"Vast current of involuntary ideas, wild-goose chase, abnegation of will! This singular feat of dexterity was accomplished by the man you know, whose sole and special faculty consists in not being master of himself, the man of encounters and good fortunes.
"Assuredly there was talent. But what abuse! What debauchery! And, besides, what fatigue and what pain!
"No doubt some respect is due or, at least, some grateful compassion, for the tireless writhing of an old dancing girl. But, alas! worn-out attitudes, weak methods, boresome seductivities!
"The ideas of our man are but old women driven crazy with too much dancing, too much kicking off the ground. Sustalerunt sæpius pedes.
"Where is the heart? Where the soul? Where reason?"
Here the manuscript comes to an abrupt end, and one is left to wonder how much more Baudelaire had written; perhaps only one more page, as he had a peculiar fashion of writing fragments on bits of note-paper. Certainly this prose has the refinement, the satire, the exquisite use of words, the inimitable charm and unerring instinct of a faultless writer. Not only is there his passion for les danseuses and for the exotic, but a sinister touch in l'abdication de la volonté which recurs finally in a letter written February 8, 1865; for, when one imagines himself capable of an absolute abdication of the will, it means that something of the man has gone out of him.
II. AN ADVENTURE IN IMAGES
It is often said, not without a certain kind of truth, that the likeness is precisely what matters least in a portrait. That is one of the interesting heresies which Whistler did not learn from Velasquez. Because a portrait which is a likeness, and nothing more than a likeness, can often be done by a second-rate artist, by a kind of sympathetic trick, it need not follow that likeness is in itself an unimportant quality in a masterly portrait, nor will it be found that likeness was ever disregarded by the greatest painters. But there are many kinds of likenesses, among which we have to choose, as we have to choose in all art which follows nature, between a realism of outward circumstance and a realism of inner significance. Every individual face has as many different expressions as the soul behind it has moods. When we talk, currently, of a "good likeness," we mean, for the most part, that a single, habitual expression, with which we are familiar, as we are familiar with a frequently worn suit of clothes, has been rendered; that we see a man as we imagine ourselves ordinarily to see him. But, in the first place, most people see nothing with any sort of precision; they cannot tell you the position and shape of the ears, or the shape of the cheek-bones, of their most intimate friends. Their mental vision is so feeble that they can call up only a blurred image, a vague compromise between expressions, without any definite form at all. Others have a mental vision so sharp, retentive, yet without selection, that to think of a person is to call up a whole series of precise images, each the image of a particular expression at a particular moment; the whole series failing to coalesce into one really typical likeness, the likeness of soul or body. Now it is the artist's business to choose among these mental pictures; better still, to create on paper, or on his canvas, the image which was none of these, but which these helped to make in his own soul.
The Manet portrait of Charles Baudelaire, dated 1862, is exquisite, ironical, subtle, enigmatical, astonishing; He has arrested the head and shoulders of the poet in an instant's vision; the outlines are definite, clear, severe, and simple. One sees the eager head thrust forward, as if the man were actually walking; the fine and delicate nose, voluptuously dilated in the nostrils, seems to breathe in vague perfumes; the mouth, half-seen, has a touch of his malicious irony; the right eye shines vividly in a fixed glance, those eyes that had the colour of Spanish tobacco. Over the long, waving hair, that seems to be swept backward by the wind, is placed, with unerring skill, at the exact angle, that top-hat that Baudelaire had to have expressly made to fit the size of his head. Around his long neck is just seen the white soft collar of his shirt, with a twisted tie in front. In this picture one sees the inspired poet, with distinct touches of this strong piece of thinking flesh and blood. And Manet indicates, I think, that glimpse of the soul which one needs in a perfect likeness.