Why the goddesses sit commonly cross-legged in ancient draughts ?

In the concluding chapter of Thomas Browne's hermetic discourse The Garden of Cyrus (1658) the physician-philosopher fires a rapid volley of tricky questions, including -'Why the goddesses sit commonly cross-legged in ancient draughts, Since Juno is described in the same as a veneficial posture to hinder the birth of Hercules ?'

Its rewarding to explore Browne's obscure question in depth. It originates from his reading of the ancient Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses. In Ovid's long poem the myths of ancient Greece are linked by a common theme of transformation. A chaotic universe is subdued into harmonious order, animals turn into stone, men and women are rewarded and punished by gods and goddesses for their deeds to become trees, birds and stars. One of the most influential works in Western culture, Ovid’s Metamorphoses was a valuable source of information and inspiration to poet, painter and scholar throughout the Renaissance. [1]

The Roman goddess Juno's symbolic body language occurs during the birth of the hero Hercules in which she attempts to prevent the birth of her unfaithful husband Jupiter's child.

'When the time for Hercules difficult birth came, and Capricorn, the tenth sign, was hidden by the sun, the weight of the child stretched my womb: what I carried was so great, you could tell that Jove was the father of my hidden burden. I could not bear my labour pains much longer....Tortured for seven nights and as many days, worn out with agony, stretching my arms to heaven, with a great cry, I called out to Lucina, and her companion gods of birth, the Nixi. Indeed, she came, but committed in advance, determined to surrender my life to unjust Juno. She sat on the altar, in front of the door, and listened to my groans. With her right knee crossed over her left, and clasped with interlocking fingers, she held back the birth, She murmured spells, too, in a low voice, and the spells halted the birth once it began.[2]

The Roman goddess Juno ruled over the primary domains of feminine life in the ancient world, namely, childbirth, marriage and motherhood. She is associated with the peacock and its feathers. As the wife of Jupiter she was one of the most important Roman gods and she is immortalized with the month of June named after her.

Browne's interest in the mystical body language of Juno's crossed-legs is first mentioned in the opening chapter of the Discourse.

'That they sat also crossed legg’d many noble draughts declare; and in this figure the sitting gods and goddesses are drawn in medalls and medallions'.

In ancient depictions, goddesses sitting cross-legged often symbolized their spiritual power. Juno's crossed legs (one imagines the goddesses of antiquity to be long-legged beauties in order to form an elegant, elongated X) is a literal expression of body language, child-birth being impossible with crossed-legs.

Mystical body language also features in the Old Testament book of Genesis in which the patriarch Jacob blesses Ephraim and Manasseh.

'But Jacob crossed his arms as he reached out to lay his hands on the boys’ heads. He put his right hand on the head of Ephraim, though he was the younger boy, and his left hand on the head of Manasseh, though he was the firstborn'. [3]

This Biblical episode is alluded to by Browne in The Garden of Cyrus thus-

'the Statuae Isiacae, Teraphims, and little Idols, found about Mummies, do make a decussation or Jacobs Crosse, with their armes, like that on the head of Ephraim and Manasses' [4]

Browne's pioneering comparative religion studies detected that mystical body language is shared by various world religions. His ability to supply Egyptian, Judaic and Roman examples of mystical body language in The Garden of Cyrus demonstrates his ability to find connections between seemingly disparate concepts, and highlights his fascination with hidden patterns underlying human culture and symbolism.

The literary critic Peter Green noted that Browne, 'packs his prose with as much concentrated symbolic meaning as it will stand' and that, 'Every symbol is interrelated with the over-all pattern'.[5]

Browne's inclusion of the Roman goddess Juno in The Garden of Cyrus is exemplary of his methodical usage of proper-name symbolism. Taking his cue from Plato, Browne utilizes proper-name symbolism in order to tentatively sketch primordial patterns of the psyche known as archetypes. Indeed, the very title of the discourse features the archetype of the 'wise ruler' at a time when Britain wasn't ruled by the divine right of a King but during the short-lived proto-Republic of Cromwell. The 'wise ruler' figures of Moses, Solomon, Solon, Alexander the Great and Augustus along with Cyrus are all alluded to in The Garden of Cyrus. 

The archetype of the nurturing figure of the 'Great Mother' is also represented in the Discourse through allusion to Juno, the Egyptian goddess Isis and the Hebrew matriarch Sarah.

X

Received wisdom will claim that The Garden of Cyrus is 'all about' the Quincunx, but in fact the quincunx pattern, the vehicle whereby Browne drives home his message of universal interconnectivity, is quite literally only half of his Hermetic vision. The symbol X (formed by joining the five dots of the Quincunx) features an equal number of times in the Discourse to the quincunx pattern.

The psychologist C.G. Jung noted that symbols can endure paradox and that's just as well because the symbol X is one of the most hard-working and flexible of all symbols and has accumulated many meanings over centuries.

The Roman numeral for ten, the Mosaic code of ten commandments as well as the Pythagorean tetractys (a pyramid of ten dots which Pythagoreans swore by) were all well-known by Browne. The Pythagorean and mathematical aspect of Browne's hermetic vision cannot be overlooked, as his candid confession in Religio Medici reveals-

'I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras, and the secret magicke of numbers'. [6]

The art historian J. B. Onians noted - 'The power of the Pythagorean mystery was based largely upon his understanding of the mathematical order of the universe, which could be summed up in visual representation of such numbers as tetractys and Quincunx.' [7]

It was also during Browne's lifetime that the mathematician William Oughtred designated the symbol X to denote the multiplication of number. Browne himself owned an edition of Oughtred's Clavis Mathematica (1648) [8]

Today, the hard-working symbol X can denote invisible X-rays, affection in the form of a kiss, as well as a wrong answer, restrictive viewing or X rated material or an unknown factor. It retains its abbreviated form for Christ in the word Xmas, and in the pattern known as the Criss-cross. Finally, conclusive evidence that all the money in the world cannot buy imagination, the social media platform once known as Twitter was rebranded X by its owner.

Crucially, (a word which itself derives from the Latin of Crux meaning a cross) Browne as a Christian knew that the Greek word for Christ begins with x (Chi) and this interpretation of X as a pre-Christian anticipation of the Coming of Christ is foremost in his hermetic vision.

The crossed-legs of Juno and the Biblical crossed-arms of Jacob are also exemplary of how Browne and other hermetically inclined antiquarians interpreted the ancient pagan world. Hermetic philosophers believed that the mythic Egyptian Hermes Trismegistus (in reality a fusion of the Egyptian god Thoth and the Greek god Hermes) was the inventor of number and letter, including the letter X.

It was the Italian Renaissance scholars Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) and his prodigy Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) who first advanced and promoted the profile of Hermes Trismegistus as the founder of a priscia theologia. Ficino and Mirandola made Hermes Trismegistus the author of a pagan tradition of divine knowledge, an ancient theology (priscia theologia) which paralleled and confirmed the revealed truth of the Bible and whose Egyptian providence reinforced tales of Plato’s travels in Egypt.

