Yarillo spring festival

[hoogen]

Dear Mary Delle,
    There has been a good deal written about the folk sources for
Stravinsky's music for the rite, and considerable speculation about the
folkloric sources for the libretto as well.
    However, I suggest you take a look at my dissertation, _Igor Stravinsky,
Nikolai Roerich and the Healing Power of Paganism.  The Rite of Spring as
ecstatic Ritual of Renewal for the Twentieth Century_ (University of
Washington, 1997).  In this work I explore the cultural context in which
Roerich and Stravinsky worked.  I believe that Roerich had a more
influential role in the project than is generally acknowledged.  I also
believe that Stravinsky was more of a willing participant in this recreation
of an ecstatic ritual than he acknowledged in later years.  During the early
twentieth century the Russian creative intelligentsia saw art as a way to
reconcile the material and spiritual worlds--a union that had been
fragmented by rational philosophy and empirical science.  In this cultural
context, The Rite of Spring can be seen as a mysterium for the twentieth
century:  it is a grand synthesis of music, design, and dance as an
enactment of a sacred mystery that will reveal to the participants the
nature of the human spirit and its relation to both the earthly and higher
spiritual worlds.  Identifying folk sources, therefore, gives only part of
the larger picture.
Marilyn Hoogen, Ph.D.

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