Danse Macabre

“ Ant. Verard,” 1509, 8vo. with the same Danse Macabre.
No. XI. “Heures à l’usaige d’Angers. Simon Vostre,” 1510, 8vo. With the same Danse Macabre. Particularly described by M. Peignot.
No. XII. “Heures à l’usaige de Rome. Guil. Godar,” 1510, large 8vo. vellum illuminated. A magnificent book. It contains the Danse Macabre as in No. I. But it is remarkable for a third Dance of Death on the margins at bottom, consisting of small compartments with a single figure, but unaccompanied in the usual manner by Death, who, in various shapes and attitudes, is occasionally introduced. ”

“ Vile women, dropping the mask of their sex, pursued men in long, haggard, furious lines over the artificial mounds that groaned under the chase. The half-naked figure of Cramoisin appeared, surrounded by bacchantes, exhorting the crowd to return to the primitive innocence. Forms meaningless and confused flitted, whirled, reeled before them in an unending danse Macabre, while mingled with the tempest came the ever-exultant shout:
"Vive la Raison! Vive la Raison!"
Suddenly, by the catch of her breath and by the involuntary "Ah!" Dossonville knew that Nicole had found Javogues. ”

“ During the rest of the century we find not unfrequently allusions to the “Danse Macabre.” The English poet Lydgate wrote a series of stanzas to accompany the figures, and it was the subject of some of the earliest engravings on wood. In the posture and accompaniments of the figures representing the different classes of society, and in the greater or less reluctance with which the living accept their not very attractive partners, satire is usually implied, and it is in some cases accompanied with drollery. ”

“ The figure representing death has almost always a grimly mirthful countenance, and appears to be dancing with good will. The most remarkable early representation of the “Danse Macabre” now preserved, is that painted on the wall of the church of La Chaise Dieu, in Auvergne, a beautiful fac-simile of which was published a few years ago by the well-known antiquary M. Jubinal. This remarkable picture begins with the figures of Adam and Eve, who are introducing death into the world in the form of a serpent with a death’s head. ”

“ Machabée, m. (popular) , gay girls’ bully, or “ponce”; see Poisson; Jew, “mouchey, Ikey, or sheney;” body of a drowned person.
Je ne vois d’autre origine à cette expression que la lecture du chap. xii. du deuxième livre des Machabées, qui a encore lieu aux messes des morts; ou plutôt c’est de là que sera venue la danse macabre, dont l’argot a conservé le souvenir.—Michel. ”

“ As society then presented itself to the eye, people might easily suppose that the world was running mad, and folly, in one shape or other, seemed to be the principle which ruled most men’s actions. The jocular societies, described in my last chapter, which multiplied in France during the fifteenth century, initiated a sort of mock worship of Folly. That sort of inauguration of death which was performed in the “Danse Macabre,” was of French growth, but the grand crusade against folly appears to have originated in Germany. Sebastian Brandt was a native of Strasburg, born in 1458. ”

“ Guyot Marchant's series of editions of the Danse Macabre or 'danse des Morts,' has been already mentioned. An edition of the same work, printed at Lyons, February 18, 1499 (no printer's name) , a copy of which is among the books which entered the British Museum under the bequest of Mr. Alfred Huth, is especially interesting as containing cuts of the shops of a printer and a bookseller, at both of which Death is at work. ”

“ He has a demonic face and he needs it for he has to go through two most critical illnesses, lose fingers in every other chapter, engage in itvely (illegible text) scraps iln (illegible text) the alternate chapters, fall in love madly several times, once with a princess who leads him a danse macabre, and this is but a fraction of his experiences. ”

“ Innocent’s Cloister, at Paris, called the Dance of Death; so that in this Passage Mr. Warton must be supposed to understand that Macaber’s Verses were written posterior to that Painting. He further informs us, in the Additions and Corrections to the second Volume of his History of Poetry, that the earliest complete French Translation of these Verses was printed in 1499, but that a less perfect Edition had been before published in 1486, and that the French Rhymes in this last are said to be by Michel Marot. A Copy in French of La grande Danse de Macabre des Hommes et des Femmes, printed in 4to. ”