Browne subscribed to Ficino and Mirandola's belief that the Greek philosopher Plato studied in ancient Egypt, the land of Hermes Trismegistus, stating in The Garden of Cyrus -

'.. whereas it is not improbable, he (Plato) learned these and other mystical expressions in his Learned Observations of Egypt, where he might obviously behold the Mercurial characters, the handed crosses, and other mysteries not thoroughly understood in the sacred Letter X, which being derivative from the Stork, one of the ten sacred animals, might be originally Egyptian, and brought into Greece by Cadmus of that Country. [9]

The symbolism of how X was introduced through Hermes Trismegistus's observation of bird's legs is alluded to in The Garden of Cyrus thus-

'And if Egyptian Philosophy may obtain, the scale of influences was thus disposed, and the genial spirits of both worlds, do trace their way in ascending and descending Pyramids, mystically apprehended in the Letter X, and the open Bill and straddling Legs of a Stork, which was imitated by that Character'. [10]

The worthy Norwich philosopher-physician reinforces the symbolic importance of X and its close relationship to Platonic thought, notably Plato's discourse Timaeus stating-

'Of this Figure Plato made choice to illustrate the motion of the soul, both of the world and man; while he delivereth that God divided the whole conjunction length-wise, according to the figure of a Greek X, and then turning it about reflected it into a circle'; [11]

Plato along with Ovid is mentioned in the opening page of The Garden of Cyrus. The ancient Greek philosopher's influence looms large throughout the Discourse, especially his Timaeus which is named by foot-note in the Discourse's opening. Plato's Timaeus is his most Pythagorean writing. It elaborates upon the relationship between geometry, number and mysticism, all of which are primary thematic concerns of Browne's Garden of Cyrus.

Quincunx

In the discourse's dedicatory epistle Browne wittily declares of the Quincunx pattern that, 'we have not affrighted the common Reader with any other Diagrams, then of it self; and have industriously declined illustrations from rare and unknown plants'.

Such is the potency of the Quincunx pattern as seen in the discourse's frontispiece which Browne 'borrowed' from a book by the Italian polymath Della Porta, that the crossing point or X figure of the pattern is occulted and hidden by circles as if  X-rated material too potent to view.

The phantasmagorical procession of art-objects, botany, star constellations, optical theories and mystical religious considerations in The Garden of Cyrus, or the Quincuncial (,)Lozenge, or Network Plantations of the Ancients, Artificially, Naturally, Mystically considered has been little understood throughout the centuries, so much so that a stray comma erroneously reproduced in the Discourse's full running title has become embedded in almost all subsequent editions since 1658. However, this stray comma in the Discourses title is incompatible with either the syntax, symmetry or artistic message of the Discourse. The five red dots added to the frontispiece illustration (below) highlights how Browne's Lozenges are Quincuncial. [12]

In recent times the American poet and literary critic John Irwin focussed his critical attention on Browne's quincunx in his labyrinthine book The Mystery to a Solution: Poe, Borges, and the Analytic Detective Story (1994). Although Irwin's book is primarily concerned with the writings of Edgar Allen Poe and the early magical realist author Jorge Borges (1899-1986), both of whom greatly admired Browne's writings. Irwin recognised that -

'the idea that there is a necessary (because original) correspondence among numbers, letters and geometric shapes, is a belief found in esoteric alchemy and the cabala'.

Irwin continues with one of the most perceptive remarks ever stated about the quincunx pattern -

‘The quincunx represents God's infallible intelligence while it also embodies the main 'tools' man uses to decipher the universe: mathematics, geometry and language. The implication is that if the God-given design of man's original plantation was a quincuncial network, then this design must express the basic relationship between man and the world, known and unknown, which is to say that this formal pattern imposed on physical nature schematizes the interface of mind and world in that it contains within itself the various modes of intelligible representation of the world, i.e. mathematics, language, geometry joined together in the homogeneousness of their physical inscription as numbers, letters and geometric shapes’. [13]

The Argyle pattern (below) is a neat variant of the frontispiece of The Garden of Cyrus. The central point of decussation, X is visible within each lozenge. Its overlaid diamond or Lozenge pattern creates a 3D perspective, an optical trick which without doubt would have intrigued Thomas Browne

Notes

[1] No less than 8 editions of Ovid's Metamorphoses are listed as once in Thomas Browne and his son Edward's combined libraries in the 1711 Sales Auction Catalogue.

[2] Ovid Metamorphoses Book 9 lines 290-300

[3] Genesis 48: verse 14

[4] chapter 3 of Cyrus

[5] Sir Thomas Browne by Peter Green pub. Longmans, Green and Co. 1959

[6] Religio Medici Part 1:12

[7] J. Onians Art and thought in the Hellenistic Age Thames and Hudson 1979

[8] 1711 Sales Catalogue page 30 no. 13

[9] Cyrus Chapter 4

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid

[12] A 1658 edition of Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica with the two 1658 Discourses Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus appended does not reproduce the stray comma which is featured in most subsequent editions.

[13] The Mystery to a Solution: Poe, Borges, and the Analytic Detective Story. John T. Irwin pub. The Johns Hopkins University Press 1996

* This one for Rosie on Valentine's Day *

Vulcan's Aquarium

In reply to a recent enquiry, what exactly is 'the Aquarium of Vulcan' from which this blog is named, its useful to refer to the ancient Greek  literary figure of Athenaeus, author of the Deipnsophistae or 'Banquet of the Philosophers'  the allusive source of the little-known myth of Vulcan's love-gift to Venus.

But first, by far the better-known myth associated with Vulcan is that of the goddess Venus  caught in bed with Mars, trapped by her husband Vulcan throwing an 'invisible net' over the pair of lovers. The Roman poet Ovid supplied rich material for many Renaissance-era artists in his Metamorphoses including a description of how Vulcan responded when discovering Venus and Mars in bed together.

'At once, he began to to fashion slender bronze chains, nets and snares which the eye could not see. The thinnest threads spun on the loom, or cobwebs hanging from rafters are no finer than was that workmanship. Moreover, he made them so that they would yield to the lightest touch, and to the smallest movement. These he set skillfully around his bed.

When his wife and her lover lay down together upon that couch they were caught by the chains, ingeniously fastened there by her husband's skill, and they were held fast in the very act of embracing. Immediately, Vulcan  flung open the ivory doors, and admitted the gods. There lay Venus and Mars, close bound together, a shameful sight. The gods were highly amused; ... They laughed aloud, and for long this was the best-known story in heaven'. [1] 

Vulcan enmeshing Venus and Mars in his net was a popular subject for many Renaissance artists including Velasquez, Tintoretto, Piero di Cosimo, Van Dyck and Rubens. Northern Mannerists artists in particular, such as Wtewael, Spranger and Heemskercke were all attracted to the myth.

Tintoretto in his 'Mars and Venus Surprised by Vulcan' dated 1551-1552 (below) has Vulcan interrupting Venus and Mar's love-making without his net. Examining by invitation her beauty, in close proximity, Vulcan is momentarily distracted from detecting a seemingly timorous Mars hiding under a bed. 

