The Lucerne Lion Monument of Bertel Thorvaldsen and ‘A Song of Liberty’ Poem of William Blake

Authors : Çağlayan Hergül

Pages : 350-375

Doi:10.56590/stdarticle.1474188

View : 52 | Download : 64

Publication Date : 2025-01-10

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :The Purpose of the Study: Lucerne City, a canton of Switzerland, shelters the famous Lion Monument (the Lucerne Lion) which represents Swiss Guards’ who lost their lives while defending the Monarchy during The French Revolution. On the other hand, William Blake, who lived during the French Revolution period and wrote poems on the revolution, wrote the lines ‘Empire is no more! And now the lion and wolf shall cease’ in his poem ‘A Song of Liberty’. The main idea of this article is to expose the intuitive connection between the Lucerne Lion and the lion metaphor in William Blake’s verse. Method: The reference works of this article have consisted of art history, history, and literature. Historical information and visual materials, which are related to the topic of the article, were obtained from local researchers of Lucerne and official web pages of various facilities and museums in Switzerland, France, Italy, and Norway. Results: It is deduced that the Metaphorical expression of the lion theme in both the sculpture and the poem in the article by illuminating visual and written sources. Within this direction of these facts, an intertextuality is evaluated between the Lion Monument and the A Song of Liberty poem. Conclusion: The historical steps during the consisting of this sculpture express the collective formation stages of a monument from the perspective of art history. Individuals and mass facts have carried today the Lucerne Lion, an artifact of this collective memory. The Song of Liberty poem written by Willam Blake against the monarchy in the French Revolution matches the metaphoric content of Lucerne Lion. In the direction of these detections, these two works were reviewed in the historical, visual, and text contexts, thus the intuitional connection was exposed between them.
Keywords : Luzern Aslanı, İsviçreli Muhafızlar, Bertel Thorvaldsen, William Blake, Karl Pfyffer von Altishofen