Mountains, trees, rocks, and ships at sea (is also Re: GRGR(23): Rügen

[Doug Millison]

 At the end of a fine post jbor reminds us,  "But Friedrich also realised
that such interpretations depend inexorably upon the viewer. Of another
work he [Friedrich] wrote: "On a bare stony seashore there stands, raised
on high, a cross--to those who see it as such, a consolation, to those who
do not simply a cross."

Room for the viewer, yes, but it may also be worth noting that Friedrich
seems to have had very clear ideas about what he was saying in his
painting. Re another painting of this subject, _The Cross in the
Mountains_, first exhibited in Dresden, in the artist's studio, on
Christmas, 1808, Friedrich wrote, according to Hugh Honour in his 1979
survey, _Romanticism_:

"...Friedrich was persuaded by his friends to write a description and
interpretation of the picture: 'Description of the picture. On the peak of
the rock the cross is raised high, surrounded with evergreen firs and with
evergreen ivy entwiningits base. The sun sinks radiating beams of light and
in the crimson glow of evening the Savious gleams on the Cross.
Interpretation of the Picture. Jesus Christ, nailed to the wood, is turned
towards the sinking sun, as to the image of the eternal life-giving Father.
The old world - the time when God the Father moved directly on the earth -
died with the teaching of Jesus. This sun sank and the earth was no longer
able to comprehend the departing light. The purest, the most precious metal
of the Saviour's figure on the Cross shines forth in the gold of the
evening light and thus reflects it on the earth in softened brilliance. The
Cross stands erected on a rock unshakably firm as our faith in Jesus
Christ. Evergreen, enduring through all ages, the firs stand round the
Cross, like the hope of mankind in Him, the Crucified.' "

Honour goes on to put this painting, despite its hopeful theme, in the same
light of despair that jbor notes in these paintings and in these passages
of GR -- where I read Pynchon's yearning for transcendence jerked short by
the despair of life in this world of mud and woe, very much in keeping with
the Romantics who seem so close to Pynchon in these pages.

That light that Friedrich describes in this painting of the Cross also
looks, to me, a lot like the light of that particular glorious sunset in
M&D. Yearning for the dying light, fear of a final light.

d  o  u  g    m  i  l  l  i  s  o  n
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