The Dutch Northern Mannerist artist Joachim Wtewael (1566–1638) painted the moment in which Venus and Mars are surprised by Vulcan in three differing versions (below). The main protagonists of the celestial drama with their respective attributes can all be seen in Wtewael's elaborate staging, including Mercury with his caduceus, Saturn with his scythe along with Vulcan preparing to fling his net over the lovers.

Bartholomew Spranger (1546-1611) was a Flemish artist who worked as a Court artist for the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. The erotic content of  his 'Vulcan and Venus' (below) is overt with its emphasis upon the Beauty and the Beast aspect of the relationship. The art critic Linda Murray notes of the main  thematic and stylist traits of  Mannerist art - 

'Mannerism can be quite easily recognised and defined: in general it is equated with a concentration on the nude, often in bizarre and convoluted poses, and with exaggerated muscular development; with subject matter either deliberately obscure, or treated so that it becomes difficult to understand -the main incident pushed into the background or swamped with irrelevant figures serving as excuses for displays of virtuosity in figure painting; with extremes of perspective, distorted proportions or scale -figures jammed into too small a space so that one has the impression that any movement would burst the confines of the picture space; with vivid colour schemes, employing discordant contrasts, effects of 'shot' colour, not for descriptive or naturalistic purposes, but as a powerful adjunct to the emotional impact of the picture'. [2]  

Its a seemingly unequal pairing of a submissive Vulcan and dominant Venus in Spranger's interpretation of the two gods relationship.  

With its unusual perspective, depiction of ancient world mythology and eroticism, Maarten van Heemskerck's (1498-1574)  'Venus, Mars and Vulcan'  (below) is closely associated with Northern Mannerist art in subject-matter along with exploring expressions of sexuality. Confident in her seductive qualities, its a not-so demure-looking Venus who gazes into the viewer's eyes in Heemskerck's painting. 

The Graeco-Roman myth of  Mars trapped by Vulcan's net  is included in the hermetic phantasmagoria of the English physician-philosopher Thomas Browne's 'network' discourse, The Garden of Cyrus (1658) its full running title being The Garden of Cyrus, or the Quincuncial Lozenge, or Network Plantations of the Ancients, Naturally, Artificially, Mystically considered.

'As for that famous network of Vulcan, which enclosed Mars and Venus, and caused that inextinguishable laugh in heaven; since the gods themselves could not discern it, we shall not pry into it. Although why Vulcan bound them, Neptune loosed them, and Apollo should first discover them, might afford no vulgar mythology'.

And in fact the highly symbolic figure of Vulcan opens Browne's hermetic discourse, ('That Vulcan gave arrows to Apollo  and Diana') and ushers its apotheosis in which 'Vulcan and his whole forge sweat to work out Achilles his armour'. 

On a mundane level the appeal of the myth of Venus and Mars surprised by Vulcan may be viewed as social commentary upon the rise of adultery in urban Europe. During the Renaissance, with the increase and mix of population in European cities, opportunities for extra-marital affairs grew. The myth served well as a moral warning to its viewers.  Renaissance painters also seized upon the myth of Venus and Mars and its symbolism in order to comment upon war-torn Europe of the late 16th and early 17th centuries for from the union of Venus, the goddess of Peace and Mars, the god of war, a child named Harmony was born. From an esoteric perspective the union of Venus and Mars is a lesser example of the 'coniunctio' or union of opposites in alchemy which was more often symbolized by the luminaries Sol et Luna.

Although Vulcan was famed for his inventiveness, making armour for the hero Achilles and a chair for his mother-in-law from which she could not escape when sitting on, no painting has survived of  his constructing an aquarium for Venus. In any event, Casaubon's edition of Athenaeus's 'Banquet of the Philosophers' was not published until 1612 and therefore no painting of this subject before this date is possible.  There is however at least one Renaissance painting in which Venus is depicted visiting her husband Vulcan's forge, perhaps for the purpose of requesting a love-gift. 

In the Dutch painter Jan van Kessel's 'Venus at the forge of Vulcan'  of 1662 (below) the stark contrast between the naked vulnerability of Venus and the metallic accoutrements of protective armour scattered in its foreground is notable. 

Thomas Browne for one knew that a close relationship existed between the goddess Venus, water and fish. In his commonplace notebooks the following verse couplet can be found-

'Who will not commend the wit of Astrology ? 

Venus born of the sea hath her exaltation in Pisces'. 

Its possible that Thomas Browne knew of the myth of Vulcan's Aquarium for Isaac Casaubon's 1612 edition of Athenaeus's Deipnosophistae, or 'The Banquet of the Philosophers'  is listed as once in his library. Browne also wrote a short, humorous piece entitled 'From a reading of Athenaeus'. [3]

Athenaeus lived in Naucratis circa the late 2nd to early 3rd century CE In his day Naucratis was an important Egyptian  harbor and a dynamic melting-pot of Greek and Egyptian art and culture. Its also the setting of 'The Banquet of the Philosophers' in which characters such as physicians, philosophers, grammarians, parasites and musicians discuss topics as diverse as Baths, Wine, invented words, feasts and music, useless philosophers, precious metals, flatterers, gluttony and drunkenness, hedonism and obesity, women and love, mistresses and courtesans, the cooking of fish and cuisine in general, ships, entertainment, luxury and  perfumes.

In total the 15 books of the 'Banquet  of the  philosophers',  mention almost  800 authors. Over 2500 separate works are cited in it, making it a valuable source of numerous works of Greek literature which otherwise would have been lost, which includes three surviving lines on Vulcan's aquarium. 

James Russell Lowell famously characterized the Deipnosophistae as -'the somewhat greasy heap of a literary rag-and-bone-picker like Athenaeus is turned to gold by time'. In the seventeenth century there was a revived interest in the Banquet of the Philosophers following its publication by the scholar Isaac Casaubon  (1559-1614) in 1612. The  commentary to the text was Isaac Causabon’s magnum opus. Incidentally it was the scholarship of Isaac Causabon which proved from his textual analysis of  the Corpus Hermeticum that it could not have been written by the mythic ancient Egyptian Hermes Trismegistus who anticipated the coming of Christ, as commonly believed, but in fact was a syncretic work of  Gnostic and Greek philosophy dated centuries after Christ's era, circa 200 and 300 CE.

By all accounts Athenaeus was a favourite author of Thomas Browne for he stated in his encyclopaedic endeavour Pseudodoxia Epidemica-

'Athenæus, a delectable Author, very various, and justly stiled by Casaubon, Græcorum Plinius (Greek Pliny) . There is extant of his, a famous Piece, under the name of Deipnosophista, or Coena Sapientum, containing the Discourse of many learned men, at a Feast provided by Laurentius. It is a laborious Collection out of many Authors, and some whereof are mentioned nowhere else. It containeth strange and singular relations, not without some spice or sprinkling of all Learning. The Author was probably a better Grammarian then Philosopher, dealing but hardly with Aristotle and Plato, and betrayeth himself much in his Chapter De Curiositate Aristotelis. In brief, he is an Author of excellent use, and may with discretion be read unto great advantage: [4]

From his reading of Athenaeus Browne knew of ancient world sexual activities -   

'The impudent wantonness of the ancients placed sponges in the natural parts of women that by expanding they might produce a lewd and as it were haunching movement in the female, whence a keener lust is provoked in the male. In the elaborations of coition almost nothing has been untried, so that the indecent egg of Marcellus Empiricus is no marvel. Away with these foolish toys of lust'. 

