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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (29744)	3/31/2005 2:08:53 AM
From: shades	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

Dance Macabre - Camille Saint-Saens dw.com.com lib.umich.edu The Dance of Death is a motive concerned with that great reminder of mortality. Origins of who the first artist to represent the theme is unknown, but what is known is that the first one was commissioned in August 1424 to be painted in the cloisters of the churchyard of the Innocents of Paris. One can hypothesize as to the factors that lead to the creation of the Dance of Death. First, is the influence of superstition that was prevalent in Central Europe with events like the midnight dance of the dead in churchyards. Second, are the poems of memento mori that played a role in evolving the motive. Another contributing factor was the psychology of the time. With the plagues that struck Europe ( 80,000 dead in Danzig in one year), the Middle Ages developed an obsession with death that contributed to the emergence of the Dance of Death. The philosophy of the ancients was 'carpe diem' which translates into `enjoy the day, pluck the day when it is ripe'. This is an aphorism quoted from Horace (Odes i. xi) affirming the need to make the most of the present time. As the Renaissance period began the Christian philosophy of memento mori took over as the accepted philosophy of the time. The term means `remember that you have to die'. The expression was a warning of death. A reminder of death that was personified in a skull or other symbolical object. With the devastation that the Great Plagues brought to Europe, the church took an active role in addressing mortality. The church began to emphasize the inevitableness of death. Consequently, the church decided to teach how to live a moral life to the illiterate population by using sermons and art to emphasize the fatality of humans. The sermons would emphasize the possibility of salvation through righteous living. Therefore, according to Dr.Warthin, "liturgy, sermons, mystery plays, legends and poems, with morbid psychology and superstitions of people evolved into the folk-cultural idea of the Death of Dance. The first form of the Dance of Death represented a dance of the living with the dead. Later the dead became personified as Death, and this personification of the skeletonized human body as representing the process of death. Therefore, death which was personified as a skeleton, gathered into a chain or dominion members of all classes of human society and dances with them to the grave. A satire that is prevalent then and today deals with social equality and how death makes all men equal.