The Wedding Feast of Cupid and Psyche

The Wedding-Feast of Cupid and Psyche by Guilio Romano.

All the evidence suggests the Italian painter Guilano Romano (1499-1546) was one the earliest artists who can be defined as Mannerist in creative outlook. Romano's The Wedding-Feast of Cupid and Psyche (1532) includes subject-matter of a mythological nature, its staged in a highly theatrical setting and uses unusual perspective as well as eroticism; all of which are characteristics associated with Mannerist art.

The Wedding-Feast of Cupid and Psyche was also painted by Romano's teacher, Raphael. It is however only one of several fresco's painted by Romano on the walls on the Palazzo del Te at Mantua in Italy. The lively and highly-stylized marriage-feast includes nymphs, fauns, satyrs, a drunken Silenus figure and what were at the time, rare and exotic animals, namely a camel and an elephant, both of which are centre-stage in Romano's fresco.

During the Renaissance new sources of myth such as Ovid's Metamorphoses and Hygenius' Fabulae became available to artists. It’s in the The Golden Ass by Apulieus, the sole surviving novel of the Roman-era, that the earliest literary source of the marriage of Cupid and Psyche can be found. Written sometime during the 2nd century C.E. the protagonist in The Golden Ass narrates upon his transformation into a donkey. The reader subsequently shares a donkey’s tribulations and perspective upon life which culminates during a ceremony of the cult of Isis, in which the donkey-narrator eats a bunch of roses, resulting in his becoming human once more.

Sleeping Beauty: A Gothic Romance

Matthew Bourne is surely one of the most innovative choreographers in the modern dance world. His male-roled Swan Lake (1994) propelled him to international fame and he's continued creating highly original productions which are performed throughout the world ever since. His latest production Sleeping Beauty: A Gothic Romance  re-interprets one of the most-established works in the ballet repertoire. Recognising the age in which Sleeping Beauty was first performed, the 1890's, as an era in which beneath a straight-laced exterior there was a fascination with the supernatural involving stories of vampires, fairies and angels along with romantic tales of love enduring beyond the grave, Bourne's ballet fully indulges in Gothic fantasy and spans over a century, from 1891 to the present-day. In his new interpretation of one of ballet's near fossilized works, Bourne breathes new life into a well-worn classic, effectively reclaiming Tchaikovsky's highly danceable, lush and sensual orchestral score with a new interpretation of an old fairy-tale. 

Featuring designs by Olivier Award-winners Lez Brotherston (set and costumes) Paule Constable (lighting) with sound design by Paul Groothuis, the audience's attention is seized from the very opening, with the crying and tantrums of a life-size marionette baby. However, its during a dazzling change of setting to the Edwardian era of picnics and tennis on summer lawns bathed in a golden light, that the evening's brightest star enters. Hannah Vassallo, in the lead role of Aurora, charmed the audience with her innocence and vulnerability. Other memorable highlights include striking Gothic-style make-up for the dancers, the use of angel's wings to identify who among the dancers were among the dead, a hilarious Waltz of the flowers and a stage flooded with a deep, ruby red light at the dénouement of the up-dated fairy-tale. A recorded sound-track also allowed for a variety of sound-effects to create a suitably Gothic atmosphere to the ballet. 

Not wanting to post spoilers for those attending Sadler's Wells, London, where Sleeping Beauty:A Gothic Romance will be performed from December 4th to January 26th 2013, I will just say that Bourne's humour is very much of the now-you-see-it-now-you-don't variety, rewarding the attentive viewer with quick-witted and often very funny incidents and gestures. Its worth remembering that modern ballet includes not only innovative dance, and many original dance movements occurred throughout the performance, but also mime and gesture, which in their turn are augmented by costume and scenery; it's the overall combination of these varied factors which modern choreographers such as Bourne fully integrates into his vision of ballet. More than any other production I've ever seen by Bourne's company, there seemed to be a complete harmony and togetherness in the ensemble of dancers. Although on the night several individual dancers shone in performance, none, not even the charming Hannah Vassallo in the lead-role of Aurora, out-shone at the expense of the collective ensemble. 

Remarkably, after the last performance on Saturday, the manager of the Theatre Royal for seventeen years, Peter Wilson came onto the stage. He reminded the evening's audience that the theatre had now hosted no less than three productions by Matthew Bourne - Highland Fling (1995) and Edward Scissorhands (2005) were all first performed at the Theatre Royal before being staged in London.  I too  remember seeing both productions at the Norwich theatre. Although he could not persuade choreographer Matthew Bourne OBE (b. 1960) to come up onto the stage, seizing the moment, Wilson led the audience in giving Bourne and his company New Adventures, now celebrating their 25th anniversary, a standing ovation from an audience which is renowned for its appreciation of dance. 

Here's  a video clip from Matthew Bourne's Highland Fling

Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time

                               

Bronzino's masterpiece Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time is archetypal in its subject-matter and style to the art movement of Mannerism.
  

Mannerism originated in Rome about 1520. The style continued with undiminished vigour and conviction in secular and decorative works in Italy until about 1600, and in the Northern courts of Paris, Munich and Prague until about 1620. The last truly vigorous manifestations of Mannerism in art were in a group of Dutch artists from the schools of Haarlem and Utrecht.

The Florentine artist Agnolo di Cosmi (1503-72) also known as Il Bronzino, depicts in Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time  a quartet of allegorical personifications enacting a drama of the psyche. While Cupid, Venus and Time are easily identifiable from their attributes, the personifications of the three characters in the background to the main action are more ambiguous in their identity; it has been proposed they may represent Despair, Pleasure and Jealousy. 

Typically of Mannerist artists, Bronzino employs a complex symbolism taken from classical mythology in order to make an intriguing psychological statement. Nor can one easily overlook the erotic content of Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time another frequently encountered focus of Mannerist art.

