Danse Macabre

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This article is about La Danse Macabre, the late-medieval allegory. For other meanings of Dance Macabre or Dance of Death, see Danse Macabre (disambiguation).
The Dance of Death (1493) by Michael Wolgemut, from the Liber chronicarum by Hartmann Schedel.
The Dance of Death (1493) by Michael Wolgemut, from the Liber chronicarum by Hartmann Schedel.

La Danse Macabre, also called Dance of death, La Danza Macabra, or Totentanz, is a late-medieval allegory on the universality of death: no matter one's station in life, the dance of death united all. La Danse Macabre consists of the personified death leading a row of dancing figures from all walks of life to the grave—typically with an emperor, king, pope, monk, youngster, beautiful girl, all in skeleton-state. They were produced under the impact of the Black Death, reminding people of how fragile their lives were and how vain the glories of earthly life were. Its origins are postulated from illustrated sermon texts, the earliest artistic examples are in a cemetery in Paris from 1424.

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[edit] Paintings

The Triumph of Death (c.1562) in the Museo del Prado, Madrid, by Pieter Brueghel the Elder who was strongly influenced by the style of Hieronymus Bosch.
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The Triumph of Death (c.1562) in the Museo del Prado, Madrid, by Pieter Brueghel the Elder who was strongly influenced by the style of Hieronymus Bosch.

The earliest artistic example is from the frescoed cemetery of the Church of the Holy Innocents in Paris (1424). There are also works by Konrad Witz in Basel (1440), Bernt Notke in Lübeck (1463) and woodcuts by Hans Holbein the Younger (1538).

The deathly horrors of the 14th Century—such as recurring famines, the Hundred Years' War in France and, most of all, the Black Death—were culturally digested throughout Europe. The omnipresent possibility of sudden and painful death increased the religious desire for penitence, but it also evoked a hysterical desire for amusement while still possible, a last dance as a cold comfort. The danse macabre combines both desires: similar to the popular mediaeval mystery plays, the dance-with-death allegory was originally a didactic play to remind people of the inevitability of death and to advise them strongly to be prepared all times for death (see memento mori).

The earliest examples of such plays, which consisted of short dialogs between Death and each of its victims, can be found in the direct aftermath of the Black Death in Germany, where it was known as the Totentanz, but also in Spain as la Danza de la Muerte. The French word danse macabre most likely derives from Latin Chorea Machabæorum, literally "dance of the Maccabees". 2 Maccabees, a deuterocanonical book of the Bible in which the grim martyrdom of a mother and her seven sons is described, was a well-known mediaeval subject. It is possible that the Maccabean Martyrs were commemorated in some early French plays or that people just associated the book’s vivid descriptions of the martyrdom with the interaction between Death and its prey. Both, the play and the evolving paintings were ostensive penitential sermons which even the illiterate people (who were in the overwhelming majority) could understand.

Furthermore, church frescoes dealing with death had a long tradition and were widespread, e.g. the legend of the three men and the three dead: On a ride three young gentlemen meet the skeletal remains of three of their ancestors who warn them: Quod fuimus, estis; quod sumus, vos eritis (You are, what we were; you’ll be, what we are). Numerous, albeit often simple frescho versions of that legend from the 13th Century onwards have survived (for instance in the hospital church of Wismar). Since they were showing pictorial sequences of men and skeletons covered with shrouds those paintings can be regarded as cultural precursors of the new genre.

A dance macabre painting normally shows a round dance headed by Death. From the highest ranks of the mediaeval hierarchy (usually pope and emperor) descending to its lowest (beggar, peasant and child) each mortal’s hand is taken by a skeleton or an extremely decayed body. The famous Totentanz in Lübeck’s Marienkirche (destroyed by an Allied bomb raid in WW II) presented Death very lively and agile, making the impression that the skeletons were actually dancing, whereas their dancing partners looked clumsy and passive. The apparent class distinction in almost all of these paintings is completely neutralized by Death as the ultimate equalizer, so that a sociocritical element is subtly inherent to the whole genre: The Totentanz of Metzin for instance shows how a pope crowned with his tiara is being led into hell by the dancing Death.

