William Wetmore Story

“ Siddons is the only Lady Macbeth we know and believe in. She is the imperious, wicked, cruel wife of Macbeth, urging on her weak and kindhearted husband to abominable crimes solely to gratify her own ambitious and evil nature. She is without heart, tenderness, or remorse. Devilish in character, violent in purpose, she is the soul of the whole play; the plotter and instigator of all its horrors; a fiend-like creature, who, having a complete mastery over Macbeth, works him to madness by her taunts, and relentlessly drives him on against his will to the commission of his terrible crimes. ”

“ His mighty arm is outstretched, and from his extended fingers an electric flash of life seems to strike into the uplifted hand of Adam, whose reclining figure, issuing from the constraint of death, and quivering with this new thrill of animated being, stirs into action, and rises half to meet his Creator. Nothing could be more grand than this conception, more certain than its expression, or more simple than its treatment. Nothing, too, has ever been accomplished in art more powerful, varied, and original than the colossal figures of the sibyls and the prophets. ”

“ Live swords, that whirl a circle of grey fire—
Brass helmets flashing 'neath their streaming hair—
A universal tumult—then a hush
Worse than the tumult—all eyes staining down
To the arena's pit—all lips set close—
All muscles strained—and then that sudden yell,
Habet!—That's Rome, says Lucius! so it is!
That is, 'tis his Rome—'tis not yours and mine.
And yet, great Jupiter here at my side,
He stands with face aside as if he saw
The games he thus describes, and says, "That's life!
Life! life! my friend, and this is simply death! ”

“ Their gods looked down upon earth through the noblest forms of Phidias with serenity, heedless of the violent struggles of humanity—like grand and peaceful presences. Even in the Laocoön, which stepped to the utmost permitted bounds of the antique sculpture, there is the restraint of beauty, and suffering is modified to grace. But here in these Titans of Michel Angelo there is a new spirit—better or worse, it is new. It represents humanity caught in the terrible net of Fate, storming the heavens, Prometheus-like, breaking forth from the bonds of convention, and terrible as grand. ”

“ Who sold his master for the meanest bribe;
Others again insist he was most right,
Giving to justice one who merely sought
To overthrow the Church, subvert the law,
And on its ruins build himself a throne.
I, knowing Judas—and none better knew—
I, caring naught for Christus more than him,
But hating lies, the simple truth will tell,
No man can say I ever told a lie—
I am too old now to begin. Besides,
The truth is truth, and let the truth be told.
Judas, I say, alone of all the men
Who followed Christus thought that he was God. ”

“ The noble and majestic statues of the sculptured gods of ancient Greece were overthrown and buried in the ground, their glowing and pictured figures were swept from the walls of temples and dwellings, and in their stead only a crouching, timid race of bloodless saints were seen, not glad to be men, and fearful of God. Humanity dared no longer to stand erect, but groveled in superstitious fear, and lashed its flesh in penance, and was ashamed and afraid of all its natural instincts. How then was it possible for Art to live? ”

“ Is eased to shame, flings back the paltry bribe?
And, when he knows his master is condemned,
Rushes in horror out to seek his death?
Whose fingers pointed at him in the crowd?
Did all men flee his presence till he found
Life too intolerable? Nay; not so!
Death came too close upon the heels of crime,
He had but done what all his tribe deemed just:
All the great mass—I mean the upper class—
The Rabbis, all the Pharisees and Priests
Ay, and the lower mob as well who cried,
"Give us Barabbas! Christus to the cross!" ”

“ I strove to act up to my best principles; but life is difficult, and man is not wise, and our opinions are often incorrect. Still, I strove to act according to my nature; to do the things which were fit for me, and not to be diverted from them by fear of any blame; to keep the divine part in me tranquil and content; and to look upon death and life, honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure, as neither good nor evil in themselves, but only in the way in which we receive them. ”

“ Does not the bribe seem all too small and mean?
He held the common purse, and, were he thief,
Had daily power to steal, and lay aside
A secret and accumulating fund;
So doing, he had nothing risked of fame,
While here he braved the scorn of all the world.
Besides, why chose they for their almoner
A man so lost to shame, so foul with greed?
Or why, from some five-score of trusted men,
Choose him as one apostle among twelve?
Or why, if he were known to be so vile,
(And who can hide his baseness at all times?) ”

“ They defy criticism, however just, and stand by themselves outside the beaten track of art, to challenge our admiration. So also, despite all his faults and defects, how grand a figure Michel Angelo himself is in history, how high a place he holds! His name itself is a power. He is one of the mighty masters that the world cannot forget. Kings and emperors die and are forgotten,—dynasties change and governments fall,—but he, the silent, stern worker, reigns unmoved in the great realm of art. ”

“ A human body! Was it dead or not?
Swiftly my sword I drew and cut it down,
And on the sand all heavily it dropped.
I plucked the robes away, exposed the face—
'Twas Judas, as I feared, cold, stiff, and dead;
That suffering heart of his had ceased to beat."
Thus Lysias spoke, and ended. I confess
This story of poor Judas touched me much.
What horrible revulsions must have passed
Across that spirit in those few last hours!
What storms, that tore up life even to its roots! ”

“ All poetry is thus allegorical. The wind will always have wings until it ceases to blow. These myths are simply poetic moulds of thought, in which vague sentiments, ideas, and facts are wrought together into an express shape. Think what your own literature or thought would be without the old Grecian poems. Let the reason reject them as it will, and drive them out into the cold, the imagination will run forth and bring them back again to warm and cherish them on its breast. Facts, as facts, are but dead husks. The spirit cannot live upon them. ”