Mannerism has been defined as an artificial style, a style of excess and as an art for connoisseurs. Its main thematic concerns, as in Bronzino's work, often feature the infinite varieties of antiquity, in particular, Roman antiquity, with its refinement, elegance and grace. Mannerist art is also characterised by hidden classical references, interlacing of forms, unexpected departures from common usage and symbolism of an esoteric or mythological nature.

According to critic Arnold Hauser, Mannerism was a refined and exclusive style, intellectually sophisticated and even surrealistic in its outlook, it catered for an essentially pan-European cultured class. Bronzino's Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time c.1547) certainly fits Hauser's definition. It was commissioned by a member of the Medici family as a present for King Francis of France. Bronzino's masterpiece has been at the National Gallery, London since 1860.

Mannerist art  is now recognised as having influenced stylistic effects of the modern art movement of surrealism. In a series of paintings Archimboldo (1527-1593) ingeniously exploited the optical trickery of multiple images, a device copied centuries later, in the artist Salvador Dali's own double-images; the unusual perspective of Joachim Wtewael's Perseus and Andromeda is echoed in Max Ernst's Temptation of Saint Anthony, while the receding horizon and vast urban spaces of Mannerist artist Antoine Caron is imitated in Italian Futurist artist De Chirico's eerie cityscapes.

Arnold Hauser noted of  Mannerist art -

'At one time it is the deepening and spiritualizing of religious experience and a vision of a new spiritual content in life; at another, an exaggerated intellectualism, consciously and deliberately deforming reality, with a tinge of the bizarre and the abstruse.'

                              

Although differing in medium, the quaternity of statuettes upon the Layer monument share a number of thematic concerns and stylistic traits to Bronzino's masterpiece. Both art-works allude to the antiquity of the classical era, both involve the interplay of a quartet of allegorical personifications, indeed there's more than a little shared symbolism between Folly, Venus and Time to Vanitas, Gloria and Labor respectively on the Layer Monument. Both artworks are boldly coloured and exhibit lively, if stylized movement and nudity. They even have a near-identical object in colour and geometric shape in common. Crucially, both Renaissance artworks utilize a complex inter-related symbolism of an esoteric nature to make a profound observation upon the human psyche, which ultimately is unfathomable in depth. 

It's often stated that the left foot of Cupid in the lower left corner of Bronzino's work can be seen  in the opening credits of the  British comedy-sketch TV series Monty Python's Flying Circus. However, a closer inspection reveals the left foot on Bronzino's Cupid doesn't exactly match up with animator and film-director Terry Gilliam's trademark image .

  

Footnotes

Wiki-Links   Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time  -  The Foot of Cupid

An essay on Bronzino's painting  here

Books quoted

John Shearman –Mannerism - pub. Penguin 1967

Arnold Hauser -Social History of Art, Volume 2: Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque: pub. Routledge 1951

Mermaid

The seductive figure of the mermaid has a fascinating place in world art and literature. 

An early western literary account of the mermaid legend occurs in a medieval Romance which tells of Melusine, a fairy of extraordinary beauty who sometimes changes into a serpent. A popular fifteenth century Romance recounted the tale of Melusine, a fairy who promises to marry Raimondin of Lusignan and make him a rich king if he agrees to marry but never to look at her on a Saturday evening. They marry and Raimondin grows wealthy, while Melusine with her magic builds him a castle. Raimondin however, is also consumed with jealousy, suspecting his wife of unfaithfulness. One Saturday evening he gouges a spy-hole through a wall to watch Melusine when she retires to her room. While she is bathing he sees that his wife has become half woman, half serpent. Melusine, distressed at being seen transformed flies away with frightful screams. Associated through marriage with the Lusignan family, Melusine appears over the centuries on the towers of their castle, wailing mournfully every time  a disaster or death in the family is imminent. 

In the utterly charming novel The Wandering Unicorn (1965) by the Argentinian author Manuel Mujica Lainez (1910-64) the legend of Melusine is developed further. Set in medieval France and the holy Land of the Crusades, Lainez’s novel is a rich serving of fantasy and romance. Narrated from the perspective of the shape-changing Melusine, the early events of the original legend are soon recounted before she embarks upon an adventure and unrequited love-affair with Aiol, the son of Ozil, a crusader knight who bequeaths a Unicorn’s lance to his son. Together the young knight Aiol and Melusine travel across Europe to eventually arrive in war-torn Jerusalem of the Crusades. The reader is drawn into Lainez’s neglected gem of magical realism with growing empathy towards Melusine as she recollects her adventures and love of Aiol, only to experience the full emotional impact of the tragic and sad ending of the love-affair between a mortal and an immortal.

18th century Melusine with the four Elements

The Renaissance alchemist-physician Paracelsus (1493-1541) also fell under the potent spell of the mermaid Melusine. It’s worth remembering that Paracelsus, above all others, was the foremost alchemist who influenced the psychologist C.G. Jung. Both men were physicians of Swiss-German nationality as well as radical protestant theologians. In the darkest year of World War II, 1942 C.G. Jung delivered a conference paper on the Swiss physician at Zurich for the quatercentenary anniversary of Paracelsus's death in 1542, which analysed the symbolism of the mermaid, stating in his essay Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon -

Melusine comes into the same category as the nymphs and sirens who dwell in the watery realms. In his De Pygmaeis Paracelsus informs us that Melusina was originally a nymph who was seduced by Beelzebub into practising witchcraft. She was descended from the whale in whose belly the prophet Jonah beheld great mysteries. This derivation is very important: the birthplace of Melusina is the womb of mysteries, obviously what we today would call the unconscious. Melusines have no genitals, a fact that characterizes them as paradisiacal beings, since Adam and Eve in paradise had no genitals either……Adam and Eve “fell for” the serpent and became “monstrous”, that is, that they acquired genitals. But the Melusines remained in the paradisal state as water creatures and went on living in the human blood. Since blood is a primitive symbol for the soul, Melusina can be interpreted as a spirit, or some kind of psychic phenomenon. Gerard Dorn confirms this in his commentary on De Vita longa , where he says that Melusina is a “vision appearing in the mind.” For anyone familiar with the subliminal processes of psychic transformation, Melusina is clearly an anima figure. She appears as a variant of the mercurial serpent, which was sometimes represented in the form of a snake-woman by way of expressing the monstrous, double nature of Mercurius.[1]

