IPHIGENIA.
I have often been surprised that we have no statue of this eminently beautiful subject. We have the story of Iphigenia constantly repeated in gems and bas-reliefs; the most celebrated example extant being the Medici Vase. But no single figure of Iphigenia, as the Greek ideal of heroic maidenhood and self-devotion, exists, I believe, in antique sculpture. The small and rather feebly elegant statuette by Christian Tieck is the only modern example I have seen.
Iphigenia may be represented under two very different aspects, both beautiful.
First, as the Iphigenia in Aulis; the victim sacrificed to obtain a fair wind for the Grecian fleet detained on its way to Troy. Extreme youth and grace, with a tender resignation not devoid of dignity, should be the leading characteristics; for we must bear in mind that Iphigenia, while regretting life and the “lamp-bearing day,” and “the beloved light,” and her Argive home and her “Mycenian handmaids,” dies willingly, as the Greek girl ought to die, for the good of her country. She begins, indeed, with a prayer for pity, with lamentations for her untimely end, but she resumes her nobler self; and all her sentiments, when she is brought forth, crowned for sacrifice, are worthy of the daughter of Agamemnon. She even exults that she is called upon to perish for the good of Greece, and to avenge the cause of right on the Spartan Helen. “I give,” she exclaims, “my life for Greece! sacrifice me—and let Troy perish!” When her mother weeps, she reproves those tears: “It is not well, O my mother! that I should love life too much. Think that thou hast brought me forth for the common good of Greece, not for thyself only!” She glories in her anticipated renown, not vainly, since, while the world endures, and far as the influences of literature and art extend, her story and her name shall live. The scene in Euripides should be taken as the basis of the character—the finest scene in his finest drama. The tradition that Iphigenia was not really sacrificed, but snatched away from the altar by Diana, and a hind substituted in her place, should be present to the fancy of the artist, when he sets himself to represent the majestic resignation of the consecrated virgin; as adding a touch of the marvellous and ideal to the Greek elegance and simplicity of the conception.
The picture of Iphigenia as drawn by Tennyson is wonderfully vivid; but it wants the Greek dignity and statuesque feeling; it is emphatically a picture, all over colour and light, and crowded with accessories. He represents her as encountering Helen in the land of Shadows, and, turning from her “with sick and scornful looks averse,” for she remembers the tragedy at Aulis.
| “My youth (she said) was blasted with a curse: This woman was the cause! I was cut off from hope in that sad place Which yet to name my spirit loathes and fears. My father held his hand upon his face; I, blinded with my tears, Essayed to speak; my voice came thick with sighs As in a dream; dimly I could descry The stern black-bearded kings with wolfish eyes Waiting to see me die. The tall masts quiver’d as they lay afloat, The temples and the people and the shore; One drew a sharp knife thro’ my tender throat Slowly—and nothing more.” |
The famous picture of the sacrifice of Iphigenia by Timanthes, the theme of admiration and criticism for the last two thousand years, which every writer on art deems it proper to mention in praise or in blame, could hardly have been more vivid or more terrible than this.
The analogous idea, that of heroic resignation and self-devotion in a great cause, would be conveyed in sacred art by the figure of Jephtha’s daughter; she too regrets the promises of life, but dies not the less willingly. “My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the Lord hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon.” And for a single statue, Jephtha’s daughter would be a fine subject—one to task the powers of our best sculptors; the sentiment would be the same as the Iphigenia, but the treatment altogether different.