tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3407624264627208128.post5026226074797375900..comments2024-01-26T21:38:25.924-08:00Comments on Duane's PoeTree: David Norris writesDuanesPoeTreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17053093400086634552noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3407624264627208128.post-22468228528318056522016-03-21T01:54:01.223-07:002016-03-21T01:54:01.223-07:00“The White Clown” should be viewed as an Easter co...“The White Clown” should be viewed as an Easter commentary, especially in its first stanza (despite the explicit reversal at the end of the stanza), the sidelong allusions in the second stanza (the deserts, the loaves and fishes, the large crowds, even the reference to Poppy dying on the high wire) and, of course, the poem’s closing line. However, it is not an Easter allegory; it merely uses the Christian motifs as a resonant background to his personal tale of love and sacrifice.<br />Sandro Botticelli was a 15th-century Florentine painter. His illustration of the first printed edition of Dante’s “Inferno” was a seminal literary-artistic event, but he is best known for his painting, “The Birth of Venus” (portrayed as “young and beautiful, with auburn hair, green eyes, long legs” emerging triumphantly from a scallop half shell on the shore). Under the influence of the puritanical Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, Boticelli first turned from decorative to devout art and then ceased painting altogether, perhaps even going so far as burning his own paintings in the infamous Bonfire of the Vanities in 1497, when moralistic mobs collected and destroyed thousands of books, artworks, mirrors, musical instruments, fine clothing, playing cards, cosmetics, and other vain, idolatrous objects.<br /><br />Coincidentally, in “Corteo,” a Cirque du Soleil extravaganza, the White Clown, a would-be authority figure, opens the door to the magic of the circus for the Dead Clown, who watches his own funeral taking place in a carnival-like atmosphere.DuanesPoeTreehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17053093400086634552noreply@blogger.com