“ Macarius is frequently introduced in the pictures of this subject; and some antiquaries suppose that hence the Dance of Death derived the name, Dance Macabre, by which it used to be generally known. Others derive it from the Arabic mac-bourah,—a cemetery. Neither derivation is improbable; but it is of little consequence to us which is correct.
It may seem strange that such a legend as this of "The Three Dead and the Three Living," with such a moral, should become the origin of a dance. But we should remember that in many countries dancing has been a religious ceremony. ”

“ The Dance of Death is not a revel, and in it Death does not dance at all. A Dance of Death, or a Dance Macabre, as it was called, is a succession of isolated pictures, all informed with the same motive, it is true, but each independent of the others, and consisting of a group, generally of but two figures, one of which is the representative of Death. ”

“ The usual title, “The Dance of Death,” which accompanies most of the printed works, is not altogether appropriate. It may indeed belong to the old Macaber painting and other similar works where Death is represented in a sort of dancing and grotesque attitude in the act of leading a single character; but where the subject consists of several figures, yet still with occasional exception, they are rather to be regarded as elegant emblems of human mortality in the premature intrusion of an unwelcome and inexorable visitor. ”

“ The music became wilder, the dance faster and faster; eyes flared and flashed, jewels twinkled and glittered, casting colour and fire on the pallid grins that glode through the hall, weaving a ghastly rhythmic woof in intricate maze of multitudinous motion, when sudden came a pause, and every eye turned to the same spot:—in the doorway stood a woman, perfect in form, in holding, and in hue, regarding the company as from the pedestal of a goddess, while the dancers stood “like one forbid,” frozen to a new death by the vision of a life that killed. “Dead things, I live!” ”

“ Other variations are also given. 'The dance is strange, and wonderful, as well as diabolical, for turning themselves back to back, they take one another by the arms and raise each other from the ground, then shake their heads to and fro like Anticks, and turn themselves as if they were mad.' [518] Reginald Scot, quoting Bodin, says: 'At these magicall assemblies, the witches neuer faile to danse; and in their danse they sing these words, Har har, divell divell, danse here danse here, plaie here plaie here, Sabbath sabbath. ”

“ He told about a Devil Dance, a religious rite, he had seen, wherein all the devils and evil spirits were represented by disguised and horrible-looking men, who chased a wildly terrified human soul, as a boy represented himself to be in the pantomimic dance. ”

“ At first the movements of the dancer may be slow, but as the music waxes louder and takes effect, he becomes gradually more excited, urging himself to phrenzy by striking himself violently, and applying his mouth to the neck of the decapitated sacrificial victim, he drinks its blood, and possibly a potation of ardent spirits. ”

“ This dance betrays the pitiful but haunting hope of primitive man, bound by chains as he lies, the slave to his own fear. For the limbs of the dancer seem fettered by hands unseen, so that at the moment when freedom is almost won, they relapse once more into bondage, helplessly jerking out their life in a divine paralysis. And now at last the sacrifice is accomplished. In dreadful travesty of death the girl languishes to the ground, and the bear-skinned tribesmen gather round to carry her away to burial, shoulder high.
Such is the ballet of Le Sacre du Printemps, if ballet it can be called. ”

“ In a masked dance it is easy to give a death-blow between the shoulders. Two crowds meet and laugh and shout and mingle almost inextricably, and if a shriek of pain should arise, it is not noticed in the din, and when they part, if one should stagger and fall bleeding to the ground, who can tell who has given the blow? ”

“ A restless life have they who wear thy chain!
Ah Love! our weal, our woe, our bliss, our bane,
More hapless still are they who never felt thy pain.
All the masks dance round Cupid, Then enter a band of satyrs, who frighten away Love and his votaries, and conclude the scene, dancing in a grotesque manner. ”

