015 [15 March 2012])
Chateaubriand’s Atala (24 April 2014) (image)
Jean Racine, Gabriel Fauré & Alexandre Cabanel: a Canticle (6 October 2012) (image)

Sources and Resources

http://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_poem.php?pid=278
The Song of Hiawatha is a Gutenberg publication [EBook #19]
The Children’s Own Longfellow [EBook 9080]
Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (1955-1958)
Hiawatha Melodrama, Naxos

____________________

[1] Antti Aarne would publish his first index of folk-literature: Verzeichnis der Märchentypen, in 1910. Stith Thompson would continue Aarne’s work and publish his six-volume Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (1955-1958). It is an online publication.

[2] Stith Thompson, The Folktale (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: The University of California Press, 1977 [1946]), pp. 297-298.

[3] “Henry Wadsworth Longfellow”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 29 Aug. 2015
<http://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Wadsworth-Longfellow>.

[4] Ojibwa are also called Ojibwe or Chippewa.

[5] R. C. Armour, illustrator, North-American Indian Fairy Tales, Folklore, and Legends (London: Gibbons & Co. and Philadelphia: Co. J. B. Lippincott, 1905). Kessinger Legacy Reprints.

Hiawatha Melodrama: The Hunting of Pau-Puk-Keewis

Antonín Dvořák
Kevin Deas (narrator), Post Classical Ensemble conducted by Angel Gil-Ordóñez
Naxos
Visual artist: Peter Bogdanoff

: Longfellow (Google images)

“The Song of Hiawatha,” a Prologue

27 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by michelinewalker in Aboriginals, American Literature, Myths

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Claude Lévi-Strauss, Ethnology, Franz Boas, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha, Winnehaha

Hiawatha and Minnehaha sculpture by Jacob Fjelde near Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis, Minnesota (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow‘s The Song of Hiawatha, published in 1855, will be posted today or early tomorrow, but it may require a short follow-up article. I have retold the entire story ‘succinctly,’ but it nevertheless made for a long article.

The Song of Hiawatha,

Hiawatha is given a mission by “Gitche Manito, the mighty, the creator of the nations[.]” (Canto i). He will be a “prophet” and put an end to the wars American Indian tribes wage one against another. The Song of Hiawatha is an epic poem, and therefore resembles the Epic of Gilgamesh and, closer to us, The Song of Roland in which Roland and his men defeat countless Saracens, Muslims, at the Battle of Roncevaux (778). It also brings to mind The Poem of the Cid, El Cantar de Mio Cid.

Hiawatha becomes a hero through legendary deeds and marries the beautiful Minnehaha. But we sense a tragedy. Ghosts come to haunt Winnehaha. They are famished, so she gives them food. This is a premonition. Famine kills Winnehaha and devastates Hiawatha’s people.

Much was expected of Hiawatha, much that he could not accomplish. The white man was arriving. After the death of Winnehaha, Hiawatha marches West to the Isles of the Blest in Keewaydin, where he will rule what I believe is the evanescent kingdom of the “Northwest Wind.”

“I beheld, too, in that vision
All the secrets of the future,
Of the distant days that shall be.
I beheld the westward marches
Of the unknown, crowded nations.
All the land was full of people,
Restless, struggling, toiling, striving,
Speaking many tongues, yet feeling
But one heart-beat in their bosoms.
In the woodlands rang their axes,
Smoked their towns in all the valleys,
Over all the lakes and rivers
Rushed their great canoes of thunder.

“Then a darker, drearier vision
Passed before me, vague and cloud-like;
I beheld our nation scattered,
All forgetful of my counsels,
Weakened, warring with each other:
Saw the remnants of our people
Sweeping westward, wild and woful,
Like the cloud-rack of a tempest,
Like the withered leaves of Autumn! (Canto xxi of xxii )

Before leaving, Hiawatha tells his people not to fear the Black Robes, the missionaries. I think we are now hearing Longfellow’s own voice.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Postage Stamp issued on 16 February 1940 (Photo credit: Google Images)

The Song of Hiawatha (1855) was enormously successful, as had been Longfellow’s Évangéline, published in 1847.

Évangéline is the lesser tragedy. Acadians were deported. They were put aboard ships dividing families and betrothed. The Cajuns, descendants of Acadians, live in Louisiana, but many returned home or went into hiding, a large number went to Quebec, protected by Amerindians. For the most part, Acadians live in the Atlantic provinces of Canada, but their farms were not returned to them. However, they have been mythicized by Longfellow, which is a form of redemption, poetical as it may be.

To a certain extent, the same is true of The Song of Hiawatha. It ennobled a people. But Amerindians had been relocated; they had been torn away from the land that had always been theirs.

Ethnologists, two of whom are Claude Lévi-Strauss and Franz Boas, devoted long and insightful studies to Amerindians, totemism in particular, and the interest they have taken in Amerindian folklore and mythology has served to dignify North America’s Indians, which is not insignificant, but …

: Évangéline (Google Images)

Collecting Amerindian Folklore

17 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by michelinewalker in Fables, Folklore, Myths

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

"Pourquoi" tales and Mythologies, Cira 1838, Collecting Amerindian Folklore, David Vermette, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, James Money, Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha, The Indian Removal Act, The Jesuit Relations, The Trail of Tears

Manabozho in the flood. (Illustration by R. C. Armour, from his book North American Indian Fairy Tales, Folklore and Legends, 1905)

In the beginning …

When discussing Joel Chandler Harris‘ tales of Uncle Remus, I noted that, by and large, these tales belonged to the Æsopic corpus and included Reynard the Fox, Roman de Renart‘s tail-fisher narrative. In the Aarne-Thompson classification index, first published by Finnish scholar Antti Aarne 1910, but revised by Stith Thompson in 1927 and 1961. It was refined by Hans-Jörg Uther in 2004 and the classification is now entitled the ATU classification index. Moreover, although Stith Thompson published a Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (1955-1958), the word “type” seems to have replaced the word “motif.” Motif might mean the smallest meaningful element in a tale (see Narrame, Wikipedia).

