Commemorating Independence Day, The Fourth of July 2026
America's 250th Birthday
the Semiquincentennial
The Connection Between The May Day Carnivalesque and Independence Day Musical Essays
The celebration of the national holiday of the 4th of July has many features of Carnival. As stated on a typical Federal Holiday website: "Independence Day is commonly associated with barbecues, picnics, concerts, carnivals, parades, and fireworks." Therefore, this musical essay series for Independence Day logically follows the previous musical essay series "May Day Carnivalesque" in the sense of (a) continuing the theme of "carnivalesque" carnival of festivities, (b) popular culture's potential for social change, and (c) sharing the revolutionary theme of the "world turned upside down."
Actually, the previous two series of musical essays, "Beltane/May Day" (with its emphasis on how the premodern public festivals for May Day "misrule" increasingly, through rituals of "social inversion" of hierarchies, took on a political edge, leading to instances of popular insurrection) and "May Day Carnivalesque," served as appropriate lead-ins to this current "Independence Day" musical essay series, with its theme of "Total Revolution." Thus, the following important statement from the previous "May Day Carnivalesque" musical essays will find its way into this current musical essay series for Independence Day: "The popularity of the term carnivalesque and its approach to carnival owes much to the influence of Bakhtin, whose exuberant descriptions of the festive life of the Middle Ages--"carnivalesque"--have led scholars to explore how popular culture might work as a force for political change."
"In fireworks are released, all the explosive pyrotechnics of a dream. The inflammable desires, dampened by day under the cold water of consciousness, are ignited at night by the libertarian matches of sleep, and burst fourth in showers of shimmering incandescence. These imaginary displays provide a temporary relief." —Kenneth Anger
The Bruce Springsteen song, “4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)," is not only appropriate here but also harks back to the GS' previous musical essay series, "May Day Carnivalesque," about carnival and carnivalesque. (There is a premodern notion about the significance of Carnival—that life is one long carnival. As the popular rock song goes: "Life is a carnival.")
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click on meme to access the "May Day Carnivalesque" webpage.
The question behind the "Independence Day" Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack:
WHAT IS AMERICA?
America has been described as a "democratic experiment." Some astute observers of our nation have ventured to describe America as an "idea," a "conversation," and a "dream." (And "The Poet of Democracy," Walt Whitman, sees America as a "great poem.")
("I would like to discuss some of the problems that we confront in the world today, and some of the problems that we confront in our own nation by using as a subject The American Dream. I choose this subject because America is essentially a dream. It is a dream of a land where men of all races, of all nationalities, and of all creeds, can live together as brothers. The substance of the dream is expressed in these sublime words, “We hold these truths to be self- evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." ~ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., "'The American Dream' July 4th Speech," Lincoln University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 4, 1965.)
However, the GS likes to conceive of America as a "tune." To read some visionary quotations about what America really is, click on link below.
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Thematic Images of the Imagination of America,
from 16th to the 19th Centuries
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"America" (The Four Continents series, Zucchi 1777)
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"The Four Continents (Rubens c. 1615)
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Four Parts of the World series - America (Giordano, 17th c.)
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"Africa and America" (The Four Continents series, Hinton 1808)
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Abundantia, from The Four Continents and Related Allegories (Spierinckx c. 1680 tapestry)
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Panel from a table carpet showing the Four Continents, the Seasons, and Four Planets (c. 1662-1680
The Personification of the American Continent (Giovanni Tiepolo, ca. 1752)
Beginning in the17th century, artworks depicting the known world were typically called “Allegories of the Four Continents” (Europe, Asia, Africa, and America). During the 17th century, with the discovery of the American continent, artists were inspired to depict this “new” continent with its companions. These artworks generally depict each region through female personifications paired with native or symbolic animals and geographical features, like major rivers (e.g., the Nile, Ganges, Danube, and Rio de la Plata), accompanied by distinct cultural symbols.
The most famous 17th-century example is the allegory of “The Four Continents” (c. 1615) by Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens. The painting is also known as “The Four Rivers of Paradise.” Each continent and its river is paired with symbolic elements and native animals: Europe: Accompanied by the Danube river god, she is seated on the far left of the composition, representing wealth, power, and refinement. Africa: Partnered with the Nile river god and a crocodile, this pairing references the great historical empires and mysterious, exotic wilderness attributed to the continent at the time. Asia: Paired with the Ganges river and protected by a tigress, Asia reflects the abundance of spices, silks, and the lush East. America: Represented by the youngest woman and the Río de la Plata, this figure incorporates elements associated with the “New World” such as exotic animals and feathered adornments.