C.G. Jung defined the alchemists of the medieval and Renaissance era as none other than embryonic psychologists who recognized the very real existence of the psyche but lacked a terminology to describe the psyche’s workings. According to Jung-

Paracelsus seems to have known nothing of any psychological premises. He attributes the appearance and transformation of Melusina to the effect of the “intervening” Scaiolae, the driving spiritual forces emanating from the homo maximus.[2]

The four Scaiolae or spiritual powers of the mind of Paracelsian alchemy have a distinct affinity to C.G. Jung’s preciser four nominated functions of the psyche, namely, thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition. Jung defined the Paracelsian Scaiolae and their relationship to Melusina thus-

Since the Scaiolae are psychic functions….as functions of consciousness, and particularly as imaginato, speculation, phantasia and fides, they “intervene” and stimulate Melusina, the water-nixie, to change herself into human form….Now this figure is certainly not an allegorical chimera or a mere metaphor: she has her particular psychic reality in the sense that she is a glamorous apparition who, by her very nature, is on one side a psychic vision but also, on account of the psyche’s capacity for imaginative realization is a distinct objective entity, like a dream which temporarily becomes reality. The figure of Melusina is eminently suited to this purpose. The anima belongs to those borderline phenomena which chiefly occur in special psychic situations. [3] 

In this context the anima figure's role in the individuation process is of great significance. Paracelsus apprehended this fact when identifying the 'difficult' nature of Melusine in her relationship to the Scaiolae of the homo maximus or  the greater man within.

Illustration by Charles Robinson 1937

J. Jacobi in a glossary to selected works by Paracelsus, defines Melusina as -

A legendary, magic being, whose name Paracelsus also uses to designate an arcarnum. He conceives of it as a psychic force whose seat is a watery part of the blood, or as a kind of anima vegetativa (vegetative soul.)

In a fine example of how male fantasy invariably  either under-values or over-values the anima figure (although often considered of a helpful, guiding nature there's also malevolent aspects of the femme fatale in the mermaid) and how Christian misogyny conspired to condemn the mermaid as symbolic of sinful sensuality, the Paracelsian scholar and lexiconographer, Martin Ruland in his Dictionary of Alchemy (1612) asserted -

Mermaids were Kings' daughters in France, snatched away by Satan because they were hopelessly sinful, and transformed into spectres horrible to behold...They are thought to exist with a rational soul, but a merely brute-like body, of a visionary kind, nourished by the elements and, like them, destined to pass away at the last day unless they contract a marriage with a man. Then the man himself may, perish by a natural death, while they live naturally by this nuptial union.

Invariably portrayed as solitary and beautiful with long-flowing hair, not easy to become acquainted  with, changeable in mood and elusive, often fleeing from human presence when approached, with an ability to inhabit an alien element, namely water, the mermaid represents the archetype of the anima in Jungian psychology. The anima is born from unconscious contents associated with, and projected onto ‘the other’  which in the male psyche is the female sex, gender being the greatest divide of nature which includes human nature. 

C.G.Jung considered fish to be perfect symbols of the contents of the unconscious psyche and the element of water itself as a symbol of the unknown and therefore also of the unconscious psyche. In essence the mermaid is a composite symbol of alluring virgin attached to an alien and repellent fish-form. From this tension of opposites, half seductress, half fish, C.G.Jung recognised the mermaid as another symbol connected to the shape-shifting deity associated with reconciling the opposites in alchemy, Mercurius.

During the romantic era of the nineteenth century  the mermaid became an object of sentimentality. Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy-tale The Little Mermaid (1837) inspired Carl Jacobsen, son of the founder of the Carlsberg brewery who had been entranced by a ballet he'd seen based upon Anderson’s fairytale at Copenhagen's Royal Theatre. In 1913 Jacobsen commissioned a bronze sculpture of a mermaid by Edward Ericksen which was placed in the entrance to Copenhagen harbour. Ericksen’s sculpture, though often sadly frequently vandalized, has become emblematic of the city of Copenhagen. The capital city of Warsaw in Poland has had a mermaid as part of its heraldic coat-of-arms since the 14th century.

Fascination with the slippery and wet fantasy of the mermaid became increasingly eroticized in paintings of the late romantic era. In British artist Frederic Leighton’s The Fisherman and the Siren (top picture) for example, the sheer unashamed erotic content of the mermaid is celebrated as in many other late 19th century paintings in which the mermaid is an object of  male fantasy and elusive desire.

The mermaid could not possibly slip away into the sea of obscurity and escape from the sharp-eyed scrutiny of the 17th century British scholar of comparative religion Sir Thomas Browne. In his encyclopaedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica, he noted of the mermaid's resemblance in the ancient world to the winged siren, and to Dagon, an ancient Assyro-Babylonian fertility fish-god, noting-

Few eyes have escaped the Picture of Mermaids; that is, according to Horace his Monster, with woman’s head above, and fishy extremity below: and these are conceived to answer the shape of the ancient Syrens that attempted upon Ulysses. Which notwithstanding were of another description, containing no fishy composure, but made up of Man and Bird; ........

