(Timely and gorgeous, thank you Brendan. - promoted by caliberal)
This week we look at different interpretations of waves, a source of inspiration to artists ranging from painters to poets. Waves crashing against the rocks illustrate the power of nature. The timeless monotony of waves on a beach forms a comforting pattern, but when we venture into this water world, seemingly secure inside ships, the waves become a threatening force. Within a storm the water seems alive, surging forward with no care for those caught in its grasp. Below the fold, a range of interpretations from different types of artists.
Paintings I've selected "Belle-Ile, rain effect" by Monet (left) and "Seascape at Saintes-Maries" by Van Gogh (right). Belle-Ile means beautiful island but it has a wild and untamed beauty, particularly the rocky coasts. Monet's painting captures the movement and power of the waves, and the streaking of the canvas gives the impression of looking through a torrential downpour of rain. Van Gogh's piece shows a less stormy sea, with the sun shining off the water. The sailboats seem to skim across the surface of the deep ocean, put near the top of the painting so that the majority of the space is filled with the waves.
Poems:
The two examples I've chosen here are The Wreck of the Hesperus, by Longfellow, and Dover Beach, by Arnold. Hesperus is a grim story of hubris punished, written in a grand style, with a fairly strict meter and rhyme. Longfellow presents the waves as appearing benign, even inviting -- but they lead the ship to its doom against the rocks, and the last quoted line leaves the reader in no doubt that the water was a willing accomplice in the wreck. Dover Beach is most famous for its closing stanza ("And we are here as on a darkling plain...") and is a despondent assessment of the uncertainties in the world. Here the waves are characterized as repetitive, timeless, somehow mournful.
She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.
Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,
Ho! ho! the breakers roared!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Music, history, photography The picture in the introduction (upper left) is an image of Lake Superior, the largest of the Great Lakes and one known for its storms. The shot shows the lighthouse at Grand Marais, in northern Minnesota; I took this in August 2004. Lake Superior has a tragic history of sinking ships, extending even into modern times. The Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior on 10 November 1975; this is a tribute set to Gordon Lightfoot's song.
Just to bring this full circle, here is Longfellow's description of Superior, from The Song of Hiawatha:
By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis,
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.
What would go on your list of significant or favorite art related to waves?
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