Dura

“ On the 5th of April, 1794, about a fortnight after we had been established in our new lodgings, a convoy arrived from Chantilly. Monsieur Randon de la Tour, who was of the party, came very early in the morning to tell our distinguished old couple that Madame de Duras was in Paris, and had positively received orders to come to the Luxembourg during the day. They were perfectly delighted. ”

“ In Durance I am homesick after mine own kind,
Oh I know that there are folk about me, friendly faces,
But I am homesick after mine own kind.
"These sell our pictures"! Oh well,
They reach me not, touch me some edge or that,
But reach me not and all my life's become
One flame, that reacheth not beyond
Mine heart's own hearth,
Or hides among the ashes there for thee.
"Thee"? Oh "thee" is who cometh first
Out of mine own-soul-kin,
For I am homesick after mine own kind
And ordinary people touch me not.
Yea, I am homesick
After mine own kind that know, and feel
And have some breath for beauty and the arts. ”

“ Jean Baptiste (1684–1770) , duc de Duras, son of Jacques Henri, was also a marshal of France. In 1733 he resigned the dukedom of Duras to his son, Emmanuel Félicité, himself receiving the brevet title of duc de Durfort. Emmanuel Félicité (1715–1789) , duc de Duras, took part in all the wars of Louis XV. and was made a marshal of France in 1775. His grandson, Amédée Bretagne Malo (1771–1838) , duc de Duras, is mainly known as the husband of Claire Louise Rose Bonne de Coëtnempren de Kersaint (1778–1828) , daughter of Armand Guy Simon de Coëtnempren Kersaint (q.v.) ”

“ It is as he said it would be, he is failing, failing rapidly. My sister has never seen him since the tiger hunt. I could not allow it. As it is, the thought of their terrible race is with them always."
"I'd like to see this Durah," said Carson. "Do you suppose——"
"That's his little place down there through the trees. You see the light? It seems strange that in six months Durah has changed from a strong, young man to a dim-eyed, trembling wreck. I—I—sometimes I've thought that Durah has gone the farther on the road to death. Durah's eyes did not escape, as did my sister's. ”

“ He glanced at his father tentatively for a moment, then bent his gaze to the cigarette.
"I don't have my car any more. But I guess I won't be needing it now."
There was a cautious knock on the door.
"Listen, Rog," Duran began, "I'll try to get to see you tomorrow before I leave. Remember that your mother and I are both on your side, without qualification. You've done a pretty terrible thing, of course. But I have to admit, at the same time, that I'm really rather proud of you. Does that make sense?"
"Sure," said Roger huskily, "I guess so." ”

“ Raise me from my lowly condition, sire! Who knows? one day you may have no one among your servants more devoted, more enlightened, than your poor John Durer!"
The thing that he pursued, fled—fled. Durer ran after it more wildly as he grew weaker, trying to raise his voice higher and higher, and stretching out his arms more and more eagerly. They were now at the Valley of Bushes. "Sire!" cried he once again.
"John Durer, scholar, of the village near Haerlem," replied a voice from the shadows of the wood, "his Majesty the Emperor does not love people who have lost their memory." ”

“ Out of all the foregoing, out of all the mortal and mouldering coverings we have now to shell the real, the immortal Dürer—the Dürer whose mind was longing for truth, whose soul was longing for harmony, and who out of his longings fashioned his Art, as all great men have done and will do until the last. ”

“ Durga! Durga!”
One day, being very sad, he went to a forest many miles distant from the village in which he lived, and indulging his grief wept bitter tears. He prayed in the following manner:—“O Durga! O Mother Bhagavati! wilt thou not make an end of my misery? Were I alone in the world, I should not have been sad on account of poverty; but thou hast given me a wife and children. Give me, O Mother, the means to support them.” It so happened that on that day and on that very spot the god Siva and his wife Durga were taking their morning walk. ”

