Part 2 — PART II. (continued 3)
Reading edition
Southey mentions that in the beginning of the last war, about 1795, when popular feeling, excited almost to frenzy, raged against France, a pantomime, or ballet, was performed at Covent Garden, from the story of Joan of Arc, at the conclusion of which she is carried away by demons, like a female Don Juan. This denouement caused such a storm of indignation, that the author—one James Cross—was obliged, after the first two or three representations, to change the demons into angels, and send her straight into Heaven:—an anecdote pleasant to record as illustrating the sure ultimate triumph of truth over falsehood; of all the better sympathies over prejudice and wrong;—in spite of history, and, what is more, in spite of Shakspeare!
CHARACTERS FROM SHAKSPEARE.
Joan of Arc is not, however, a Shakspearian character; and, in fact, there are very few of his personages susceptible of sculptural treatment. They are too dramatic, too profound, too complex in their essential nature where they are tragic; too many-sided and picturesque where they are comic.
For instance, the attempt to condense into marble such light, evanescent, quaint creations as those in “The Midsummer’s Night’s Dream” is better avoided; we feel that a marble fairy must be a heavy absurdity. Oberon and Titania might perhaps float along in a bas-relief; but we cannot put away the thought that they have reality without substantiality, and we do not like to see them, or Ariel, or Caliban fixed in the definite forms of sculpture.
There are, however, a few of Shakspeare’s characters which appear to me beautifully adapted for statuesque treatment: Perdita holding her flowers; Miranda lingering on the shore; might well replace the innumerable “Floras” and “Nymphs preparing to bathe,” which people the atéliers of our sculptors. Cordelia has something of marble quietude about her; and Hermione is a statue ready made. And, by the way, it is observable that Shakspeare represents Hermione as a coloured statue. Paulina will not allow it to be touched, because “the colour is not yet dry.” Again,—
“Would you not deem those veins Did verily bear blood? “The very life seems warm upon her lips, The fixture of her eye hath motion in’t, And we are mocked by Art! The ruddiness upon her lip is wet, “You’ll mar it if you kiss it, stain your own With oily painting.”
I think it possible to model small ornamental statuettes and groups from some few of the scenes in Shakspeare’s plays; but this is quite different from life-size figures of Hamlet, Othello, Shylock, Macbeth, which must either have the look of real individual portraiture, or become mere idealisations of certain qualities; and Shakspeare’s creations are neither the one nor the other.
CHARACTERS FROM SPENSER.
Spenser is so essentially a picturesque poet, he depends for his rich effects so much on the combination of colour and imagery, and multiplied accessories, that one feels—at least I feel, on laying down a volume of the “Fairie Queene” dazzled as if I had been walking in a gallery of pictures. His “Masque of Cupid,” for instance, although a procession of poetical creations, could not be transferred to a bas-relief without completely losing its Spenserian character—its wondrous glow of colour. Thus Cupid “uprears himself exulting from the back of the ravenous lion;” removes the bandage from his eyes, that he may look round on his victims; “shakes the darts which his right hand doth strain full dreadfully,” and “claps on high his coloured wings twain.” This certainly is not the Greek Cupid, nor the Cupid of sculpture; it is the Spenserian Cupid. So of his Una, so of his Britomart, and the Red Cross Knight and Sir Guyon: one might make elegant statuesque impersonations of the allegories they involve, as of Truth, Chastity, Faith, Temperance; but then they would lose immediately their Spenserian character and sentiment, and must become something altogether different.
THE LADY. COMUS.
It is not so with Milton. The “Lady” in Comus, whether she stands listening to the echos of her own sweet voice, or motionless as marble under the spell of the “false enchanter,” looking that divine reproof which in the poem she speaks,—
“I hate when vice can bolt her arguments, And virtue has no tongue to check her pride”—
is a subject perfectly fitted for sculpture, and never, so far as I know, executed. It would be a far more appropriate ornament for a lady’s boudoir than French statues of Modesty, which generally have the effect of making one feel very much ashamed.5
Sabrina has been beautifully treated by Marshall.