Generally, a short dialog is attached to each victim in which Death is summoning him or her to dance, and the summoned is moaning about the near death. In the first printed Totentanz textbook (Anon.: Vierzeiliger oberdeutscher Totentanz, Heidelberger Blockbuch, approx. 1460), Death addresses e.g. the emperor:

Her keyser euch hilft nicht das swert
Czeptir vnd crone sint hy nicht wert
Ich habe euch bey der hand genomen
Ir must an meynen reyen komen
Emperor, your sword won’t help you out
Sceptre and crown are worthless here
I’ve taken you by the hand
For you must come to my kingdom

At the bottom end of the Totentanz Death calls e.g. the peasant to dance and he answers:

Ich habe gehabt [vil arbeit gross]
Der sweis mir du[rch die haut floss]
Noch wolde ich ger[n dem tod empfliehen]
Zo habe ich des glu[cks nit hie]
I had to work very much and very hard
The sweat was running down my skin
I’d like to escape death nontheless
But here I won’t have any luck
Bernt Notke: Totentanz in Tallinn (Nikolaikirche)
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Bernt Notke: Totentanz in Tallinn (Nikolaikirche)

[edit] Printing

The earliest known depiction of a print shop appeared in a printed image of the The Dance of Death, in 1499, in Lyon, by Mattias Huss. It depicts a compositor at his station, which is raised to facilitate his work; and a person running the press. To the right of the print shop an early book store is shown. Early print shops were gathering places for the literati of the day.

[edit] Musical settings

Musical examples include

[edit] Cultural borrowing and references

  • The band Grateful Dead appropriated danse macabre imagery.
  • An architectural variation on the theme is Peter Olshavsky's project “House for the Dance of Death” [1]
  • A particularly sarcastic Danse Macabre fashion show appears in Federico Fellini's film Roma.
  • The final shots of the film The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman depict a kind of Danse Macabre.
  • The final scene of the Woody Allen film Love and Death is of Allen and the Grim Reaper doing a Danse Macabre.
  • A scene in episode 11 of the Inhumanoids animated series features a danse macabre, in which a giant skeleton monster with false angel wings, D-Compose, dances with Sandra Shore, a woman transformed in a demonic giantess, while skeleton insects play a sinister music on bone and tissue musical instruments.
  • In White Wolf, Inc. role-playing game system Vampire: The Requiem Danse Macabre represents life of a vampire society.
  • In Warhammer Fantasy Battles, the Vampire Counts army contains a spell called Vanhel's Dance Macabre which allows undead units to move forward in the magic phase.
  • The Playstation 2 action game Devil May Cry 3 allows the player to perform a move called the 'Dance Macabre', which consists of numerous sword attacks in different directions.
  • Stephen King used Danse Macabre as the title of a book that analyses horror writing and horror films. It concentrates primaily on works of other authors and filmmakers working around the period 1950-1980.
  • The Richard Matheson short story, "Dance of the Dead" takes place in a apocalyptic world in which a literal Dance of the Dead as a side-effect of biochemical weapons. A television adaptation, written by Matheson's son, Richard Christian Matheson appeared on the Masters of Horror television series.
  • A Danse Macabre is depicted in part by the vampires of Theatres Des Vampires in Anne Rice's novel, Interview With the Vampire.
  • Saddle Creek Records' band The Faint has an album entitled "Danse Macabre" .
  • Black metal band Cradle of Filth featured Danse Macabre in the song "From the Cradle to Enslave".

[edit] See also

 Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

[edit] References

  • James M. Clark. The Dance of Death in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, 1950.
  • Israil Bercovici. O sută de ani de teatru evriesc în România ("One hundred years of Yiddish/Jewish theater in Romania"), 2nd Romanian-language edition, revised and augmented by Constantin Măciucă. Editura Integral (an imprint of Editurile Universala), Bucharest (1998). ISBN 973-98272-2-5.
  • André Corvisier. Les danses macabres, Presses Universitaires de France, 1998. ISBN 2-13-049495-1.

[edit] External links

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