Magdalenian

“ A very long interval of time separates us from the closing epoch (Magdalenian) of the paleolithic period. For we find on the borders of Lakes Constance and Geneva animal remains of the Magdalenian epoch in terraces that are 20 to 30 meters above the present level of these lakes. Magdalenian industry is found in Switzerland well within the area covered by the Würm glaciation. But such stations have not yet been found within that covered by the Bühl stage. ”

“ It would appear that the woolly mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros were not hunted in this region, for their remains are not preserved in any of the grottos or stations mingled with the middle or late Magdalenian cultures. On the other hand, we find the steppe horse, the kiang, the stag, and the reindeer very abundant indeed. The bison is absent, and wild cattle are very rare; so that this region is not typical of the mammalian life of Magdalenian times as found in Dordogne and in the Pyrenees. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ John the Baptist in Siena, Venice, and Berlin. Of these, the Magdalen in the Baptistery at Florence is the most typical and the most uncompromising. She stands upright, a mass of tattered rags, haggard, emaciated, almost toothless. Her matted hair falls down in thick knots; all feminine softness has gone from the limbs, and nothing but the drawn muscles remain. It is a thin wasted form, piteous in expression, painful in all its ascetic excess. The Magdalen has, of course, been the subject of hostile criticism. ”

“ Magdaléna regarded it with great awe. She was by no means without superstition. Would it bring men to her feet? Not that she wanted them now, but she would like one evening of intoxicating success, just for the sake of her old ambitions: they had been little less than entities at one time; for old friendship's sake she would like to give them their due. She did wish that she felt a thrill as she touched it,—a vibration of the attenuated thread which connected one of her soul's particles with that other soul which, perhaps, had contributed its quota to her making. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Helena, with the world at her feet, would have little time for brooding, little time for anything but the lighter pleasures of life under his watchful eye, until she loved and passed to the keeping of a man who, he hoped, would be far stronger and finer than himself. But Magdaléna? Repressed, unloved, intellectual, disappointed at every turn, passionate undoubtedly,—there was no knowing to what sudden extremes desperation might drive her. And the woman, no matter how plain, had yet to be born who could not be utterly bad if she put her mind to it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They will not abandon you, Magdalene. The rest depends upon yourself alone. , . . I am good and generous, perhaps, but in my own manner; and we must understand each other. ... So they have arrested him in whom you take so lively an interest, as I told you that they would? . . .
MARY MAGDALENE: They have not only arrested him: all the menials of the Temple, the grooms, the herds, the meanest scullions in the kitchens rushed at him, insulted, flouted and ill-treated him. . . . And, as they were afraid, as they were too cowardly to venture it alone, they made the Roman soldiers help them! ”

“ MARY MAGDALENE: I shall not go out? . . . True, you dare fight against a woman. I had not foreseen this great courage born of terror. You all shake your heads like the empty corn-spikes; and the women rejoice in at last discovering the cowardice of the men, showing itself suddenly more signal than their own! . . .
JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA: Take counsel, Mary Magdalene; think of him and reflect that, if he heard you . . .
MARY MAGDALENE: Well, if he heard me, it would be as on the day when that one among you whom you all resemble reproached me with anointing his feet with too costly an ointment! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mary is sent to the mountains for seven years' penance; at the end of that time washes her hands in a brook, and is guilty of admiring them; is sent back to the mountains for seven years, and is then taken to heaven.
A Catalan ballad combines the legend of the Magdalen's penance with that of her conversion: Milá, Observaciones, p. 128, No 27, 'Santa Magdalena,' and Briz y Saltó, Cansons de la Terra, II, 99. Martha, returning from church, asks Magdalen, who is combing her hair with a gold comb, if she has been at mass. Magdalen says no, nor had she thought of going. ”

“ Joseph of Arimathæa
Listen, Magdalene.... I lack neither courage nor loyalty.... Notwithstanding the power of the priests, I have thrown open my house to those who followed him. I know the price which I shall have to pay.... I am prepared to sacrifice everything and life itself to him. But I know his will and I cannot disobey him.... Peter wished to defend him and drew his sword.... He made him put it up into the sheath.... I was at Gethsemane....
Mary Magdalene
Since you were there, why did you not help Peter?... We save those whom we love; we listen to them afterwards!... ”

