She closed her eyes for a moment, as if to shut out some painful vision evoked by his words.
“Sir, do you recollect the reply of Laplace, when Napoleon asked him why there was no mention of God in his ‘Mécanique Celeste?’ ‘Sire, je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse.’ I was not sufficiently insane to base my religion of beauty upon a holiness that was buried in the tomb supplied by Joseph of Arimathea,—that was long ago hunted out of the world it might have purified. Once I believed in, and revered what I supposed was its existence, but I was speedily disenchanted of my faith, for,—
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‘I have seen those that wore Heaven’s armor, worsted: I have heard Truth lie: Seen Life, beside the founts for which it thirsted, Curse God and die.’ |
Dr. Grey, I do not desire to sneer at your Christian trust, and God knows I would give all my earthly possessions and hopes for a religion that would insure me your calm resignation and contentment; but the resurrection of my faith would only resemble that beautiful floral Palingenesis (asserted by Gaffarel and Kircher), which was but ‘the pale spectre of a flower coming slowly forth from its own ashes,’ and speedily dropping back into dust. Leave me in the enjoyment of the only pleasure earth can afford me, the contemplation of the beautiful.”
“Unless you blend with it the true and good, your love of beauty will degenerate into the merely sensuous æsthetics, which, at the present day, renders its votaries fastidious, etiolated voluptuaries. The deification of humanity, so successfully inaugurated by Feuerbach and Strauss, is now no longer confined to realms of abstract speculation; but cultivated sensualism has sunk so low that popular poets chant the praises of Phryne and Cleopatra, and painters and sculptors seek to immortalize types that degrade the taste of all 348 lovers of Art. The true mission of Art, whether through the medium of books, statues, or pictures, is to purify and exalt; but the curse of our age is, that the fashionable pantheistic raving about Nature, and the apotheosizing of physical loveliness,—is rapidly sinking into a worship of the vilest elements of humanity and materialism. Pagan æsthetics were purer and nobler than the system, which, under that name, finds favor with our generation.”
She listened, not assentingly, but without any manifestation of impatience, and while he talked, her eyes rested dreamily upon the yellow beach, where,—
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“Trampling up the sloping sand, In lines outreaching far and wide, The white-maned billows swept to land.” |
Whether she pondered his words, or was too entirely absorbed by her own thoughts to heed their import, he had no means of ascertaining.
“Mrs. Gerome, what have you painted recently?”
“Nothing, since my illness; and perhaps I shall never touch my brush again. Sometimes I have thought I would paint a picture of Handel standing up to listen to that sad song from his own ‘Samson,’—‘Total eclipse, no sun, no moon!’ But I doubt whether I could put on canvas that grand, mournful, blind face, turned eagerly towards the stage, while tears ran swiftly from his sightless eyes. Again, I have vague visions of a dead Schopenhauer, seated in the corner of the sofa, with his pet poodle, Putz, howling at his master’s ghastly white features,—with his Indian Oupnekhat lying on his rigid knee, and his gilded statuette of Gotama Buddha grinning at him from the mantelpiece, welcoming him to Nirwána. There stands my easel, empty and shrouded; and here, from day to day, I sit idle, not lacking ideas, but the will to clothe them. Unlike poor Maurice de Guérin, who said that his ‘head was parching; that, like a tree which had lived its life, he felt as though every passing wind were blowing through dead branches in his top,’ I feel that my 349 brain is as vigorous and restless as ever, while my will alone is paralyzed, and my heart withered and cold within me.”