Nationalism and Culture (91 page)

Every great art is free from national limitations and affects us so overpoweringly just because it rouses in us the hidden stirrings of our humanity, reveals the mighty unity of mankind. Let one sink himself in the creations of Francisco Goya from which radiates all the warmth of southern plains. Still, behind the outer forms of southern surroundings dreams the soul of the artist, stand ideas and problems that were revolving in his brain, and which were not simply the problems of his country, but the problems of his time. For every art of vital strength brings out the value of the spiritual contribution of its epoch, which is struggling for emotional expression. And right here there enters that purely human quality that overcomes the foreign and sets us on our native soil.

One need not be a Spaniard to be able to appreciate the art of Goya in all its greatness. The onrush of a new time that strode steelshod over a perishing world rumbles from out his work and seems like the twilight

^ Originally called Christ Healing the Sick, the etching came later to be named for a price once paid for it.— Translator

of the gods, the battle to the death of everything that is. His portraits of the Spanish royal family and the entire courtly setting are gruesome examples of an inexorable urge for the truth that made no concessions and stripped from divinely established royalty the last fragment of the tinsel of majesty. Only the human, the all too human, finds expression here. Nietzsche's saying, "Often corruption sits on the throne—and often the throne on corruption," becomes reality here in both its aspects.

And what holds good of Goya's paintings holds good in still higher degree of the etchings of the master. Here his rebellious temper takes on actually demonic forms. His Desastres de la Guerra are more horrible than anything ever said against war. In these frightful drawings there lies no slightest glimmer of heroic sentiment, no patriotic inspiration of any sort, no glory of the great leaders of battle j only the human beast is here depicted in every phase of his murderous activity. A revolutionary in the boldest sense of the word here speaks to us in a language understood by all peoples that strips the last rags from the rotten body of patriotic hypocrisy J a really great man here passes judgment on the organized murder of peoples. Goya's all-destroying spirit made pause before no sanctity. With grim scorn and angry contempt he broke through all the bounds of antiquated traditions and reverend notions. He writes his Mene tekel above the gates of the old society, and opposes the heads of state and church just as implacably as he does the whole chaotic mass of dead conventions and inherited prejudices of his contemporaries. When the signal fires of the French Revolution flamed up also in Spain, then the artist jubilated over the new time which was to come. But these unbounded hopes were quickly shattered j and with Ferdinand VII on the throne, blackest reaction boldly reared its head and scoffed at all the dreams of a coming freedom. The Inquisition was reestablished in its old rights, all the young germs perished before the pest-laden breath of a bloody despotism, and dense darkness spread over all the land. Even Goya's dream had been dreamed out. In utter silence, filled with a grim contempt for mankind, he lived withdrawn from all the world in his country house near Madrid, alone with the offspring of his hellish fantasy which his hand conjured forth upon the walls—frightful figures of a silent world of specters, surrounded by the madness of every terror, compared to which Dante's Hell seems happy and peaceful—till the aged artist no longer felt safe even in this loneliness from the malice of the despot, whom people called the "Tiger," and dragged his withered body off to France, where death closed at last his tired eyes.

However strongly the advocates of "art for art's sake" may emphasize that art is timeless, still the art history of every epoch shows us by innumerable examples how irresistibly the intellectual and social currents of the time come to expression in its art. Let one compare the works of the rococo

painters with the creations of Jacques-Louis David, and one recognizes at the first glance that in the short time that lies between the two a scene of mighty dimensions in world history has been enacted.

