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Winter
Winter
POSTED DECEMBER 30, 2020
Winter has many faces. Artists, composers, and writers through the ages have explored it and celebrated it. Here are a few of their works and thoughts.
"Hunters in the Snow" (1585) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder is one of the earliest and most famous depictions of a winter landscape in European art.
Allegro non molto
Shivering, frozen mid the frosty snow in biting, stinging winds;
running to and fro to stamp one's icy feet, teeth chattering in the bitter chill.
Largo
To rest contentedly beside the hearth, while those outside are drenched by pouring rain.
Allegro
We tread the icy path slowly and cautiously, for fear of tripping and falling.
Then turn abruptly, slip, crash on the ground and, rising, hasten on across the ice lest it cracks up.
We feel the chill north winds coarse through the home despite the locked and bolted doors…
this is winter, which nonetheless brings its own delights.
Vivaldi composed the music of his Four Seasons to follow closely the text of his sonnets. The text and music "are bound up with one another to an extent rarely heard in any other programmatic pieces either of the baroque period or subsequently." [1]
"Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home." - Edith Sitwell
Monet's "The Magpie" perfectly captures the peaceful stillness following a snowfall.
Written at the start of the twentieth century, Thomas Hardy's "Darkling Thrush" begins with the poet reflecting on a "desolate... fervourless" winter scene before him. Then a thrush sings a "full-hearted evensong of joy illimited," and the last two stanzas of the poem are among the most upbeat and lyrical that Hardy ever wrote:
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
Probably the best known winter poem in the English language is Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on A Snowy Evening." Rereading it today, I found it just as expressive and reflective as when I first heard it decades ago.
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
"The Drum Bridge and Yuhi Hill at Meguro" by Hiroshige (1857) is from his series of woodblock prints "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo." (Edo was renamed Tokyo, "East Capital", in 1868 when the Emperor Meiji moved his residence there.)
Cantus Arcticus by Einojuhani Rautavaara
Cantus Arcticus by Einojuhani Rautavaara
"This haunting contemporary symphony features recordings of the song of the shore lark and the call of the whooper swan. The work has three movements: The Bog, Melancholy and Swans Migrating." [2]
Poet Mary Oliver was a great observer of the natural world. "White-Eyes" (below left) is a poem of many layers. The blogger Maura at "Mysteries and Manners" sees both Christian imagery and references to Native American lore in this strangely beautiful poem. [3]
In winter
all the singing is in
the tops of the trees
where the wind-bird
with its white eyes
shoves and pushes
among the branches.
Like any of us
he wants to go to sleep,
but he's restless—
he has an idea,
and slowly it unfolds
from under his beating wings
as long as he stays awake.
But his big, round music, after all,
is too breathy to last.
So, it's over.
In the pine-crown
he makes his nest,
he's done all he can.
I don't know the name of this bird,
I only imagine his glittering beak
tucked in a white wing
while the clouds—
which he has summoned
from the north—
which he has taught
to be mild, and silent—
thicken, and begin to fall
into the world below
like stars, or the feathers
of some unimaginable bird
that loves us,
that is asleep now, and silent—
that has turned itself
into snow.
"Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness.”
― Mary Oliver (from "Snowy Night")
"Winter Landscape" by Casper David Friedrich
"At first glance it is a pared-down, rather desolate looking winter scene; a line of fir trees stands braced against a snowfall as a dark fog hangs like a pall over a distant church. On closer inspection it’s possible to see a man resting against one of the rocks. His hands are raised in prayer; a wooden cross pressed into the foliage of the tree is the apparent object of his meditation..." [4]
"In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer." - Albert Camus
For more on the depiction of winter by artists and poets, see links below from the BBC [left] and The Poetry Foundation [right].
[1] baroquemusic.org [2] Classic FM [3] Mysteries and Manners [4] medium.com
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