We live in a difficult age, one of travail and adversity for people around the world — I therefore think it useful start the week with some culture, to elevate the soul and speak to the realm of Spirit, whatever beliefs you may, or may not, have.
Today’s featured artist: German Romantic-era painter Casper David Friedrich.
( “Tree of Crows,” Caspar David Friedrich, c. 1822; photo credit — Wikimedia Commons )
Friedrich is best known for his epic landscapes, and was a contemporary of Beethoven, whose Third Symphony we featured last Sunday.
( “Seashore with Fisherman,” Caspar David Friedrich, c.1807; photo credit — Wikimedia Commons )
Like many of his fellow Romantics, from poets like Wordsworth through composers like Mendelssohn and Brahms, he was very interested in Nature, and in human smallness before its power and might.
( “Chasseur [hunter] in the Woods,” Caspar David Friedrich, 1814; photo credit — Wikimedia Commons )
Born at Greifswald on the Baltic Sea, north of Berlin, and near today’s Polish border, Friedrich grew up in a physical environment that was actually quite similar to southeastern Massachusetts, a place of large estuaries and embayments, glacial lakes and moraines, and pine forests.
( “Evening,” Caspar David Friedrich, c.1820-21; photo credit — Wikimedia Commons)
( “Monk by the Sea,” Caspar David Friedrich, c.1808-1810; photo credit — Wikimedia Commons )
Pioneering German director Werner Herzog, famous for such truly wild, bordering-on-lunacy films as Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, about moving a steamship over a mountain in 19th century Amazonia (more recently he was featured on the finale of the NBC comedy series “Parks and Recreation”), is a very painterly film-maker, and he “quotes” Friedrich’s Monk by the Sea in his 1977 movie Stroszek — about an alcoholic street person, a prostitute/sex worker, and an aged pensioner who move together from West Berlin to rural Wisconsin, chasing the American Dream.
( Werner Herzog’s “Stroszek,” 1977. In this clip, the German migrants have their mobile home foreclosed upon and auctioned off; the scene in which Herzog visually ‘quotes’ Friedrich begins at 5:34).
May Day
Yesterday was also May 1st, May Day, which has been significant as a vernal holiday for millennia.
( Plymouth Town Brook, Spring. Photo credit — Benjamin Cronin )
Gaelic-speaking peoples in Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Mann celebrated Beltane, marking Springtime, on May Day, well before the Christian era, and the persistence in British folk-culture of May Day ceremonies that are clearly pagan in origin, such as Maypoles and the crowning with flowers of a “Queen of the May,” attests to the lasting influence of not only Celtic, but also Germanic and Norse influences.
( 17th century Flemish painter Gaspar de Witte, “Spring: elegant figures on a boating lake, others dancing around a Maypole,” between 1644 and 1681; photo credit — Wikimedia Commons. )
( College students dance around Maypoles, some in classical garb, Northeastern US, 2005; photo credit — Wikimedia Commons. )
The Marian Hymn “Bring Flowers of the Rarest,” written in the 19th century by Massachusetts composer Mary Walsh, also strikes me as a good example of what anthropologists call cultural syncretism, where pagan and Christian elements are mixed up together. The lyrics bring to mind of course, not only the Virgin Mary of Christian tradition, but also fertility goddesses such as the Greek Demeter and Persephone, Irish Brigid, and Roman Flora:
O Mary! we crown thee with blossoms today,
Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May.
May Day is of course, Labor Day in every other industrialized democracy besides the United States (thank you, Grover Cleveland!), and an occasion for pro-worker demonstrations throughout the world. Here’s the UK Labour Party’s anthem, which is sung to a tune most Americans will be familiar with as “O Christmas Tree” (the tune was originally a 13th century Western European tavern song):
( UK Labour Party Anthem, “The Red Flag,” originally written by James Connolly, famous later for participating in the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin. There were strong connections between the British labor movement and Irish republicanism).
Finally, May Day is also significant locally — the May Pole set up by Thomas Morton’s settlement at Merry Mount, at Wollaston in what is today Quincy, was but one symbol of that settlements stark defiance of the norms of Reformed Protestants like the Pilgrims and the later Puritans. Morton, an attorney from Devon, lived in a kind of communal settlement where libations flowed freely, and where May Day celebrations the Pilgrims considered profane and impious were held openly.
Importantly, Morton was living side-by-side with eastern Algonquian — mostly Massachusett — peoples. The Massachusett were the most-devasted by the Great New England Plague — possibly smallpox — of the 1610s, losing perhaps 95% of their population by one historian’s estimate, and survivors went in a number of directions.
Some retained traditional ways. Others, called “Praying Indians,” went the other direction, converting to Christianity and setting up what were called Praying Towns at places like Natick and Ponkapoag. There were Praying Towns in Plymouth Colony and Southeastern Massachusetts at places like Herring Pond in South Plymouth, Aquinnah, Nantucket, and Nukkehkummees (Dartmouth).
( Praying Towns in southern New England. Image Richard W. Wilkie and Jack Tager, Historical Atlas of Massachusetts, Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1991. )
Others still went over to Morton’s camp. When Morton began to sell both liquor and firearms to Native peoples, he angered elements among both Native and English societies. William Bradford of Plymouth complained of him “dancing and frisking” with the Native women, and in 1628 Plymouth sent Capt. Myles Standish on a military expedition to Wollaston to pull down the Maypole — reportedly some 80 feet tall and topped with antlers — and stop Morton’s trade in liquor and guns (a national security threat, as one professor put it to me, back in the earliest days of the Iraq War).
( Myles Standish and troops approach the May-pole of Merry Mount, in this 19th century engraving; photo credit — Wikimedia Commons )
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a famous 1836 short story about the event, “The May Pole of Merry Mount,” that is pro-May Pole, and well worth checking out.
I’ve included a link below:
"The May-Pole of Merry Mount," Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Lots coming up this week, so hopefully this helps start things on the right footing.