Its in book 2 of  'Banquet of the Philosophers'  that Athenaeus records how the blacksmith of the gods Vulcan set about creating sheets of glass which he bonded together with an early version of tungsten steel. Tungsten is one of the oldest elements used for alloying steel. It forms a very hard carbide and iron tungstite. High tungsten content in the alloy however tends to cause brittleness and makes it subject to fracturing rather than bending. Somehow Vulcan over came this weakness, its speculated through adding 'the salty sweat' of his workshop labourers to the molten crucible. 

The little-known myth is recounted in the Deipnosophistae after heated discussion upon the best sauces to prepare for fish.  The  courtesan and lute-player musician Callipygae recites three verses from a long-lost comedy, now known only by the title of The Chessmen of Odysseus. Its believed that the following lines specifically allude to Vulcan's aquarium -

 As the Pleiades ascended, Vulcan's workshop laboured,

the sound of hammer on anvil could be heard 

echoing through mountains

 until rosy dawn glowed furnace-like in the east. 

 Salty sweat streamed in torrents into hissing troughs, 

smelting and refining the dross. 

Crafted and ready 

to bind with ox-like ribs the thick and cloudy glass,

Vulcan's love-gift  for Venus. 

[6]  (Book 2 Lines 27-29 ) 

Aquariums are mysterious habitats which often evoke great underwater beauty. They function well as calming distractions and their psychological benefits include reducing stress. Looking into an aquarium, observing fish swimming care-free, helps people momentarily forget their worries. 

The symbol of the aquarium invites speculation and analysis. For the seminal twentieth century psychologist C.G. Jung -

'The protean mythologem and the shimmering symbol express the processes of the psyche far more trenchantly than, in the end, far more clearly than the clearest concept.' [7] 

Perhaps Venus made her request to test the fullness of Vulcan's forgiveness, or else to alleviate her boredom with Vulcan spending long hours away from her at the forge, or simply for her amusement and pleasure, its not really known. Nor is it known how many or what kind of fish she choose to place in her aquarium. But whether Vulcan manufactured his love-gift for Venus specifically for any of these reasons remains unclear. What is clear is that the fish in the Aquarium of Vulcan are far more playful than previously imagined. 

Notes

[1] Ovid Metamorphosis  Book 4 lines 180-190

[2] The High Renaissance and Mannerism Linda Murray Thames and Hudson 1977

[3]  1711 Sales Auction Catalogue page 7 no. 67

[4]  Pseudodoxia Epidemica . Bk.1 chapter 8

[5] From a reading of Athenaeus 

[6] Deipnosophistae Book 2 lines 27-29

[7] Collected Works of C.G.Jung vol. 13  Alchemical Studies (1967) para. 199

 

Dr. Browne's 'readie way to read the characters of Morpheus'.

                                                           
Thomas Browne's short tract On Dreams is exemplary of the seventeenth century physician-philosopher's deep learning and dedication to his medical profession. Furthermore, Browne's On Dreams  reveals him to be a pioneering psychologist, not least for anticipating concepts associated with the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung.

Its worthwhile reminding ourselves of the nature of dreams and the historical antecedents of their interpretation. Dreams can have a wide variety of moods and feelings, frightening or anxious, exciting and adventurous, sometimes with a magical content or empowering, sometimes with a sexual element and most often simply puzzling. Dreams can give a creative or inspiring thought, and in the past they've been viewed as a conduit of God-given revelation and prophecy. 

The ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia left evidence of dream interpretation dating back to at least 2100 BCE. In one of the world's oldest literary works The Epic of Gilgamesh the hero Gilgamesh escapes the vengeance of the gods by paying attention to dreams which warn and show him how to overcome his enemy.  The Greek physician Hippocrates (469–399 BCE) had a simple dream theory: during the day, the soul receives images; during the night, it produces images, similarly, the Greek historian Herodotus in his Histories, wrote, "The visions that occur to us in dreams are, more often than not, the things we have been concerned about during the day".

Thomas Browne (1605-82) demonstrates his familiarity with Hippocrates' theory to the causes of dreams stating in accordance to the ancient Greek physician, 'the thoughts or actions or the day are acted over and echoed in the night'. Browne himself had an intimate relationship to the world of dreams. Living in an age of grim living conditions and little entertainment, dreaming was a welcome diversion in seventeenth century England.  Browne confesses of his enjoyment of dreaming in  Religio Medici (1643) thus-

'There is surely a nearer apprehension of any thing that delights us in our dreams, than in our waked senses........I thank God for my happy dreams, as I do for my good rest, for there is a satisfaction in them unto reasonable desires, and such as can be content with a fit of happiness; and surely it is not a melancholy conceit to think we are all asleep in this world, and that the conceits of this life are as mere dreams to those of the next, as the Phantasms of the night, to the conceit of the day'. [1]

Dreams were rich nourishment for Browne's imagination, not least because he was able to lucid dream, that is, to be conscious of oneself actually dreaming, and thus able to take an active instead of a passive role in the events occurring in a dream, effectively controlling the action of a dream. Browne  elucidates on  his rare gift in Religio Medici thus -

'yet in one dream I can compose a whole Comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof; were my memory as faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I would never study but in my dreams, and this time also would I choose for my devotions, but our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted understandings, that they forget the story, and can only relate to our awaked souls, a confused and broken tale of that that hath passed'. [2]

On Dreams opens with fleeting allusion to night and sleep, themes which, together with dreams inspired some of the greatest passages of Browne's literary art. Citing the Old Testament book of Genesis and its story of Jacob's dream, Joseph's interpretation of the Egyptian pharaoh's dreams and Nebuchadnezzar's demand not only for the interpretation of his dream but of his dream itself, Browne in common with other Renaissance thinkers viewed dreams as God-given communications and their interpretation sanctioned in the Bible. 

Even as late as the seventeenth century the little-understood psychic phenomena of the dream was believed to be of either divine or diabolical origin. Browne's remark that, 'We have little doubt there be demoniacal dreams' seems  to be an observation based upon personal, first-hand experience. If there are demonic dreams Browne argues -

'Why may there not be Angelical ? If there be Guardian spirits, they may not be unactively about us in sleep, but may sometimes order our dreams, and many strange hints, instigations, or discoveries which are so amazing unto us, may arise from such foundations'.

