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 THE
PAGAN DREAM OF THE RENAISSANCE
Thomas Wiloch reviews Joscelyn Godwin's book on Renaissance
neo-classical paganism
The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance
Joscelyn Godwin
2002
UK: Thames & Hudson £26 HC
US: Phanes Press $35 HC
How did knowledge of the pagan gods survive into the present day
after being suppressed for centuries by the Christian church? Joscelyn
Godwin, a professor of music at Colgate University and author of
a number of books on esoteric subjects, offers an interesting answer.
In his new book, The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance, Godwin
argues that during the Italian Renaissance, when the glories of
Greece and Rome were rediscovered by Christian Europe, the pagan
deities of ancient times captured the imagination of the European
elites. Paganism offered a range of images and symbols beyond the
boundaries of Christianity. As such, it opened up a world of the
imagination, an unconscious realm of possibility, that existed awkwardly
side by side with the orthodox religious beliefs of the time. A
dichotomy of thinking emerged in Western Civilization between the
established Christian orthodoxy and an ancient paganism. Godwin
characterizes the pagan half of this equation as a kind of “dream”,
or subconscious, activity. Pagan gods and stories became subjects
for Europe’s paintings, sculpture, gardens, theatre, and literature.
Renaissance aristocrats - even church officials - routinely commissioned
works of art depicting Greek or Roman deities. “This book
sets out to show how the dream of an alternative, pagan cosmos entered
the European imagination through the visual and performing arts,”
Godwin explains.
In covering this intensely creative period of history, Godwin meanders
along, looking at the various ways the elites of Renaissance Europe
welcomed the pagan gods into their imaginative worlds. He especially
uncovers the hermetic aspects of the Renaissance arts. In the chapter
'Garden Magic', for example, he examines the Renaissance garden
and its statues of Greek and Roman deities, elaborate fountains,
mechanical automata run on water power, even hydraulic organs playing
music - all of which were used to induce in the visitor “a
trancelike atmosphere of suspended excitement beyond words or the
rational mind.”
Sharing the Renaissance garden’s initiatory quality were
the studioli - small, private studies richly decorated
with paintings on allegorical subjects and portraits of the great
figures of the past. A studiolo was where a wealthy aristocrat
could go to escape from the world and contemplate better realms.
In Germany, Kunstund Wunderkammer, a “chamber of
art and marvels”, became the rage. These private collections
of the rare, the unusual, and the beautiful took the idea of the
studiolo a step further, focusing not so much on the room’s
decorations as on its contents. The idea, of course, evolved into
the modern museum.
Opera, too, has its roots in the Renaissance. Great processions
and festivals, traditionally used as occasions to bolster the ties
between ruler and ruled and employing the imagery of the Medieval
Church, evolved into great parades of horse-drawn floats carrying
such allegorical scenes as 'Pluto Abducting Persephone'. The carnivals
associated with these parades included songs, dance and plays which
featured the old gods. When this kind of entertainment was moved
indoors by nobles desiring after-dinner amusement, the forerunners
of opera were born.
Godwin concludes his survey with a suitably esoteric explanation
of the “pagan dream” of his title, calling it the “Imaginal
World,” based on the ideas of medieval Persian theosophers.
This Imaginal World, similar to Carl Jung’s collective unconscious,
is “an independently-existing world that is accessible through
the inward senses [and] the places and personages encountered there
have a real, objective existence.” It is an “objective
world of archetypal images.” Each people and culture has its
own imaginal world, each culture’s particular images reflecting
the images common to all of humankind. What happened during the
Renaissance, Godwin argues, is that the artists of that time “lived
alternately in two imaginal worlds, one Judeo-Christian and the
other Greco-Roman.” Ultimately, this dichotomy gave way as
monotheistic Christianity was unable to make room for pantheistic
paganism and the ancient gods were displaced, at least officially.
A Traditionalist and scholar, Godwin ends his book with a sobering
look at our own time, in which we are free to “contemplate
the Christian myths as well as the pagan ones, and appreciate the
values that each brought into the world.” But while we have
such freedom, we must also ask ourselves “are we creating
anything of lasting value” now? Godwin finds modern art to
be soulless and far removed from Traditional conceptions of the
Beautiful. “What is today’s equivalent of the pagan
dream,” he asks, “what riches of the imaginal world
are we revealing for the future delectation of our kind?”
While Godwin’s question reveals his own pessimism about the
state of contemporary art, the reader may well believe that there
are creative currents at work promising a more positive answer to
his question.
THOMAS WILOCH - 18 February 2003
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