VITAL FORCE, OR THE RHODIAN GENIUS.
The Syracusans, like the Athenians, had their Poecile,[[RJ]] where representations of gods and heroes, the works of Grecian and Italian art, adorned the richly decorated halls of the Portico. Incessantly the people streamed thither; the young warrior to feast his eyes upon the deeds of his forefathers, the artist to contemplate the works of the great masters. Among the numerous paintings which the active enterprise of the Syracusans had collected from the mother country, there was but one which for full a century had continued to attract the attention of every visitor. Even when, the Olympian Jupiter, Cecrops, the founder of cities, and the heroic courage of Harmodius and Aristogiton, failed to attract admirers, a dense crowd still pressed round this one picture. Whence this preference? Was the painting a rescued work of Apelles, or did it bear the impress of the school of Callimachus? No! although it possessed both grace and beauty, yet neither in the blending of the colours, nor in the character and style of its composition, could it be compared with many other paintings in the Poecile.
The crowd—and how numerous are the classes included in this denomination—ever admires and wonders at what it does not understand! For more than a century had that painting been publicly exhibited, and yet, although Syracuse contained within its narrow limits more artistic genius than all the rest of sea-girt Sicily, the riddle of its meaning still remained unsolved. It was not even known to what temple it had formerly belonged, for it had been saved from a stranded vessel, which was only conjectured, from the freight it carried, to have come from Rhodes.
The foreground of the picture was occupied by a numerous group of youths and maidens, whose uncovered limbs, although well formed, were not cast in that slender mould which we so much admire in the statues of Praxiteles and Alcamenes. The fuller development of their limbs, which bore indications of laborious exercise,—the human expression of passion and of care stamped on their features,—all seemed to divest them of a heavenly or God-like type, and to fix them as creatures of the earth. Their hair was simply adorned with leaves and wild flowers. Their arms were extended towards each other with impassioned longing, but their earnest and mournful gaze was rivetted on a Genius, who, surrounded by a brilliant halo, hovered in the midst of the group. On his shoulder was a butterfly, and in his right hand he held aloft a flaming torch. His limbs were moulded with child-like grace; his eye radiant with celestial light. He looked imperiously upon the youths and maidens at his feet. No other characteristic traits could be distinguished in the picture. Some, however, thought they could perceive at his foot the letters ζ and σ, and as antiquarians were then no less bold than they are now, they inferred, though far from happily, that the artist was called Zenodorus, the name borne at a later date by the modeller of the Colossus of Rhodes.
“The Rhodian Genius,” for so this mysterious painting was called, did not however want for interpreters in Syracuse. Virtuosi, especially the younger of them, on their return from a flying visit to Corinth or Athens, would have deemed themselves deficient in all pretensions to connoisseurship, had they not immediately advanced some new explanation. Some regarded the Genius as the personification of spiritual Love, forbidding the enjoyment of sensual pleasures; others were of opinion that the dominion of Reason over the Passions was here signified. The wiser preserved silence, and while they conjectured that the painting was intended to represent something of a sublimer character, delighted to linger in the Poecile to admire the simple composition of the group.
The question continued to remain undecided. Copies of the painting, with various additions, were sent to Greece, but without eliciting any explanation respecting its origin. At length, however, when at the early rising of the Pleiades the Ægean Sea was again opened to navigation, ships from Rhodes entered the port of Syracuse. They contained a treasure of statues, altars, candelabras, and pictures, which a love of art had caused the Dionysii to collect in Greece. Among the paintings there was one which was instantly recognised as the companion to the “Rhodian Genius.” It was of the same size, and exhibited a similar tone of colouring, although in a better state of preservation.
The Genius stood as before in the centre, but without the butterfly; his head was drooping, his torch extinguished and reversed. The group of youths and maidens thronged simultaneously around him in mutual embrace; their looks were no longer sad and submissive, but announced a wild emancipation from restraint, and the gratification of long-nourished passion.