The trenchant phrase of Pompadour, "After us the deluge!" stood invisible above the gates of the old society, a world of hypocritic appearances, as fragile as its dainty porcelain and its slender, curved-legged furniture that seemed made rather to be looked at than to be used. Its speech is graceful and select, its social forms are of involved courtliness. It has no more feeling for the heroic gestures of Corneille or for the stiff dignity of Racine. Only the intimate, the dainty, still has attraction for its supporters. Their passion is the pastoral play, the gallant adventure, which make no further demands on one; and if the debilitated body is not in shape to follow up the tumult of the senses, then artificial means must be employed to reinforce the erotic impulse. Everything seems ornate, softened, over-refined in this theatrical world; everything coos, smiles, minces, dances, lures, sighs amorously, smells of musk and cosmetics and never for an instant thinks of the fact that outside a whole people is perishing in shocking misery. And when from time to time a dull growl of hatred disturbs the dainty joys of this eternal holiday, they seem for a while bewildered and anxious, then quickly turn with graceful wantonness to some new madness. To shut themselves away from all the realities of the world outside, not to see what is, was the motto of that society, to which Mozart has so delightfully given sound and rhythm in his Figaro.

Watteau's Embarkation for the Island of Cytherea could serve that time as a slogan, A company of enamored rococo people in the midst of a lovely landscape before a placid body of water, awaiting the vessel that is to transport them to the dream-fields of the blissful. Here the woe and suffering of the world is forgotten; no rough gale penetrates into this hidden paradise. All life seems wrapped in fragrance and delight—a faithful image of the gay society, which lived as if in a garden of love and walled up every entrance so that no uninvited guest could disturb their pleasures. What inspired Watteau was yet more delicately and perfectly depicted in the works of Lancret, Boucher, Fragonard and others. Everything great, solemn, stern, which might awaken in the beholder serious or tormenting reflections, is lacking here. Life is lived under the sign of Venus, the erotic is its only content. It is not the naive, almost undesirous nakedness of a past time, which gives the artist the opportunity to trace all the motives for the activities of the human body—not even the blunt sensuality which stands out so crudely in the works of Rubens. Here something else appears. A gentle quiver goes through these female bodies, which often have not quite reached their bloom, as in Boucher's figures of girls. Something like a lascivious shudder runs through this naked flesh, pregnant with hidden pleasures and panting for the joys of

secret love. It is a world of rapturous charm, the carefree world of Arcadia, where the tender sky seems never beclouded by a sorrow j almost too lovely to be true. One has the feeling of sitting out a cheerful play on which the curtain will shortly be rung down.

But the pastoral idyll was to have a sudden end. Too frightful was the price that must be paid for the pleasures of a tiny minority of privileged idlers, too horrible the suffering that ground to earth the millions born of the dust, whose death rattle died out unheard amid the carouse of the love-feast. The catastrophe did not come suddenly. Since the death of Louis XV revolts of the hungry peasantry had become a constantly recurring phenomenon. Because the unrest was confined to narrow limits, as a rule, the government was able to suppress it with comparative easej but the disturbances occurred again and again, and they became constantly more bitter. The signs were there, but there were only a few who wanted to understand themj and still fewer who could summon up the courage to interpret them correctly. But at last the storm broke, and, wildly howling, tore through the rotten framework of the old society so that everything came crashing down together. A thunder storm had broken over Cythereaj fiery bolts set the old trees ablaze, and through the pleasant walks, where hitherto there had been heard only the billing and cooing of lovers, roared the thunder's mighty voice announcing the beginning of new time. The firm walls which had so safely shut off the fields of the blessed from the outer world, fell in ruins j and aroused masses rolled in compact troops through the quiet closes of a lost paradise—the miserable and enslaved of uncounted years. None had had pity on themj now they, in turn, knew no mercy, and with rough fists and clenched teeth they made their own law.

The lovely dream was dreamed out, the last illusion burst like a glittering bubble. The awful twilight of the gods had come and proclaimed the end of every rapturous feast and gallant shepherd play. The world no longer smelled of perfume and rouge, but of sweat and blood, of powder and lead. Out of a herd of ragged subjects there had come forth a nation which took the field against all the world. These are no longer rococo men—these soldiers who tread the world stage and plunge into battle to the strains of the Marsaillaise to safeguard the achievements of the revolution. A new idea had been born, the idea of the fatherland; the insurgent masses themselves had stood sponsor for it ; it seemed to them the integrating bond that held all forces together in the service of the revolution against her enemies. For patriotism meant in those days fidelity to the revolution. Out of the former subject there had been made a citizen, who now felt that he, too, had a part in the common responsibility for the fate of his country. All unwordliness had vanished; there were no dreamers any more.