And therefore these pieces so common among us, do rather derive their original, or are indeed the very descriptions of Dagon; which was made with human figure above, and fishy shape below; whose stump, or as Tremellius and our margin renders it, whose fishy part only remained, when the hands and upper part fell before the Ark. Of the shape of Atergates, or Derceto with the Phœniceans; in whose fishy and feminine mixture, as some conceive, were implyed the Moon and the Sea, or the Deity of the waters; and therefore, in their sacrifices, they made oblations of fishes. From whence were probably occasioned the pictures of Nereides and Tritons among the Grecians, and such as we read in Macrobius, to have been placed on the top of the Temple of Saturn. [4]

Japanese hentai anime of the anima figure of the Mermaid.  

Notes

[1]  C.G.Jung  Collected Works vol. 13. 180 

[2]  Vol. 13:220

[3]  Vol. 13:216-217

[4]  Pseudodoxia Epidemica book 5 chapter 19

Wiki-Links - Mermaid 

Posted for Emily Josephine Jackman on her birthday with love.

Japan: Kingdom of Characters

Recently I had the pleasure of visiting the Sainsbury Centre at the University of East Anglia (UEA) for an exhibition organized by the Japanese Foundation entitled Japan : Kingdom of Characters. On an all-too-rare day of settled summer weather it was well worth the short cycle-ride from home to view.

The informative guidebook to the Kingdom of Characters exhibition explains that Japanese people have established strong ties with manga and anime characters; in effect, such characters have forged a powerful bond with the Japanese psyche, sometimes as a replacement for family and friends. In essence, many of the rich and imaginative characters of Japanese manga and anime have developed as compensation and comfort against the stresses and alienation of life in megapolis cities. And for these reasons it's not always easy for Westerners to appreciate manga and anime's enormous popularity in Japan. A sizeable percentage of Japanese society was profoundly psychologically dislocated as a result of the rapid  growth, industrialization and urbanization which Japanese population underwent in the twentieth century. In some ways manga and anime characters have also provided comfort for the solitary and lonely as well as the survivors of the many disasters Japan has experienced throughout its history. From the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 to the cataclysmic natural disasters of the Kobe earthquake of 1995 to the simultaneous disasters of earthquake, Tsunami, nuclear power-plant meltdown and subsequent radio-active fears of 2011, Japan has always been vulnerable, not only to ecological disasters but also to man-made catastrophes.

From the early 1950’s manga characters such as Tetuswan Atom (Astro Boy), Japanese anime has debated on humanity’s relationship to science, on the differences between robots and humans, the future of humanity in sci-fi worlds, often of a post-apocalyptic nature and the moral issues of living in a technologically sophisticated, yet alienating megapolis. Alongside an advanced technological and scientific perspective, the remnants of superstition and a fascination with the spirit world in the popular psyche often feature in Japanese anime. Typically, the ghost in the machine in Japanese anime speaks with the voice of a long-lost ancestral spirit.

There’s a considerable amount of mass-produced merchandise associated with Japanese anime; the Kingdom of Characters exhibition even re-creates a teenage girl’s bedroom crowded with the paraphernalia of her favourite anime characters, some of whom have achieved global popularity. The Tamagotchi ‘egg-watch’ digital electronic pet has now sold in excess of 76 million since 1996, while the characters of Pokemon and Hello Kitty (photo above) are instantly recognized and loved by many throughout the world.

Far removed from the cute and kitsch world of Hello Kitty with subject-matter unsuitable for any public exhibition, Toshio Maeda's notorious Urotsukidōji: Chōjin Densetsu, lit. Wandering Kid: The Legend of the Super God (1986-90) is a seminal anime work which features strong hentai elements of graphic sex.

Puzzlingly to western sensibilities Maeda's controversial Urotsukidōji mixes plots and genres seemingly unrelated to each other - horror, comedy, disaster, the supernatural and teen-age romance are all juxtaposed in random sequence. This effect is heightened further by the severe editing which Maedea’s flawed masterpiece has suffered at the hands of the British Board of Censors. Besides indulging in extreme eroticism and violence Urotsukidōji depicts an alternate world in which  the battle of good and evil is fought on a cosmic scale between mankind, beasts and demons. Urotsukidōji also includes an example of so-called tentacle erotica. The origins of tentacle erotica can be traced to an illustration by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai's (1760-1849) The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife an influential example of Shunga (Japanese erotic art). The subject of tentacle eroticism has been explored by a number of artists, but perhaps none with such notoriety as Toshio Maedea’s interpretation. Maedea returned to tentacle eroticism in his equally infamous horror/sex comedy series La Blue Girl (1992-94).

Japanese anime has also been used a vehicle to discuss romance, sexuality and spirituality. In Takahashi Rumiki’s romantic-comedy Urusei Yatsura (1978-87) the bikini-clad Lum possesses the fatal combination of a bad temper in conjunction with magical powers as elements of her adolescent love-life. The relationship between sexuality and magic is never far from the surface in Rumiki’s dark fantasy Mermaid Forest (1991) which develops an ancient Japanese legend, that mermaid's flesh grants immortality if eaten. However, there's also the risk that eating it may also lead to death or transformation into a lost soul or damned creature.

Other notable landmarks in the history Japanese anime include Masamune Shirow’s  Ghost in the Shell (1995) in which a cyborg heroine with human consciousness questions her own identity - Perfect Blue (1997) a Hitchcock-like psycho-thriller and Hiroyuki Kitakabo’s Blood: The Last Vampire (2000) which sets the vampire myth on an American occupation air-base. Each of the aforementioned has in one way or another advanced the art of Japanese anima in either genre and story-telling and/or computer-generated graphic design.

The Master and Margarita

Earlier this year I read once again The Master and Margarita. Mikhail Bulgakov's masterpiece is considered by many to be a major 20th century novel and a seminal work of a genre loosely defined as magical realism. However, it's not always an easy novel to read in either its volume or thematic scope. Because of its many-facted nature, Bulgakov's masterpiece is both a metaphysical fantasy and a satire upon life in 1930's Soviet Russia, which alternates between comic and profound, mystical and satirical with seamless ease. It’s also a novel which inter-twines history with politics and religion, as well as a testament to the triumph of artistic self-expression in the face of State censorship and oppression.

