Trumps VI- XIII
Posted: 26 Sep 2013, 21:17
In his 2007 post about the order of the trumps, Michael Hurst quotes Dummett:
* Love, Fortune and Death are immediately identifiable by their names in both the poem and the trump sequence (Amour, Fortune, Mort);
* the three concepts appear in the same order in the poem and in the trumps;
* the iconography is quite similar (Love with a bow, Fortune with a wheel, death as a skeleton).
A 1543 edition provides this summary of the text:
Amour, fortune et mort , aveugles et bandés ,
Font dancer les humains chacun par accordance :
Car aussitôt qu'amour a ses traits débandés,
L'homme veut commencer a dancer basse dance;
Puis fortune, qui sait le tour de discordance ,
Pour un simple d'amour fait un double bransler,
Plus inconstant beaucoup que feuille d'arbre en l'air.
Du dernier tourdion la mort nous importune ;
Et si n'y a vivant qu'on ne voye esbranler
A la dance de mort , d'amour et de fortune.
Here is my unreliable translation:
Love, fortune and death, blind and blindfolded,
make all people dance to their rhythm:
As soon as love has slacken its leads,
people want to start dancing a low dance;
Then fortune, who knows the turns of discordance,
Makes a double dance for a simple love,
Much fickler than a leaf in the air.
Death bothers us with the last pavane;
We can see that no living being can escape
The dance of death, love and fortune.
It is great to see how the identification of the three main sections of the trump sequence (0-V, VI-XIII. XIV-XXI) makes it possible to find and understand visual and textual parallels to the trumps in mainstream medieval moral allegories. I like the simplicity and meaningfulness of all this.
Michael comments this segment with an illustration from a 1485 manuscript of a poem by Pierre Michault written in 1465. The poem is titled "La Danse des aveugles" (the dance of the blind) and it describes the role of Love, Fortune and Death as the powers shaping human life. It is evident how this concept is a good parallel to the central segment of the trump sequence:Ignoring the Virtues, we can say that the sequence of the remaining trumps falls into three distinct segments, an initial one, a middle one, and a final one, all variation occurring only within these different segments.
...
[the second segment (VI-XIII)] could be described as representing conditions of human life: love; the cardinal virtues of Temperance, Fortitude..., and Justice; the triumphal car; the wheel of fortune; the card now known as the hermit; the hanged man; and death.
* Love, Fortune and Death are immediately identifiable by their names in both the poem and the trump sequence (Amour, Fortune, Mort);
* the three concepts appear in the same order in the poem and in the trumps;
* the iconography is quite similar (Love with a bow, Fortune with a wheel, death as a skeleton).
A 1543 edition provides this summary of the text:
Amour, fortune et mort , aveugles et bandés ,
Font dancer les humains chacun par accordance :
Car aussitôt qu'amour a ses traits débandés,
L'homme veut commencer a dancer basse dance;
Puis fortune, qui sait le tour de discordance ,
Pour un simple d'amour fait un double bransler,
Plus inconstant beaucoup que feuille d'arbre en l'air.
Du dernier tourdion la mort nous importune ;
Et si n'y a vivant qu'on ne voye esbranler
A la dance de mort , d'amour et de fortune.
Here is my unreliable translation:
Love, fortune and death, blind and blindfolded,
make all people dance to their rhythm:
As soon as love has slacken its leads,
people want to start dancing a low dance;
Then fortune, who knows the turns of discordance,
Makes a double dance for a simple love,
Much fickler than a leaf in the air.
Death bothers us with the last pavane;
We can see that no living being can escape
The dance of death, love and fortune.
It is great to see how the identification of the three main sections of the trump sequence (0-V, VI-XIII. XIV-XXI) makes it possible to find and understand visual and textual parallels to the trumps in mainstream medieval moral allegories. I like the simplicity and meaningfulness of all this.