Other notable “Four Continents” versions from the era include the Allegories of the Four Continents print series by Adriaen Collaert (c. 1590) and the ten-panel biombo (folding screen) by Juan Correa.
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Miss America - Four Continents (Monkman, 2012)
Thematic Images of America as American and African Amerindians
Thematic Images of America as "Indian Princess" & the "Goddess Columbia"
Goddess Columbia with Phrygian Liberty Cap and flag
Goddess Columbia with Phrygian Liberty Cap and flag
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Amérique as Indian princess (terracotta ca. 1840)
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Columbia and Indian Princess (fresco in U.S. Capitol, Brumidi 1855)
Lady Columbia & Lady Liberty with U. S. Presidents
Columbia: Allegory of America
Before there was Lady Liberty and Uncle Sam, Columbia hailed as one of the earliest personifications of the United States. While she has lent her name to dozens of rivers, cities, and universities, such as the District of Columbia, Columbia University, and the Columbia River, she remains largely overlooked in the history of America’s allegories.
Columbia was strong and beautiful, modeled after Greek mythology and infused with a unique sense of Americanism. She remains a central figure in the narrative of how early Americans saw the nation, its values, and its full potential. While Lady Liberty has come to symbolize justice, openness to immigrants, and the hope of an established American dream, Columbia’s reputation was ever-evolving, alongside America’s growth. Columbia was at times audacious, representing the pursuit of freedom, and alongside it, war and the desire for territorial expansion. She also conveyed a sense of purity and newness, often accompanied by a heavenly, if not directly religious, connotation.
The timeline of Columbia’s identity follows the timeline of the United States as it came into its own power. The name Columbia used to describe the United States dates back to 1738, when it used in the British Gentleman’s Magazine. However, she was not the earliest allegory of America. Before Columbia, there were European artistic depictions of America.
Allegories of America as Goddess
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(2) "The Commissioners"
(1) "The Female Combatants, or Who Shall"
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(3) The Tea Tax Tempest, or the Anglo-American Revolution
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(4) America [Minerva] Triumphant and Britannia in Distress
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(5) Liberty Triumphant or the Downfall of Oppression
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(6) The Goddess Liberty holding a portrait of Jefferson
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(7) America Guided By Wisdom
(8) America! with Peace and Freedom Blest
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(9) Columbia Teaching John Bull his new Lesson
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(10) The outbreak of the rebellion in the United States 1861
(11) America. To Those, who wish to Sheathe the Desolating Sword of War. And, to Restore the Blessings of Peace and Amity, to a divided People
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(12) France offering liberty to America
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(14) Triumph of Liberty. Dedicated to its defenders in America
(13) The Works of Minerva
(15) Study For Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences, or The Genius of America Encouraging the Emancipation of the Blacks
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(16) Shall I trust these men, and not this man?
Allegories of America and Britain
Allegories of America
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Allegory of America (Tammaso de Vivo, 19th c.)
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The Uprising of the North (Thomas Nast, c. 1867)
Mounted knights salute Columbia. In the distance, the American continent is alight with beacon fires, and in the sky the Capitol radiates light.
Thematic Images of the Goddess Minerva as America & the Statue of Freedom
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Statue of Freedom, the bronze statue atop the U.S. Capitol dome in Washington, D.C. (Crawford and Mills 1855-1863). It was based upon the well-known iconography of “Libertas” first codified in 18th-century emblem books. During the French and American Revolutions, “Libertas” symbolized freedom from tyranny, as is evident in the Paul Revere masthead for the Massachusetts Spy in 1781. Images below are of the goddess Minerva and the Statue of Freedom modeled upon her.
Thematic Images of the Goddess of Liberty: Libertas or Lady Liberty (with Phrygian Cap)
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Liberty Leading the People (French Revolution, Delacroix 1798)
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Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death to Tyrants
- Long live the Peoples (Alsace 1792). Lady Liberty with Liberty Pole and Phrygian Cap
Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in his journals about the “Spirit of America" in almost archetypal terms: “a living soul, which doth exist somewhere beyond the Fancy, to whom the Divinity hath assigned the care of this bright corner of the Universe.” Although he does not name this female divinity, he’s probably referring to the goddess Columbia/Liberty, who was popular in the 19th-century as America’s newly emergent protectress of Liberty and Peace.
