Handbook of the new Library of Congress

by Unknown

Mr. Warner’s Bronze Doors.—Mr. Warner’s first door, Tradition, illustrates the method by which all knowledge was originally handed down from generation to generation. The background of the panel in the larger tympanum is a mountainous and cloudy landscape, conveying admirably, says one critic[5], “a sense of prehistoric vastness and solitude.” In the centre is a woman, the embodiment of the subject, seated on a throne. Against her knee leans a little boy, whom she is instructing in the deeds and worship of his fathers. The visitor will not fail to notice the unusual expressiveness of the group—the boy with eager, attentive face, and the woman holding his hand in one of hers, and raising the other in a gesture of quiet but noble emphasis. Seated on the ground, two on either side, and listening intently to her words, are an American Indian, holding a couple of arrows in his hand; a Norseman, with his winged steel cap; a prehistoric man, with a stone axe lying by his side; and a shepherd with his crook, standing for the nomadic, pastoral races. The four are typical representatives of the primitive peoples whose entire lore was kept alive by oral tradition. The face of the Indian is understood to be a portrait of Chief Joseph, of the Nez Percés tribe, from a sketch made from life by Mr. Warner in 1889.

Of the panels below, that to the left contains the figure of a woman holding a lyre, and the other the figure of a warrior’s widow clasping the helmet and sword of her dead husband to her breast. The first represents Imagination, and the second Memory, the former being the chief quality which distinguishes the nobler sorts of traditional literature, as exemplified in the true epics, springing from the folk-tales of the people, and the latter standing for that heroic past with which it so constantly deals.

BRONZE DOOR, MAIN ENTRANCE.
BY OLIN L. WARNER.

The same general arrangement of figures is followed in the second door—the one representing Writing—as in the first. In the tympanum of the door, a female figure is seated in the centre, holding a pen in her hand and with a scroll spread open in her lap. Beside her stand two little children, whom she is teaching to read or write. To the right and left are four figures representing the peoples who have had the most influence on the world through their written memorials and literature—the Egyptian and the Jew to the right, and the Christian and Greek to the left. The Jew and the Christian are represented as kneeling, in allusion to the religious influence which they have exerted. The former holds a staff in his hand, and may be taken as one of the ancient Jewish patriarchs; the latter bears a cross. The Greek has a lyre, for Poetry, and the Egyptian holds a stylus in his hand.

The standing figures in the door proper are of women, and represent Truth (on the right) and Research (on the left). Research holds the torch of knowledge or learning, and Truth a mirror and a serpent, the two signifying that in all literature, wisdom (of which the serpent is the emblem) and careful observation (typified by the mirror, with its accurate reflection of external objects) must be joined in order to produce a consistent and truthful impression upon the reader. The smaller panels below contain a design of conventional ornament with cherubs or geniuses supporting a cartouche, on which the mirror or serpent of the larger panels is repeated.

Mr. Macmonnies’s Bronze Door.—In Mr. Macmonnies’s design the tympanum is occupied by a composition which he has entitled, Minerva Diffusing the Products of Typographical Art. The Goddess of Learning and Wisdom—a fit guardian to preside at the main portal of a great library—is seated in the centre upon a low bench. On either side is a winged genius, the messengers of the goddess, each carrying a load of ponderous folios which she is dispatching as her gift to mankind. To the right is her owl, perched solemnly on the bench on which she is sitting. She wears the conventional helmet and breastplate—the latter the Ægis, with its Medusa’s Head—of ancient art, but in her wide, full skirt, with its leaf-figure pattern, the artist has adopted a more modern motive. The Latin title of Mr. Macmonnies’s subject, Ars Typographica, and various symbolical ornaments are introduced in the background. To the left and right, enclosed in a laurel wreath, are a Pegasus and a stork. The former stands, of course, for the poetic inspiration which gives value to literature. The stork, commonly symbolizing filial piety, may be taken here, if one chooses, as typifying the faithful care of the inventors of printing and their disciples in multiplying the product of that inspiration. To the left, also, are an hour-glass, an inking-ball, and a printer’s stick; and on the other side of the panel, an ancient printing-press.

TRADITION—TYMPANUM OF BRONZE DOOR.—BY OLIN L. WARNER.