And in fact a belief in Guardian angels as well as witches was integral to Thomas Browne's spiritual hierarchy. Its unsurprising therefore that the Christian in Browne is concerned  in On Dreams about the possibility of sinning in one's dreams. In his short tract he also condemns those who have paid too close attention to their dreams at the expense of common sense, stating, 'Yet he that should order his affairs by dreams, or make the night a rule unto the day, might be ridiculously deluded'.

On Dreams includes examples of Browne's 'dimensional imagery' in which the very large and very small are juxtaposed, noting that in dreams -

'the phantastical objects seem greater than they are, and being beheld in the vaporous state of sleep, enlarge their dimensions unto us; whereby it may prove easier to dream of Giants than pygmies'.

The very same juxtaposition of giant and pygmies, Browne's 'dimensional imagery' is featured in his late work Christian morals, in moralizing highly relevant to our own day.

'without which, though Giants in Wealth and Dignity, we are but Dwarfs and Pygmies in Humanity, and may hold a pitiful rank in that triple division of mankind into Heroes, Men and Beasts'.  (C.M. 3:14)

In the painting The Gentleman's Dream or Disillusion with the World (1655) by the Spanish Baroque-era artist Antonio de Peruda (c.1611-1678) a courtier sleeps and dreams beside a table displaying various vanitas objects. A guardian angel unfurls a scroll with the words, "Eternally it stings, swiftly it flies and it kills", inscribed upon it, a waspish allusion to the sting of Time.

Browne references both ancient and modern philosophers in On Dreams including the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, a big influence upon Browne who declared in Religio Medici - 'I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras' and a creative influence of the discourse The Garden of Cyrus. [3]

In addition to Pythagoras, the Italian physician, mathematician and general polymath Jerome Cardan  is also mentioned twice in the tract. Jerome Cardan (1501-76) was highly influential in various disciplines, writing over 200 works on science. His interests included medicine, biology, engineering, chemistry, astrology and astronomy and he's credited with inventing several mechanical devices including the combination lock and the Cardan shaft with its universal joints which allow for the transmission of rotary motion at various angles and used in car-motors to the present day.  He was often short of money and kept himself solvent by being an accomplished gambler and chess player. Cardan had a reoccurring dream which ordered him to write De subtilitate rerum (1550) a book which Thomas Browne was critical of when assessing Cardan in his encyclopedic endeavour  Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646-72) -

'We had almost forgot Jeronymus Cardanus that famous Physician of Milan, a great Enquirer of Truth, but too greedy a Receiver of it. He hath left many excellent Discourses, Medical, Natural, and Astrological; the most suspicious are those two he wrote by admonition in a dream, that is De Subtilitate & Varietate Rerum. Assuredly this learned man hath taken many things on trust, and although examined some, hath let slip many others. He is of singular use unto a prudent reader but to him that desireth hoties, or to replenish his head with varieties, like many others before related, either in the original or confirmation, he may become no small occasion of error'. [4]

Browne's judgement of Jerome Cardan didn't prevent him from acquiring sometime in 1663 or shortly after (he often purchased books upon notification of their publication by book-dealers) an edition of Jerome Cardan's complete works which included Somniorum Synesiorum, omnis generis insomnia explicantes, libri IIII (Synesian dreams, dreams of all kinds set forth, in four books). [5]

Jerome Cardan's work on the interpretation of dreams is partly inspired by Synesius of Cyrene (c.370-c.413 CE) a Greek bishop of ancient Libya and author of  De insomniis (On dreams). Cardan divided dreams into four categories based on their causes: digestive dreams caused by food and drink; humoural caused by imbalances in the four humours; anamnestic caused by passions or changes in emotion; and finally prophetic dreams of a supernatural or divine origin. Jerome Cardan viewed the first three categories as natural and ordinary bodily processes. Most of this work however, is devoted to a discussion of prophetic dreams which he views from a philosophical perspective.

Jerome Cardan is one of several independent-minded figures from Renaissance intellectual history whom Browne was highly critical of, yet read closely. Other notable candidates of similar critical influence upon Browne include Cardan's countryman, the polymath Giambattista della Porta (1538-1615) the Belgian scientist Van Helmont (1577-1644) the Swiss physician Paracelsus (1494-1541) and the German scholar of comparative religion Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680). 

Browne sometimes wrote with his most recent reading in mind. From his mention of the Italian polymath and physician Jerome Cardan twice in On Dreams its possible to tentatively date On Dreams as written circa 1663 from two facts. According to the 1711 Auction Sales Catalogue an edition of Jerome Cardan's Opera (Complete works) dated 1663 is listed as once in Browne's library. [5]. Coincidentally, almost half of Browne's eldest son  Edward Browne's dissertation for his bachelor of medicine degree, on the use of dreams to the physician, was written in 1663.[6] Its therefore possible to speculate that Browne may have composed On Dreams to assist his son. In any event the short tract On Dreams isn't dissimilar in either its literary style or subject-matter to Browne's  A Letter to a Friend  (circa 1656) in which dreams as experienced by the dying are commented upon. As such On Dreams may be read as an appendage to A Letter to a Friend, Browne's major medical writing.

There's a fascinating relationship between Thomas Browne to the Swiss psychologist  Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). For example, both men were physicians who took their psychiatric responsibilities seriously, both studied comparative religion and alchemical literature in depth and both had a big  interest in their own and others' dreams. I've written at length about this fascinating relationship  elsewhere on this blog. [7] 

C.G.Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963) like Browne's Religio Medici (1643) is an autobiographical account and spiritual testament which includes many philosophical digressions. The biggest difference between the two autobiographies being whilst Religio Medici was penned before its author embarked upon a medical career, C.G. Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections was written after a long medical career, shortly before the author's death. It includes recollections of some of the many dreams Jung had, of digging up the bones of prehistoric animals, of kneeling to hand a girl an umbrella, of a tree transformed by frost, of his father reading a fish-skin bound Bible and many equally bizarre others. According to Jung-

'The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the psyche, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness....All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of the more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. [8]

In On Dreams Browne declares- 'We owe unto dreams that Galen was a physician, Dion an historian, and that the world hath seen some notable pieces of Cardan' to which one might add we owe unto dreams that the Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung embarked upon a long study of alchemy.

Jung's dream which heralded his encounter with alchemy occurred in 1926 when he dreamt he was travelling through the Lombardy plain in Northern Italy. Upon viewing a large manor house located near Verona he entered its courtyard. Suddenly its gates slammed shut and he thought to himself, 'Now, we are caught in the seventeenth century'. Only much later did Jung come to realize that his dream alluded to his many years of studying alchemy, the golden age of alchemy being the seventeenth century.

Amazingly, Memories, Dreams, Reflections includes an endorsement of Browne as a psychologist. Jung's autobiography is prefaced by a verse chosen by his secretary Aniela Jaffe to describe the psychologist, but the author of the verse, the English romantic poet Samuel Coleridge is eulogizing upon Thomas Browne, not C.G. Jung. This verse is notable for its early usage of the word 'consciousness' which the Oxford English Dictionary attributes to the poet William Wordsworth, Coleridge's sometime mentor as the first to use and in all probability was 'borrowed' from him. Coleridge's enthusiastic response to Browne focuses upon the self-analytical and mind-expanding qualities of the physician-philosopher.