In the case of Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings: The Folk-Lore of the Old Plantation, 1881, the collector was Joel Chandler Harris and the collection, Æsopic and, drawing on Reynard the Fox. Chandler Harris wrote in eye dialect, which is English in Uncle Remus, but English spelled as it was pronounced by black slaves (i.e. brother is ‘brer’).

If one looks down the table of contents in James Mooney’s Myths of the Cherokee (Gutenberg [EBook #45634]), one quickly notices that Amerindians told etiological (or ætiological) tales, which is also the case in the Tales of Uncle Remus. There are many levels to ætiological tales. They range from Rudyard Kipling‘s Just So Stories for Little Children, “pourquoi” tales and “children’s literature,” to Mesopotamia‘s Epic of Gilgamesh, c. 2100 BCE .

An Inglorious Past

Creation myths
Trickster tales
Myths and folklore
The Indian Removal Act (1830)
The Cherokee Indian Removal Act (1838)

The Myths of the Cherokee, published in 1902, is a collection of fables and tales that may be read by children, but they border on mythology, such as Greek Mythology, mythologie gréco-romaine FR, the Bible, and various sacred texts, the purpose of which is to explain how and why we humans came to inhabit planet Earth. In the area folklore, these are called creation myths. For instance, the story of the Cherokees includes the deluge (V.14; Mooney). James Mooney was an American ethnologist whose books were published by the US Bureau of American Ethnology.

Trickster tales are the most popular Amerindian tales, but we are looking at a wider selection. For instance, James Mooney gives an account of the plight of Amerindians in the United States. Between 1830 and 1838, Amerindians had to leave their hunting grounds one-third of the Mississippi and settle west of the Mississippi, in geographical areas often, if not always, chosen by the government. Good land was reserved for the white.

I doubt American officials could have removed Amerindians west of the Mississippi had it not been for the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Financially, Louisiana was purchased at a low-cost to the United States’ government, yet at too high a cost to Amerindians living in the Southeast of the United States.

The Removal Act of 1830, passed into law under the presidency of Andrew Jackson, is an event we would now wish to erase from the pages of history, but it happened, just as Auschwitz happened. Andrew Jackson was a slave-owner and Amerindians were dark-skinned, the wrong “colour.” We still have white supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan, the American Rifle Association, anti-tax extremism, and racism, i.e. the remains of an inglorious past.

For the Amerindians who were sent west, the Removal Act of 1830 was their “trail of tears.” One cannot take a people’s land away and give it to another people without causing considerable harm.

“The Trail of Tears” (Photo credit: Google images)

The Jesuit Relations

Dissemination of folktales
A case: George Bonga
the Jesuits as folklorists: the Relations
Epics

I have suggested that deported Acadians may have told their stories to black slaves in Georgia US. They could not leave those boats that sailed down Britain’s Thirteen Colonies. It is an honest theory, but one-third of the current contiguous United States belonged to France and French-Canadian voyageurs grew to include African-Americans and Amerindians. George Bonga,[1] who was of American African and Objiwe descent, was a voyageur and a fur trader. He was educated in Montreal. In other words, stories could circulate quite easily. (See David Vermette, RELATED ARTICLES.)

Stith Thompson (of the Aarne-Thompson-Üther classification index) has provided insightful information regarding the manner in which North-American folklore was collected. He writes that:

“[s]ome of the Jesuit Fathers in Canada, however, interested themselves greatly in listening to such stories. They were, of course, much concerned to learn exactly what kinds of error they must combat in their attempt to convert these simple folk. But their curiosity went far beyond this immediate need, and they recorded a number of stories merely because they were interesting.”

With the activities of the Jesuit Fathers, the collecting of American Indian began.”[2]

During their forty-one year mission in New France, from 1632 to 1673, Jesuit missionaries sent their Relations to their superiors in France. The Jesuit Relations were a yearly and detailed report of the activities of missionaries and the daily life of the people of New France. Although converting Amerindians was the main role of Jesuit missionaries, they incorporated in their Relations stories told by Amerindians. The Relations may be read online, but the text may not be complete.

In fact, we could compare the work of the Jesuits with the Brothers Grimm travels in German-language lands, collecting a past for German-speaking Europeans. It was not long before composer Richard Wagner followed in their tracks providing a nascent Germany with operas that told its epic past. Der Ring des Nibelungen is an example. But the Jesuits also transferred an oral tradition into a learned (written) tradition.

The “Noble Savage”

Stith Thompson looks upon the Jesuits as folklorists. They recorded the “folklore” of Amerindians. However, we can also associate the Jesuit Relations with the growth of the notion of the Noble Savage. We have already linked this concept with John Dryden‘s heroic play The Conquest of Granada (1672) and to the Baron de Lahontan‘s Adario. (See RELATED ARTICLES.)

It was difficult for certain Jesuits not to see in Amerindians a form of lay virtue, virtue not associated with a religion.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
The Song of Hiawatha (1855)

However, the development of the concept of the noble savage is also credited to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (27 February 1807 – 24 March 1882), the author of The Song of Hiawatha (1855).

Stith Thompson writes that “[b]y far the best known of all American Indian creation myths is that made famous by Longfellow’s Hiawatha.”[3] Hiawatha was a historical Iroquois” whose name was Manabozho. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft who wrote a six-volume study of American Indians in the 1850s (see Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Wikipedia), was an inspiration as well as a source to Longfellow (see Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Wikipedia). Longfellow’s sources were Ojibwe Chief Kahge-ga-gah-bowh, Black Hawk a Sauk leader and other Sauk and Fox Indians.

