Magdalenian culture

“ When they reached the Magdalenian stations they adopted the barbed harpoon, imitating reindeer-horn forms in red-deer horn.
The blond Maglemosians in the Baltic area introduced from Asia the domesticated dog. They were thus able to obtain their food supply with greater ease than did the Solutreans with their laurel-leaf lances, or the Magdalenians with their spears tipped with bone or horn. When man was joined by his faithful ally he met with more success than when he pursued the chase unaided. ”

“ The cavern of Combarelles, discovered in 1901, in Dordogne, near Les Eyzies, contains by far the most remarkable record of early Magdalenian art; there are upward of four hundred drawings and engravings representing almost every animal of early Magdalenian times, among them the horse, rhinoceros, mammoth, reindeer, bison, stag, ibex, lion, and wolf; there are also between five and six representations of the men of the time, both masked and unmasked; the style is more recent than that of the oldest drawings in Font-de-Gaume, but much more ancient than the period of polychrome art. ”

“ In the variety of industries we find evidences of a race endowed with closely observant and creative minds, in which the two chief motives of life seem to have been the chase and the pursuit of art. The Magdalenian flints are fashioned in a somewhat different manner from the Solutrean: long, slender flakes or 'blades' with little or no retouch are frequent, and in other implements the work is apparently carried only to a point where the flint will serve its purpose. No attempt is made to attain perfect symmetry. ”

“ Their excellence and value, as unequalled productions of art, may not perhaps be understood by all,—the poetical charm, the something more than meets the eye, is not perhaps equally felt by all,—but the sentiment is intelligible to every mind, and goes at once to every heart; the most uneducated [165] eye, the merest tyro in art, gazes with delight on the Notte; and the Magdalene reading has given perhaps more pleasure than any known picture,—it is so quiet, so simple, so touching, in its heavenly beauty! ”

“ Society, the mud wherein we stand
Up to the eyes, whence if I drag you forth,
Saving your soul and mine, there shall ascend
A poisonous blast that may o'ertake our lives.
Magdalen. I feel a meaning in your eloquence;
I see my poor thoughts made celestial
Like faded women Jove hung in the sky.
Obey my nature, sir? How shall I know
The voice of nature from the thousand cries,
That clamour in my head like piteous birds,
Filling the air about a lonely isle
With ringing terror when the hunter comes.
Smith. Shut out the storm and heed the still, small voice.
Magdalen. Have pity. ”

“ But the most remarkable indication of progress in the "cave-man" is his artistic skill. Exaggerated conclusions are sometimes drawn from the statuettes, carvings, and drawings which we find among the remains of Magdalenian life. Most of them are crude, and have the limitations of a rustic or a child artist. There is no perspective, no grouping. Animals are jumbled together, and often left unfinished because the available space was not measured. ”

“ I shall give the legend of the Magdalene here as it was accepted by the people, and embodied by the arts, of the middle ages, setting aside those Eastern traditions which represent the Mary of Bethany and the Magdalene as distinct personages, and place the death and burial-place of Mary Magdalene at Ephesus. Our business is with the Western legend, which has been the authority for Western Art. ”

“ The Magdalene is no longer a shadowy ideal with a somewhat buxom body, scantily draped, with indefinite hair and with the lifeless beauty that the old masters paint. Nor is she quite the woman of the scriptures who is presented to one's mind without that quality which is called local coloring, and with too much of the quality that is ever present with the women in the scriptures—a something between uncleanness and final complete redemption. ”

“ One cannot imagine a modern ecclesiastic conversing with a Magdalen in terms of ordinary civility, unless she was in a very high social position indeed, or blending with disreputable characters without a dramatic sense of condescension and much explanatory by-play. ”

“ When the Magdalene is introduced into pictures of the ‘Incredulity of Thomas,’ it is in allusion to a famous parallel in one of the Fathers, in which it is insisted, ‘that the faith of Mary Magdalene, and the doubts of Thomas, were equally serviceable to the cause of Christ.’
Among the many miracles imputed to the Magdalene, one only has become popular as a subject of Art. ”

