Zanoni — Edward Bulwer-Lytton
decide! Now turn to the other picture. Clarence Glyndon returns to England with a wife who can bring him no money, unless he lets her out on the stage; so handsome, that every one asks who she is, and every one hears, — the celebrated singer, Pisani. Clarence Glyndon shuts himself up to grind colors and paint pictures in the grand historical school, which nobody buys. There is even a prejudice against him, as not having studied in the Academy, — as being an amateur. Who is Mr. Clarence Glyndon? Oh, the celebrated Pisani’s husband! What else? Oh, he exhibits those large pictures! Poor man! they have merit in their way; but Teniers and Watteau are more convenient, and almost as cheap. Clarence Glyndon, with an easy fortune while single, has a large family which his fortune, unaided by marriage, can just rear up to callings more plebeian than his own. He retires into the country, to save and to paint; he grows slovenly and discontented; ‘ the world does not appreciate him,’ he says, and he runs away from the world. At the age of fortyfive what will be Clarence Glyndon? Your ambition shall decide that question also! ” “Tf all men were as worldly as you,” said Glyndon, rising, “there would never have been an artist or a poet! ” “Perhaps we should do just as well without them,” answered Mervale. “Is it not time to think of dinner?
The mullets here are remarkably fine! ”
p. 126
CHAPTER IX.
Wollt ihr hoch auf ihren Flugeln schweben, Werft die Angst des Irdischen von euch ! Fliehet aus dem engen dumpfen Leben In des Ideales Reich! Das Ideal und das Leben.
Wouldst thou soar heavenward on its joyous wing # Cast off the earthly burden of the Real ; High from this cramped and dungeoned being, spring Into the realm of the Ideal.
As some injudicious master lowers and vitiates the taste of the student by fixing his attention to what he falsely calls the Natural, but which, in reality, is the Commonplace, and understands not that beauty in art is created by what Raphael so well describes, — namely, the idea of beauty in the painter's own mind; and that in every art, whether its plastic expression be found in words or marble, colors or sounds, the servile imitation of Nature is the work of journeymen and tyros, — so in conduct the man of the world vitiates and lowers the bold enthusiasm of loftier natures by the perpetual reduction of whatever is generous and trustful to all that is trite and coarse. A great German poet has well defined the distinction between discretion and the larger wisdom. In the last there is a certain rashness which the first disdains, —
“The purblind see but the receding shore, Not that to which the bold wave wafts them o’er,”
Yet in this logic of the prudent and the worldly there is often a reasoning unanswerable of its kind.
p. 197
You must have a feeling, —a faith in whatever is self-sacrificing and divine, whether in religion or in art, in glory or in love; or Common-sense will reason you out of the sacrifice, and a syllogism will debase the Divine to an article in the market. very true critic in art, from Aristotle and Pliny, from Winkelman and Vasari to Reynolds and Fuseli, has sought to instruct the painter that Nature is not to be copied, but exalted ; that the loftiest order of art, selecting only the loftiest combinations, is the perpetual struggle of Humanity to approach the gods. The great painter, as the great author, embodies what is possible to man, it is true, but what is not common to mankind. There is truth in Hamlet; in Macbeth, and his witches; in Desdemona; in Othello; in Prospero, and in Caliban; there is truth in the cartoons of Raphael; there is truth in the Apollo, the Antinoiis, and the Laocoén. But you do not meet the originals of the words, the cartoons, or the marble, in Oxford Street or St. James’s. All these, to return to Raphael, are the creatures of the idea in the artist’s mind. ‘This idea is not inborn; it has come from an intense study. But that study has been of the ideal that can be raised from the positive and the actual into grandeur and beauty. The commonest model becomes full of exquisite suggestions to him who has formed this idea; a Venus of flesh and blood would be vulgarized by the imitation of him who has not. When asked where he got his models, Guido summoned a common porter from his calling, and drew from a mean original a head of surpassing beauty. It resembled the porter, but idealized the porter to the hero. It was true, but it was not real. ‘There are critics who will tell you that the Boor of Teniers is more true to
p. 128
decide! Now turn to the other picture. Clarence Glyndon returns to England with a wife who can bring him no money, unless he lets her out on the stage; so handsome, that every one asks who she is, and every one hears, — the celebrated singer, Pisani. Clarence Glyndon shuts himself up to grind colors and paint pictures in the grand historical school, which nobody buys. There is even a prejudice against him, as not having studied in the Academy, — as being an amateur. Who is Mr. Clarence Glyndon? Oh, the celebrated Pisani’s husband! What else? Oh, he exhibits those large pictures! Poor man! they have merit in their way; but Teniers and Watteau are more convenient, and almost as cheap. Clarence Glyndon, with an easy fortune while single, has a large family which his fortune, unaided by marriage, can just rear up to callings more plebeian than his own. He retires into the country, to save and to paint; he grows slovenly and discontented; ‘ the world does not appreciate him,’ he says, and he runs away from the world. At the age of fortyfive what will be Clarence Glyndon? Your ambition shall decide that question also! ” “Tf all men were as worldly as you,” said Glyndon, rising, “there would never have been an artist or a poet! ” “Perhaps we should do just as well without them,” answered Mervale. “Is it not time to think of dinner?