He looked at his own Soul
With a Telescope. What seemed
all irregular he saw and
shewed to be beautiful
Constellations: and he added
to the Consciousness hidden
worlds within worlds.

Thomas Browne's anticipation of a Jungian interpretation of dreams is boldly declared in On Dreams -

Many dreams are made out by sagacious exposition from the signature of their subjects; carrying their interpretation in their fundamental sense & mysterie of similitude, whereby he that understands upon what natural fundamental every notional depends, may by symbolical adaptation hold a readie way to read the characters of Morpheus.

Browne's proposal of 'symbolical adaptation' as 'a readie way to read the characters of Morpheus' (the god of sleep is known as 'Fashioner' in Ancient Greek: μορφή meaning 'form, shape') requires elaboration.

Its worth remembering first that the word 'symbol'  derives from the Greek σύμβολον symbolon, meaning "token, watchword" from σύν syn "together" and βάλλω bállō " "I throw, put". The meaning of symbol as "something which stands for something else" was first recorded  in Edmund Spenser's epic poem The Faerie Queene (1596). 

According to C.G Jung - 'Symbols are never simple - only signs and allegories are simple. The symbol always covers a complicated situation which is so far beyond the grasp of language that it cannot be expressed at all in any unambiguous manner. [ 9]

'If symbols mean anything at all, they are tendencies which pursue a definite but not yet recognisable goal and consequently can express themselves only in analogies.' [10]

The Renaissance study of nature included the study of human nature. It was the radical 'Luther of Medicine' the Swiss physician-alchemist Paracelsus who first encouraged and urged the physician to take dreams and seriously, declaring-

"The interpretation of dreams is a great art. Dreams are not without meaning wherever they may come from - from fantasy, from the elements, or from another inspiration". [11]

Orthodox Christian theology did not however always possess a clear-cut view or answer to the new spiritual and psychological concerns experienced by many during the Renaissance, an age of great change. The effects of urbanization for example increased interaction between widely differing social, cultural, moral and religious perspectives and increased awareness of sexuality. 

From their close understanding of the human condition and dissatisfied with Christian dogma alchemist-physicians  as diverse as Paracelsus, John Dee, Van Helmont, Jerome Cardan and Thomas Browne either augmented concepts originating from the western esoteric traditions or coined home-grown neologisms and symbols in order to describe their understanding of the psyche.  Each of these aforenamed alchemist-physicians took their own dreams far more seriously than most in contemporary society today; each recognized their dream-lives to be of great importance to their self-development or individuation process in Jungian terms. From alchemist-physicians analysis of their dreams there emerged the beginnings of the modern-day science of psychology. Their rudimentary and tentative understanding of the self and unconscious psyche  several of whom C.G. Jung found confirmation of his psychology, in particular Gerard Dorn, were the fruits of the Renaissance spirit of enquiry into nature, which includes human nature. As C.G.Jung explains-

'the language of the alchemists is at first sight very different from our psychological terminology and way of thinking. But if we treat their symbols in the same way as we treat modern fantasies, they yield a meaning - even in the Middle Ages confessed alchemists interpreted their symbols in a moral and philosophical sense, their "philosophy" was, indeed, nothing but projected psychology'. [12]

Thomas Browne's fascination with symbols is writ large throughout his oeuvre. Allusion to symbolism involving the alphabets of various languages, numbers, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Mercurial characters, kabbalistic signs and geometric symbols as well as metaphors, allegories, anagrams and  riddles can be found in his writings, not least in his highly hermetic discourse  The Garden of  Cyrus (1658) a literary work densely packed with symbolism. Not only is the ubiquity of the number five in art and nature prominent in The Garden of Cyrus but also its many closely-associated extensions including the V shape and the Latin numeral for 5, which by mirror doubling becomes the figure X, significant  to Christians as the first letter of the name of Christ in Greek, the ten commandments as well as the Pythagorean tetraktys, which by multiplication (X) becomes the reticulated network, as seen illustrated on the discourse's frontispiece. (Below)

The literary critic Peter Green recognized- 'there is nothing vague or woolly about Browne's mysticism...Every symbol is interrelated with the over-all pattern'. [13]

Crucially, in relation to Jungian psychology, Browne not only employs one of the earliest usages of the very word 'archetype' in The Garden of Cyrus  but even attempts to delineate the archetype of the 'wise ruler' through utilizing highly-original proper name symbolism, alluding to Solomon, Moses, Alexander the Great, Augustus and of course the titular hero of the discourse, Cyrus. Browne's proper-name symbolism also alludes to the archetypal figure of the ‘Great Mother' as a symbol of fertility and fruitfulness with mention of Sarah, Isis, Juno, Cleopatra and Venus. But if ever there were a sly, Royalist supporter's opposition to Cromwell's rule of England (1650-1658), its surely in Browne's repeated citing of examples of the 'Wise ruler' from history in  The Garden of Cyrus.

The religious mystic and symbol go together hand in glove. For most Christian mystics the inexhaustible symbolism of the Cross was sufficient for expression of their spiritual thought. The Elizabethan mathematician and hermetic philosopher John Dee (1527-1608) however devised his very own mystical symbol, the Monas Hieroglyphica a complex, metaphysical 'explanation' of the cosmos. Dee's Monas symbol became a printer's colophon which was avidly reproduced by various alchemystical philosophers in their publications. John Dee's eldest son Arthur Dee became a friend of Browne's upon his return from Russia and retirement to what was at the time, England's second city in terms of prosperity and population, Norwich.

Peter French  speculates- 'Little is known of this son of Dee's; one cannot help but wonder however, how much he may have influenced Browne, who was one of the seventeenth century's greatest literary exponents of the type of occult philosophy in which both the Dee's were immersed'.[14]

On Dreams is not Browne's only literary work in which the psychological is prominent. His two closely-related discourses of 1658 Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus are a portrait of the human condition and psyche, depicting humanity as simultaneously irrational and rational, fearful of death, yet forever with the future in mind, serious and merry, enduring pain and illness as well as enjoying health and pleasure. Imagery involving Light and Darkness permeates the diptych discourses, as does the dominant themes of Time (Urn-Burial) and Space (The Garden of Cyrus) the basic framework of  the Mandala. Most often a circular visual image, but conceivable as a literary structure, in Jungian psychology the meditative image of the mandala symbolically represents the dreamer's search for completeness and self-unity; its function is to assist with healing and to help transform ordinary minds into enlightened ones. Plexiformed in their polarity, themes and imagery, Browne's diptych discourses are capable of achieving such a transformation to the receptive mind.  By focusing his reader's attention to the discourses primary symbols of Urn and Quincunx, Thomas  Browne  -

'by concentrating, almost like a hypnotist, on this pair of unfamiliar symbols, paradoxically releases the reader's mind into an infinite number of associative levels of awareness, without preconception to give shape and substance to quite literally cosmic generalizations...............Mystical symbolism is woven throughout the texture of Browne's work and adds, often subconsciously, to its associative power of impact. [15]

