Hippolyte Taine

“ The fourteenth century is the heroic and tragic epoch of Flanders. She possesses brewers like Arteveldt, who are tribunes, dictators and captains, and who end life on the field of battle or are assassinated; civil war is mixed up with foreign war; people fight from city to city, trade against trade, and man to man; there are fourteen hundred murders in Ghent in one year; the stores of energy are so great that she survives all ills and sustains all efforts. Men seek death twenty thousand at a time, and fall in heaps before lances without giving an inch. ”

“ She descends, and kneeling on the table she places on his brow a crown of flowers. At this moment the joust is proclaimed, the drums beat, a pursuivant-at-arms appears in a mailed suit covered with swans, and then enters the Duke of Clèves, Knight of the Swan, richly armed, seated on a horse caparisoned in white damask and fringed with gold; he leads by a gold chain a large swan accompanied by two mounted archers; behind him march children on horseback, grooms, knights armed with lances, all, like himself, in white damask fringed with gold. ”

“ Left to itself it would have developed not, as in Italy, into a pagan renaissance, but, as in Germany, into a recrudescence of Christianity. The art, moreover, which, of all the others, best reveals the cravings of the popular imagination, architecture, remains gothic and Christian up to the end of the sixteenth century; Italian and classic importations do not affect it; the style gets to be complicated and effeminate, but the art does not change. ”

“ Three gigantic tables were arranged, each one being adorned with several "entremets," so many huge machines reminding one, on a grand scale, of the toy presents given nowadays to the children of the wealthy. The men of this time, indeed, in curiosity and in flights of the imagination are nothing but children; their strongest desire is to amuse the eye; they sport with life as with a magic lantern. ”

“ The men who inhabit the Netherlands belong, for the most part, to that race which invaded the Roman empire in the fifth century, and which then, for the first time, claimed its place in broad sunshine alongside of Latin nations. In certain countries, in Gaul, Spain and Italy, it simply brought chiefs and a supplement to the primitive population. In other countries, as in England and the Netherlands, it drove out, destroyed and replaced the ancient inhabitants, its blood, pure, or almost pure, still flowing in the veins of the men now occupying the same soil. ”

“ An elegant and refined architecture converts stone into lace, festooning churches with pinnacles, trefoils and intricate mullions, and in such a fashion that the honey-combed, gilded and flowering edifice becomes a vast and romantic casket, a product of fancy rather than of faith, less calculated to excite piety than wonder. ”

“ They are Flemings, and they stick to the earth. They copy the real with scrupulous accuracy, and all that is real - the ornaments of armor, the polished glass of a window, the scrolls of a carpet, the hairs of fur, [9] the undraped body of an Adam and an Eve, a canon's massive, wrinkled and obese features, a burgomaster's or soldier's broad shoulders, projecting chin and prominent nose, the spindling shanks of a hangman, the over large head and diminutive limbs of a child, the costumes and furniture of the age; their entire work being a glorification of this present life. ”

“ Fifty years later, around rebellious Ghent, the peasantry "chose death rather than ask quarter, declaring that they would perish as martyrs in a fair fight." In these swarming hives an abundance of food and habits of personal activity maintain courage, turbulence, audacity and even insolence, all excesses of brutal and boundless energy; these weavers were men, and when we encounter man we may expect soon to encounter the arts. ”

“ Success in life depends on knowing how to be patient, how to endure drudgery, how to unmake and remake, how to recommence and continue without allowing the tide of anger or the flight of the imagination to arrest or divert the daily effort. ”

“ At evening parties in Amsterdam, ladies, bedecked like shrines, and motionless on their chairs, seem to be statues. In Belgium, in Germany and in England, the faces of the peasantry seem to us inanimate, devitalized or benumbed. ”

“ It will not answer to fling aside the newspaper the moment its political interest flags, nor take up politics for the pleasure of discussion and speech-making, nor excite insurrections against officials the moment they become distasteful, which is the fashion in Spain and elsewhere. You yourselves have some knowledge of a country where the government has been overthrown because in active and because the nation felt ennui. Among Germanic populations, people meet together not to talk but to act; politics is a matter to be wisely managed, they bring to bear on it the spirit of business ”

“ The Latins show a decided taste for the external and decorative aspect of things, for a pompous display feeding the senses and vanity, for logical order, outward symmetry and pleasing arrangement, in short, for form. The Germanic people, on the contrary, have rather inclined to the inward order of things, to truth itself, in fact, to the fundamental. ”

“ A hierarchical symmetry groups personages and stiffens attitudes. With Hubert Van Eyck the eye is fixed and the face impassible; it is the eternal immobility of divine life; in heaven all is fulfilled and time is no more. ”

“ You are aware that among the Latin families this is not over respected; in Italy, Spain and France adultery is always the principal subject of the play and the romance; at all events, literature in these lands always incarnates passion in the hero, and is prodigal of sympathy for him by granting him all privileges. In England, on the contrary, the novel is a picture of loyal affection and the laudation of wedlock; in Germany, gallantry is not honorable, even among students. In Latin countries it is excused or accepted, and even sometimes approved of. ”

“ Observe their coloring - the strongest and richest ever seen, the pure and full tones side by side as in a Persian carpet, and united solely through their harmony, the superb breaks in the folds of purple mantles, the azure recesses of long falling robes, the careen draperies like a summer field permeated with sunshine, the display of gold skirts trimmed with black, the strong light which warms and enlivens the whole scene; you have a concert in which each instrument sounds its proper note, and the more true because the more sonorous. ”