“ Their voices were heard no more singing by shadowy brooks, their faces peered no longer through the sighing woods; and of all the mighty train of greater and lesser divinities and deified heroes to whom Greece and Rome had bent the knee and offered sacrifice, Orpheus alone lingered in the guise of the Good Shepherd.
Christianity struck the deathblow not only to pagan Art, but for a time to all Art. Sculpture and Painting were in its mind closely allied to idolatry. Under its influence the arts slowly wasted away as with a mortal disease. ”

“ And long as Christus shall be known of men
His name shall bear the brand of infamy,
The curse of generations still unborn.
Thus much of him: I leave the question here,
Touching on naught beyond, for Lucius waits—
I hear him fuming in the court below,
Cursing his servants and Jerusalem,
And giving them to the infernal gods.
The sun is sinking—all the sky's afire—
And vale and mountain glow like molten ore
In the intense full splendor of its rays.
A half-hour hence all will be dull and grey ”

“ Only by having all can the mind have its full grasp of art. It is too often insisted in our days that a man to be great in one art must devote himself exclusively to that; or if he be solicited by any other, he must merely toy with it. Such was not the doctrine of the artists of old, either in ancient days of Greece or at the epoch of the Renaissance. Phidias was a painter and architect as well as a sculptor, and so were nearly all the men of his time. ”

“ In making them, the weight of this unexplained mystery of life hung over him; the struggle of humanity against superior forces oppressed him. The doubts, the despair, the power, the indomitable will of his own nature are in them. They are not the expressions of the natural day of the world, of the glory of the sunrise, the tenderness of the twilight, the broad gladness of day, or the calm repose of night; but they are seasons and epochs of the spirit of man—its doubts and fears, its sorrows and longings and unrealized hopes. ”

“ DISTORTIONS OF THE ENGLISH STAGE AS INSTANCED IN “MACBETH.”
Art is art because it is not nature, is the motto of the Idealisti; Art is but the imitation of nature, say the Naturalisti. The truth lies between the two. Art is neither nature alone, nor can it do without nature. No imitation, however accurate, for imitation’s sake makes a good work of art in any other than a mechanical sense. And every work of art in which the objects represented are inaccurately or imperfectly imitated is in so far deficient. But art works by suggestion as well as by imitation. ”

“ The marble gods, which had lain dethroned and buried in the earth for so many centuries, rose with renewed life from their graves, and reasserted over the world of Art the dominion they had lost in the realm of Religion. It is useless to rehearse the familiar names that then illumined the golden age of Italian art, where shine preëminent those of Leonardo, the widest and most universal genius that perhaps the world has ever seen; of Michel Angelo, the greatest power that ever expressed itself in stone or color; of Raffaelle, whose exquisite grace and facile design have never been surpassed ”

“ You at once feel yourself to be in the presence of an influence, serious, grand, impressive, and powerful, and of a character totally different from anything that sculpture has hitherto produced, either in the ancient15 or modern world. Whatever may be the defects of these great works, and they are many and evident, one feels that here a lofty intellect and power has struggled, and fought its way, so to speak, into the marble, and brought forth from the insensate stone a giant brood of almost supernatural shapes. ”

“ These royal persons, once so gay and proud and powerful, some of whom patronized Michel Angelo, and extended to him their gracious favor, and honored him perhaps with a smile, now so utterly dethroned by death, their names scarcely known, or, if known, not reverenced, while the poor stern artist they looked down upon sits like a monarch on the throne of fame, and, though dead, rules with his spirit and by his works in the august realm of art. ”

“ We have thus far considered Michel Angelo as a sculptor, painter, and architect. It remains to consider him as a poet. Nor in his poetry do we find any difference of character from what he exhibited in his other arts. He is rough, energetic, strong, full of high ideas, struggling with fate, oppressed and weary with life. He has none of the sweet numbers of Petrarca, or the lively spirit of Ariosto, or the chivalric tones of Tasso. ”

“ To attribute to Him our own passions is universal, with the mass. To deify man or to humanize God is the rule. You deify that beautiful character named Christ, and you humanize God by representing Him as inspired with anger and cruelty beyond anything in our system. You attribute to Him a scheme of the universe which is to me abhorrent. Will you excuse me if I state thus plainly how it strikes one who belonged to a different age and creed, and who therefore cannot enter into the deep-grained prejudices and ideas of your century and faith? ”

“ He could not have been a pleasant companion, and he was never a lover of woman. His friendship with Vittoria Colonna was worlds away from the senses,—worlds away from such a connection as that of Raffaelle with the Fornarina. They walked together in the higher fields of thought and feeling, in the region of ideas and aspirations. Their conversation was of art, and poesy, and religion, and the mysteries of life. They read to each other their poems, and discoursed on high themes of religion, and fate, and foreknowledge. ”

“ What lends itself still more to this interpretation is the character and expression of both the statues of Lorenzo and Giuliano, and particularly that of Lorenzo, who leans forward with his hand raised to his chin in so profound and sad a meditation that the world has given it the name of Il Pensiero—not even calling it Il Pensieroso, the thinker, but Il Pensiero, thought itself; while the attitude and expression of Giuliano is of one who helplessly holds the sceptre and lets the world go, heedless of all its crime and folly, and too weak to lend his hand to set it right. ”

“ And turning round, one may see the Baptistery celebrated by Dante, and those massive bronze doors storied by Ghiberti, which Michel Angelo said were worthy to be the doors of Paradise. History and romance meets us everywhere. The old families still give their names to the streets, and palaces, and loggie. Every now and then a marble slab upon some house records the birth or death within of some famous citizen, artist, writer, or patriot, or perpetuates the memory of some great event. ”