Mikhail Bulgakov (May 15th 1891-1940) studied medicine and travelled extensively throughout Russia before settling in Moscow as a theatre director and writer. He worked on and developed, never quite completing his masterpiece right up until his death in 1940. Due to censorship and the controversial nature of his subject-matter, his novel was not published in its entirety until 1967. Its recorded that Bulgakov spoke personally to Joseph Stalin on the telephone requesting permission to travel, a request which was inevitably refused. Given the Zeitgeist of 1930's censorship in the Soviet Union it was also inevitable that Bulgakov's out-spoken attack on the bureaucracy of Stalinist Russia would not see light until decades later. As the Soviet composer Dimitri Shostakovitch also discovered when Joseph Stalin visited the theatre to hear his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District the Soviet dictator was the supreme State censor of the arts.

The Master and Margarita describes the visit of a mysterious character named Woland accompanied by a bizarre entourage who play tricks upon Moscow's citizens. The irony being the Devil and his entourage's conjuring of pranks in what was once the world capital of State-endorsed atheism. The novel's comedy is supplied by the antics of a walking, talking, fat, cigar-smoking cat who accompanies his master Woland and much of the satire is centred upon Woland's exposing the greed, lust, vanity and pride of Moscow's citizens. The novel's rapid action is set in a theatre, both on-stage and back-stage, a psychiatric hospital and the apartments of ordinary Moscow folk and interspersed in the narrative are episodes transporting the reader to Roman-occupied Jerusalem during the trial and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. These are told from the perspective of Pontius Pilate and his tormented conscience. Not least among the novel's triple and inter-related story-lines is the love story of the Master and his redeemer, Margarita.

The Master and Margarita  is prefaced with an epigram from Goethe’s Faust-

                                         ‘…who are you, then?’

‘I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good’.

The myth of the scholar who barters his soul to the devil for knowledge has a peculiar place in the Western psyche, representing as it does, inverted questions of the individual’s relationship to God. Bulgakov's novel is in many ways a development and variation upon the Faustian legend which various playwrights have been attracted to, including the Elizabethan dramatist Christopher Marlowe, author of The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus (1604). Several historical persons in the esoteric tradition have been proposed as a prototype of Faust. In the British esoteric tradition the Elizabethan magus John Dee is often proposed. A more likely figure from the country of the legend’s origin would be the Renaissance figure of Paracelsus.

The medieval legend of the questing scholar who barters his soul to the Devil was developed by the German genius and polymath Goethe in Faust I and II. The figure of Faust in Goethe’s drama, his gambling his soul with the Devil at risk of losing it, was of particular interest to the Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung. In fact, there’s sufficient material in Jung’s collected writings for a full-length essay on his interpretation of Goethe’s drama. Digressing slightly, I cannot resist quoting Jung's summarizing of the Faustian spirit and it's relevance to modern-day man -

It was from the spirit of alchemy that Goethe wrought the figure of the “superman” Faust, and this superman led Nietzsche’s Zarathustra to declare that God was dead and to proclaim the will to give birth to the superman, ‘to create a god for yourself out of your seven devils”. Here we find the true roots, the prepatory processes deep in the psyche, which unleashed the forces at work in the world today. Science and technology have indeed conquered the world, but whether the psyche has gained anything is another matter.  -CW 13: 163

As in Goethe's Faust Mikhail Bulgakov in The Master and Margarita asks questions on individual destiny, fate and redemption. Crucially, Bulgakov raises the relevance of the Faustian myth in his novel to modern times, holding up a mirror to the responses and moral choices available to the individual when faced with the temptation of evil when living under stifling State bureaucracy, censorship and economic hard times.

In his 1997 introduction Richard Peaver stated no-one has ever been able to explain why several minor characters in The Master and Margarita share the names of famous composers.  In  what may be a world first, I believe I can in fact explain why Bulgakov's minor characters are named after composers.

The Master and Margarita opens with a literary professor named Berlioz meeting the Devilish trickster Woland one evening shortly before being decapitated by a tram, slipping under its wheels from spilt sunflower oil, just as Woland predicts. The psychiatric hospital in which the Master is a voluntary resident and where several victims of Woland's diabolic tricks end up insane from their disbelief from encountering the Devil, is maintained by a suitably cold and clinical doctor named Stravinsky. The theatre where Woland first performs magical tricks upon an astounded Moscow audience is run by a much harassed director named Rimsky-Korsakov.

Quite simply, all three of these characters are named after composers who wrote music in which the Devil is prominent. The Romantic composer Hector Berlioz wrote a free-form oratorio entitled The Damnation of Faust. Igor Stravinsky in 1918 wrote a jazz-style chamber work The Soldier's Tale in which a soldier trades his fiddle to the devil for a book which predicts the future of the economy. The Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov famously re-arranged and orchestrated Modest Mussorgsky's tone-poem A Night on a Bare Mountain a musical portrait of a mid-summer Walpurgis Nacht and witches sabbath, as also occurs in a central chapter of The Master and Margarita.

The British author Salman Rushdie once stated that The Master and Margarita was an inspiration for his own novel of magical realism The Satanic Verses (1989). Twenty-three years since first reading Bulgakov's love-story fantasy I recognise echoes of my own life's love-history to certain characters of the novel; my first copy of it was a birthday present given in 1989 from someone special to my heart over decades. Every time I read Bulgakov's landmark novel of magical realism another meaning within its comic and tragic pages illuminates my understanding of my own progress in life. Bulgakov's masterpiece is capable of striking a deep chord on the themes of individual destiny and the relationship between creativity, love and mental illness.