Kindest greetings to all of you. ♥

RELATED ARTICLES

Cira 1838 (WordPress), The Cherokee Indian Removal Act, 1838 (2013)
David Vermette (The Red Cedar, WordPress), What’s My story: The Voyageur (19 September 2012)
The Jesuit Relations: an invaluable legacy, revisited (22 May 2015)
Chateaubriand’s Atala (24 April 2014)
Missionaries and the Noble Savage: Père Marquette & Gabriel Sagard (17 November 2012)
The Noble Savage: Lahontan’s Adario (26 October 2012)
The Jesuit Relations: an invaluable legacy (erased mistakenly)

Sources and Resources

Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus: his Songs, his Sayings: The Folk-Lore of the Old Plantation, 1881 [EBook #2306] EN, Eye dialect (here, spelled in English as it was pronounced by a black slave) EN
Roman de Renart (Le), Wikisource (please click on the title) FR
Reynard the Fox, Wikifur EN
Aarne-Thompson classification index, Vol 1, Wikisource EN
James Mooney’s Myths of the Cherokee Gutenberg [EBook #45634] EN
The Jesuit Relations: http://puffin.creighton.edu/jesuit/relations/relations_01.html EN

____________________

[1] Grace Lee Nute, The Voyageur (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society 1955 [1931]), p. 39.

[2] Stith Thompson, The Folktale (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: The University of California Press, 1977 [1946]) p. 297-298.

[3] Op. cit., p. 307.

Black Robe, directed by Bruce Beresford

Picasso in Paris

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, Commedia dell'arte, France, Love, Myths

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Ballets Russes, Erik Satie, Igor Stravinsky, Manuel de Falla, Olga Kokhlova, Parade, Paulo Picasso, Pulchinella, Sergei Diaghilev, The Three-Cornered Hat

Olga, 1923

(All images may be enlarged by clicking on them.)

Picasso[i] had several relationships, but he was a husband to Russian ballerina Olga Kokhlova (17 June 1891 – 11 February 1955). He met Olga during the production of the Ballets Russes‘ Parade (1917). In the early years of the twentieth century, there was no better creative milieu in Paris than Sergei Diaghilev‘s (1872 –1929) Ballets Russes. The Russian impresario recruited the most talented individuals of his days and, among them, Pablo Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973). When he was employed by Sergei Diaghilev, Picasso was mixing with le tout Paris, or the cream of Parisian society.

The Legend Begins

Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes

Érik Satie (composer)

Jean Cocteau (writer)

Ernest Ansermet (conductor)

Manuel de Falla (composer)

Léonide Massine (choreographer)

Igor Stravinsky (composer)

Léon Bakst (costume and set designer)

Alexandre Benois (costume and set designer)

Marius Petipa (choreographer)

Michel Fokine (choreographer)

Vaslav Nijinsky (ballet dancer and choreographer)

Pablo Picasso (set and costume designer)

Parade (1917)

For instance, the production of the ballet Parade (1917) brought together composer Érik Satie (17 May 1866 – 1 July 1925), legendary writer and future filmmaker Jean Cocteau (5 July 1889 –11 October 1963) and choreographer Léonide Massine (9 August 1896 – 15 March 1979).

Érik Satie (17 May 1866 – 1 July 1925) was one of the main composers of his era. Beginning in 1888, Satie composed the Gymnopédies.[ii] Jean Cocteau is the author of the 1929 novel Les Enfants terribles, which he would transform into a film in 1950.[iii] Finally, when it premièred at Paris’ Théâtre du Châtelet, on 18 May 1917, Parade was conducted by Ernest Ansermet (11 November 1883 – 20 February 1969) who founded l’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (1918).

Shown below is Parade‘s curtain, Picasso’s largest work. It features the nimble Harlequin, a recurring figure in Picasso’s artwork, portrayed here in the artist’s first work as costume and set designer. Parade’s curtain also features mythology’s winged horse Pegasus. Later in Picasso’s career, mythology, the Minotaur in particular, would be a significant motif.

Curtain for the Ballet Parade, 1917

(Please click on the images to enlarge them.)

The Remains of the Minotaur in Harlequin’s Costume, 1936

The Legend Continues…

The Three-Cornered Hat (1919)

In 1919, Ernest Ansermet would conduct Manuel de Falla‘s (23 November 1876 – 14 November 1946) El Sombrero de tres picos (The Three-Cornered Hat or Le Tricorne), a Ballets Russes production choreographed by Léonide Massine with costumes and set designed by Pablo Picasso. The Three-Cornered Hat premièred in London at the Alhambra Theatre, on 22 July 1919.

Pulchinella (1920)

Pulcinella (Polichinelle) is a zanni from la commedia dell’arte. Igor Stravinsky composed the music. The ballet was choreographed by Léonide Massine, who also wrote the ballet’s libretto (the text), and Pablo Picasso designed the costumes and the set. Pulchinella was first performed on 15 May 1920 under the baton of Ernest Ansermet at the Paris Opera (Palais Garnier).

The Ballets Russes would also employ costume and set designers Léon Bakst and Alexandre Benois (both Russian) and choreographers Marius Petipa and Michel Fokine. However, the Ballets Russes had no greater star than Polish ballet dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky (12 March 1889/1890 [Kiev]– 8 April 1950).

Gesamtkunstwerk

Diaghilev was at times a little too punctilious, but his contribution to what composer Richard Wagner called Gesamtkunstwerk (total art) is exemplary. The Ballets Russes defined an entire era of the twentieth century and Pablo Picasso’s work with the company gave enormous impetus to his career.

Allow me to quote the UK Guardian (Luke Jennings; 10 May 2010), on the Ballets Russes:

This was more than just a dance company; it was a creative movement which, from its inception, drew to itself the greatest musical, theatrical and artistic talents of the day.

Gertrude Stein

27, rue de Fleurus

American writer Gertrude Stein lived here with her brother Leo and then with Alice B. Toklas. She received numerous artists and writers from 1903 to 1938.

