Here is the link to Saint-Saens Danse Macabre Music   https://youtu.be/YyknBTm_YyM

The Danse Macabre, or Dance of Death, has been a recurring artistic theme since the 1400’s when the Bubonic Plague wiped out probably more than half of the European population. Death struck all levels of society, popes and peasants all fell victim to the quickly spreading, fatal disease. Death became a constant theme in all the arts, theater, music, painting, and literature.

This is from the Atas Obscura:

"In the Danse Macabre, or Dance of Death, skeletons escort living humans to their graves in a lively waltz. Kings, knights, and commoners alike join in, conveying that regardless of status, wealth, or accomplishments in life, death comes for everyone. At a time when outbreaks of the Black Death and seemingly endless battles between France and England in the Hundred Years War left thousands of people dead, macabre images like the Dance of Death were a way to confront the ever-present prospect of mortality”

Ever since then, every time massive death sweeps humanity, the Danse Macabre, the dance of death, echoes across all our arts and fascinates and moralizes us with the tangible truth that life and glory are fleeting and no one, young or old, escapes the grim reaper.  

Sadly, unexpectedly, now, once again, the Dance of Death stalks the world on an industrial scale, as if on cue. Why do we plunge into human devastation time and time again?

Why? Why do we always throughout history reach the point of mass death and mass killing? And the killing isn’t just in ancient times. The mass murder and two world wars of the Twentieth Century and the tens of millions exterminated by dictatorial decree of their own government makes the Twentieth Century a Danse Macabre extraordinaire.

And now the Twenty-First Century has barely begun and already we are deep into another Dance of Death.

What sparks the Danse Macabre? Is life nothing more than a drive toward death? What is the fear and hate that fuels the death drive, the dance of death?

Many years ago, in the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris at age nineteen my carefree, middle-class world was surprisingly demolished by Renoir’s impressionist painting Luncheon of the Boating Party.

That painting, so famous and beloved by so many, has a special enchantment. To me, it was the perfect picture of life as it should be lived, and as it had been lived. Such joie de vivre, such interesting people, fashionable, but eminently bourgeoise, possibly working class, middle-class and artists, at a leisurely luncheon in an easy, colorful, and comfortable setting, all seeming to be distinct personalities enjoying a simple pleasure to the fullest.

I longed to be there with them, and yet, from my Twentieth Century perspective, I knew what a horrible and devastating tragedy was fast bearing down upon their happy world.

Renoir painted Luncheon of the Boating Party in 1882, a mere 30 years before World War One would kill millions of French men and women. Surely, all the people in the picture suffered horribly during WW I, even if they had been too old to be soldiers. Surely, some of their sons were tragically lost far too young in the bloody trenches of the endless slaughter that characterized WWI. And their daughters were left bereaved, cold and starving.

Could they ever have guessed that millions of their fellow men would be ruthlessly and mercilessly exterminated in wars, manmade famines, and concentration camps? Or that their homes, their cities, their families, their country and their entire world would be utterly and irrevocably destroyed forever, never to return.

Being a Boomer, I had heard a lot about that war, and even more about WWII, which followed closely on the heels of WWI.

At first, what kept me coming back again and again to view The Boating Party Luncheon was my curiosity. I was driven to search for some sign of the coming disaster that awaited these very familiar, very ordinary, contented people. I was sure that some forewarning of a human tragedy of such magnitude that was only a few years distant would be visible somewhere in that painting.

Was there something hidden in their faces, for instance, some coarseness of expression that hinted at unsavory character tendencies? Was there a cruel twist of the mouth or dark furrow of the brow to warn of the evil that was to erupt so soon? I searched that painting and those faces for some shadow in their world, some premotion of the imminent destruction in their faces.

But, no. The painting, the subjects in the painting, and even the painter himself seemed entirely innocent of any subtle indications of their fast approaching, and very tragic fate.

It was there in that foreign setting of Paris where I first experienced the disturbing realization that the Danse Macabre could suddenly and unexpectedly throw its deadly shadow across the entire world.

I suppose being an impressionable nineteen-year-old in Paris, alone, walking the very streets that Renoir, Van Gogh, Manet and the Boating Luncheon people had walked made an indelible mark on me. I was on the very soil of France, which just a few years past had absorbed so much blood, so much terrified sweat, and certainly so many bitter tears in the recent wars.

It was all too shattering and too real. The people in that painting were so much like the people I knew in France and in the USA, people I’d had lunches with, too. Would my world someday also be destroyed?

What was the matter with this old world of ours?

I was so very young and when you are young, life is so precious.

I needed desperately to know what caused the world to throw away joy and plunge into the Dance of Death. How did that happen, and why?  

And so, I became hypnotically fascinated by Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boat Party. Here were the happy, smiling faces of 1882, a mere 33 years before the massacre of millions swept their country.

They seemed so alive and so at ease, and so pleased with a simple lunch on a sunny day. How could tragedy engulf this lovely world? From what dark miasma does the horror arise, from what terrible impulse does mankind need to kill and be killed? I puzzled and sighed and had to move on with my life, having not the least idea of an answer to that age old question.

Of course, history books are full of explanations of all types. There are political considerations, economic dislocations, national feelings, trade problems, social problems, the reasons are endless. But none of those reasons seems sufficient to explain the destruction of so much happiness and the good life so evident in that painting.

And yet, here we are again, dancing the Danse Macabre of plague, war, and needless starvation, and massacres.  

I guess I am not so different from those happy Boating party guests, after all. I never saw the devastation and death that was coming at my country fast and with a vengeance.

These are not happy times. You can’t laugh in the face of so much suffering and death. The Dance of death is not a joyous dance. It’s tragic.

Do we need to be reminded how valuable life is? I still have no answer.

As always, the people who are holding the power of life and death in their fearful grip seem unaware of the death and destruction they are wrecking in every corner of the world. But they do it again and again.

And again and again.

The Danse Macabre. Perfect for Halloween, but not the kind of Halloween that’s happy, the kind of Halloween death dance that’s all too real.

As I look at the The Boating Party Luncheon now, in the midst of our Dance of Death, I do it to remind myself that there was once a time of happiness in the world, and surely it can come again. I hope and pray.