The Master and Margarita has been served well in translation since its first publication in 1967. It's also been a rich source of inspiration to numerous artists, attracted to its strong characters and magical scenes. I've chosen only two images from a wide variety of art available on-line. There are also several Russian productions of The Master and Margarita on Youtube which are well worth checking out.

Editions

Harvill Press 1967 translated by Michael Glenny

Collins Havill 1988 reprinted (twice)
Picador 1997  translated by Diana Burgin and Katherine O’Connor

Penguin 1997 reprint 2000 trans.Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

Also recommended
Mikhail Bulgakov -  Heart of a Dog (1925) first published 1968
A novella/long short story equally comic and profound. 

Wiki-links -  The Master and Margarita     Mikhail Bulgakov

Venus and Mars

As for the famous network of Vulcan, which inclosed 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.


Thus does Sir Thomas Browne allude to the union of the goddess of love with the god of war and their subsequent entanglement, caught inflagrante delicto by Vulcan with his cunning network, in  the Discourse, The Garden of Cyrus. However, the Classical myth of Venus, the goddess of love, taming Mars, the god of war, was first elaborated upon by the Renaissance Hermetic scholars Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) and Pico della Mirandola (1463-94) as symbolic of the victory of love over war and the supremacy of Harmony over strife.

Indeed the planet Earth itself orbits between the planets Venus and Mars, symbolically intermediate between peace and war. The Classical myth was also a lesser representation of the coniunctio of the alchemists and more frequently alluded to as the union of  Sol et Luna, Sun and Moon, it was also alluded to as the astrological phenomenon of the Eclipse, an event which continues to exert a fascination upon humanity.

For the alchemist the uniting of the opposites was the primary objective of the 'Great Work' or magnum opus. And it's interesting to note in passing that C.G. Jung's deepest and final writing on alchemy is entitled Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955-56).

Paintings - Mars and Venus captured by Vulcan - Luca Giordano 1670's
Below- Mars and Venus united by Love - Paulo Veronese c.1578  
See Also - Vulcan 

Femme Fatale

The French phrase femme fatale (lit. deadly woman) represents male sexual fantasies and fears as well as the sexual empowerment of women. Although portrayals of the femme fatale in literature and film have altered considerably, as a mythic creature she continues to endure. Sociologically the role of the femme fatale can be interpreted as embodying female independence and rebellion against traditional female gender roles. In Jungian psychology the femme fatale is an archetypal figure who represents the lowest manifestation of the anima in the unconscious contents of the male psyche.

Typical descriptions include her being mysterious, subversive, double-crossing, unloving, predatory, tough-sweet, unreliable, irresponsible and manipulative. She is often portrayed as a woman who is extremely attractive with a sultry voice, a provocative body and a complex character. She tends to be very intelligent, in addition to her beauty she often speaks, behaves and dresses in an unusual and striking manner designed to attract male attention. Most importantly, she is extremely dangerous; an entanglement with a femme fatale often involves devastating consequences for a man.

From the enchantress Circe’s transformation of men into pigs to the alluring song of the Sirens in Homer’s epic poem ‘The Odyssey’, to Biblical characters such as Delilah’s emasculation of Samson to Salome’s erotic dance, examples of the femme fatale occur throughout  world literature. Other notable literary characters  include Sheridan Le Fanu’s  ‘Carmilla’ and De Quiros’ Genoveva in  The Tragedy of the Street of Flowers  but there's many other portrayals of the femme fatale  scattered throughout world literature, too numerous to mention.

Depictions of the femme fatale often proliferate whenever there is rapid social change and upheaval. An early cinematic portrayal of the femme fatale can be seen in Von Sternberg’s 'The Blue Angel'  (1930) in which the infatuated fall of school-teacher professor Rath through night-club singer Lola (Marlene Dietrich) occurs. Another historical epoch  in which the role of the femme fatale  was prominent was after the social upheaval caused by World War II  in American society, as depicted in film noir cinema. Notable femme fatales in film noir include Rita Hayworth in  ‘Gilda’, Lana Turner in ‘The Postman always rings twice’ and Barbara Stanwyck in ‘Double Indemnity’.

The writings of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung provide an illuminating  understanding of the psychological significance of the femme fatale. In Jungian psychology the femme fatale is a somewhat negative manifestation of the anima (it’s corresponding term in a woman being defined the animus). It’s worthwhile refreshing one’s understanding of the Jungian concept of the anima. Jung defined the anima as the feminine component in a man’s personality and the totality of all the unconscious feminine psychological qualities that a male possesses. In his words, woman has carried for man the living image of his own feminine soul and likewise man has carried for woman the living image of her own spirit. 

Central to Jungian psychology is the concept of projection, that is, active but unconscious thought  towards another, often towards the opposite sex. Projection in itself is neither good or bad, but an unconscious activity, it is what one does with the projection which matters. Negative effects of projection upon the anima (animus in a woman) are directly related to a man’s unawareness and devaluation of his feminine side, and vice-versa in a woman. 

According to Jung the entire process of anima development  is about the male opening up to emotionality and to a broader spirituality, this includes intuitive processes, creativity, imagination and psychic sensitivity towards himself and others. Just as the anima is the master of a man’s moods and irrational behaviour, so too the animus  is the master of opinions and judgements in a woman. Its important here to emphasis that woman is as much in the unconscious grip of her animus as man is of his anima, resulting in unconscious  judgements, opinions and over-intellectualism  at the expense of feeling in her.

Jung proposed that there were four stages of the anima in man’s psyche, these being Eve, Helen of Troy, the Virgin Mary and at the apex of development of the anima the spiritual wisdom of Sophia.  The character of the femme fatale in literature and film, the lowest rung in the sequential development of a man’s anima equivalent to the temptress of Eve takes on a clearer understanding and profounder meaning in  the light of Jung’s psychology.