Americans in Paris: Gertrude Stein

On 4 April 2013, I posted an article entitled Henri Matisse: an Eclectic Modernist. It refers to Picasso’s acquaintance with Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, members of Stein’s family, and the Cone sisters. The next two paragraphs are therefore somewhat repetitive. Yet, it should be mentioned that Picasso’s most fervent aficionados and promoters were Americans in Paris. He owes much of his relatively early success to Leo Stein and his sister Gertrude Stein (3 February 1874 – 27 July 1946). In fact, we could start a whole new series entitled: Americans in Paris. These Americans were wealthy and became patrons to the Impressionists and all that was avant-gardiste in Paris: Fauvism, Cubism, Surrealism, etc.

Gertrude Stein was a salonnière. Few addresses are as famous as 27, rue de Fleurus, Paris 6. An invitation to 27, rue de Fleurus, Stein’s home and that of her lover, Alice B. Toklas, was almost as much a privilege in twentieth-century Paris as entrée to Madame Geoffrin‘s Parisian salon had been in the eighteenth century.

Madame Stein is the Gertrude Stein of “a rose is a rose is a rose” who entitled her 1933 autobiography The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. As for Alice B. Toklas, Stein’s lover, she is the author of the Alice B. Toklas Cookbook of the famous hashish cookies. Born in 1877, Alice died in poverty, the victim of greed, on 7 March 1967, aged 89. (See Henri Matisse: an Eclectic Modernist.)

Paulo as Harlequin, 1924

Portrait of Paulo, 1929

Olga Kokhlova

Olga Kokhlova was a socialite and therefore facilitated Picasso’s introduction to Paris’ world of music, design, choreography, dance, and literature. The two married on 18 May 1917 and, three years after Parade, on 4 February 1921, Olga gave birth to Picasso’s first son, Paulo, depicted above as Harlequin and Pierrot (Pedrolino), Commedia dell’arte figures.

Picasso’s marriage to Olga (17 June 1891 – on 11 February 1955) was not a happy union. It seems the two were not suited for one another. In 1927, Picasso entered into a relationship with another woman. Olga left in 1935 and, as is well known, Picasso refused to divorce her because he would have had to give her half of his belongings, including his paintings. That was not acceptable to him. (See Olga Khokhlova, Wikipedia.)

Harlequin, always…

But let us return to Harlequin. In 1906, Picasso depicted him as dead (see below). At that point, reports of Harlequin’s death were premature. Picasso continued to depict Harlequin and other characters from the Commedia dell’arte, which makes him heir to Jean-Antoine Watteau (baptised 10 October 1684 – 18 July 1721).

However, Picasso’s settings of Commedia dell’arte figures are less ethereal than Watteau’s bucolic fêtes galantes. Yet both artists drew part of their subject matter from Italian comedy and from ballet, without portraying disorderly buffoons. Picasso was also influenced by seventeenth-century Spanish artists Diego Velásquez – “Las Meninas” – and El Greco.

In short, despite a failed marriage, Paris was kind to Picasso who remembered Harlequin and other characters from the Commedia dell’arte.

I apologize for not posting more often. The problem is a long and disabling episode of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Kind regards to all of you. ♥

Harlequin’s Death, 1906

RELATED ARTICLES

Picasso’s Harlequin (3 July 2014)
Arlecchino, Arlequin, Harlequin (30 June 2014)
Leo Rauth’s “fin de siècle” Harlequin (27 June 2014)
After a strike, one can expect anything (decorative use; 15 September 2013)
Pablo Picasso: Tribute to a Cat and a Dog (16 June 2013)
Henri Matisse: an Eclectic Modernist (4 April 2013)
A Portrait by Picasso (3 April 2013)

Sources and Resources

http://www.biography.com/people/pablo-picasso-9440021

_________________________

[i] “Pablo Picasso”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 07 Jul. 2014
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/459275/Pablo-Picasso-myth>.

[ii] Érik Satie was one of “les Six,” probably named “les Six” after the Russian “les Cinq.” The “Six” are Emmanuel Chabrier, Claude Debussy, Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Ravel, Érik Satie, and Richard Strauss.

[iii] Among other films and various works, we owe Jean Cocteau his 1946 Beauty and the Beast, but he is better known for his 1929 novel and 1950 film Les Enfants terribles.

Manuel de Falla (23 November 1876 – 14 November 1946)

El Sombrero de tres picos

Joven Orquesta de la Comunidad de Madrid (Sergio Alapont, director)

Portrait of Paulo, Artist’s Son, 1923

8 July 2014

WordPress

Jean Racine’s Cantique, by Gabriel Fauré

09 Friday May 2014

Posted by michelinewalker in Beast Literature, French Literature, Myths

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Canticle, Cantique de Jean Racine, Gabriel Fauré, hymns of praise, Jean Racine, mythology, Racine's Phèdre, the Golden Calf, the Sacred Bull, Theseus & the Minotaur

Hippolytus and Phaedra, Louvre (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Jean Racine’s Canticle (1688)

I have used this song in an earlier post on Jean Racine and his Phèdre (1677) entitled Jean Racine, Gabriel Fauré & Alexandre Cabanel: a Canticle. Phèdre is a dramatic tragedy, in five acts, written in alexandrine verse (twelve syllables). It was first performed on 1 January 1677 (see Phèdre, Wikipedia). Racine’s Cantique is not part of Phèdre, perhaps the best known of Racine’s tragedies and, officially, his last play.

Racine’s Phèdre is about love and jealousy. In certain seventeenth-century works of literature, jealousy is the feeling that reveals one is “in love.” Love is therefore looked upon as dangerous, because jealousy can be an extremely painful feeling. The foremost literary expression of this phenomenon is Madame de la Fayette‘s novel entitled La Princesse de Clèves, published anonymously in 1678. It is considered a masterpiece of Western literature.