“ First they advanced, bowed and retired, then they repeated what they had done before, and again, each time getting faster and faster in their movements, changing their bows into pirouettes, craning their long necks and making such antics as they went through the figures of their dance, and replacing their dignity with such grotesqueness, as to make their large audience shake with laughter, they themselves keeping throughout all their grotesque measures a solemn air, which only seemed to heighten the effect of their antics. ”

“ They dance to the sound of strange music, and intoxicate themselves with a sort of vile spirit, brewed from grain and particular roots, sometimes, it is said, sharpened by pepper. The dance is most grotesque and savage; a multitude of men taking hands sometimes in a circle, sometimes in a line, beating time with their feet, bend with one accord, first nearly to the earth with their faces, then backward, and then sidewise, with various wild contortions. These, and their uncouth dress of black and gray blankets, give a peculiar air of brutal ferocity to the assemblage. ”

“ Standing at the point of entry one looks at the opposite side and sees great cracks, yawning cavities with open mouths of blackness, dismal shadows, to which flickering lights give a ghoulish, dance-like appearance. Yes, the devil seems to be holding high carnival, while his imps would dance the night away. They bob up and down and swing their arms in fiendish glee, while the dance goes on forever. None can look therein without seeing these imps and their antics. The floor recedes rapidly from the entrance, and is composed of great rocks scattered in confusion. ”

“ The name of danse des bouffons sometimes given to the sword-dance may be explained by a very constant feature of the English examples, in which the dancers generally include or are accompanied by one or more comic or grotesque personages. The types of these grotesques are not kept very distinct in the descriptions, or, probably, in fact. But they appear to be fundamentally two. There is the ‘Tommy’ or ‘fool,’ who wears the skin and tail of a fox or some other animal, and there is the ‘Bessy,’ who is a man dressed in a woman’s clothes. ”

“ In these designs, which are wholly different from the dull and oftentimes disgusting Macaber Dance, which is confined, with little exception, to two figures only, we have the most interesting assemblage of characters, among whom the skeletonized Death, with all the animation of a living person, forms the most important personage; sometimes amusingly ludicrous, occasionally mischievous, but always busy and characteristically occupied. ”

“ The showy finery of the ball dress, must be replaced by the winding sheet and the grave cloths. That form which under the tutoring hand of art, moved with such grace, through all the evolutions of the dance, must lie icy cold in the embrace of death.
Then they will have done with earthly things. No music with its dulcet notes will wake the echoes of the dreary caverns of the dead; no jovial companions will relieve the dullness of the grave; no dance will fill the void of slow revolving ages. ”

“ Valentine brought his glass down on the counter.
"What is it?" he exclaimed. "Why, the greatest dance in the world, the dance that youth sends out the invitations for, and women live for, and old men die with longing for. We set the hours dancing in the night, we—all who are gay and careless, who love life in the greatest way, and who laugh at death, and who aren't afraid of the devil. The devil's only a bogey to frighten old women and children. ”

“ People danced, as in the fairy-tales, whether they would or no, sick and well, young and old, and their dancing-green was the graveyard. A grinning skeleton was enthroned as King Death, and round him the frantic people danced hand in hand, shouting and singing, over the graves that held their friends and kinsfolk. ”

“ When we think of the kind of ritual from which tragedy emerged, the lament for a dead god, we can see how well a dance was fitted, in primitive times, to express the emotions that we call tragic.
This dance gradually grew into drama; how it did so is an old story. Into the inarticulate mass of emotion and dumb show which is the Dance there comes some more articulate element. There comes some one who relates, or definitely enacts, the actual death or "pathos" of the hero, while the Chorus goes on as before expressing emotion about it. ”

“ The mingled mirth and horror grew more and more maddening, till the sand all around refused to soak in the blood they had shed, and the naked feet of the dancers plashed to their own barbarous war cry, or stumbled over the dead bodies of the slain; for with every turn of the dance, an axe had fallen, and a soul gone shrieking up to its Maker. ”