|
"There
is no man who lives and,
seeing the Angel of Death,
can deliver his soul from his hand."
Eccl. 8:4
Really, you should not
be so scared,
t'was written,
even before your were.
Time bends his knee,
in front of me.
Through my empty eyes,
I've seen them all.
Same fear, same cries,
when they see the wall.
Disappear into the night,
the Shadow and the Scythe.
How (do) you dare ask the door
what you'd prefer to ignore?
I'm the gate, (I'm) the guide,
I don't peep the other side.
I don't stop, I don't rest,
please come over, be my guest.
I don't care if you bleed,
I don't have pride to feed.
Time bends his knee,
in front of me.
Would be too easy
(to) fade away.
Every action
has a fee to pay!
Don't pray me,
don't waste your faith,
I'm just the door,
I am the gate.
How (do) you dare ask the door
what you'd prefer to ignore?
And if you want the truth,
ask a child about his youth.
(Menarini - Capelli 2014)
Of course (since men like
to talk about all what scares them, as if, once written down
in a limited form, or painted, or sketched it was someway
more manageable), Grim Reaper has appered countless times
in al formes of popular culture ...
Just to give some examples:
Abaddon
(The Angel of teh Abyss), one of the Jewish biblical
reppresentations of Death, appears as a character in popular
CW Tv-Show Supernatural
(8th and 9th seasons) created by writer and screenplayer Eric
Kripke. In the same show, Death itself is represented
in a very ironical way, surrounded by legions of "reapers".
 In
Talmudic lore, Abaddon is characterized as archangel Samael,
and Samael appears as key (and mostly disturbing) character
in one of the greatest stories of Corto
Maltese (created in by italian artist Hugo
Pratt (1927-1995)): Le Etiopiche.
In
Ingmar Bergman's (1918-2007) film The
Seventh Seal (1957), a knight returning from the Crusades
plays chess with Death, in a hopeless attempt to win his own
life, this same scene, in parody form, is referenced in many
other movies, including "Muppets
Most Wanted" (2014).
Death is a recurring character
in the Discworld
novels by Terry
Pratchett and in countless movies and TV episodes of series
like Twilight
Zone and clones. It was portrayed by (among the others)
Bengt
Ekerot (The Seventh Seal), Robert Redford and Brad
Pitt (Meet
Joe Black 1998 - remake of 1934 Death
takes a holiday).
In Markus
Zusak's novel The
Book Thief 2005 Death is the narrator. The book inspired
2013 movie: The
Book Thief.
Death appear in Harry
Potter and the Deathly Hallows book by J.K.
Rowling as protagonist of a fairytale called "The
Tale of the Three Brothers" (found in a book called "The
Tales of Beedle the Bard").
In Neil
Gaiman's Comics series The
Sandman, Death is one of the seven Endless.
Marvel Comics' version of Death is depicted as a female figure
someway involved in a sort-of-relathionship with Deadpool.
In Charles
Dickens' (1812-1870) novel,
A Christmas Carol (1843), the Ghost of Christmas Future
is the personification of Death.
|
Pre-Raphaelite Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919)
"Angel of Death"
In Jewish
tradition, Death was referred to as the Angel of
Life and Death (Malach HaMavet) or the Angel of Dark
and Light stemming from the Bible and Talmudic lore. The
Bible itself does refer to the "Angel of Life and Death"
when he reaps Egypt's firstborns. (...) In Talmud,
there is also a reference to "Abaddon"
(The Destroyer), an Angel who is known as the "Angel
of the Abyss". (...)*
Ancient
Greece found Death to be inevitable, and, therefore,
he is not represented as purely evil. He is often portrayed
as a bearded and winged man, but has also been portrayed
as a young boy. (...) *
Above, Death in Tarots
of Marseille. In Tarots, Death doesn't necesarily have
a "negative" meaning, meanly it represents a "change".
It normally bear number 13. Do we need to remember that
Templars
final act began on Friday the 13th of October 1307 when
hundreds of them were arrested by order of King Philip
IV of France?
Also, In numerology,
the number twelve is considered the number of divine organizational
arrangement or chronological completeness, (twelve months
of the year, twelve hours of the clock day, the twelve deities
of Olympus, twelve signs of the Zodiac,
the 12 years of the Chinese Buddhist cycle, etc.), whereas
the number thirteen was considered irregular, transgressing
this completeness. (N.di.MRC)
Breton
folklore shows us a spectral figure portending death,
the Ankou.
Usually, the Ankou is the spirit of the last person that
died within the community and appears as a tall, haggard
figure with a wide hat and long white hair or a skeleton
with a revolving head who sees everyone, everywhere. The
Ankou drives a deathly wagon or cart with a creaking axle.
The cart or wagon is piled high with corpses and a stop
at a cabin means instant death for those inside. (...)*
In Ireland
was a creature known as a dullahan,
whose head would be tucked under his or her arm (dullahans
were not one, but an entire species), and the head was said
to have large eyes and a smile that could reach the head's
ears. The dullahan would ride a black horse (...), and stop
at the house of someone about to die, and call their name,
and immediately the person would die. (...)*
In Scottish folklore there
was a belief that a black, dark green or white dog known
as a Cù
Sìth took dying souls to the afterlife.(...)*
La
Santa Muerte (Saint Death) is a sacred figure and
feminine skeletal folk saint venerated primarily in Mexico
and the United States in Folk Catholicism. As a figure made
holy by popular belief, the saint of death developed through
syncretism between Mesoamerican indigenous and Spanish Catholic
beliefs and practices. (...) It is more commonly known as
La Catrina.
In many languages (including
English), Death is personified in male form, while in others,
it is perceived as a female character (for instance, in
Slavic and Romance languages).*
*(Source Wikipedia)
La mort du fossoyeur (The Death of the gravedigger; 1895)
by Carlos
Schwabe (1866-1926) is a compendium of Symbolist motifs.
|