“ The sum of it is, that a certain giant having by religious austerities obtained a boundless store of merit, conquered the three worlds, dethroned all the gods save the supreme triad, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, and their consorts, drove them from heaven, and made them fall down and worship him. The wretched immortals found favour in the eyes of the goddess Durga, and she went forth to slay their oppressor, who met her with an army of thirty thousand giants of enormous size, ten millions of horses, a hundred millions of chariots, and one hundred and twenty thousand millions of elephants! ”

“ Wide enough the light was, and clear; no more Salvator’s lurid chasm on jagged horizon, nor Durer’s spotted rest of sunny gleam on hedgerow and field; but light over all the world. Full shone now its awful globe, one pallid charnel-house,—a ball strewn bright with human ashes, glaring in poised 297 sway beneath the sun, all blinding-white with death from pole to pole,—death, not of myriads of poor bodies only, but of will, and mercy, and conscience; death, not once inflicted on the flesh, but daily, fastening on the spirit ”

“ You can outline line a tree or a stone, when it rises against another tree or stone; but you cannot outline folds in drapery, or waves in water; if these are to be expressed at all it must be by some sort of shade, and therefore the rule that no good drawing can consist throughout of pure outline remains absolute. You see, in that woodcut of Durer's, his reason for even limiting himself so much to outline as he has, in those distant woods and plains, is that he may leave them in bright light, to be thrown out still more by the dark sky and the dark village spire ”

“ There is no real ground for confusion. On our right is another low relief of Durga, throwing herself into the universe, in God-intoxication. Behind her the very air is vocal with saints and angels chanting her praises. ”

“ The old graveyard on the promontory was at most times the forlornest and least frequented spot about Durrus. The dead people who lay in crowded slumber within the narrow limits of the grey, briar-covered walls seldom heard any disturbing human voice to remind them of the life they had left. Their solitude was ensured to them{33} by the greater solitude of the sea, which on three sides surrounded them, and by the dreary strip of worn-out turf bog which formed their only link with the rest of the world. ”

“ The Dawn and the Gloaming may without violence to imagination be called terrific-mouthed, as they both, as it were swallow the universe, and the goddess Durga is ten-armed, for she embraces the universe from the ten quarters of the globe. As darkness abides in the ten quarters of the globe, Dawn challenges Darkness residing in the ten quarters all at once and with ten weapons. ”

“ It was a still night; we could hear the low booming of the sea in the caves below the old graveyard, and the nearer splashing of the rising tide among the Durrus rocks.
“There’s no sound I hate like that row the ground-swell makes out there at the point,” said Willy. “If you’re feeling any way lonely, it makes you want to hang yourself.” ”

“ But, quite as naturally, when one has to speak of Dürer, the mind becomes filled with the exhilaration and the staidness that the desire to know and the desire to act rightly beget; with the dignity of conscious comprehension, the serenity of accomplished duty with all the strenuousness and ardour of which the soul is capable; with science and religion. ”

“ Dürer shows us the constancy that bridges the intervals between such free hours, that gives continuity to man's necessarily spasmodic effort. Thus he typifies for us the Northern genius: as Michael Angelo's athletes might typify by their naked beauty and the unexplained impressiveness of their gestures, the genius of the sudden South--sudden in action, sudden in thought, suddenly mature, suddenly asleep--as day changes to night and night to day the more rapidly as the tropics are approached. ”

“ Quiet rides with him through the damp brown woods, or now and then a day with the Moycullen hounds; drives{200} to return the visits of such of the natives as had called upon me; walks across the turf bog to where the old graveyard hangs over the sea, to watch the sun drop below the horizon. “Bound for America,” says Willy. “I wonder if you’d like to be going back with him?” I had no doubts in my own mind on the subject, though I did not feel called upon to say so to him. I was now quite certain that, in spite of various drawbacks, I enjoyed my life at Durrus very much. ”

“ I prided myself upon being a singularly practical, unimaginative person; and yet now, for the third time since my arrival at Durrus, my self-possession had been disturbed by a trivial event, which I should formerly have laughed at. I walked rapidly to the house, determined for the future to give no toleration to my foolish fancy, and to——
“Here you are!” said Willy’s voice from the hall door. “Come on and have some tea.” ”

