She shrinks from the reproachful glances of those whom she has injured; and yet, as it is finely intimated, wherever she appears her resistless loveliness vanquishes every heart, and changes curses into blessings. Priam treats her with paternal tenderness; Hector with a sort of chivalrous respect.
| “If some proud brother eyed me with disdain, Or scornful sister with her sweeping train, Thy gentle accents softened all my pain; Nor was it e’er my fate from thee to find A deed ungentle or a word unkind.” |
Helen, standing on the walls of Troy, and looking sadly over the battle plain, where the heroes of her forfeited country, her kindred and her friends, are assembled to fight and bleed for her sake, brings before us an image full of melancholy sweetness as well as of consummate beauty. Another passage in which she upbraids Venus as the cause of her fault—not as a mortal might humbly expostulate with an immortal, but almost on terms of equality, and even with bitterness,—is yet more characteristic. “For what,” she asks, tauntingly, “am I reserved? To what new countries am I destined to carry war and desolation? For what new lover must I break a second vow? Let me go hence! and if Paris lament my absence, let Venus console him, and for his sake ascend the skies no more!” A regretful pathos should mingle with her conscious beauty and her half-celestial dignity; and, to render her truly, her Greek elegance should be combined with a deeper and more complex sentiment than Greek art has usually sought to express.
I am speaking here of Homer’s Helen—the Helen of the Iliad, not the Helen of the tragedians—not the Helen who for two thousand years has merely served “to point a moral;” and an artist who should think to realise the true Homeric conception, should beware of counterfeits, for such are abroad.[2]
There is a wild Greek myth that it was not the real Helen, but the phantom of Helen, who fled with Paris, and who caused the destruction of Troy; while Helen herself was leading, like Penelope, a pattern life at Memphis. I must confess I prefer the proud humility, the pathetic elegance of Homer’s Helen, to such jugglery.
It may flatter the pride of virtue, or it may move our religious sympathies, to look on the forlorn abasement of the Magdalene as the emblem of penitence; but there are associations connected with Helen—“sad Helen,” as she calls herself, and as I conceive the character,—which have a deep tragic significance; and surely there are localities for which the impersonation of classical art would be better fitted than that of sacred art.
I do not know of any existing statue of Helen. Nicetas mentions among the relics of ancient art destroyed when Constantinople was sacked by the Latins in 1202, a bronze statue of Helen, with long hair flowing to the waist; and there is mention of an Etruscan figure of her, with wings (expressive of her celestial origin, for the Etruscans gave all their gods and demi-gods wings): in Müller I find these two only. There are likewise busts; and the story of Helen, and the various events of her life, occur perpetually on the antique gems, bas-reliefs, and painted vases. The most frequent subject is her abduction by Paris. A beautiful subject for a bas-relief, and one I believe not yet treated, would be Helen and Priam mourning over the lifeless form of Hector; yet the difficulty of preserving the simple sculptural treatment, and at the same time discriminating between this and other similar funereal groups, would render it perhaps a better subject for a picture, as admitting then of such scenery and accessories as would at once determine the signification.
