Joris-Karl Huysmans

“ Ay, that Nativity!—He had only to turn to his notes to see it plainly before him.
Painted as a triptych, on the right wing was an old man in front of some wondering bystanders, burning incense to the Virgin, who is visible through an open window above a landscape in distant perspective with avenues undulating to the horizon; while a woman, her head dressed in a muffler that is almost a turban, touches the old man's shoulder with one hand and raises the other with an indescribable gesture of surprise and joy, her face expressive of ecstasy. ”

“ This Saint Clare has no ravings, no outcries, like Saint Magdalen of Pazzi; she does not soar with the flight of divine intoxication. The mystic possession manifests itself in a mute rapture; her transports are controlled, and her inebriety is grave; she does not diffuse herself, but opens her soul, and Jesus, as He enters in, stamps her with His likeness, impresses her with the image of the Crucifix she holds, and of which the impress was found graven on her heart when it was examined after her death. ”

“ Was it not the case of the mote and the beam, with the parts reversed—imperfections discerned in others, when he was so far their inferior?
"Constantly, at the end of every argument, I find my own lack of humility," said he to himself. "What efforts are needed to remove the mire of my sins! In a convent perhaps I might rub the rust off," and he dreamed of a purer life, a soul soaked in prayer, expanding in communion with Christ, who might perhaps, without too much soiling Himself, come down to dwell in him. "It is the only life desirable," cried he. ”

“ And Saint Joseph, opposite to him, represented as a bald old man, with a short beard, and wearing a red cloak, comes forward as if amazed at his happiness, and scarce daring to believe that the moment has come when he may adore the Messiah born at last; he smiles, deferentially, mildly stepping with the almost clumsy care of an old man who would fain be serviceable but fears to intrude. ”

“ There, too, Durtal had found two large compositions: one of the Virgin bestowing the Rosary on Saint Dominic, and the other of Saint Thomas Aquinas kneeling before an altar on which stands a Crucifix radiating light. Never since the Middle Ages had monks been so understood and so painted; never had a more impetuous fount of soul been revealed under so stern a casing of features. Borel was the painter of the Monastic Saints; his art, by nature rather torpid, soared up with them as soon as he tried to paint them. ”

“ Every writer, without exception, had expatiated, each more enthusiastically than the last, on the pure and religious art of these early painters, speaking of them as seraphic artists who had depicted superhuman beauty, white and sylph-like Virgins all soul, standing out like celestial visions, against backgrounds of gold. ”

“ Durtal, kneeling before Her, determined to address Her, to say to Her,—
"I am afraid of the future and of its cloudy sky, and I am afraid of myself, for I am wasting in depression and bewilderment. Thou hast hitherto led me by the hand. Do not desert me; finish Thy work. I know that it is folly thus to take care for the future, for Thy Son has said, 'Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.' Still, that depends on temperament. What is easy to some is so hard for others. Mine is a restless spirit, always astir, always on the alert. ”

“ If we want to understand the whole personal character of German religious painting, we must study other schools than this, the only one ever spoken of, and always with praise. We must turn to the less familiar schools of Franconia and Swabia; there we find the very opposite. As art it is savage and rough, but it lives—it weeps, nay it cries aloud, but it prays. ”

“ It is indeed strange that these very early painters should have begun where painting as an art ends, in mere finish and smoothness; men who from the first put sugar in their new wine and betray their lack of energy, of enthusiasm, of simplicity, while no faith projects itself from their work. ”

“ And not far away is a Virgin, very like her—indeed her very self, with her sensitive, slightly upturned nose, her lips like a folded clover-leaf, her brackish eyes, her pink lids, her golden hair, her greenish complexion, her strongly-moulded frame and large hands. ”

“ To make the whole thing more than perfect, above the figure of Pierre Bladelin extends a wondrous landscape, cut across by the High Street of Middelburg, the town founded by this nobleman, a street bordered by castellated houses with battlements and church towers, and vanishing in a country scene lighted up by a clear sky, a blue spring day; above Saint Joseph a meadow and woods, sheep and shepherds, and three exquisite angels in robes, one of pinkish yellow, one of purple like a campanula, and one of greenish citron hue ”