In a chariot of light from the regions of the day,
The Goddess of Liberty came,
Ten thousand celestials directed her way,
And hither conducted the dame.
A fair budding branch from the gardens above,
Where millions with millions agree,
She brought in her hand as a pledge of her love,
and the plant she named Liberty Tree.
The celestial exotic stuck deep in the ground,
Like a native it flourished and bore;
The fame of its fruit drew the nations around
To seek out this peaceable shore.
Unmindful of names or distinctions they came,
For freemen like brothers agree;
With one Spirit endued, they one friendship pursued,
And their temple was Liberty Tree.
But hear, O ye swains ('tis a tale most profane),
How all the tyrannical powers,
Kings, Commons, and Lords, are uniting amain
To cut down this guardian of ours.
From the east to the west blow the trumpet to arms,
Thro' the land let the sound of it flee:
Let the far and the near all unite with a cheer,
In defense of our Liberty Tree.
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Since her arm out of the dust has raised me
Beats my heart so boldly and serene;
And my cheek still tingles with her kisses,
Flushed and glowing where her lips have been.
Every word she utters, by her magic
Rises new-created, without flaw;
Harken to the tidings of my goddess,
Harken to the Sovereign, and adore!
~ Holderlin, “Hymn To Liberty”
It's coming from the women and the men
O baby, we'll be making love again
We'll be going down so deep
The river's going to weep
And the mountain's going to shout Amen!
It's coming like the tidal flood
Beneath the lunar sway
Imperial, mysterious
In amorous array
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
~ Leonard Cohen, “Democracy”
Thematic Images of the Goddess of Liberty & Statue of Liberty
Have you ever really looked at the symbolism in the Statue of Liberty? The seven points of her crown represent the Pleiades star cluster, also known as the Seven Sisters.
And these words, from the sonnet “The New Colossus” written by Emma Lazarus, are engraved inside the statue of Liberty: “Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand – A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame – Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name – Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand – Glows world-wide welcome; ‘Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’”
Thematic Images of the Angel of Liberty
Thematic Images of the Goddess of Democracy
Thematic Images of Liberty Pole, Tree, & Cap
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Painting on the left: "Raising the Liberty Pole 1776" (An engraving of 1875 by J C McRae after a painting by F A Charman). Painting on the right: "Raising the Maypole" (Frederick Goodall, 1855). The similarity between these two paintings attests to the Gypsy Scholar's theory that the premodern maypole morphed into the 18th-century liberty pole because of the increasing politicalization of the May Day festivities of "misrule" and "turning the world upside down" by the common people, which often lead to instances of popular insurrection against the church and state.
Thematic Images of the Goddess of Liberty and Minerva on the Great Seals of America
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Arms of the United States of America (Baker, 1864)
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The Goddess Minerva on the Great Seal of California (1857)
Thematic Images of Goddess of Liberty Coins and Medals
Thematic Memes for Democracy and Nature
It has been documented that 19th-century American Romantic landscape painting, by way of the New York Hudson River School, influenced the French Romantic Alexis de Tocqueville's imagination of America and its democracy, since the Hudson River School (dated from the 1820s, five years before Tocqueville arrived in the United States and ten years before his Democracy in America was published) had come into being to great critical and popular acclaim. The school had started with the Hudson River region in New York, but eventually extended in time and space all the way to California and the 1870s. The time period in which the school's artists were active was a time of momentous social, political, and economic change in American history, and the work of the Hudson River School artists represents part of the process of the national self-conceptualization taking place in those years. It is for this reason that the landscape paintings of the Hudson River School lay claim to an important place in American art history and in the American cultural consciousness. These visionary landscapes, then, represent the undeniable place that Nature has and continues to occupy in the American imagination and its ongoing re-visioning of the country's socio-political institutions.
Therefore, this information substantiates the GS's argument about the vital interrelationship between art and politics--between poetry and politics--in the Romantic Movement (e.g., Schiller and Blake and the new conceptions of "beauty and the sublime"); namely, that the "Romantic Total Revolution" aestheticized politics and politicized art, and thus constructed a political ideology/theory that offered a different--a more essential and a more comprehensive --course of change than the strictly "political" French Revolution, which failed to bring about the liberation it promised.
Thematic Images for The Revolutionary War & "The World Turned Upside Down"
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The British defeat by the American revolutionary army at the Battle of Yorktown caused Lord Cornwallis to surrender to General Washington on October 17, 1781, which marked the end of the Revolutionary War. As the famous story goes, the British army band supposedly played the tune "The World Turned Upside Down" (the popular song from the 17th-century English Revolution).