“ Even among the reflective and those in good circumstances the fondness for liquor is very great: in Germany and in England it is not regarded as disreputable for a well-educated man to rise from the table partially intoxicated; now and then he becomes completely drunk. With us, on the contrary, it is a reproach, in Italy a disgrace, and in Spain, during the last century, the name of drunkard was an insult which a duel could not wholly wipe out, provoking, as it often did, the dagger. ”

“ Sensational allurements penetrate too deeply; the caprices of the imagination there are too brusque; the mind creates for itself visions of transports and of ecstatic delight, or at least a romance of exciting and varied sensuality, and at the first opportunity the suppressed flood bursts forth, carrying with it every barrier of duty and of law. ”

“ Women in magnificently ornamented veils, the breast nude, the head crowned with huge cones and crescents, and dressed in gaudy robes covered with the figures of unicorns, lions and savages, place themselves on seats representing small sculptured and gilded cathedrals. The life of the court and of princes seems a carnival. ”

“ The symbolic age gives way to the picturesque age; the intellect is no longer content with a scholastic entity; it seeks to contemplate a living form, the human mind finding it necessary for its completeness to be translated to the eye by a work of art.
But this work of art bears no resemblance to that of Italy for the reason that the culture and direction of the intellect are different ”

“ A friend, returning from Berlin, remarked to me, "those people all have dead eyes." Even the young girls look simple and drowsy. Many a time have I paused before a shop-window to contemplate some rosy, placid and candid face, a mediæval madonna making up the fashions. It is the very reverse of this in our land and in Italy, where the grisette's eyes seem to be gossiping with the chairs for lack of something better, and where a thought, the moment it is born, translates itself into gesture. In Germanic lands the channels of sensation and expression seem to be obstructed ”

“ In fine, the national genius, which is Germanic, inclines much more to faith than to incredulity. Through the Lollards and the mystics of the middle ages, also through the iconoclasts and the innumerable martyrs of the sixteenth century, it turns in the direction of Protestant ideas. ”

“ In Belgium to-day there still flourish an infinity of similar corporations, societies of archers, of musicians, of pigeon fanciers, and for singing birds. In Holland volunteer associations of private individuals minister to every requirement of public charity. To act in a body, no one person oppressing another, is a wholly Germanic talent, and one which gives them such an empire over matter; through patience and reflection they conform to the laws of physical and human nature, and instead of opposing them profit by them. ”

“ It is in Italy that a noble lady exclaims, on partaking of a delicious ice-cream, "What a pity there is no sin in it!" In France a noble lord remarks, speaking of a diplomatic roué, "Who wouldn't admire him, he is so wicked!" In other directions their vivacity of impression and promptness of action render them improvisators; they are so quickly and so deeply excited by a crisis as to forget duty and reason, resorting to daggers in Italy and Spain, and to pistols in France ”

“ It is indeed through these vices that their civilization becomes corrupt or ends; you encounter them in the decline of ancient Greece and Rome, in Provençe of the twelfth, in Italy of the sixteenth, in Spain of the seventeenth, and in France of the eighteenth centuries. Their more quickly cultivated temperament bears them more speedily on to subtleties. Coveting keen emotions, they cannot be happy with moderate ones: they are like people who, accustomed to eating oranges, throw away carrots and turnips ”

“ They attend to anatomy, the perspective is exact, the minutest details are rendered of stuffs, of architecture, of accessories and of landscape; the relief is strong, and the entire scene stamps itself on the eye and on the mind with extraordinary force and sense of stability; the greatest masters of coming times are not to surpass them in all this, nor even go so far. ”

“ Consider Spain, Italy and France in the sixteenth century; read the tales of Bandello, the comedies of Lope de Vega, the narratives of Brantôme, and listen for a moment to the comment of Guiccardini, a contemporary, on the social habits of the Netherlands. "They hold adultery in horror ... Their women are extremely circumspect, and are consequently allowed much freedom. They go out alone to make visits, and even journeys without evil report; they are able to take care of themselves. Moreover they are housekeepers, and love their households." ”

“ Their instinct leads them to avoid being seduced by appearances, to remove mystery, to seize the hidden, even when repugnant and sorrowful, and not to eliminate or withhold any detail, even when vulgar and unsightly. Among the many products of this instinct there are two which place it in full light through the strongly marked contrast in each of form and substance, and these are literature and religion. The literatures of Latin populations are classic and nearly or remotely allied to Greek poesy, Roman eloquence, the Italian renaissance, and the age of Louis XIV. ”

“ But to one who is familiar with the disturbances and violence of the middle ages, the order and harmony which is then established seem sufficient; at all events they are greater than ever before. Henceforth, as at Florence about the year 1400, authority becomes recognized and society organized; henceforth, as in Italy about the year 1400, man abandons the ascetic and ecclesiastic regime that he may interest himself in nature and enjoy life. ”

“ Let us consider the common characteristics of the Germanic race, and the differences by which it is opposed to the Latin race. Physically, we have a whiter and softer skin, generally speaking, blue eyes, often of a porcelain or pale hue, paler as you approach the north, and sometimes glassy in Holland; hair of a flaxy blonde, and, with children, almost white; the ancient Romans early wondered at it, and stated that infants in Germany had the hair of old men. ”

“ In English novels people are always lunching - the most sentimental heroine, at the end of the third volume, having consumed an infinite number of buttered muffins, cups of tea, bits of chicken, and sandwiches. The climate contributes to this; in the foods of the north, people could not sustain themselves, like a peasant of the Latin race, on a bowl of soup or a piece of bread flavored with garlic, or on a plate of macaroni. ”

“ In fine, if we compare their faculties with the world as it runs, it is too mechanical, too rude, and too monotonous for them, and they too lively, too delicate, and too brilliant for it. Always after the lapse of centuries this discord shows itself in their civilization; they demand too much of things, and, through their misconduct, fail even to reach that which things might confer on them. ”