The problem of relationship and  the frequent misunderstandings between the sexes  according to Jung arises from the fact that, more often that not, rather than accepting and listening to the real  and flawed person facing one, there frequently  arises unconscious  and projected anima or animus activity which overtake true relating. Whenever a man or woman fascinates us we can be sure that a projected content of the unconscious is at work. For a man, this means recognising that his moods, compulsive sexual fantasies, and insatiable restlessness have a dark feminine side at their source. For a woman it means recognising that the opinions and destructive criticisms that suddenly come into her consciousness have the inner figure of the animus behind them. 

Woman as a femme fatale  in Jung's psychology is none other than an immature and undeveloped aspect of a man's anima figure. The misunderstandings between the sexes are succinctly stated  by Jung thus -

‘no man can converse with an animus for five minutes without becoming the victim of his own anima…. The animus draws his sword of power and the anima ejects her poison of illusion and seduction’.  - CW 9 ii 29

The persona of the femme fatale divides opinions amongst sociologists. Some consider the femme fatale to be closely tied to male misogyny, while for others the role of femme fatale remains an example of female independence and a threat to traditional female gender roles. for it, ‘expresses woman's ancient and eternal control of the sexual realm’. 

Some have argued that Jung's psychology, based upon mythology, simplifies the complexities of  relationships between the sexes. What is certain however is that many years before the American pop-star Britney Spears (b. 1984) entitled her new seventh album Femme Fatale,  the German-born chanteuse, Gothic uber-fraulein and prodigy of Andy Warhol, Nico, (1938-98 photo above)  accompanied by the Velvet Underground, sang Lou Reed’s song entitled Femme Fatale in 1967. Like many self-styled femme fatale’s Nico died prematurely.

The modern femme fatale is as likely to have the same self-destructive tendencies and mental health problems which are usually associated with men, that is, problems arising from alcohol abuse, drug addiction, violence and aggression, negative effects from empowerment not resulting in true equality for women.

Jung's psychological  observations, although less fashionable than once, when fully comprehended, continue to clarify the often confused relations between the sexes today. 

Recommended reading and quotes from - The Invisible Partners: How the Male and Female in Each of Us Affects Our Relationships by John A. Sanford 1979

Black Swan

                                   Natalie Portman in Black Swan

Yesterday I attended a screening of  the latest Darren Aronofsky film, the controversial  Black Swan. Set in  New York in the gruelling world of  a Ballet company in rehearsal, it’s the story of  Nina  who has to prove herself capable of performing the dual lead role of Odette/Odile in Swan Lake. The theatrical director thinks  she is too much a perfectionist and although technically  able to perform the part of Odette, the white swan, out of touch with her inner, sexual self  to  perform the role of Odile, the black swan.

It should be remembered that in some ways the dual role of white swan/black swan in Tchaikovsky's perennial masterpiece is the Hamlet role in the ballet world. It requires that the dancer not only projects the pure innocence of the white swan heroine, but also the seductive femme fatale role of the black swan. There's  not too many dramatic roles which demand acting both the goodie and the baddie.

It’s a slow burner of a film which deliberately plays tricks upon the viewer. Natalie Portman’s acting throughout totally engages the audience to empathize with her fate as she confronts her possessive and manipulative mother, jealous peers and predatory director.  Issues such as body image, sexuality, rivalry, madness, obsessiveness and the quest for perfection are explored as Nina’s psyche  slowly unravels under pressure into  a deceptive hallucinatory world.

Natalie Portman has already won numerous awards for her acting in Black Swan and may yet well win more in the coming Oscar season. Personally I feel she deserves to. She acted a  not dissimilar role of  disintegration of personality in Milos Foreman’s 'Goya’s Ghosts' (2006).

 Black Swan has been compared in its decent into paranoia and madness to Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, Repulsion and The Tenant as a psycho-drama. It's as scary as the aforementioned Polanski films in horror and subtle deception of the viewer.  Film critics  however seem to be sharply divided between hate and admiration of Black Swan, some considering Aronofsky’s offering  to be shallow, pretentious and stereotypical in its portrayal of ambitious women, and those who consider it  redeemed by compelling performances  and direction.

 Black Swan shares some of the thematic concerns of Powell and Pressburger’s 1948 ballet film The Red Shoes in its portrait of artistic destruction in the quest for perfection. In essence however Aronofsky's Black Swan is a  horror psycho-drama which exploits the physical and mental pressures of ballet for its own artistic agenda.

                   Prima ballerina Irena Kolesnikova in the role 
                     of the black Swan in  Swan Lake

The Fiery Angel

Set in Renaissance Germany and the world of  magic and occult arts, ever since its first publication in 1907, Valery Bruisov's novel ‘The Fiery Angel', has been controversial. It’s full title is indicative of both its subject matter and stylistic tone

The Fiery Angel or a True Story in which is related of the Devil, not once but often appearing in the Image of a Spirit of Light to a Maiden and seducing her to Various and Many Sinful Deeds, of Ungodly Practises of Magic, Alchymy, Astrology, the Cabbalistical Sciences and Necromancy, of the Trial of the Said Maiden under Presidency of the Eminence of the Archbishop of Trier, as well as of Encounters and Discourses with the Knight and thrice Doctor Agrippa of Nettesheim, and with Doctor Faustus, composed by an Eyewitness. 

Written in an archaic style as if a Gothic romance or Renaissance adventure travelogue and with meticulous attention to historical detail, the story of Renata is narrated by the Knight Ruprecht, recently returned to Germany from his travels in America. Ruprecht recollects his tale from his first encounter with the beautiful Renata who is in a frenzied state. He tells of their relationship, study of the occult together and quest for the fiery angel of Madiel. Eventually the Inquisition are summoned to investigate Renata’s disturbed behaviour at a convent where an outbreak of collective hysteria erupts.

