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Similarities Between King Roger And Red Shields

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It was byzantine aesthetics, specifically byzantine mosaic that inspired Ivaszkiewicz made him look for the lost small Motherland in the Italian natural and cultural landscape. Ravenna’s mosaic reminds Iwaszkiewicz of mosaic at St. Sofia Cathedral, but mosaic decorations of Cappella Palatina in Palermo, in the palaces of Roger II and Wilhelm and the biggest and closest mosaic composition in pure byzantine style of the XII century in Montreal Cathedral in Sicily they are so similar to those of Kyiv that they should have been in writer’s mind while writing libretto or “King Roger” and “Red Shields”.
Mastery, aesthetic charm and byzantine culture sophism according to Iwaszkiewicz contrast with the western world in particular Gallic culture. Erudition …show more content…

For Henryk the red shields are the start of dream image of the ideal, fair principality, is a projection of his dream of "Journey Beyond Three Seas", combining fairy East and fantastic Sandomierz reality: "... dear Henryk’s shields. They were dark, red, and made from leather, artificially coloured in Byzantium "[3: 363]. The bearer of red colour as in connection with Byzantine, and at the same time Kress-Ukrainian aesthetics may be a woman named Verhoslava. Her red gloves become a sexual fetish of the Rus princess and at the same time a symbol of erotic desire of the prince who was in love with her. Henryk’s younger brother named Casimir, like Boleslaw the Curved-Lips, married Elena, the princess of Kiev, who wore red shoes during the wedding …show more content…

Thus, the red colour can mean the transition from Henrik’s high purpose dream image to painful defeat or sacrifice, but it can also be a symbol of the frontier, an area of intersection of different cultural traditions, actually the move from one world to another. Not coincidentally, Iwaszkiewicz dresses King Roger in the red coat, the true ruler of cultural and ethnic mosaic boundary, because the kingdom of Sicily is located at the intersection of pagan, ancient world, on the one hand, and Christian and Muslim world on the other hand. Here in Sicily they repeated the mysterious ritual of adoration to Pan and Dionysus but with greater destiny of authenticity, as well as in "Autumn Uchta", participants in this sexual ritual will be Henryk and Queen Sybil, for whom the mystery ends with death [7:

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