This new state of affairs forced art also into different roads and became the creator of another new style. This new art found its most important representative in Jacques-Louis David, Himself an enthusiastic, indeed, a fanatical advocate of democracy in Rousseau's sense, he belonged also among the men who had overthrown the monarchy and declared war to the knife against the old society. An outspoken Puritan in politics, he felt himself powerfully drawn to Robespierre and believed, like the latter, that virtue could be enforced by the terror. His very first works, the Oath of the Horatii^ Brutus^ the Death of Socrates reveal the harshness of his inexorable character. What a distance lies between these works and the productions of a Boucher or a Fragonard! Two worlds stand here ruggedly opposed, utterly without a point of contact. Muther depicts this contrast very effectively when he says of David:

He showed us a new puritanical generation that could no longer make use of the trifling art of the rococo, the man, the hero who dies for an idea, for the fatherland. He gave to this man a powerful musculature, like a fighter plunging into the arena. And he also brought color and the language of line into harmony with the heroism of the day. What in the rococo period had been flattering and vague, in David is hard and metallic. What in line had been caressing and fawning, is with him rigid discipline. In the place of the irregularity, the spirals, and the curved trifles came the straight line, the bolt-upright posture of the training-field, the movement of the soldier on parade.^

There are few artists whose work so completely coincide with the man as does David's. His personality is of one piece with the events of his time—is fully rooted in them. Even his relations with Napoleon show this. How he regarded the latter is revealed by the pictures which represent General Bonaparte, especially the well-known portrait in which the field-marshal, with his clear-cut, narrow face and his calm self-conceit, gazes defiantly into the distance, confident that he will not miss the right road. To David, the Jacobin and Tribune of the People of 1793, who had expected from the dictatorship the setting up of the ideal society, the saber-dictatorship of the first consul and, later, emperor, must have seemed a necessity. He would never have allied himself with the Bourbons, whom he hated bitterly to the day of his death, for they were for him the visible supporters of the old regime. But he was allied to Napoleon by an inner kinship of nature which bridged the external antagonisms. David could not do otherwise. The historical man in him impressed its stamp on his individuality and showed his art its way.

We know the story of Mademoiselle de Noailles who had commissioned the artist to try his skill once upon a Christus. When the picture

'Richard Muther, Geschichte der Malerei. Leipzig, 1909. Band III, p. 128.

was finished the Savior of mankind had become an implacable Cato, always ready to hurl at the world his heartless "Ceterum censeo." When the lady expressed her astonishment at this conception of the Savior the artist answered brusquely, "I have long known that there is no more inspiration to be drawn from Christianity!" Certainly not for David, for forgiveness was not in his line. Leonidas, Cato, Brutus, Spartans and Romans—as he saw them—were his ideal figures. Romanism had become popular at that time. Men assumed Roman names, called themselves Romans, and the men of the Convention competed with one another in the effort to behave like members of the Roman Senate. Their speeches had the Roman cut, their carriage the rigid dignity that used to stalk about beneath the toga, inaccessible to any consideration of humanity. Many took their parts seriously: Saint-Just, Robespierre, Couthon are examples of thisj the others followed them because it was the fashion.

It is of symbolic significance that the creators of the modern nation were at the hour of its birth already set upon dressing their idol in the garb of a foreign people and imparting to it the forms of expression of a time long past. The greatness of the nation, which hovered before the men of the great revolution, was in reality only the omnipotence of the new state, which now began to stretch its iron limbs preparatory to initiating a new epoch in the history of Europe. For the revolution was not just an occurrence in French history, but an event of European importance, which brought under its spell in equal measure all the members of the same cultural circle. David's art heralded this dawning time and embodied all its historical greatness without being able to overcome its defects and weaknesses. Thus seen, he was not merely the creator of a new style and of new esthetic concepts which gave full expression to the rigid forms of the revolutionary epoch j considered even from a purely sociologically standpoint, his work is of imperishable significance.