This post is not about Phèdre, except indirectly. I am using images related to Racine’s Phèdre, whose plays, tragedies, are rooted in Greco-Latin models or mythology. However, Racine’s tragedies usually convey a meaning not entirely intended in the Greco-Roman “model.” Moreover, Racine’s plays are examples of works of literature that were considered as well written as their source. The literary maturity of seventeenth-century French literature triggered the famous Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns. As we neared the end of the seventeenth century, many claimed that the modern work of literature was at least as fine as the Greco-Latin “model,” which was often the case.

On Jean Racine

Corneille

Racine

Molière

Jean Racine is one of the most prominent dramatists in French literature. He lived during the seventeenth century, the age of Pierre Corneille (6 June 1606 – 1 October 1684), best known for Le Cid (1637) and Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), one of the “greatest masters of comedy in Western literature,” (baptized 15 January 1622 – d.17 February 1673). (See Molière, Wikipedia.)

A Canticle

Jean Racine‘s Cantique is a translation and a paraphrase (a rewording) of an earlier text. Set to Gabriel Fauré‘s music, it nearly becomes what the romantics, nineteenth-century authors, artists, musicians and critics, would call the “sublime.” Gabriel Fauré (12 May 1845 – 4 November 1924) set Racine’s Cantique to music when he was nineteen-years old.

A canticle is a song of praise taken from biblical texts other than the Psalms (Wikipedia). Magnificats, hymns of praise, are canticles. Racine’s text is a translation and a paraphrase of Consors paterni luminis. It is part of Racine’s Hymnes traduites du Bréviaire romain (Hymns Translated from the Roman Breviary), published in 1688.

The Images

I have recycled images used in my posts on Racine’s Phèdre. Phèdre’s husband slew the Minotaur, the offspring of Pasiphaë, Minos’ wife, and a bull. The Minotaur’s father may be the Sacred Bull. The Bible’s Golden Calf is an example of the worship of bulls, calfs and cows. Pictured below is the Bull of Knossos, or the Cretan Bull. The Minotaur‘s mother is Pasiphaë, Phèdre’s and Ariadne’s mother. The Minotaur was slain by Theseus, Phèdre’s husband, who used Ariadne thread to find his way to the Minotaur through the labyrinth built by Daedalus, who crafted sadly-remembered wings for his son Icarus.

However, let us focus on Gabriel Fauré’s (op. 11) musical setting of the canticle translated by Racine. Bulls will be discussed elsewhere. They were worshipped in Egypt, so it’s a long story.

By and large, we no longer worship bulls and bull-leaping is antiquated, but we do have bullies a-plenty.

Best regards to all of you: my family!

Fresco of bull-leaping from Knossos (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Posts on Marian Hymnology 7 January 2013
Phèdre’s “Hidden God” 8 October 2012
Jean Racine, Gabriel Fauré & Alexandre Cabanel: a Canticle 6 October 2012 ←

Verbe égal au Très-Haut, notre unique espérance,
Jour éternel de la terre et des cieux,
De la paisible nuit nous rompons le silence :
Divin sauveur, jette sur nous les yeux.

Répands sur nous le feu de ta grâce puissante ;
Que tout l’enfer fuie au son de ta voix ;
Dissipe le sommeil d’une âme languissante
Qui la conduit à l’oubli de tes lois !

Ô Christ ! sois favorable à ce peuple fidèle,
Pour te bénir maintenant assemblé ;
Reçois les chants qu’il offre à ta gloire immortelle,
Et de tes dons qu’il retourne comblé.

—ooo—

Word of God, one with the Most High,
in Whom alone we have our hope,
Eternal Day of heaven and earth,
We break the silence of the peaceful night;
Saviour Divine, cast your eyes upon us!

Pour on us the fire of your powerful grace,
That all hell may flee at the sound of your voice;
Banish the slumber of a weary soul,
That brings forgetfulness of your laws!

O Christ, look with favour upon your faithful people
Now gathered here to praise you;
Receive their hymns offered to your immortal glory;
May they go forth filled with your gifts.

For translations of the “Cantique” in languages other than English, please click on translations. You will find the original Latin text in Wikipedia’s entry on Cantique de Jean Racine (Fauré).

Gabriel Fauré (12 May 1845 – 4 November 1924)

Jean Racine (22 December 1639 – 21 April 1699)

May 9, 2014

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Theseus and the Minotaur

Black-Figure pottery

(Photo Credit: Wikipedia)

The Topsy-Turvy World of Beast Literature, revisited

27 Tuesday Aug 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Beast Literature, Myths

≈ 26 Comments

Tags

C. S. Lewis, fantasy, Harry Potter, J. R. R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, The Wind in the Willows

Mr Toad jailed because he stole a car. (Photo credit: The Telegraph)

Kenneth Grahame‘s The Wind in the Willows, illustration by Arthur Rackham

The Wind in the Willows, by Philip Mendoza, 1983

http://www.illustrationartgallery.com/acatalog/info_MendozaW45.html

(Photo credit: Philip Mendoza, Illustrations, Posters)

NB. This post was published in October 2011. It has been rewritten as the line between the mythical and the mythological is growing thinner.

The Wind in the Willows

(see the video at the bottom of this post)

It would appear that animals are indeed everywhere. We find mythological, mythical, zoomorphic and theriomorphic animals in the most ancient texts, but they also inhabit recent literature. Where older texts are concerned, India seems our main source, but mythological and mythical animals are migrants. They travel from culture to culture, and they endure.

In the Bible, we find archangels, good angels, bad angels and Lucifer: the devil himself! As well, the Bible warns that we must not trust appearances. In Matthew 7:15, we read:

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

Literature

Literature is home to an extraordinary number of ravenous wolves. In La Fontaine’s fables, we have a wolf who eats a lamb, “Le Loup et l’Agneau,” and other wolves. In fairy tales, Little Red Riding Hood loses her grandmother to a wolf.