The mullets here are remarkably fine! ”
p. 126
CHAPTER IX.
Wollt ihr hoch auf ihren Flugeln schweben, Werft die Angst des Irdischen von euch ! Fliehet aus dem engen dumpfen Leben In des Ideales Reich! Das Ideal und das Leben.
Wouldst you soar heavenward on its joyous wing # Cast off the earthly burden of the Real ; High from this cramped and dungeoned being, spring Into the realm of the Ideal.
As some injudicious master lowers and vitiates the taste of the student by fixing his attention to what he falsely calls the Natural, but which, in reality, is the Commonplace, and understands not that beauty in are is created by what Raphael so well describes, — namely, the idea of beauty in the painter's own mind; and that in every art, whether its plastic expression be found in words or marble, colors or sounds, the servile imitation of Nature is the work of journeymen and tyros, — so in conduct the man of the world vitiates and lowers the bold enthusiasm of loftier natures by the perpetual reduction of whatever is generous and trustful to all that is trite and coarse. A great German poet has well defined the distinction between discretion and the larger wisdom. In the last there is a certain rashness which the first disdains, —
“The purblind see but the receding shore, Not that to which the bold wave wafts them o’er,”
Yet in this logic of the prudent and the worldly there is often a reasoning unanswerable of its kind.
p. 197
You must have a feeling, —a faith in whatever is self-sacrificing and divine, whether in religion or in art, in glory or in love; or Common-sense will reason you out of the sacrifice, and a syllogism will debase the Divine to an article in the market. very true critic in art, from Aristotle and Pliny, from Winkelman and Vasari to Reynolds and Fuseli, has sought to instruct the painter that Nature is not to be copied, but exalted ; that the loftiest order of art, selecting only the loftiest combinations, is the perpetual struggle of Humanity to approach the gods. The great painter, as the great author, embodies what is possible to man, it is true, but what is not common to mankind. There is truth in Hamlet; in Macbeth, and his witches; in Desdemona; in Othello; in Prospero, and in Caliban; there is truth in the cartoons of Raphael; there is truth in the Apollo, the Antinoiis, and the Laocoén. But you do not meet the originals of the words, the cartoons, or the marble, in Oxford Street or St. James’s. All these, to return to Raphael, are the creatures of the idea in the artist’s mind. ‘This idea is not inborn; it has come from an intense study. But that study has been of the ideal that can be raised from the positive and the actual into grandeur and beauty. The commonest model becomes full of exquisite suggestions to him who has formed this idea; a Venus of flesh and blood would be vulgarized by the imitation of him who has not. When asked where he got his models, Guido summoned a common porter from his calling, and drew from a mean original a head of surpassing beauty. It resembled the porter, but idealized the porter to the hero. It was true, but it was not real. ‘There are critics who will tell you that the Boor of Teniers is more true to
p. 128
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