“ Thereupon the Marseillaise dismissed her slaves, and offered the Jewess an ivory armchair with cushions embroidered in gold. But Mary Magdalen, pushing it back with disgust, seated herself on the ground with feet crossed in the shade of the great plane-tree stirred by the murmuring breeze.
“Daughter of the Gentiles,” she said, “you have not despised the disciples of the Lord. For this reason I will teach you to know Jesus as I know Him, to the end that you shall love Him as I love Him. I was a sinner when I saw for the first time the most beautiful of the sons of men.” ”

“ The figure that chiefly attracts, has, by its suavity, for centuries attracted, and still absorbs the general eye, is that charming one of the Magdalen, in a half kneeling, half recumbent posture, pressing the foot of Jesus to her lips. By doing this, the painter has, undoubtedly, offered to the Graces the boldest and most enamoured sacrifice which they ever received from art. ”

“ Thereafter the "great thaw" opened up Europe to the invasion of new races from Asia and Africa.
Three distinct movements of peoples in Europe can be traced in post-Magdalenian times, and during what has been called the "Transition Period", between the Upper Palæolithic and Lower Neolithic Ages or stages. The ice-cap retreated finally from the mountains of Scotland and Sweden, and the reindeer migrated northward. Magdalenian civilization was gradually broken up, and the cave art suffered sharp decline until at length it perished utterly. ”

“ For industrial purposes scrapers continue to be very abundant, as well as borers for the perforation of bone implements. The [Pg 388] middle Magdalenian industry is best represented in the deposits of central and southern France, at Raymonden, Bruniquel, Laugerie Basse, Gourdan, Mas d'Azil, and Teyjat.
The chief weapon of Late Magdalenian times is the harpoon with the double row of barbs, which is found at all the principal discovery sites extending from stations in southwestern and southern France far to the east. ”

“ It was a week before she squarely faced the relation of Henry James to her own ambitions. Then she admitted it in so many words: she could not write, she never could write. The writers who were dust had inspired her to emulation; it took a great contemporary to bring her despair. It is only the living enemies we fear; the dead and their past are beautiful unrealities to the smarting ego.
Magdaléna realised for the first time the exact value she had placed upon the art of expression,—a value that was in inverse ratio to her limitations. ”

“ Who would pretend to compare the beauty of the haughty and sensual Magdalen, flaunting her profane charms in the streets of Capharnaum, the theme for the toasts of libertines, to the beauty of the saintly and almost angelic penitent, bathing the feet of Jesus with her tears, and wiping them with her dishevelled hair!
He whose thoughts are modest cultivates an unselfish spirit. Alas! what with our fund of pride, our intolerant self-will, and ungovernable temper, how much we need to think on whatsoever things are modest! How prone we are to stand upon our rights ”

“ It might have happened in Rome or Florence or Perugia. Magdalen, the lady of noble blood but famous with ill-fame, fair of person and of heaven-bright countenance, who dresses splendidly and lives with many lovers, spending her days in the pleasure of rich banquets and perfumed baths, delighting her heart with the music of lyres and flutes and the voices of young men, appears before us with a reality that proves how deep a hold upon the poet's fancy her picturesque tale had taken. Martha, her good but commonplace sister, forms a foil to the more impassioned and radiant figure of Magdalen. ”

“ But the beautiful Magdalene of Annibal Caracci has heard the words of mercy; she has [Pg 362] memories which are not of sin only; angelic visions have already come to her in that wild solitude: she is seated at the foot of a tree; she leans her cheek on her right hand, the other rests on a skull; she is in deep contemplation; but her thoughts are not of death: the upward ardent look is full of hope, and faith, and love. The fault of this beautiful little picture lies in the sacrifice of the truth of the situation to the artistic feeling of beauty—the common fault of the school ”