C.G.Jung, recognizing the enduring continuity of symbolism in the collective unconscious psyche throughout long stretches of time perceptively observes-

'The symbolic statements of the old alchemists issue from the same unconscious as modern dreams and are just as much the voice of nature'. [16] 

Browne concludes his short tract On Dreams refuting that children don't dream under six months old, that men don't dream in some countries by supplying a footnote upon the difference between false and true dreams in the form of the Ivory gate and the polished horn gate as mentioned in Homer's Odyssey, in which Penelope the hero's wife says of dreams-

"Ah my friend," seasoned Penelope dissented
"dreams are hard to unravel, wayward, drifting things-
not all we glimpse in them will come to pass...
Two gates there are for our evanescent dreams,
one is made of ivory, the other made of horn.
Those that pass through the ivory cleanly carved
are will-o'-the-wisps, their message bears no fruit.
The dreams that pass through the gates of polished horn
are fraught with truth, for the dreamer who can see them. [17]

Conclusion

In addition to being a superb introduction to Browne's literary style, On Dreams includes a number of highly original speculations on the psyche's relationship to dreams, 'the Theatre of Ourselves', as the physician-philosopher memorably defines the psyche. 

Link to full text of  On Dreams

Books consulted

* Patrides C. A. ed. and with an introduction The Major Works of Sir Thomas Browne pub. Penguin  1977 includes On Dreams
* Finch J. S - A Catalogue of the Libraries of Sir Thomas Browne and Dr Edward Browne, his son. A Facsimile Reproduction with an Introduction, Notes and Index.  E. J .Brill    1986
* Jung C. G.  Memories, Dreams, Reflections trans. R & C Winston London 1979
* Jung C.G. Psychology and Religion Vol. 11 Collected works pub. RKP 1958
* Green, P. Sir Thomas Browne  pub. 1959 Longmans, Green & Co (Writers and Work, No.108).
* The Odyssey Homer translated by Robert Fagles 1996 Viking Penguin

Notes

[1] Religio Medici Part 2  Section 11
[2] Ibid.
[3] R.M. Part 1:12
[4] Pseudodoxia Epidemica Bk 1:18 no.13
[5] Sales Catalogue p.19 no 96  Opera Omnia 10 vol. Lyon 1663
[6] I am indebted to Ms. A. Wyatt for information about Edward Browne's bachelor of medicine dissertation and indeed on all matters relating to Thomas Browne's eldest son, Edward Browne (1644-1708).
[7]  Carl Jung and Sir Thomas Browne
[8]  Glossary  of  Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
[9] Carl Jung Complete Works  Vol:11 paragraph 385
[10] CW 14: paragraph 667
[11] Paracelsus: Selected Writings edited by Jolande Jacobi pub. Princeton University Press 1951
[12] CW 14: paragraph 737
[13] Green, P. Sir Thomas Browne pub. 1959 Longmans, Green & Co (Writers and Work, No.108)
[14] John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus, by Peter J. French Pub. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1972
[15] Green, P. Sir Thomas Browne  pub. 1959 Longmans, Green & Co (Writers and Work, No.108)
[16] Collected Works vol. 11: paragraph 105
[17] Book 19 lines 560-565 The Odyssey Homer by Robert Fagles pub. 1996 Viking Penguin

Paintings

'Before Waking'  40 x 50 cm. (2015) by Peter Rodulfo.









The Knight's Dream by Antonio de Peruda. (1655)









Henri Rousseau Le Rêve (The Dream) 1909. Rousseau's last painting.

'Dreaming Fisherman' by Peter Rodulfo

See  also-

Link to Peter Rodulfo's art 

See also -

Rodulfo's quadriptych of Loving-Kindness

Rodulfo's 'As the elephant laughed'. A panorama of evolution

Paracelsus on the interpretation of dreams

Paracelsus and Sir Thomas Browne

Carl Jung and Sir Thomas Browne

Dame Ninette de Valois: Architect of British Ballet

The dancer, director, teacher and choreographer Dame Ninette De Valois (born June 6th 1898, died 2001 aged 102) had many honours bestowed upon her in her lifetime including a C.B.E. in 1947, Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur (1950), D.B.E.(1951), C.H. (1981) and O.M. (1992). But perhaps it is her being awarded the Erasmus Prize in 1974 for a contribution of particular importance to Europe in the cultural or social sphere which best reflects her greatest achievement. She effectively established a British National ballet company, (The Royal Ballet), as well as founding a national ballet company for Ireland and Turkey. The deep influence which de Valois exerted upon the ballet world continues to the present-day.

Ninette de Valois first danced professionally on the stage of the Palladium in 1915 and by 1919 she had achieved the status of premiere danseuse at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, London.

De Valois in 1923

In her memoirs de Valois states that she studied for 4 years with the Italian dancer Enrico Cecchetti (1850-1925). Born in 1850 in the dressing room of the Apollo Theatre in Tordino, Italy, by 1888 Cecchetti was widely acknowledged  as the greatest male ballet virtuoso in the world. He created and performed the virtuoso role of the Blue Bird and the mime role of Carabosse in the premiere of Marius Petipa's The Sleeping Beauty in 1890. Later in life he restaged many ballets, including Petipa's definitive version of Coppélia in 1894, from which nearly all modern versions of the work are based. Indeed, de Valois' own choreography for the Royal Ballet's revival of Coppelia in 1954 is based upon Cecchetti's choreography. [1]

Enrico Cecchetti 1890

In addition to Cecchetti, de Valois was greatly influenced by the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929). De Valois considered Diaghilev's Ballet Russe company to be the most perfect ballet expression the theatre has ever known and Diaghilev himself to be an exemplary fusion  of  connoisseur, creative artist and scholar.

It was during de Valois' time with the Ballet Russe that Diaghilev assigned to Bronislava Nijinska the choreography of Stravinsky's Les Noces. The result combines elements of her brother's choreography for The Rite of Spring with traditional aspects of ballet, such as dancing en pointe. The following year Nijinska choreographed three new works for the company: Les biches, Les Fâcheux and Le train bleu. While attending rehearsals of Les Noces de Valois noted- 'From  this detailed study was to emerge a clear picture of the geometrical beauty of the inner structure and relationship between the music and choreography'. [2]

De Valois had the unique opportunity to learn many aspects of staging a ballet production while with the Ballet Russe. Artists of the calibre such as Picasso, Stravinsky and Matisse frequently visited the Company in rehearsal. She describes one surprise visitor during rehearsals, none other than Vaslav Nijinsky who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1919 and committed to a mental asylum. She describes him thus - 'Looking around that company where futures and pasts were stamped on features and actions, one felt the silent onlooker's present state spelt a peace that might be absent for ever from the understanding of his companions. It is important to stress the happiness that was in his face; it was as if the mind had departed in an effort to escape from the discord'. [3]

Vaslav Nijinsky with sister Bronislava 1912

In her Invitation to the Ballet (1937) Ninette de Valois informs her reader that, 'two English choreographers have served under Madame Nijinska, both in the classroom and on stage, i.e. Frederick Ashton and the present writer - the latter regarding Nijinska's tuition as the most vital influence and help in her career'. Elsewhere she states - 'I learnt far more from Nijinska than I ever did from Massine'. [4] She also states- 'The main effect of Diaghilev on my dormant creative mind was to arouse an intense interest in the ballet in relation to the theatre....I had come to one conclusion: the same should happen along the same lines, and with such an ultimate goal - in England'. [5]

Upon leaving Diaghilev's company in 1926, De Valois occasionally toured England, in particular performing at Cambridge Arts Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. In her Rout staged privately with her pupils at Cambridge in 1928, the influence of Bronislava Nijinska's Les Noches which de Valois had  danced while a member of Diaghilev's Ballet Russe  can be seen. 

