ART AND REVOLUTION.
The main theme of this fine article is the relation of Art to the Universal Brotherhood of Man. It is prefaced by an introduction written in 1872 which begins with Carlyle’s trenchant words on “that universal Burning-up, as in hell-fire, of Human Shams.” Wagner goes on to explain how the essay was written “in the feverish excitement of the year 1849.” This was the revolution which cost him so many years of painful exile at Paris and Zürich. He says he was guided by an ideal which he thought of as “embodied in a Folk that should represent the incomparable might of ancient brotherhood, while I looked forward to the perfect evolution of this principle as the very essence of the associate Manhood of the Future.”
After some explanations of certain technical words which might be misunderstood, Wagner introduces us to the essay itself. He begins by saying that the essence of Modern Art is only a link in a chain of causes started by the Ancient Greeks. The Grecian spirit found its fullest expression in the god Apollo: “It was Apollo,—he who had slain the Python, the dragon of Chaos ... who was the fulfiller of the will of Zeus upon the Grecian earth; who was, in fact, the Grecian people.” Proceeding then to connect Dance and Song, as inseparable elements in early Greek Art, he says: “Thus, too, inspired by Dionysus,[[1]] the tragic poet saw this glorious god; when to all the rich elements of spontaneous art ... he joined the bond of speech, and concentrating them all into one focus, brought forth the highest conceivable form of art—the Drama.”
That this Drama was a religious teacher connected with the Mysteries is very clearly brought out, and Wagner draws a fine picture of one of those great sacred days when thirty thousand people assembled to witness “that most pregnant of all tragedies, the Prometheus; in this titanic masterpiece to see the image of themselves, to read the riddle of their own actions, and to fuse their own being and their own communion with that of their god.”
How fell this glorious Tragedy? “As the spirit of Community split itself along a thousand lives of egoistic cleavage, so was the great united work of Tragedy disintegrated into its individual factors.” For two thousand years since then Art has given way to Philosophy; but “True Art is highest freedom” and can only arise out of freedom.
Then follows a splendid description of the brutal materialism of the Romans which hangs to this very day like a pall about her ruins: “They loved to revel in concrete and open bloodthirstiness.” Mutual slavery of Emperor and people was the result, and “self-contempt, disgust with existence, horror of community” found their expression in Christianity. But this Christianity of Constantine Wagner is careful to distinguish from the teaching of “the humble son of the Galilean carpenter; who, looking on the misery of his fellow-men, proclaimed that he had not come to bring peace, but a sword into the world; whom we must love for the anger with which he thundered forth against the hypocritical Pharisees who fawned upon the power of Rome; ... and finally who preached the reign of universal human love.” In short, one might say that Jesus and his teaching stood in the same relation to the later Christianity as Dionysus and the early pure mysteries to the later degraded and materialized Bacchic mysteries.
Then in a very fine passage Wagner indicts Modern Art, based, as it is, on fame and gain and serving all the lower needs of a debased public taste. The Drama is separated into Play and Opera; the one losing its idealizer—Music,—the other, its dramatic aim and end: “What serves it us, that Shakespeare, like a second Creator, has opened for us the endless realm of human nature? What serves it, that Beethoven has lent to Music the manly, independent strength of Poetry? Ask the threadbare caricatures of your theatres, ask the street-minstrel commonplaces of your operas: and ye have your answer!”
Think of it! This was written half a century ago, and in spite of it the Music Hall more than ever sways the masses, and the cheap inanities of the comic opera are the rage with the rest of the community. I shall review the remainder of this essay in the next article.
(To be continued.)
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE.
IV. POET, DIPLOMAT, TRAVELLER.
Lamartine spent two winters at Paris after the Restoration. His former acquaintances were scattered, and he had new ones to make. He was for a time solitary and little occupied. He was, nevertheless, resolute in his quest for an opening into public life. His friend Virieu and others introduced him to persons of distinction and one step led presently to another. The passion for literature served to place him on a friendly footing with others of similar tastes, and he became able after a while to enumerate among his acquaintances Chateaubriand, the “Napoleon of French literature,” Lamennais, the French Savonarola, Rocher, Aimé Martin, De Vigny.
The epoch of the Restoration was also the epoch of the Revival of Letters in France. The Revolution had sent scholars and literary men to the scaffold or driven them into exile, and Bonaparte had attempted to level all learning and philosophic culture to the plane of physical and mathematical science. Whatever might elevate the human soul was not tolerated. He aspired to restore the Sixteenth century at the end of the Eighteenth and required literature to be adapted to that end.