The three-cornered relationship between Renata, an attractive young woman who experiences visions, the Knight Ruprecht and Madiel, the fiery angel who manifests himself as the red-headed Count Heinrich and with whom Renata has an obsessive relationship, was in fact mirrored in the real-life menage-a-trois  between the novelist Bruisov himself, Nina Petrovskaya, a young 19-year old girl and fellow symbolist-decadent author, Andre Bely.

The Russian literary critic and novelist Valery Bruisov became a leading figure amongst Decadent and Symbolist artists of his time. He attended seances, spiritualistic meetings and lectures by scholars of the esoteric and became familiar with leading authors of occultism. Popular interest in the occult, the writings Madame  Blavatsky, founder of the theosophy movement and Rudolph  Steiner were enormous throughout Russian society during the first decade of 20th century. Bruisov's own complete knowledge of esoteric topics is evident throughout the novel which is in essence, like  Andre Bely’s ‘Petersburg’ (1916) a major  novel of  Russian Symbolism. 

It's often during epochs of intense socio-economic upheaval that Apocalyptic prophecies and visions proliferate along with revived interest in the occult arts. The early years of 20th century Russia were no exception to this phenomenon. The artistic movement of Russian Symbolism emphasised the  transcendent aspects of the arts to near religious status. 

Russian symbolist art’s messianic role is exemplified in Mikhail Vrubel's  'Six-winged Seraph' of 1904 (above painting). Composed as a kind of inner vision to the artist, reminding him of his mission and utterly Symbolist in theme and creed, Vrubal’s painting endeavours to rouse its audience from the trivia of everyday existence to awareness of spiritual phenomena. Moving in the same artistic circles, its impossible Bruisov was not aware of Vrubal’s  painting.

In brief, in the absence of social and political reform in Russia, the arts became imbued with religious fervour. The artist Kandinsky in his essay ‘Concerning the spiritual in art' (1911)  stressed this  religiosity of art, stating-

‘Every man who steeps himself in the spiritual possibilities of his art is a valuable helper in the building of the spiritual pyramid which will someday reach to heaven’.

                                       Valery Bruisov 1873-1924

In Bruisov’s novel the heroine Renata falls victim to religious intolerance and an all-too-literal interpretation of a single line of Biblical scripture, Thou shalt not suffer a Witch to live. ( Ex. 22 v. 18) This single verse tragically endorsed genocide throughout Renaissance Europe. Over-zealously interpreted by an exclusively male legislative and judiciary it resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of lives, mostly single women, especially those who were young and attractive, or old and ugly, throughout Europe over three centuries.

In essence the subject-matter of ‘The Fiery Angel’ is that of the complex relationship between sexuality and spirituality. Written only a few years after Sigmund Freud’s seminal work of psychoanalysis ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ (1900) psychiatry eventually abandoned concepts such as female hysteria. Today the heroine Renata would be diagnosed as perhaps suffering from a bi-polar disorder or  old-fashioned existential angst. 

'The Fiery Angel' has a precedent in the French Symbolist writer Joris-Karl Huysman’s  novel La Bas (1891) with  its description of  a black Mass. Aspects of its subject-matter are also echoed  in Aldous Huxley’s novel,  'The Devils of Loundon' (1953) with its depiction of religious hysteria. More importantly the general theme of the occult along with the Passion of Christ also occurs in Mikhail Bulgakov’s  masterpiece ‘The Master and Margarita’ (1940).

Incidentally it's a curious cultural coincidence that the Russian craze for occult learning during the pre-revolutionary years of the 20th century coincides with a similar cultural phenomena in 1650's England. Both historical  epochs were  characterised  by political instability and uncertainty. Following the civil war, execution of Charles I and establishment of the Protectorate of Cromwell  large portions of English society, unsure of direction, apprehensive of an impending apocalypse, searched for new knowledge and spiritual guide-lines. The same social phenomena occurred  in Russia centuries later. While England experienced the trauma of civil war, deposition of Monarch and a radical change of Government and then engaged in popular interest in esoteric affairs, early 20th century Russian interest in the occult preceded the horrors of world war, regicide, radical change of government  and civil  war. 

Bruisov fleetingly alludes to the city of Norwich in 'The Fiery Angel'  and there exists a curious connection between  Czarist Russia to Norwich worth exploring; for the actions of the archetypal historical character associated with the occult, the charismatic, haemophiliac-healing 'Mad Monk' Rasputin can be linked to a 17th century Norwich resident.  Among the alchemical manuscripts Rasputin is recorded to have stolen from the Romanov Czar’s Imperial Library were those by the English physician Arthur Dee when resident  physician to Czar Mikhail circa 1614-30 in Moscow. When Arthur Dee, eldest son of the Elizabethan magus John Dee, left Moscow he eventually settled at Norwich where he befriended the physician Thomas Browne.

When Arthur Dee died in 1651 a flood of esoteric literature began to  pour from British printing-presses. Many important esoteric titles made their first appearance in the English language during the 1650's decade,  including those of  the magus Cornelius Agrippa, author of 'Three books of occult philosophy' who makes a significant appearance in the action of  'The Fiery Angel'.

Arthur Dee’s close associate Thomas Browne confidently defended a belief in  angels in his Religio Medici declaring -

Therefore for Spirits I am so farre from denying their existence, that I could easily beleeve, that not onely whole Countries, but particular persons have their Tutelary, and Guardian Angels: It is not a new opinion of the Church of Rome, but an old one of Pythagoras and Plato; there is no heresie in it, and if not manifestly defin'd in Scripture, yet is it an opinion of a good and wholesome use in the course and actions of a mans life, and would serve as an Hypothesis to salve many doubts, whereof common Philosophy affordeth no solution. R.M.Part I:33

 Edition consulted -

'The Fiery Angel' by Valery Bruisov published by Dedalus  2005  with an  afterword by Gary Lachman