And, as strange as it may seem, literature is also home to the zoomorphic (hybrid) and theriomorphic (deified) animals featured in mythologies, but reappearing along with new fantastic beasts in medieval Bestiaries, including Richard de Fournival’s Bestiaire d’amour, c. 1290.

arthur-rackham-the-wind-in-the-willows-1940-it-was-a-golden-afternoon-the-smell-of-the-dust-they-kicked-up-was-rich-and-sastifying

The Wind in the Willows, by Arthur Rackham

(Photo credit: Encore Editions and Google Images)

High Fantasy Literature

Finally, literature is home to more or less recent high fantasy works featuring fantastic beasts, many of which are mythical (list of legendary/mythical creatures) or mythological (list of mythological creatures). Certain fantastical beasts are found in medieval bestiaries, where they are considered as “real.”

J. R. R. Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel (3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) is the author of The Hobbit, 1937, the high fantasy The Lord of the Rings trilogy, written between 1954 to October 1955, and the mythopoeic Silmarillion, published posthumously, in 1977, by Tolkien’s son Christopher and Guy Gavriel Kay. Tolkien taught English literature at Oxford and, among other works, he drew his inspiration from Beowulf for what he called his legendarium.
C. S. Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963), a friend of Tolkien, is the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, written between 1949 and 1954. Narnia is a fictional place, a realm. Previously, Lewis had published a collection of letters entitled The Screwtape Letters, 1942. Earlier still, Lewis had written his three-volume science-fiction Out of the Silent Planet, a trilogy written between 1938 and 1945 and inhabited by strange figures. C. S. Lewis created Hrossa, Séroni, Pfifltriggi, new creatures who live in outer space, but his cosmology includes angels and archangels. C. S. Lewis’ brother, W. H. Lewis, wrote The Splendid Century, Life in the France of Louis XIV (online), a superior history of seventeenth-century France. He became his brother’s secretary.
As for J. K. Rowling (b. 1965), she is the author of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Quidditch Through the Ages (both supplements to the Harry Potter series, 2001), The Tales of Beedle the Bard (supplement to the Harry Potter series, 2008) and the Harry Potter series, which contains several fantastic/al beasts.

Fantastical Beasts and Where to Find Them

In these books, written by scholars and well-educated authors, new lands are created as well as new beasts, but these works also feature beasts borrowed from antiquity and various medieval bestiaries, and not necessarily the loftier ones. The books I have mentioned were immensely successful, which shows the importance of fantasy in the human mind. We need imaginary worlds, worlds we cannot navigate without a map, topsy-turvy worlds.

Topsy-Turvy Worlds

What I would like to emphasize is this blog is the topsy-turvy world of beast literature and the comic text. In Reynard the Fox, not only do animals talk, but they are an aristocracy. Humans are mere peasants.

As for the theriomorphic,[i] creatures of mythologies (Pan), briefly mentioned above, they are deified beasts attesting that Beast Literature is indeed an “upside-down” world. Transforming zoomorphic creatures into deities is an inversion of “the natural order of things.” Anthropomorphism presents us with an a world upside-down. With respect to the monk-bishops of the Ysengrimus, Jill Mann writes:

I have said that the Ysengrimus confronts us with a ‘world upside-down’, but in fact the world is turned upside down not once but twice. For the poet sees the real world as already a world-upside-down’. The bishop should be a shepherd to his flock; if he preys on them — acting instead like a wolf — he is inverting the natural order of things.[ii]

The Ysengrimus is the birthplace of Reynard the Fox where the fox is called Reinardus. It is a 6,574-line poem in elegiac couplets, written by Nivardus of Ghent in 1148-49 and translated into English by Jill Mann.

Underworlds, middle-earths, etc.

We also have underworlds. Greek mythology has an Underworld whence one cannot escape, as the three-headed zoomorphic Cerberus guards its entrance.

Tolkien created a “middle-earth” and C. S. Lewis, worlds in outer space. The Judeo-Christian hell is also an underground world. Moreover, how ironic it is that Richard de Fournival should use animals in a courtly love bestiary.

Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows

However my favourite underworld can be found in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (1908). The Mole and the Rat get lost in the woods during a snow storm. They see a mat and beyond the mat a door that leads to the Badger’s underground residence. After dinner, the Mole, the Rat, the Otter, who arrives later, and Badger, their host, sit by the fire and the Badger praises his underground world where he is sheltered from both the cold and the heat:

The Badger simply beamed on him. ‘That’s exactly what I say,’ he replied. ‘There’s no security, or peace and tranquillity, except underground. And then, if your ideas get larger and you want to expand–why, a dig and a scrape, and there you are! If you feel your house is a bit too big, you stop up a hole or two, and there you are again! No builders, no tradesmen, no remarks passed on you by fellows looking over your wall, and, above all, no WEATHER.[iii]

This statement is very comical, but it is not “innocent.”

Conclusion

I doubt very much that one of my readers will bump into a centaur, or Pan walking down a street. At one level, these are not “real” creatures. However they live in the imagination of a vast number of individuals all over the world. The success of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series is an eloquent testimonial to the continued need to fantasize and it demonstrates that legendary creatures, mythical or mythological, have survived. Moreover, these creatures, the unicorn and the dragon in particular, are widely known. The unicorn is the Qilin in China. He may be the Hebrew Bible’s Re’em. Be that as it may, they become metaphors: “hungry as a wolf,” “clever as a fox,” and good friends.

In 1909, Theodore Roosevelt, then US president, wrote to Grahame to tell him that he had “read it [The Wind in the Willows] and reread it, and have come to accept the characters as old friends.” (See The Wind in the Willows, Wikipedia)[iv]

The reports of explorers and travellers

Yesterday, I spent several hours looking at Medieval Bestiaries and found the centaur, the griffin, the unicorn, the yale, etc. depicted as “real.” Authors who wrote early natural histories often relied on the reports of travellers to faraway lands who did not have a camera and may not have been good draftsmen. The unicorn could be our rhinoceros. This may be one of the many ways legends grow.