“ Nothing is more common in the mouth of the vulgar than the wicked life of the Magdalen. The preachers who wish to confess souls that are afflicted with horror at their sins, represent to them this woman as one of the most immodest and dissolute that ever existed, to whom, however, God has shown mercy. And, upon this same prejudice, which is altogether imaginary, has been founded a reason why the Son of God having been raised from the dead, appeared to Mary Magdalen before any other person ”

“ 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 ”

“ Helena, dazzlingly fair in a frock of forest green, and surrounded by five new admirers, three Eastern and two English tourists, awaited Magdaléna on the verandah. The strangers gave Magdaléna a faint shock: being the only well-dressed men she had ever seen except Trennahan, they assumed a family likeness to him, and seemed to steal something of his preeminence among men. ”

“ Salvator once more inspected Antonio's pictures, and stopped before one representing a "Magdalene at the Saviour's feet," which he especially praised.
"In this Magdalene," he said, "you have deviated from the usual mode of representation. Your Magdalene is not a thoughtful virgin, but a lovely artless child rather, and yet she is such a marvellous child that hardly anybody else but Guido could have painted her. There is a unique charm in her dainty figure; you must have painted with inspiration; and, if I mistake not, the original of this Magdalene is alive and to be found in Rome. ”

“ The little man then vanished, leaving his gifts behind him, and Magdalen hastened joyfully home. Her first care was to prepare herb tea for the patient, whose health was miraculously restored as soon as she had tasted it. But when Magdalen tried to cut the cheese the kind-hearted gnome had given her, she was amazed to find it was a solid lump of pure gold! She and her mother were so rich with this treasure that they soon purchased the Bründlisalp, where Magdalen and Alois, a happy husband and wife, tended their flocks together. ”

“ Trennahan, you are actually stouter. You don't look as if you had been climbing perpendicular mountains. Is it true that a man stepped over the Bridal Veil backward? Do tell me all about it!"
Helena was staring at Magdaléna with her mouth half open. She was the least obtuse of mortals, but although she knew that pride was at the root of Magdaléna's extraordinary behaviour, she concluded that love had fled, and marvelled, for she had believed Magdaléna to be the deepest and most tenacious of women. ”

“ 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?... ”

“ In the Magdalene's face—and in that of an actor of Mrs. Fiske's range—these are a beautifully delicate incongruity.
And my friend Annabel Lee has told me that the strongest things are the delicate incongruities—the strongest in all this wide world. Because they make you consider—and considering, you wait.
With such a pair of round, innocent eyes of some grayish color—who can blame Mary Magdalene?
In the latter acts of the play these eyes go one step farther than innocence: they do hunger and thirst after righteousness. ”

“ There was a teasing look in Magdalen’s eyes, which told Roger 385he had nothing to fear, and raising himself up he drew her down beside him and said: “I ask you to be candid with me, Magda. We have wasted too much time not to be in earnest now. Your coming to me as you have could only be construed in one way, were you like most girls; but you are not. You are impulsive. You think no evil, see no evil, but do just what your generous heart prompts you to do. ”

“ Verus
It is well, stand up.... I do not keep you by force. But I could not have believed that you had come to this.... I have fallen into one of your Jewish traps. Do you see the crowd posted there, under the portico, spying upon its hostages?... I will not have Roman property defiled.... I bear you no grudge, Magdalene. Love, in me, is not extinguished in a moment; and I possess more constancy than woman.... ”

“ He does not suspect that he owes his life to me; for hitherto, from pity or indifference, I had held back the threats that were gathering over his head. But, since he himself comes to attack me in my happiness, I add to those [Pg 106] threats all the weight of flouted love.... And, now, go with your guide from the tombs.... We shall meet again before long.
(Lazarus goes out slowly through the vestibule. Magdalene, without a word, without a movement, without a look, GOES OUT after him, amid the profound, still silence of all present.) ”