“ And can I, Oh! can I ever enough express my joy, when this good young man, now dearer to me than life, informed me of the Magdalen-House: whereof he told me his excellent master was a governor, and to the chapel of which he had one Sunday introduced him.
There needed not much recommendation; for how could I be unwilling to abandon a life which was big with misery and sorrow? ”

“ Nor is it only the popularity of Mary Magdalene as the representative and the patroness of repentant sinners which has multiplied her image through all Christendom. As a subject for painting,
Whether the fair one sinner it or saint it,
it is rich in picturesque capabilities. It combines all that can inspire, [Pg 345] with all that can chasten the fancy; yet, when we review what has been done, how inadequate the result! In no class of subjects have the mistakes of the painters, even the most distinguished, been so conspicuous as in the representation of the penitent Magdalene ”

“ And Magdalen mingled amongst the crowd to listen to the words of the young master.
Some of his disciples having said in speaking to him of Magdalen, that she had been seduced and then abandoned by a young doctor of the law, the figure of Jesus became grave, severe, and almost menacing, and he exclaimed——
'Woe to you, doctors of the law! Woe to you, hypocrites! You are like unto whitened sepulchres; the outside appears gay, but within all is bones and putridity. Thus, outwardly you appear just in the eyes of men, but inwardly you are full of iniquity and hypocrisy. ”

“ Magdalen of Pazzi, alone in the cloister-garden, rapturously catching up the roses to her face, and extolling Him who made them fair, signifies much: not only that she was dowered with the keen perception of beauty,—hardly that at all; but that she was at the apex of moral sanity, which has as much right to be passionate with beauty as the sun itself. It is inconceivable that barbarians should admire the sunset: though it is not inconceivable that barbarians in good society should say that they do so. ”

“ But I beg pardon for running from my subject; women's pens, Sir, are not used to order.
In my calamitous distress I applied to the Magdalen House; and I was received with all that humanity which distinguishes the worthy managers of it. I fancied and foreboded every good to myself, when, on the day of admission, I perceived many of the gentlemen wipe their eyes while I was relating some of my early miseries! For alas, Sir, though I am old in grief, I have yet seen but nineteen years! It is impossible for me to describe, as I ought, the comforts I found in that house. ”

“ Three times, during 352 the day he spent at Parma, he returned to the contemplation of this picture; and truly painting never produced its superior, scarcely its rival. The Holy Child sits in his mother’s lap, with an angel beside him, who smiles as he exhibits to the Magdalen the page on which her sins were inscribed, now white as snow, and the Magdalen kisses the Saviour’s foot, and looks still repentant but consoled. ”

“ The Magdalen is, appropriately enough, of the same type as the exquisite, golden blond courtezans—or, if you will, models—who constantly appear and reappear in this period of Venetian art. Hardly anywhere has the painter exhibited a more wonderful freedom and subtlety of brush than in the figure of the Christ, in which glowing flesh is so finely set off by the white of fluttering, half-transparent draperies. The canvas has exquisite colour, almost without colours ”

“ Verus (clasping her violently)
Have no fear, Magdalene. Nothing can touch you in these arms which close round you. The madness of this land seems more contagious than its pestilence and more tenacious than its leprosy; but Roman reason does not waver, like the rest, at the first foul breath that issues from a tomb. We will cut this matter short. (To Lazarus) You I will not touch with my sword. It shrinks from corpses, even when they walk and drive the trade which you do. It is for the slaves to show you the road back to the sepulchre.... Where are the slaves?... ”

“ And I am not sure that this notion was a wrong one; for now that my ideal has received the corrections of experiment, what college shall I prefer to Magdalen? Perfect and entire is Wadham, where, in the warden’s lodge, I first broke academic bread; lordly is Christ Church, with its walks and its quadrangles; lovely is Merton, as it were the sister of Christ Church, and gracefully dependent; New College is majestic; All Souls worthy of princes: but Magdalen alone is all that is the charm of others, compendious in itself ”