The ‘horned’ shepherd god Pan = panic

“The Piper at the Gates of Dawn”

Kenneth Grahame‘s The Wind in the Willows

illustration by Arthur Rackham

(Photo credit: The Guardian)

______________________________

[i] “The animal form as a representation of the divine…”

Kurt Moritz Artur Goldammer, “religious symbolism and iconography.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 26 Aug. 2013.

<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/497416/religious-symbolism>.

[ii] Jill Mann, “The Satiric Fiction of the Ysengrimus,” in Kenneth Varty, editor, Reynard the Fox: Social Engagement in the Beast Epic from the Middle Ages to the Present (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000), p. 11.

The Ysengrimus is the birth place of Reynard the Fox where he is called Reinardus. It is a 6,574-line poem in elegiac couplets, written by Nivardus of Ghent in 1149.

[iii] The Wind in the Willows is a Project Gutenberg [EBook # 289]. When looking for Project Gutenberg ebooks, it is best to use the Gutenberg link: http://www.gutenberg.org.

[iv] “First edition of The Wind in the Willows sells for £32,400”. The Guardian. Retrieved 19 November 2012.

Kenneth Grahame’s Mr Toad,

illustration by Ernest Shepard

(Photo credit: James Gurney)

October 31, 2011

Revised on August 26, 2013

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Anthropomorphism and Zoomorphism

25 Sunday Aug 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, Beast Literature, Myths, Symbols and Emblems

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

anthropomorphism, Bestiaries, heraldry, La Fontaine, mythical animals, mythological animals, symbols and emblems, the Griffin, The Physiologus, zoomorphism

Griffin fresco in the “Throne Room,” Palace of Knossos, Crete, Bronze Age.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Griffin

The red Griffin “rampant” was the coat of arms of the dukes of Pomerania and survives today as the armorial of West Pomeranian Voivodeship (historically, Farther Pomerania) in Poland.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When the griffin or other mythical/mythological animal is featured on a crest in a climbing position, he is called “rampant” (ramping, crawling).

Anthropomorphism

Aesopic, Libystic and Sybaritic fables

Anthropomorphism was defined in my post on Vaux-le-Vicomte. Moreover, Milo Winter’s illustrations for “The North Wind and the Sun” provide examples of elements disguised as human beings. Fabulist Jean de La Fontaine used anthropomorphism: animals, elements, vegetation, mountains. In some fables, he featured humans and who were viewed as morally inferior to animals. The Man and the Snake (The Man and the Adder or L’Homme et la Couleuvre [X.1]) is an example of the use of an inferior human being in a fable. Fables featuring beasts only are called Æsopic. Those featuring human beings interacting with beasts are called Libystic, and those featuring humans only are Sybaritic fables.[I]

The Use of Anthropomorphism

a fox is a fox is a fox

The word Æsopian refers to a language that can only be understood by people other than insiders. Nineteenth-century Russian satirist Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedri was the first to use the term aesopian language. Animals speak and do no speak. In the end, as eloquent as he may be, a fox is a fox is a fox. Gertrude Stein’s “a rose is a rose is a rose” captured the spirit of anthropomorphism. Whether they are used as a carpe diem or a memento mori, roses are roses are roses.

In 1997, in his review of Marc Fumaroli‘s Le Poète et le Roi, Jean de La Fontaine en son temps, Charles Rosen wrote that “[w]ith La Fontaine’s Fables, we do not have to burrow far under the surface to recognize a discreet opposition to the grandeur of style and the servile obedience wanted by the court, an opposition never openly expressed but manifest on every page.” (The New York Review of Books, “The Fabulous La Fontaine,” (18 December 1997.)[II] Fables feature speaking animals, but readers know that animals do not speak just as Louis knows he is not a lion. Therein lies the wizardry of beast fables.

Animals as Types

In the preface to his translation of Aesop’s fable, Townsend writes that

“The Fox should be always cunning, the Hare timid, the Lion bold, the Wolf cruel, the Bull strong, the Horse proud, and the Ass patient” and all of this, “by mutual consent.”

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21/21-h/21-h.htm#link2H_PREF

Centaur

Diosphos Painter, white-ground lekythos (500 BCE)

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Zoomorphism: Hybrid creatures

However, certain legendary or mythical animals as well as mythological animals are hybrid creatures who combine the features of humans and those of an animal or combine the features of several animals. Zoomorphic animals are also anthropomorphic, or humans in disguise.

Well-known animals that combine human and animal features are centaurs and the Minotaur. Centaurs have the torso of a man or a woman, but their lower body is that of a horse. The Minotaur, he is the son of Pasiphaë and a bull. He is therefore a hybrid animal that is kept in a labyrinth built by Daedalus. The Minotaur is slain by Theseus who finds his way through the labyrinth using Ariadne‘s thread. Theseus also slays a centaur. Zoomorphic animals may belong to a mythology, in which case they have lineage and ancestors. Interestingly, angels have wings, but they are otherwise identical to human beings.

Usually, mythologies tell a story that explains origins. They are etiological narratives. In children’s literature, etiological narratives are called “pourquoi” stories. Rudyard Kipling‘s Just So Stories (1902) are “pourquoi” narratives. However, some legendary creatures, such as the phoenix, appear to straddle both categories, the mythical and the mythological. The distinguishing factor could be the degree of symbolism attributed to the animal. The more symbolic the animal, the more mythical. By and large, mythical animals are zoomorphic and have no lineage. Relatively few are not featured in etiological narratives, such as the Bible and and many inhabit the medieval bestiary. Bestiaries are allegorical.

