cedarxwing

[cedarxwing]

William Mainwaring Palin(1862 - 1947)

[cedarxwing]

A Tale from the Decameron (1916) by John William Waterhouse

[cedarxwing]

So where can I learn more about the Death and the Maiden trope/motif/symbolism/whatever you choose to call it? I'm a novice with 99% of what you post but it's fascinating and beautiful and I understand just enough to keep coming back for more.

learn about it in what way, anon? 

in a historical sense i think it was borne of the danse macabre of the late middle ages and then developed more fully in renaissance art, which eroticised the image of the funereal figure seizing a young woman. then there was a great revival of the trope during the time of the romantics (capital r).  consider the stark difference in tone between bernini’s rape of proserpina—the pathos, the tormented movement in the marble—and some of baldung’s artworks, the lipless kiss, the embrace; death’s skeletal hand cradling the maiden’s tipped head vs the cruelty in pluto’s grasp to impress upon proserpina’s flesh as it does. seemingly the same subject, very different execution. it’s a little complicated bc many credit the homeric hymn to demeter wherein persephone is plucked from her meadow by the prince of the dead as one of the first incarnations of this myth but i feel that i have to disagree. i think the hades/persephone myth has recently become very romanticised but that we mustn’t neglect its roots in rape and abduction. that’s why i would omit it from this narrative.  we might note, then, that there are specific artistic cues that the trope follows and that most crucially, it seems, the death and the maiden story pivots on the seduction of the subject, and not on their coercion or duress. 

but in a more personal sense... i would wager most enthusiasts of the motif began small—i did. as a child i was obsessed with andrew lloyd webber’s phantom of the opera, and with this masked angel of music who felt such a great and terrible longing, and who suffered so acutely. it was released when i was four. years later i went on to read the book, not understanding a word of it but fuelled by passion. more years passed and this time, when i read it again, i began to take note. 

“You must know that I am built up of death, from head to foot, and it is a corpse who loves you and adores you and will never, never leave you!”

here are some other tales i’ve picked up along the way. some follow the narrative more closely than others, but many have been moulded by the author/creator’s vision: - keturah and lord death by martine leavitt - candyman, dir. bernard rose, 1992 / the forbidden by clive barker - charles baudelaire’s poetry, but especially un fantôme - angela carter’s short stories: perhaps start with the bloody chamber, the executioner’s beautiful daughter and the lady of the house of love - bram stoker’s dracula / dracula, dir. francis ford coppola, 1992

- margaret atwood’s marrying the hangman - keats’ ode to a nightingale - walter savage landor’s death stands above me - dante gabriel rosetti’s death-in-love - percy shelley’s to ianthe, sleeping - gwendolyn bennett’s sonnet 1 - penny dreadful (2014-16) - deathless by catherynne m. valente - the coffin path by katherine clements - am i allowed to say nekromantik? i’m gonna say it. directed by jörg buttgereit, 1987 - for a non-fiction rec, joyce carol oates’ essay the aesthetics of fear which v much touches on the notion of the funereal seducer, and from which the excerpt above was taken^

if i think of more i will reblog and add!♡

[cedarxwing]

gifsets aren’t the place for you to “finally admit” that you didn’t like a movie or show btw

[cedarxwing]

Illustrations from Jacques Cazotte’s The Devil in Love (Félix Hilaire Buhot, 1878). 

(via Artsy & Pinterest)

[cedarxwing]

US Navy Sailors, study for a Collier's Magazine cover by J.C. Leyendecker, 1917.

[cedarxwing]

𝔑𝔬𝔰𝔣𝔢𝔯𝔞𝔱𝔲 𝔡𝔦𝔯. ℜ𝔬𝔟𝔢𝔯𝔱 𝔈𝔤𝔤𝔢𝔯𝔰

[cedarxwing]

Stefan Kürten (German, 1963), Viseion of a Tree, 2024. Acrylic, ink and sunken relief cut on wood, 100 x 70 cm.

[cedarxwing]

you may already know this, but! claustrophilia wasn’t just inspired by hannibal, it was published first on ao3 as hannibal fanfiction

YES I SAW IT AFTER I POSTED THAT HFDHHD honestly work !

[cedarxwing]

Junji Ito

[cedarxwing]

taking a hiatus to focus on my partner's new jockstrap collection. see you all next year

[cedarxwing]

Group of Flowers (1675) by Willem van Aelst

[cedarxwing]

being in academia is kind of like where you're on everest and you see the frozen bodies of the other people who've tried it strewn about everywhere and you think "okay, but that's them and i'm me"

[cedarxwing]

i love when WOMEN escape stories. men…stay trapped forever

[cedarxwing]

can we get donna tartt on hot ones

[cedarxwing]

Crash (1996), dir. David Cronenberg

[cedarxwing]

While we’re talking about censorship, I need everyone to stop playing this little amnesia game where we pretend not to remember what internet and fandom has looked like for the past 20 years. Weird and taboo porn has always existed, it used to be a LOT easier to access, and you won’t die if you look at it. We simply cannot continue placating the crazy mob of people who are scared of sex and love overstating harm, they’ll call you a pedophile literally no matter what, and they’ll roll around in their cognitive dissonance like a hog in mud when you point out that the other group calling you a freak and a pedo are the conservative alt right. Fucking exhausting being a fag and a pervert in 2025.