“ Lived and laboured Albrecht Dürer, the Evangelist of Art;
Hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling still with busy hand,
[Pg 105] Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the Better Land.
Emigravit is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies;25
Dead he is not, but departed,—for the artist never dies.
Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair,
That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed its air! ”

“ If Dürer were here now I am sure he would lay his hand upon my shoulder, and, his deep true eyes searching mine, his soft and human lips would say:—
You are right, my friend; this is my best, for it is the spirit of my age that spoke in me then.
In front of the Pantheon at Paris is a statue called The Thinker. A seated man, unconscious of his bodily strength, for all his consciousness is in the iron grip of thought. He looks not up, not down—he looks before him ”

“ Thus my dear father was most anxious to bring up his children to honor God. His highest wish was that his children should be pleasing to God and man; therefore he used to tell us every day that we should love God and be true to our neighbors.”
Durer sorrowed deeply when his father died in 1502. On his death-bed he commended the mother to her son. Durer was faithful to his trust and cared tenderly for his mother until her death, several years later. Never did boy or man more faithfully keep the command, “Honor thy father and mother,” than did our artist. ”

“ There, reader, you have, in my opinion, the greatness of Dürer; he never surpassed it. It is the consciousness of man's impotence; it is the saddest sight mortal eyes can behold—that of a man who has lost faith in himself. ”

“ A few months after a much longed for son came to bless the Pirkheimers, a little boy was born in the goldsmith’s house whom they named, for his father, Albrecht Durer. As the years went by, seventeen other children came to the Durer home. Three only of all these children grew to maturity.
With such a family to support we can easily imagine that the father’s life was a hard one. He was a pious and industrious man whom his illustrious son never tires of praising. ”

“ Dürer with finality excludes the faithless from all hope. It is this finality, this absolute faith in the Word, this firm conviction of the finiteness of all things, which characterise the whole of his Art. The spirit which brooks no uncertainty and suffers no metaphor, glues a veritable sword to the lips of the "Son of man."
This finality is the cause of Dürer's isolation. He has no followers in the world of creative Art. Close the doors of Dürer's cathedral and the world rolls on, rolls by unheeding. ”

“ Durer’s second answer is the plate of “Melencholia,” which is the history of the sorrowful toil of the earth, as the “Knight and Death” is of its sorrowful patience under temptation.
Salvator’s answer, remember, is in both respects that of despair. Death as he reads, lord of temptation, is victor over the spirit of man; and lord of ruin, is victor over the work of man. Durer declares the sad, but unsullied conquest over Death the 239 tempter; and the sad, but enduring conquest over Death the destroyer. ”

“ All these points have to be realised before one can hope to understand Dürer even faintly. Again, when we examine more closely the apparently quaint and fantastic form his mode of visualising takes, we must make allowances for the habits and customs and costumes of the times—as indeed one has to, in the case of all old masters, and for which reason I humbly submit that the study of old masters properly belongs to the few, not the many. ”

“ On the way Yudhisthira, ever anxious for divine help, invoked the goddess Durga in terms which reveal at once the attributes of the goddess and the Hindu poet’s idea of the most suitable expressions to be employed in addressing a female divinity. “Salutations to thee, O giver of boons.... Salutations to thee, O thou of four hands and four faces, O thou of fair round hips and deep bosom, O thou that wearest bangles made of emeralds and sapphires, O thou that bearest excellent braces on thy upper arm.... Thou art the only female in the universe that possessest the attribute of purity. ”

“ The green tree is the tree to water; the dead tree—be its black branches and sere leaves never so picturesque—is beyond the need of your attentions.
The Scylla and Charybdis of æsthetic reformers is praise of the old, and poor appraising of the new.
Now the old Italians thought Dürer a most admirable artist, blamed what they called the defects of his Art on the ungainliness of his models, and felt convinced that he might have easily been the first among the Italians had he lived there, instead of the first among the "Flemings." ”