Therefore, this means the perfect connection between the GS's previous musical essay series "May Day Carnivalesque" and the present "Independence Day" musical essay series. To visit the "World Turned Upside Down" section of the "May Day Carnivalesque" webpage, click the link below.
Thematic Images for George Washington's Vision of America's Destiny
Anthony Sherman, an officer in George Washington’s army at Valley Forge during the winter of 1777, gives a verbatim account of General Washington relating a story of an angel who had revealed a prophetic vision of America to him. (It ends with the following words: “Such, my friends,” concluded the venerable narrator, “were the words I heard from Washington’s own lips, and America will do well to profit by them.” It is dated July 4, 1859, in Independence Square, and was originally published by Wesley Bradshaw in the National Review, Vol. 4, No. 12, December 1880. (This may or may not be a true story.)
Thematic Image of Imagi-Nation Totem American Flag
This is an illustration of the Gypsy Scholar's stated project of "re-mythologizing America through its symbols" in order to realize what Walt Whitman envisioned as an "archaic democracy." "I speak the pass-word primeval—I give the sign of democracy." With inspiration from the "Poet of Democracy," there can be a returning to primordial social forms and worldview, which has ultimate political repercussions; for it reveals a historical precedent for an image of a future non-hierarchical, egalitarian society in harmony with itself and its environment. This coincides with Emerson's notion of an "American posthistorical ahistoricity could approximate ancient history." Thus, Emerson understands that the poet or artist—a poet just like Whitman—expresses an "aboriginal power and seeks the aboriginal in his audience."
"With what has been called the Romantic Myth of Revolution, the poets envisioned that America had the potential to become a grand symbol for what has always been the true home-country of the poet-prophets—the Imagi-Nation, whose matriotism of the land replaces the former misguided and destructive super-patriotism of an artificial geo-political entity, and whose flag of nationhood would be the totem-animal spirits that reflect the animism of the land—the eagle, the serpent, the buffalo and coyote. Therefore, the Romantic Myth of Revolution (with its implicit archetype of 'archaic revival') ultimately envisions the ideal country; not a nation-state under a patriarchal 'God,' but instead a Gaian 'ecology of souls' under the Goddess of Liberty. (Independence Day musical essay)
The notion of "an archaic democracy" may reflect the historical fact that the early model of American executive, legislative, judicial branches of leadership was mirrored in the governing practices of tribes throughout the Algonquin and Iroquois regions. Thus, the system of governance of the Iroquois Confederacy ultimately influenced the framework of the democracy of the United States of America.
The GS' "IMAGI-NATION" Flag (with lyrics from Michael Franti & Spearhead's "Bomb The World")
Thematic Images for William Blake's Prophecy for America: "The Angelic Land"
Blake's America, A Prophecy (1793)
America as Indian warrior
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"Europe, Africa & America" (Blake 1796)
Plate 3
Preludium
The shadowy Daughter of Urthona stood before red Orc,
When fourteen suns had faintly journey’d o’er his dark abode:
His food she brought in iron baskets, his drink in cups of iron.
Crown’d with a helmet and dark hair the nameless Female stood;
A quiver with its burning stores, a bow like that of night ....
A Prophecy
The Guardian Prince of Albion burns in his nightly tent,
Sullen fires across the Atlantic glow to America's shore:
Piercing the souls of warlike men, who rise in silent night,
Washington, Franklin, Paine & Warren, Gates, Hancock & Green;
Meet on the coast glowing with blood from Albion's fiery Prince.
Washington spoke; “Friends of America look over the Atlantic sea;
“A bended bow is lifted in heaven, & a heavy iron chain
“Descends link by link from Albions cliffs across the sea to bind
“Brothers & sons of America, till our faces pale and yellow;
“Heads deprest, voices weak, eyes downcast, hands work-bruis'd,
“Feet bleeding on the sultry sands, and the furrows of the whip
“Descend to generations that in future times forget.”
The strong voice ceas’d; for a terrible blast swept over the heaving sea:
The eastern cloud rent: on his cliffs stood Albion’s wrathful Prince,
A dragon form, clashing his scales: at midnight he arose,
And flam’d red meteors round the land of Albion beneath;
His voice, his locks, his awful shoulders, and his glowing eyes
Appear to the Americans upon the cloudy night....
