Janus has just shut down the last weekend of his month here in North Carolina, and most of the mid-Atlantic states. The god's reign of terror--sub-teen-ish, "wind-chill" temperatures, multi-inch snow, sleet, and freezing rain, cloud-darkened daytime hours--would seem to allow for little debate about the "cruellest month." On the other hand, the balcony view of my duck pond--white-blanketed banks, frosted trees reflected on its glistening mirror-like surface--has its own chiaroscuro beauty. Nothing at all, obviously, like Nicolas Poussin's technicolor fantasy, "Dance to the Music of Time" (1639)--that French Renaissance painter's Olympian version of Kalendis Ianuarius.
The drawing of Janus in last post (q.v.) is many more than a thousand years older and gleaned from a temple-frieze. In that ingratiating anthropomorphic form or others like it, this native-born nature-god was worshiped by the Latins for millennia. And most likely propitiated vociferously at his festival on New Year's day--"Father Janus, be gentle with us in your eponymous month to come" ... "Lighten up a bit" ... "How about giving us a break on this cold weather thing?" ... "Make it a real mensis misericordium for your humble votaries this year!"--or such like.
But they would have known he could be tough: notice his SPEAR, at rest, but right-arm ready. The KEY in his left hand is symbolically more benign, promising the opening-up of new possibilities for the coming year (his affixed double-visage had always, more practically, guarded Roman door- and gate-ways). The COCK is an obvious icon for beginnings of things. But as a fertility symbol it might also invoke in every supplicant's mind what certain things they ought to be doing during the long winter nights--things to be brought to fruition nine months or so later at about harvest time.
The old nature-deity is stylized almost out-of-existence--he's a statue--in Poussin's painting above, but it's fair throbbing with fertility nonetheless. Well, it throbs with just about everything--hard to find a more baroque conglomeration of classical images. Lots of fun. But to the point: Janus is well to the (sinistrum) left, so his backward visage mercifully looks at nothing in the past. All is forgiven. Everything in the frame is thus pictorially rightward and optimistically forward-looking. The voluptuous Four Seasons will be linked one to the other in cosmic and irenic harmony in tune with the rhythms of old Time's lyre, dancing their way through the coming Solar Year--which is personified over their pretty heads in the divine presence of Helios/Hyperion/Apollo and his train careering across the sky. Look for the golden hoop and halo.
But look especially at the foreground figures once again. To the rightest is Time, hoar-headedly-balding but buck-naked and buff, who stares lustily at three of the Seasons while playing on his crotch-clenched harp. The ladies glance approvingly and willingly back. The fourth one? That's right, her smiling gaze--MonaLisalike--is directed solely at YOU, the Viewer. How sly, but how joyfully seductive, is her over-the-bare-shoulder, come-hither look! And she's got to be Winter!--as far to the left and closest to Janus as she is. Dame Winter says silently: Alas, the cold, but think of the warm and snuggly potential of nights long and dark. A couple of rosy-cheeked cherubs like these playing in the corners might be the result.
Aroint thee, then, thou anti-depressants and 1000-watt light-panels, the prescription for Seasonal Affective Disorder is to gaze on the delights of Poussin's "Dance to the Music of Time" for an hour or so. (more)
************
No comments:
Post a Comment