treasures.”
“I would probably understand better how valuable these things are if I knew who Spinoza and Descartes were.”
“Of course. But first let us try to familiarize ourselves with the period they lived in. Have a seat.”
They sat in the same places as before, Sophie in the big armchair and Alberto Knox on the sofa. Between them was the coffee table with the book and the casket. Alberto removed his wig and laid it on the writing desk.
“We are going to talk about the seventeenth century—or what we generally refer to as the Baroque period.”
“The Baroque period? What a strange name.”
“The word ‘baroque’ comes from a word that was first used to describe a pearl of irregular shape. Irregularity was typical of Baroque art, which was much richer in highly contrastive forms than the plainer and more harmonious Renaissance art. The seventeenth century was on the whole characterized by tensions between irreconcilable contrasts. On the one hand there was the Renaissance’s unremitting optimism—and on the other hand there were the many who sought the opposite extreme in a life of religious seclusion and self-denial. Both in art and in real life, we meet pompous and flamboyant forms of self-expression, while at the same time there arose a monastic movement, turning away from the world.”
“Both proud palaces and remote monasteries, in other words.”
“Yes, you could certainly say that. One of the Baroque period’s favorite sayings was the Latin expression ‘carpe diem’—‘seize the day.’ Another Latin expression that was widely quoted was ‘memento mori,’ which means ‘Remember that you must die.’ In art, a painting could depict an extremely luxurious lifestyle, with a little skull painted in one corner.
“In many senses, the Baroque period was characterized by vanity or affectation. But at the same time a lot of people were concerned with the other side of the coin; they were concerned with the ephemeral nature of things. That is, the fact that all the beauty that surrounds us must one day perish.”
“It’s true. It is sad to realize that nothing lasts.”
“You think exactly as many people did in the seventeenth century. The Baroque period was also an age of conflict in a political sense. Europe was ravaged by wars. The worst was the Thirty Years’ War which raged over most of the continent from 1618 to 1648. In reality it was a series of wars which took a particular toll on Germany. Not least as a result of the Thirty Years’ War,
France gradually became the dominant power in Europe.”
“What were the wars about?”
“To a great extent they were wars between Protestants and Catholics. But they were also about political power.”
“More or less like in Lebanon.”
“Apart from wars, the seventeenth century was a time of great class differences. I’m sure you have heard of the French aristocracy and the Court of Versailles. I don’t know whether you have heard much about the poverty of the French people. But any display of magnificence presupposes a display of power. It has often been said that the political situation in the Baroque period was not unlike its art and architecture. Baroque buildings were typified by a lot of ornate nooks and crannies. In a somewhat similar fashion the political situation was typified by intrigue, plotting, and assassinations.”
“Wasn’t a Swedish king shot in a theater?”
“You’re thinking of Gustav III, a good example of the sort of thing I mean. The assassination of Gustav III wasn’t until 1792, but the circumstances were quite baroque. He was murdered while attending a huge masked ball.”
“I thought he was at the theater.”
“The great masked ball was held at the Opera. We could say that the Baroque period in Sweden came to an end with the murder of Gustav III. During his time there had been a rule of ‘enlightened despotism,’ similar to that in the reign of Louis XIV almost a hundred years earlier. Gustav III was also an extremely vain person who adored all French ceremony and courtesies. He also loved the theater...”
“... and that was the death of him.”
“Yes, but the theater of the Baroque period was more than an art form. It was the most commonly employed symbol of the time.”
“A symbol of what?”
“Of life, Sophie. I don’t know how many times during the seventeenth century it was said that ‘Life is a theater.’ It was very often, anyway. The Baroque period gave birth to modern theater—with all its forms of scenery and theatrical machinery. In the theater one built up an illusion on stage—to expose ultimately that the stage play was just an illusion. The theater thus became a reflection of human life in general. The theater could show that ‘pride comes before a fall,’ and present a merciless portrait of human frailty.”
“Did Shakespeare live in the Baroque period?”
“He wrote his greatest plays around the year 1600, so he stands with one foot in the Renaissance and the other in the Baroque. Shakespeare’s work is full of passages about life as a theater. Would you like to hear some of them?”
“Yes.”
“In As You Like It, he says:
All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.
“And in Macbeth, he says:
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.”
“How very pessimistic.”
“He was preoccupied with the brevity of life. You must have heard Shakespeare’s most famous line?”
“To be or not to be—that is the question.”
“Yes, spoken by Hamlet. One day we are walking around on the earth—and the next day we are dead and gone.”
“Thanks, I got the message.”
“When they were not comparing life to a stage, the Baroque poets were comparing life to a dream. Shakespeare says, for example: We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep...”
“That was very poetic.”
“The Spanish dramatist Calderon de la Barca, who was bom in the year 1600, wrote a play called Life Is a Dream, in which he says: ‘What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story, and the greatest good is little enough, for all life is a dream ...’ “
“He may be right. We read a play at school. It was called Jeppe on the Mount.”
“By Ludvig Holberg, yes. He was a gigantic figure here in Scandinavia, marking the transition from the Baroque period to the Age of Enlightenment.”
“Jeppe falls asleep in a ditch ... and wakes up in the Baron’s bed. So he thinks he only dreamed that he was a poor farmhand. Then when he falls asleep again they carry him back to the ditch, and he wakes up again. This time he thinks he only dreamed he was lying in the Baron’s bed.”
“Holberg borrowed this theme from Calderon, and Calderon had borrowed it from the old Arabian tales, A Thousand and One Nights. Comparing life to a dream, though, is a theme we find even farther back in history, not least in India and China. The old Chinese sage Chuang-tzu, for example, said: Once I dreamed I was a butterfly, and now I no longer know whether I am Chuang-tzu, who dreamed I was a butterfly, or whether I am a butterfly dreaming that I am Chuang-tzu.”
“Well, it was impossible to prove either way.”
“We had in Norway a genuine Baroque poet called Fetter Dass, who lived from 1647 to 1707. On the one hand he was concerned with describing life as it is here and now, and on the other hand he emphasized that only God is eternal and constant.”
“God is God if every land was waste, God is God if every man were dead.”
