King Edmund, also considered a saint, remains an important figure in Bury St. Edmunds, which is named after him. It's a rather wild story. The Vikings killed Edmund for not renouncing his religion and threw his head into the briars. There, the head was guarded by a wolf, and became a relic.
Doris Zinkeisen does justice to it here. She was a theatrical costume designer in addition to being a painter. A sense of the theatrical is what it needs. You can hardly miss that the head is in a spotlight.
2 comments:
I've heard of a few characters raised by wolves, Romulus and Remus as the first two and then of course Kipling's Mowgli, but I've never heard of anyone's head or body being protected by a wolf after death. What made the story extra interesting was that his head reattached itself to his body when placed together. King Edmund provided a good example to Christians everywhere. Then came Henry VIII and the story became a legend.
It's said that wolves had a bad reputation among people for a long time, naturally enough after having gained the reputation for hunting people.. earned or not. Jack London's books Call of the Wild and White Fang changed more than a few minds. The fact that they remain ungovernable means people are best to be cautious when wolves are in the vicinity.
That's a very nice painting.
It's impossible to overstate how different Edmund's England was from anything we associate with England. Centuries before William the Conqueror invaded, it really was still the Age of Legends in Britain. Edmund himself is the center of a very colorful one. A wolf guarding a head? A head reattaching itself to the body? It's a very strange story to us. But I believe there's a truth at the center of the tale, although it's beyond us to find out exactly what happened.
Werewolf legends are based on this idea of wolves hunting people. It's the question of whether we can trust nature, and for that matter, trust ourselves. Jack London saw things from a different perspective, taking wolves on their own terms. Unlike dogs, they never chose to come in from the cold. That puts them outside our experience for the most part.
Thank you. Yes, it's a lovely and bold painting.
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