Louis XVIII. was always broad and liberal in his sentiments, and even before the Revolution he had cherished familiar relations with literary men and men of learning. His long term of enforced leisure, during his absence from France, and a weakness in his limbs which compelled him to sedentary life, had tended to deepen his interest in such pursuits. He was emphatically a king of the fireside.
The emigrants that returned with him to France, had but imperfectly apprehended the change. Those most bigoted formed a coterie around the Count D’Artois; others endeavored to qualify the action of the King. Hence the court was a combination of old royalty with a new order of things.
A galaxy of stars of the first magnitude was now shining in France. Naturally Lamartine was dazzled by them when he came to Paris. Observing that several young men were recognized in the literary world, he again cherished the notion of publishing.
While himself without employment he conceived the plan of a long poem and actually wrote several cantos. It was to be the history of a human soul and its migrations through successive terms of existence and forms of experience till its eventual reunion to the Centre of the Universe, God.
He also projected and began several other compositions. He labored incessantly to perfect his style, till it became, though diffuse, a model of elegance, energy and correctness.
He had from time to time written verses to which he gave the title of Meditations. Friends slyly pilfered these, and gave copies to ladies of their acquaintance. These passed from hand to hand till they came to the table of Talleyrand himself. The prince greatly admired them and his praises were repeated to the Marquise de Raigecourt. This lady had been an intimate friend of the Princess Elizabeth. Lamartine had been introduced to her by the Count de Virieu, and she took a motherly interest in his welfare. Yet he could not bring himself to go to the Court. “I was born wild and free,” he says for himself, “and I did not like to bend down in order to rise.”
From 1815 to 1818 when at home, he composed several tragedies—Medée, one relating to the Crusades, and Saul. He had a hope that by them he might gain some celebrity and perhaps contribute something to the fortune of his parents and sisters. He completed them in the spring of 1818, and having copied them in a plain hand hurried with them to Paris. He solicited an interview with Talma who granted it at once.
On invitation, he read extracts from the tragedy entitled Saul. The great tragedian listened attentively, and was for some time silent. His first words were: “Young man, I have desired to know you for twenty years. You would have been my poet. But it is too late. You are coming to the world and I am going from it.”
He then requested Lamartine to tell him frankly, as a son to a father, his personal history, his family relations, and his wishes.
This he did and told how he had desired to work, to come out of his obscurity, to produce something that would be an honor to the name of his father and a comfort to the heart of his mother. He had thought of Talma. He had written several tragedies, of which this was a specimen.
“Will you be good enough,” he implored, “to hold out your hand and help me succeed by the stage?”
Tears stood in Talma’s eyes. He praised the work, and declared that in the reign of Louis XIV. it would have won applause. But now, tragedy had been superseded, in general estimation, by the drama. He counselled Lamartine to study Shakespeare, to forget art and study nature.
When Lamartine came again to Paris the next winter, he asked him to write for the stage. But Lamartine coveted a public rather than a literary career, and applied to M. Pasquier, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, for a diplomatic appointment.
He was now present at the salons or drawing-room parties of the Duchess de Raigecourt, the Duchess de Broglie, Madame de Stael’s daughter, Madame de Ste. Aulaire, Madame de Montcalm, the sister of the Duke de Richelieu. At these he was introduced to persons of distinction. Madame de Sainte Aulaire, who had a divining faculty for discerning young persons who were destined to achieve a career, took a warm interest in his behalf. She invited him to read several pages of his unpublished verses, and afterward encouraged him to print them. He was then recovering from a severe illness. Booksellers, however, objected to the novelty of the style, and he was able only by obstinate perseverance to induce one to undertake the risk.
Now Lamartine was harassed by a new apprehension. The book, whether it broke like an egg by falling to the ground, or proved a successful venture, was liable, although anonymous, to be a source of perplexing complications. The notion of specialties in work was current, and the fact of being an author and writer of verses, might be an obstacle to his hopes.
Madame de St. Aulaire was a relative of the minister, M. Decazes. She and her husband put forth their influence with the Government in his behalf.
About the same time, M. Jules Janin, then at the beginning of his career, finding a copy of the Meditations at a book-store, purchased it out of curiosity. He found to his astonishment, a new style of poetry; that it admirably depicted the sentiments of the soul and passions of the heart, the joys of earth and the ecstasies of heaven, the hopes of the present and apprehensions of the future. He wrote a long review, which served to arouse the attention of the literary and book-reading public and to create a prodigious demand. Forty-five thousand copies were sold in the next four years, and its author was speedily ranked with Byron, Goethe and Chateaubriand, then the distinguished poets of the period. He had originated a new style of poetry.