“ O Holy Virgin, Holy Virgin, have pity on the rickety souls that struggle on so painfully when they are no longer upheld by Thee! Have pity on the bruised souls to whom every effort is painful; on the souls whom nothing can console, to whom everything is affliction! ”

“ This Jesus, ugly as He is, with lips like death, asserts Himself by a gesture, a look of ineffable beauty, as the murdered Son of a God!
We stand dumfounded, not even trying to understand; for this work, stamped with transcendent naturalism, is beyond and apart from painting; no one can copy or reproduce it. ”

“ In the hours of desertion, of doubt as to their vocation, which must come over them, is it not appalling to think of the constantly revived memories of home, of friends, of all that they have left to shut themselves up for ever in a convent?
"As each asks herself whether she can endure watching and fasting, must it not be a permanent temptation to rebel against being buried alive in a tomb? ”

“ Durtal went on, "even setting apart such daring painters as Grünewald, I prefer many an unknown artist whose work is strange rather than beautiful, but at any rate mystical, to the honey and lard of Cologne; for instance, an anonymous painter who is to be found in the Grand Duke's collection at Gotha, as the author of one of those curious Mass-scenes which in the Middle Ages were called the 'Mass of Saint Gregory,' wherefore, we know not." ”

“ This was the most remarkable religious painting of our time, and it was achieved with no borrowing from the Early painters, no trickery of awkward attitudes supported by iron bars, no affectations, no artifice. And what a devout Catholic, what an emotionally pious artist must the man be who could produce such a work!
After him the rest was silence. Among the religious youth of to-day no one is to be found equal to the presentment of Church subjects. "Only one," said Durtal, thinking it over, "gave any hope of such powers, for he stands apart from the rest, and, at any rate, has talent." ”

“ The idea of doing for the West what Manuel Pauselinos did for the East, of eliminating study from nature, imposing an uniform ritual of colour and line, of compelling every artistic temperament to squeeze itself into the same mould, shows an absolute misapprehension of art in the mind of the man who attempted it. The system was bound to end in ankylosis, in the paralysis of painting, and this, in fact, was the result. ”

“ Durtal went on, "there is an irremediable decay of religious feeling in painting. The seventeenth century has not left a single picture in which there is a genuine stamp of manly devotion; excepting, indeed, in Spain at the time when Saint Theresa and Saint John of the Cross flourished there; then the mystical realism of its painters produced some fiercely fervid works;" and Durtal recalled a picture by Zurbaran he had seen and admired in the Gallery at Lyons, Saint Francis of Assisi standing upright in a habit of grey serge, the cowl over his head, his hands hidden in his sleeves. ”

“ Among the ten subjects that decorate the nave, we find Moses Striking the Rock, the Disciples at Emmaus, the Healing of One Possessed, of One Born Blind, and of Tobit; but in spite of the calm energy shown in these frescoes, they are disappointing by reason of their general heaviness and of the sleepy and unwonted effect of colour. Not till we reach the choir, beyond the communion railing, do we find works of a quite different kind of art, above some magnificent figures of saints of the Order of Friars Preacher, amazing in the power of prayer, the essence of saintliness that they diffuse. ”

“ Neither Van Eyck, with his rather vulgar and never beautiful heads, nor Memling—more tender and refined, no doubt, but limited to his ideal of a woman with a round forehead and a face shaped like a kite, wide above and pointed below—ever achieved the elegance of form or the purity of a woman made divine by love, a being who, even apart from her surroundings and bereft of the attributes by which she is recognizable, could be none other than the Mother of God. ”