The Syracusan antiquaries had already begun to accommodate their former explanations of the “Rhodian Genius” to the newly arrived painting, when the Tyrant ordered it to be conveyed to the house of Epicharmus. This philosopher of the school of Pythagoras dwelt in the remote part of Syracuse called Tyche. He seldom visited the court of the Dionysii, not but that learned men from all the Greek colonies assembled there, but because proximity to princes is apt to rob the most intellectual of their spirit and freedom. He occupied himself unceasingly in studying the nature of things and their forces, the origin of plants and animals, and those harmonious laws by which the celestial bodies on a large, and the snow-flake and the hail-stone on a small scale, assume a globular form. Decrepid with age, he caused himself to be carried daily to the Poecile, and thence to the harbour of Nasos, where, as he said, the wide ocean presented to his eye an image of the Boundless and the Infinite, which his mind strove in vain to comprehend. He was honoured alike by the lower classes and by the tyrant, but he avoided the latter, while he joyfully cultivated and often assisted the former.
Epicharmus lay weak and exhausted on his couch, when the newly arrived work of art was brought to him by the command of Dionysius. He was furnished at the same time with a faithful copy of the “Rhodian Genius,” and the philosopher now caused both paintings to be placed before him. He gazed on them long and earnestly, then called together his scholars, and in accents of emotion thus addressed them:
“Remove the curtain from the window, that I may once more feed my eyes with the sight of the richly animated and living earth. Sixty years long have I pondered on the internal springs of nature and on the differences inherent in matter, but it is only this day that the ‘Rhodian Genius’ has taught me to see clearly that which before I had only conjectured. While the difference of sexes in all living beings beneficently binds them together in prolific union, the crude matters of inorganic nature are impelled by like instincts. Even in the darkness of chaos, matter was accumulated or separated according as affinity or antagonism attracted or repelled its various parts. The celestial fire follows the metals, the magnet, the iron; amber when rubbed attaches light bodies; earth blends with earth; salt separates from the waters of the sea and joins its like, while the acid moisture of the stypteria (στυπτηρία ὑγρά) and the fleecy salt Trichitis, love the clay of Melos. Everything in inanimate nature hastens to associate itself with its like. No earthly element (and who will dare to class light as such?) can therefore be found in a pure and virgin state. Everything as soon as formed hastens to enter into new combinations, and nought, save the disjoining art of man, can present in a separate state ingredients which ye would vainly seek in the interior of the earth, or in the moving oceans of air and water. In dead inorganic matter absolute repose prevails as long as the bonds of affinity remain unsevered, and as long as no third substance intrudes to blend itself with the others; but even after this disturbance unfruitful repose soon again succeeds.
“Different, however, is the blending of the same substances in animal and vegetable bodies. Here vital force imperatively asserts its rights, and, heedless of the affinity and antagonism of the atoms asserted by Democritus, unites substances which in inanimate nature ever flee from each other, and separates that which is incessantly striving to unite.
“Draw nearer to me, my disciples, and recognise in the ‘Rhodian Genius,’ in the expression of his youthful vigour, in the butterfly on his shoulder, in the commanding glance of his eye, the symbol of vital force as it animates every germ of organic creation. The earthly elements at his feet are striving to gratify their own desires and to mingle with one another. Imperiously the Genius threatens them with upraised and high-flaming torch, and compels them, regardless of their ancient rights, to obey his laws.
“Look now on the new work of art which the Tyrant has sent me to explain; and turn your eyes from the picture of life to the picture of death. The butterfly has soared upwards, the extinguished torch is reversed, and the head of the youth is drooping. The spirit has fled to other spheres, and the vital force is extinct. Now the youths and maidens join their hands in joyous accord. Earthly matter again resumes its rights. Released from all bonds they impetuously follow their sexual instincts, and the day of his death is to them a day of nuptials.—Thus dead matter, animated by vital force, passes through a countless series of races, and perchance enshrines in the very substance in which of old a miserable worm enjoyed its brief existence, the divine spirit of Pythagoras.[[RK]]
“Go, Polycles, and tell the Tyrant what thou hast heard! And ye, my beloved, Euryphamos, Lysis, and Scopas, come nearer—and yet nearer to me! I feel that the faint vital force within me can no longer retain in subjection the earthly matter, which now reclaims its freedom. Lead me once more to the Poecile, and thence to the wide sea-shore. Soon will ye collect my ashes.”