Zoomorphic Beasts

The dragon, the griffin, and the unicorn are zoomorphic animals combining the features of many animals. They are legendary or mythical animals, rather than mythological beasts. However, both the griffin and the phoenix do belong to certain mythologies. It may be legitimate to separate the dragon, the griffin, the phoenix and the unicorn from other zoomorphic animals in that all four are likely to appear as symbols, but so do other legendary animals. The phoenix, who rises from his own ashes, is a symbol of rebirth. The unicorn appears in the Bible, but he is not listed in Donald Ray Schwartz’s Noah’s Ark, the Hebrew Bible.[III] The Western unicorn cannot be captured by a person other than a virgin. He is therefore emblematic of chaste love. In children’s literature, he is often described as an animal who missed the boat: Noah’s Ark. (See Unicorn, Wikipedia.)

The dragon‘s characteristics change from culture to culture. He is feared in the West, but not in China.
The griffin, shown at the top of this post, a lion mostly, with the head of an eagle, is a guardian. In antiquity, he was a symbol of divine power and a guardian of the divine.
The unicorn has one horn and plays various roles from culture to culture. In Western culture, he is, as mentioned above, “emblematic of chaste love and faithful marriage.”
Given that he rises from his own ashes, the phoenix is a symbol of rebirth and very popular.

The Order of the Dragon was created to defend Europe against the invading Ottoman Turks in the 15th century. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A phoenix depicted in a book of mythological creatures by F. J. Bertuch (1747-1822).

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Other Zoomorphic Animals

Other relatively well-known zoomorphic animals, combining animal features only, are Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology, or Cerberus/Kerberos, the three-headed dog who guards the entrance to the underworld. In The Tale of Cupid and Psyche, Psyche is told how to avoid him, which enables her to fetch beauty from Persephone without dying. Locksmiths and businesses that provide alarm systems often name their store or company Cerberus/Kerberos.

I will skip medieval bestiaries, as many are featured in illuminated manuscripts and are discussed elsewhere: the Aberdeen Bestiary and the they

There are Medieval love bestiaries, such as Richard de Fournival‘s Bestiaire d’amour (ms 12469 Bibliothèque nationale de France). In this bestiary, animals are used allegorically. In fact, animals inhabiting medieval bestiaries are allegorical figures and they are usually the same from author to author. They are as described by Pliny the Elder (23 CE – 25 August 79 CE), Isidore of Seville, etc. or as described in the 2nd century CE Physiologus. (See Physiologus, Wikipedia.) However, the unicorn and the griffin are often featured on coats of arms, shields, helmets. In other words, these animals are used as blazons in heraldry. (See Zoomorphism, Wikipedia.)

High Fantasy Literary Works and other Literary Works

The phoenix appears in J. K. Rowling‘s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003), in which we also find the griffin Albus Dumbledore. As well, the Harry Potter series features Cerberus/Kerberos. The griffin, however, had been used previously. For instance, he appears in Dante Alighieri‘s (c. 1265–1321) Divine Comedy and in John Milton‘s Paradise Lost. In C. S. Lewis‘ popular Chronicles of Narnia, we find a centaur.

They are also featured in children’s literature. Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows is a children’s novel, but such works are best understood by adults if poorly illustrated.

Werewolf by Lucas Cranach the Elder (Gotha, Herzoglishes Museum)

Other Roles

metamorphosis
the werewolf, le loup garou
animal ancestry

Therianthropic animals, humans that transform themselves into beast and vice versa can be looked upon as zoomorphic creatures. There are therianthropic beings in fairy tales, which is usually the result of a curse. A fine example is Beauty and the Beast. Enchantment is central to fairy tales. But shapeshifting animals bring to mind the werewolf (le loup-garou), a lycanthrope, rather than fairy tales.

Beast literature is not an animal counterpart of fairy-tales.

The above shows, among other factors, to what extent humans see commonality with animals, but not as in Darwinism.

_________________________

[I] Jan M. Ziolkowski, Talking Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry, 750 – 1150 (The University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), p. 18.

[II] Marc Fumaroli, Le Poète et le Roi, Jean de La Fontaine en son siècle (Éditions de Fallois, 1997).

[III] Donald Ray Schwartz, Noah’s Ark, an Annotated Encyclopedia of every Animal Species in the Hebrew Bible (Jason Aron Inc.: Northvale, New Jersey, Jerusalem, 2000).

The Unicorn

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Camille Saint-Saëns (9 October 1835 – 16 December 1921)

Le Carnaval des animaux

The Yale,

The Bern Physiologus

25 August 2013

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Anthropomorphism

Fables and Beast Epics

Speech

The Story

Zoomorphism: les Hybrides

Mythologies and Myths

Other Beasts

Animals as Types

Conclusion

michelinewalker.com

Like this:

michelinewalker.com

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Lupercalia & Candlemas

Pancake Day or La fête des crêpes

Valentine’s Day

The many Saints called Valentine

Conclusion

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Mythifying

Sources: Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

Temporary Conclusion

Hiawatha Melodrama: The Hunting of Pau-Puk-Keewis

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The Song of Hiawatha,

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In the beginning …

An Inglorious Past

The Jesuit Relations

The “Noble Savage”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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The Legend Begins

Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes

Parade (1917)

The Legend Continues…

The Three-Cornered Hat (1919)

Pulchinella (1920)

American writer Gertrude Stein lived here with her brother Leo and then with Alice B. Toklas. She received numerous artists and writers from 1903 to 1938.

Americans in Paris: Gertrude Stein

Olga Kokhlova

Harlequin, always…

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Jean Racine’s Canticle (1688)

On Jean Racine

A Canticle

The Images

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NB. This post was published in October 2011. It has been rewritten as the line between the mythical and the mythological is growing thinner.

The Wind in the Willows

Literature

High Fantasy Literature

Fantastical Beasts and Where to Find Them

Topsy-Turvy Worlds

Underworlds, middle-earths, etc.

Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows

Conclusion

The reports of explorers and travellers

michelinewalker.com

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Anthropomorphism

The Use of Anthropomorphism

Animals as Types

Zoomorphism: Hybrid creatures

Zoomorphic Beasts

Other Zoomorphic Animals

High Fantasy Literary Works and other Literary Works

Other Roles

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