Post-Vanitas, Testament I
The skull remains—death needs no updating. But everything else has been replaced: not hourglasses and flowers as symbols of time passing, but smartphones and wires as artifacts of a time that has already passed. Digital comfort reduced to rubble
December 31st – Richard Hoffman
All my undone actions wanderby Richard Hofmann (b. 1949) from his collection Emblem.
I don’t know precisely which picture the poet is referring to for January in his calendar, nor which artist, but it it is undoubtedly an example of a Vanitas or Memento Mori, a genre symbolizing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, and thus the vanity of ambition and all worldly desires. The paintings involved still life imagery of items suggessting the transitory nature of life.
A couple of examples are here:
Between them you find all the elements mentioned in the poem: the skull represents death, the flowers impermanence, the coins personal wealth and the other items worldly knowledge and pleasure. There’s an interesting WordPress blog about the symbolism this genre here:
P.S. My own calendar has pictures of tractors in it.
#Art #December31st #MementoMori #Poem #Poetry #RichardHoffman #Vanitas
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In the Dark