DANSE MACABRE

Danse macabre is a popular iconographic narrative in the late-medieval European art, depicted as a dance of human skeletons rhythmically moving to music with the late lamented, which refers to the fragility of their lives and how vain were the glories of earthly life… With this inferno dance starts the afterworld ordeal of the sinners’ souls “on the deathly plain of the infinite mass“… However, during the past five hundred years, the picture of the world and the worldview have considerably changed, and such understanding has gone by in time and does no longer exist!
We no longer imagine Death as a Grim Reaper, i.e. as a man or cloaked skeleton holding a scythe… For us death is a new stage in the evolution of the immortal soul, for which after the life starts the life after… Yes, we will have to part! Yes, we will have to report! However, we will ‘join the majority’; are not we highly expected there by our relatives and close ones… And there is nothing fatally infernal about it! There is Divine Will of God, i.e. God’s plan for a human (You should go!), and liberum arbitrium – free will of a human (when…)!

Probably, exactly this modern understanding of death Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart put into his words, when on 4 April 1787 he was writing to his father, “… death is the real ultimate goal of our life. Over the past two years, I became so closely acquainted with this true and man's best friend that the image of death does not only contain something frightening for me, but, on the contrary, gives a lot of calm and comfort! And I thank God that I was given this happiness to understand death as a source of our true felicity.”

In this painting everything is significant and has a meaning: the color, the light, the number, configuration, and location...

For example, we know that "2" is inverted "5"... And "?" - in the inverted form (like in the picture the one made of lilies) means "the answer"...

"." - Do you see the planet? It might, probably, mean "of a planetary significance"...

An amusing puzzle, isn't it?!

1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9 - they are magic numbers and symbols...

A stern look... No fun?! - Of course, joking aside... It's serious!

Bare feet... Before Death we all stand naked and exposed! But maybe there is an added meaning... If we do not "fall from grace", we pass away quietly and relaxed in the sleep "like saints, after washing feet in the evening"...

The rose petals are like lips open for a kiss... Yes, Death is a kiss of Eternity! And, by the way, people in the know say that for the soul the experience of death is less painful than the experience of birth...

And on the left, do you see, the ends of the stole are forming a heart..? Anyone can understand the symbol!

But further on, The Thoughtful, Sensitive, Perceptive and Discerning Reader, please, continue yourself..!

But the most important thing is, perhaps, the understanding that we are so much loved... and that.., as everything in this world is for our good, so is the death.., thanks to which we are allowed to dump our old, shabby and worn out on the potholes of life, duds... to get new, impeccably made, outfits to match our psychological age and spiritual growth!

But if everything is completely different?! - In this regard... it seems appropriate to remember an old anecdote (which, probably, cropped up from a parable on the same topic) about two embryos having a conversation in their mother's womb concerning the essence of existence. The younger brother asks his older, more experienced and wise, brother a question, "Is there life after death?" - And the older brother answers, "I don't know... No one went and came back from there..."

So, the whole message of the painting can be revealed in the following words of Fanny Ardant, ‘J'aime vivre, je veux vivre …, mais en même temps je n'ai pas peur de mourir’! (‘I like living, I want to live …, but at the same time I am not afraid of dying’)