And so the Princes fade from earth, scare seen by souls of men
But tho’ obscur’d, this is the form of the Angelic land. [Fragment]
~ William Blake, America, A Prophecy
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"America is the continent of the West, and as such represents the Body and its five senses, especially sex.... Historically, America, the birthplace of Orc (Revolution), represents the Liberty of the Body." (S. Foster Damon, A Blake Dictionary) This must be why Leonard Cohen sings that when "democracy" comes to the USA, it will come in "amorous array." This is in line with Walt Whitman blending democracy and love (eros). Thus, "Romantic Total Revolution" can be considered an eroto-political revolution.
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"A Song Of Liberty"
(pl. 25 and 27, ca. 1792)
1. THE ETERNAL FEMALE groan’d! It was heard over all the Earth.
2. Albion’s coast is sick, silent. The American meadows faint!
3. Shadows of Prophecy shiver along by the lakes and the rivers, and mutter across the ocean. France, rend down thy dungeon! ....
19. Where the son of fire in his eastern cloud, while the morning plumes her golden breast,
20. Spurning the clouds written with curses, stamps the stony law to dust, loosing the eternal horses from the dens of night, crying: Empire is no more! and now the lion and wolf shall cease.
CHORUS
Let the Priests of the Raven of dawn no longer, in deadly black, with hoarse note curse the sons of joy! Nor his accepted brethren—whom, tyrant, he calls free—lay the bound or build the roof! Nor pale Religion’s lechery call that Virginity that wishes but acts not!
For every thing that lives is Holy!
For Blake, the outbreak of the American Revolution is symbolized in "A Song of Liberty." The American Revolution is the hope of the world and a new dawn; a sign of apocalyptic change when "Empire is no more! and now the lion and wolf shall cease." ("A Song of Liberty" appears at the end of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.)
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"The Dance of Albion" or "The Glad Day"
This color engraving (ca. 1793) of the dancing youth Albion ("Eternal Man" or "Fallen Man") symbolizes not only "politically awakened England" but also "spiritual rebirth."
Orc, the fiery archetypal figure of revolution.
(From Blake's America: A Prophecy, pl. 10)
Thematic Images for European and American Romantic Visionaries of Democracy
The Two European Romantic Visionaries for "Romantic Total Revolution"
William Blake & Friedrich Schiller: Poet-Comrades In Arms
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"Thus Arm in Arm with thee I dare defy my century into the lists." ~Friedrich Schiller
William Blake (11/28/1757 - 8/12/1827) in England and Friedrich Schiller 11/10/ 1759 - 5/9/1805) in Germany were contemporaries and had a common vision of the fundamental role of "Art" in society and its revolutionary potential for human emancipation.
The Two American Romantic Visionaries for "Romantic Total Revolution"
Ralph Waldo Emerson & Walt Whitman: American Romantic visionaries of democracy, with their imaginal 19th-century "Party of Idealists," which in the 1960s became the imaginal "Party of Eros."
“No one,” Emerson wrote in 1840, “can converse much with the different classes of society in New England without remarking the process of revolution” even as “the spirit of the time is felt by every individual with some difference." Prof. Cornel West has depicted Emerson as founding a radically new philosophical tradition that “evades” all strains of antebellum philosophy. Lawrence Buell, one of Emerson's most influential interpreters, has argued for the transnational revolutionist as the crucial framework in which Emerson's genius can be most fully appreciated: “Emerson is almost always at his most interesting when striving to free his mind from parochial entanglements of whatever sort.”
Walt Whitman, “The Poet of Democracy,” proclaimed the following about the United States and Americans in his book, Democratic Vistas (1971): “Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. . . . Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations. Here is action untied from strings necessarily blind to particulars and details magnificently moving in vast masses. . . . Other states indicate themselves in their deputies . . . but the genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors . . . but always most in the common people.”
In Whitman's short poem, “America” (1812), he reasserts the democratic poet’s faith in the destiny of the American nation, demonstrates his love of the masses, his devotion to democracy, and his belief that in responding to the call of a democratic process, America is fulfilling a spiritual need of her people.
Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair’d in the adamant of Time.
For Whitman, America was destined to be a towering and eternal exemplum built on the radical principles of individual freedom, universal equality, the rule of law, and the generous cooperation of community.
click on image to go to the "Romantic Total Revolution" webpage
Thematic Images for the French Bastille Day, July 14, 1789