It is difficult to render Comus without making him too like a Bacchus or an Apollo. He is neither.
He represents not the beneficent, but the intoxicating and brutifying power of wine. His joviality should not be that of a God, but with something mischievous, bestial, Faun-like; and he should have, with the Dionysian grace, a dash of the cunning and malignity of his Mother Circe. These characteristics should be in the mind of the artist. The panther’s skin, the coronal of vine leaves, and, instead of the Thyrsus, the magician’s wand, are the proper accessories. It is also worth notice, that in the antique representations Comus has wings as a demigod, and in a picture described by Philostratus (a night scene) he lies crouched in a drunken sleep. Little use, however, is made of him in the antique myths, and the Miltonic conception is that which should be embodied by the modern sculptor.
Il Penseroso and L’Allegro, if embodied in sculpture as poetical abstractions (either masculine or feminine) of Melancholy and Mirth, would cease to be Miltonic, for the conceptions of the poet are essentially picturesque, and expressed in both cases by a luxuriant accumulation of images and accessories, not to be brought within the limits of plastic art without the most tasteless confusion and inconsistency.
SATAN.
The religious idea of a Satan—the impersonation of that mixture of the bestial, the malignant, the impious, and the hopeless, which constitute the Fiend, the enemy of all that is human and divine—I conceive to be quite unfitted for the purpose of sculpture. Danton’s attempt degenerates into grim caricature. Milton’s Satan—“the archangel ruined,”—is however a strictly poetical creation, and capable of the most poetical statuesque treatment. But we must remember that, if it be a gross mistake, religious and artistic, to conceive the Messiah under the form of a larger, stronger humanity, with a physique like that of a wrestler, (as M. Angelo has done in the Last Judgement) it is equally a mistake to conceive the lost angel, our spiritual adversary, under any such coarse Herculean lineaments. There can be no image of the Miltonic Satan without the elements of beauty, “though changed by pale ire, envy, and despair!” Colossal he may be, vast as Mount Athos; but it is not necessary to express this that he should be hewn out of Mount Athos, or look like the giant Polypheme! His proportions, his figure, his features—like his power—are angelic. As the Hero—for he is so—of the “Paradise Lost,” the subject is open to poetic treatment; but I am not aware that as yet it has been poetically treated.
Of the Italian poetry and history, and all the wondrous and lovely shapes which come thronging out of that Elysian land,—I can say nothing now,—or only this,—that after all I am not quite sure that I am right about Spenser. For, at first view, what poet seems less amenable to statuesque treatment than Dante? One would have imagined that only a preternatural fusion of Michal-Angelo and Rembrandt could fitly render the murky recesses and ghastly and monstrous inhabitants of the Inferno, or attempt to shadow forth the dazzling mysteries of the Paradiso. Yet see what Flaxman has achieved! His designs are legitimate bas-reliefs, not pictures in outline. He has been true to his own art, and all that could be done within the limitations of his art he has accomplished. It is a translation of Dante’s ideas into sculpture, with every thing peculiarly Dantesque in the treatment, set aside.
Now as to our more modern poets.—From amid the long array of beautiful subjects which seem to move in succession before the fancy, there are two which stand out prominent in their beauty. First, Lord Byron’s “Myrrha,” who with her Ionian elegance is susceptible of the purest classical treatment. She should hold a torch; but not with the air of a Mænad, nor of a Thais about to fire Persepolis. The sentiment should be deeper and quieter.
“Dost thou think A Greek girl dare not do for love that which An Indian widow does for custom?”
Ion in Talfourd’s Tragedy—the boy-hero, in all the tenderness of extreme youth, already self-devoted and touched with a melancholy grace and an elevation beyond his years—is so essentially statuesque, that I am surprised that no sculptor has attempted it; perhaps because, in this instance, as in that of Myrrha, the popular realisation of both characters as subjects of formative art has been spoiled by theatrical trappings and associations.
