Wrapped in an Enigma

In all honesty, though the Wrapped in Tradition exhibit was fascinating and colorful, it was portrayed more as a history exhibit and was lacking in its assertions. That is not to say that I didn’t like the historical set-up; I found it fascinating. However, the statement that the blankets held designs to represent the people seemed a little far-fetched. In looking at the blankets I could see some sunsets, trees and mountains. Here and there were less stylistic images and more bold, such as the “Indian head” and hatchets, and even a loosely based representation of Frank Hopkins (the cowboy). The collector spoke of the people selecting designs for themselves and their tribe, similar to the way that plaids are connected to clans. However the idea was muddied and convoluted by the telling of blanket makers who labeled their wares as coming from certain tribes that they had no link to so that who really knows the truth of it now? There were basic shapes and flourishing designs, but I didn’t think it had anything to say about the people who wore them. I, in fact, believe that the collector missed the whole ironic idea of the blankets.

It is not the Native American who made the blanket, but the blanket that made the native American. The story told by the exhibit is that these people gave up their own hand-made and hunted hides in favor of the woven blankets that the invaders brought with them. The American industrialists them realized a great market for their wares and capitalized on the love of color that the native peoples had. It seems that this is the only aspect that the Native Americans were able to contribute to the design of the blankets. After that is was pure advertisement and marketing. Is it fair to say that Americans wear sneakers and therefore sneakers are an American style? Perhaps we wear them because that is what advertising tells us that we must do. Did we really design the Air-Jordan because it was a symbol of our lives? Certainty not. Really, in my opinion, the blanket manufacturers just made the blankets in whatever design pleased them and then convinced the natives that they needed them (of course they needed blackest but does it really have to be as gaudy as a peacock?). It seems to me that, in the end, the blankets came to define the native Americans. In having these things marketed especially to them and their need for the blankets caused them to take up an image that eventually represented the natives on first sight. If I see a roughly woven blanked with banded colors and arrowheads today I am bound to think of it as “Indian” or “Western.” And it just seems to ironic that it is not even anything that they made themselves. The westerners actually created the image for them. It’s almost like finding out that Roman columns were actually shipped to Rome from Persia or Disney Land.

The Happy Dirge

The Lament for Icarus I find intriguing for reasons I can’t fully explain. It’s certainly not the story behind it or it’s moral. From what I can remember, Icarus and his father were trapped on an island and in order to escape they collected feathers for years. They used these to fashion wings by gluing them with wax and then they flew away. However Icarus, in the joy of his newfound freedom, flew too close to the sun, melting the wax and plummeting himself to the earth. It’s as if to say that if you aspire too high you will fail. If you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen. I would prefer to disagree on that note. If I were going for theme alone, I would probably choose Icarus at the peak of his triumphant flight. And yet here he is, sunken to earth, a sad, pitiful figure. It is rather a sad scene and yet there is something calm about it. There would be nothing but the birds and the cool breeze off the water, the lapping of the waves on the rocks and the warm sun. There is a harp that is not played and nymphs that do not speak but gaze on. Quiet.

The colors. There is something about them. They seem to glow with a warmth that defies the somberness of the scene. Rich ochre, warm browns and blushing creams seem to set the image ablaze. Or perhaps its more akin to the burning of embers. And the characters, they are smooth and unflawed. Icarus shows no sign of injury or pain. It is as if he has fallen asleep upon a nest of feathers. Angelic. Serene. The water nymphs, signs of innocence and joy are out of place within this tragedy. They seem to glow palely as they regard Icarus and seem more curious than sorrowful. But the three women also have some quality of the muses. One carries a golden harp and all three are crowned.

I think that overall it is the implied serenity of the scene that I like. It does not seem truly sad, nor is it joyful. All seems to have stopped in a heartbeat of innocence and longing, that moment before the shock and realization of death sinks in. There is still a glow within the world that makes even death a happy place.

Dapper, William James. The Lament for Icarus. 1898.

The Iliad of Eirik

The Saga of Eirik. There was a man called Eirik. He was born of this man and this woman who lived in the middle of no where. He had adventures. He married a wife. He had children. He named everything after himself. The narrator sounds like this. There is no point to the saga. The saga continues without a point. Sometimes someone might speak and say ‘A-aah!” Sometimes there is random description like this: ‘she was dressed like this’; ‘this is what the prophetess had for her meal:’.

Enough of that. This story is absolutely ridiculous. The literary style used to write it brings to mind The Iliad that’s been crossed with the "Old Testament" of the Bible. From the first, come the mirror of “this man who came from here, born of so-and-so and so, and owned so many sheep, speared this warrior who had five daughters who married five kings and they owned this many sheep and lived in this land” and so on and so forth. From the latter, the tale has the long list of begets and begots of son, daughter, mother, father. The saga has the high paced, rapid succession of event after event after event, with names thrown out willy-nilly. The untrained ear, that is not familiar with the sounds, will find it hard to remember who is who trough the leaps of the story. And, with no familiar background the names are merely superfluous to the meat of the story. There also appears no sequential logic of one sub-story to the other. In some cases it is a partial background that doesn’t truly add to the overall importance of the fragile story, which I assume to be the population of the new world, Vinland.

Furthermore, due to the almost clinical and to-the-point writing of the author, the insertion of description and speech appears random and almost ridiculous. For example the aforementioned ‘A-aah!’ which seemed completely unnecessary in its text (pg. 87). There are also the odd attempts at adding description. Usually the saga merely state that they sailed there they found stuff, they named places, and they went home to winter with their friends. The End. What about the voyage? Was it nice? Did the crew kill each other? Who knows. The narrator isn’t going to tell us. And so, odd attempts are made such as the description of the prophetess where the narrator lists of what she’s wearing and what she eats as if they were symptoms of an illness. Overall, this is rather a bizarre effect.

Magnusson, Magnus and Herman Palsson. The Vinland Sagas; The Norse Discovery of America. “Eirik’s Saga.” Penguin Books.