Rout  Cambridge 1928 with de Valois in centre of group

Ninette de Valois performed at the Maddermarket Theatre, Norwich on  Monday 1st December 1930. The Maddermarket Theatre was the first permanent recreation of an Elizabethan Theatre in England. It opened under the directorship of its founder Nugent Monck in 1921 and continues to be active today.  

In what appears to have been a full programme of dance, all of which was choreographed by de Valois, her small troupe of dancers performed the following - Prelude Orientale with music by Gliere, Rhythm a group dance with music by Beethoven, Russe Fantasie a group dance, Serenade a solo with music by Boccherini, Etude a pas de trio with music by Debussy, Fugue,  a group dance to the music of J.S. Bach's Fugue no. 5 from The Well-Tempered Klavier and The Tryst with specially commissioned music by the budding composer William Alwyn (1905-85). It was probably de Valois' solo dance in A Daughter of Eve which was the star performance of the night with de Valois dancing in a costume  consisting of a fluffy, white, calf-length skirt, a peasant apron, and a bonnet with coloured ribbons. 

'This became an immensely popular item, a demi-caractere miniature of a flirtatious young woman in silent dialogue with an unseen young man. At the end she offers him an apple, is refused, and then sits on the forestage steps, and bites into the apple. With a provocative smile, she leaves it on stage and walks away'  [6]

Its not improbable, given the fact that both Nugent Monck and de Valois were friends of the Irish poet W.B. Yeats, that somehow a commendation, request or invitation to perform at the Maddermarket theatre at Norwich was made between these artists. In the same year as her Norwich performance de Valois danced in a production of the opera Carmen  at Covent Garden  in 1930.

In 1931 De Valois, through the help of theatre manager Lilian Baylis (1874-1937) established a permanent ballet company at Sadler's Wells. At first the Vic-Wells ballet had only six female dancers, with Ninette de Valois herself as lead dancer and choreographer. The company performed its first full ballet production on 5 May 1931 at the Old Vic, with Anton Dolin as guest star. Its first performance at Sadler’s Wells was a few days later, on 15 May 1931.

De Valois shares this amusing anecdote about her benefactress Lilian Baylis- 'The body beautiful was her great topic; on this point she had no inhibitions. I once stood with her at the back of the Old Vic circle during a ballet performance when she informed me, in clear loud tones, that a certain male dancer had a most beautiful behind'.  [7]

De Valois performed one last time as a dancer in 1935 in a production of Coppelia.  One critic noted-

'Her performance was characterised by superlative neatness and elegance but it was in her miming that she particularly excelled. In the second act especially she reflected to perfection every idea and fancy passing through the heroine's brain. Not only her face but all the movements of her body seemed to be called into play'.

Another ballet-critic claimed she was- 'something of a sensation as Swanilda. Her grace and charm; her precision and sense of rhythm; and her gaiety and perfect miming, went to the creation of a very fine performance.'

De Valois as Swanilda in Coppelia 1935

Under the Directorship of Ninette de Valois the Vic-Wells ballet company flourished during the 1930s to became one of the first Western dance companies to stage the classical ballet repertoire of the Imperial Russian Ballet. De Valois began to establish a British repertory, engaging Frederick Ashton as Principal Choreographer and Constant Lambert as Musical Director in 1935 and  choreographed several of her own ballets including Job (1931), The Rake’s Progress (1935) and Checkmate (1937). 

The Black Queen in a modern production of Checkmate

Eventually the dance company which de Valois established included many of the most famous ballet dancers in the world, including Margot Fonteyn, Robert Helpmann, Moira Shearer, Beryl Grey, and Michael Somes. In 1949 the Sadler Wells Ballet was a sensation when they toured the United States with Margot Fonteyn instantly becoming an international celebrity.

In many ways de Valois' visionary genius lay in her ability to recognise, encourage, train and retain talent. Self-sacrificing for the benefit of the Company, forever considering the future, she was also a strict disciplinarian who earned the nickname of 'the Games mistress' by pupils and dancers. Set designer and artist Leslie Hurry (1909-78) typifies her influence, stating-

'She imposed a stern discipline upon my turbulent imagination. An incredibly brilliant woman -sympathetic, understanding, marvellous to work with'. [8]

Although she officially stepped-down as Director of The Royal Ballet in 1963, de Valois continued to teach and exert her sometimes formidable influence upon the Company for a further decade. De Valois herself stated of  choreography-

'Choreography is one of the most complex and exacting forms of creative work, demanding an abstraction and plasticity to be found in painting and sculpture. In this way its relation to space is coupled with its own function in time'.

De Valois (left) teaching a dancer

Notes

[1]   Delibes: Coppelia - Choreography Ninette de Valois 

       The Royal Ballet. Opus Arte/BBC (2010)

[2]  Ninette de Valois -Idealist without Illusions 

       Katherine Sorley Walker  pub. Hamish Hamilton 1987

[3]  Valois, Ninette de - Invitation to the Ballet. 

       London pub. Bodley Head 1937

[4]  Secret Muses: The life of Frederick Ashton 

       Julie Kavanagh  pub. Faber and Faber 2006

[5]  Invitation to the Ballet

[6]  Ninette de Valois -Idealist without Illusions 

[7]  Ibid.

[8] Walker citing Evening News 6 September 1943

Books 

*  Valois, Ninette de - Invitation to the Ballet. London: Bodley Head pub. 1937

*  Valois, Ninette de - Come Dance with Me; A Memoir, 1898-1956. London:           pub. Hamish Hamilton. 1957

*  The Royal Ballet 75 Years Zoe Anderson pub. Faber and Faber 2006

*  Ninette de Valois - Idealist without Illusions -Katherine Sorley Walker pub.           Hamish Hamilton 1987

DVD

* Delibes:Coppelia - Choreography Sergey Vikharev after Petipa and Cecchetti.     Ballet of the State Academic Bolshoi Theatre of Russia.  

   Belair Classiques: BAC463  (2019)

* Delibes: Coppelia - Choreography Ninette de Valois. 

   The Royal Ballet. Opus Arte/BBC (2010)

* Checkmate and The Rake's Progress Choreography De Valois  

    Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet  VAI  (1982)