“ Those who have grown old in the convent would, of course, despise these calls, these invitations to live; the quietude of their spirits must increase as they find themselves protected for ever from the perils which the noisy rush of the trains must bring before them every hour of the day and night; they will feel more drawn to pray, for those whom the chances of life carry away to Paris, or bring back to the country, outcasts from the city. ”

“ The whole effect under a clear sky is silvery grey, and if the sun lights it up it turns pale golden yellow; seen from near, its skin is like a nibbled biscuit, a siliceous limestone eaten into holes; at other times, when the sun is setting, it turns crimson and appears like some vast and exquisite shrine, all rose colour and green ”

“ First we have a wonderful Venus, nude, with pure gold hair brought round her body by one hand, standing out in her white flesh against a black background, gazing with limpid grey eyes, liquid with the colour of stagnant water, and edged with lids like a young rabbit's—pink lids ”

“ I should have to account for whatever may have survived of orthodoxy in Germany after the Reformation; to mention, at any rate, from the Lutheran point of view, that extraordinary painter, Cranach, whose Adams are bearded Apollos of the complexion of a Red Indian, and his Eves slender, chubby-faced courtesans, with bullet heads, little shrimps' eyes, lips moulded out of red pomatum, breasts like apples close under the neck, long, slim legs, elegantly formed, with the calf high up, and large, flat feet with thick ankles. ”

“ Frames of tapers on each side shot up little tongues of flame, and prostrate women were praying, their faces hidden in their hands or upturned to the dark countenance, on which the light did not fall. ”

“ It was harsh to the palate, the roughest wine of mysticism; but at least it was not the mawkish syrup of the early Cologne painters.
"Ah! that mystical breath by which the soul of the artist becomes incorporate in the colour on a canvas, in the lines of carved stone, in written words, and speaks to the souls of those who can understand! How few have had it!" thought Durtal, closing his notes of travel. In Germany it may be seen in the very bunglers among painters ”

“ Take pity on the homeless, outcast souls, the wandering souls, unable to settle and dwell with their kind, the tender, budding souls! Take pity on all souls such as mine! Have pity on me!"
And before quitting the Mother he would often visit Her in those depths where, since the Middle Ages, the faithful no longer seek her; he would light an end of taper, and, turning aside from the nave of the crypt, follow the curved line of the wall along the entrance passage as far as the sacristy of this underground church, where in the ponderous stone-work was a door strengthened with iron-work. ”

“ Then he tried to fight against it, and lost patience.
"Come, come!" he growled, "a man does not shut himself up in an abbey to take his ease there; a convent is not a pious Sainte-Périne; he retires there, I suppose, to expiate his sins and prepare for death. What, then, is the use of expatiating on the kind of punishments to be endured? A determination to accept them is all, to endure them and be strong!" ”

“ As a composition it is utterly common: we see a sort of cellar of stone-work, a table facing us, behind which sits Jesus, His feet bare, His lips colourless, His complexion muddy, His raiment of a pinkish grey ”

“ A fourth figure, with an intelligent profile, sees nothing, but, attentive to his duties, waits on the guests.
It is a meal of humble folk in a prison; the colours are limited to a key of sad greys and browns, excepting in the case of the man who twists his napkin, whose sleeves are thick with a vermilion like red sealing-wax, while the others might be painted with dust and pitch. ”

“ This common, squat Virgin, fat and pudgy, was simply a good German girl, well-dressed and squarely seated, but she could never have been the ecstatic Mother of God! Then these kneeling and standing men were not in prayer; there was no devotion in this picture; the personages were all thinking of something else, folding their hands and looking round at the painter who was depicting them. ”

“ Now, however perfect these cenobites may be, they remain none the less men; or, to express it otherwise, sympathy and antipathy live in constant and compulsory friction; with very restricted subjects of discussion, living in complete ignorance of all that is going on outside, conversation must degenerate into chatter; at last the only interest of life centres in trivialities, in petty questions which in such an atmosphere assume the importance of events.
"A man becomes an old maid, and how infinitely wearisome must this talk be, unvaried by the unforeseen. ”