A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies Part 30

Madame Schrder Devrient told me that she sung with most pleasure to herself in the "Fidelio;" and in this part I have never seen her equalled.

f.a.n.n.y Kemble told me the part she had played with most pleasure to herself, was Camiola, in Ma.s.singer's "Maid of Honour." It was an exquisite impersonation, but the play itself ineffective and not successful, because of the weak and worthless character of the hero.

118.

Mrs. Charles Kean told me that she had played with great ease and pleasure to herself, the part of Ginevra, in Leigh Hunt's "Legend of Florence." She _made_ the part (as it is technically termed), and it was a very complete and beautiful impersonation.

These answers appear to me psychologically, as well as artistically, interesting, and worth preserving.

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119.

Mrs. Siddons, when looking over the statues in Lord Lansdowne's gallery, told him that one mode of expressing intensity of feeling was suggested to her by the position of some of the Egyptian statues with the arms close down at the sides and the hands clenched. This is curious, for the att.i.tude in the Egyptian G.o.ds is intended to express repose. As the expression of intense pa.s.sion self-controlled, it might be appropriate to some characters and not to others. Rachel, as I recollect, uses it in the Phedre:-Madame Rettich uses it in the Medea. It would not be characteristic in Constance.

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120.

On a certain occasion when f.a.n.n.y Kemble was reading Cymbeline, a lady next to me remarked that Imogen ought not to utter the words "Senseless linen!-happier therein than I!" aloud, and to Pisanio,-that it detracted from the strength of the feeling, and that they should have been uttered aside, and in a low, intense whisper. "Iachimo," she added, "might easily have won a woman who could have laid her heart so bare to a mere attendant!"

On my repeating this criticism to f.a.n.n.y Kemble, she replied just as I had antic.i.p.ated: "Such criticism is the mere expression of the natural emotions or character of the critic. _She_ would have spoken the words in a whisper; _I_ should have made the exclamation aloud. If there had been a thousand people by, I should not have cared for them-I should not have been conscious of their presence. I should have exclaimed before them all, 'Senseless linen!-happier therein than I!'"

And thus the artist fell into the same mistake of which she accused her critic-she made Imogen utter the words aloud, because _she_ would have done so herself. This sort of subjective criticism in both was quite feminine; but the question was not how either A. B. or F. K. would have spoken the words, but what would have been most natural in such a woman as Imogen?

And most undoubtedly the first criticism was as exquisitely true and just as it was delicate. Such a woman as Imogen would _not_ have uttered those words aloud. She would have uttered them in a whisper, and turning her face from her attendant. With such a woman, the more intense the pa.s.sion, the more conscious and the more veiled the expression.

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121.

I read in the life of Garrick that, "about 1741, a taste for Shakespeare had lately been revived by the encouragement of some distinguished persons of taste of both s.e.xes; but more especially by the ladies who formed themselves into a society, called the 'Shakespeare Club.'" There exists a Shakespeare Society at this present time, but I do not know that any ladies are members of it, or allowed to be so.

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122.

The "Maria Maddalena" of Friedrich Hebbel is a domestic tragedy. It represents the position of a young girl in the lower cla.s.s of society-a character of quiet goodness and feeling, in a position the most usual, circ.u.mstances the most common-place. The representation is from the life, and set forth with a truth which in its naked simplicity, almost hardness, becomes most tragic and terrible. Around this girl, portrayed with consummate delicacy, is a group of men. First her father, an honest artisan, coa.r.s.e, harsh, despotic. Then a light-minded, good-natured, dissipated brother, and two suitors. All these love her according to their masculine individuality. To the men of her own family she is as a part of the furniture-something they are accustomed to see-necessary to the daily well-being of the house, without whom the fire would not be on the hearth, nor the soup on the table; and they are proud of her charms and good qualities as belonging to them. By her lovers she is loved as an object they desire to possess-and dispute with each other. But no one of all these thinks of _her_-of what she thinks, feels, desires, suffers, is, or may be. Nor does she seem to think of it herself, until the storm falls upon her, enwraps her, overwhelms her. Then she stands in the midst of the beings around her, and who are one and all in a kind of external relation to her, completely alone. In her grief, in her misery, in her amazement, her perplexity, her terror, there is no one to take thought for her, no one to help, no one to sympathise. Each is self-occupied, self-satisfied. And so she sinks down and perishes, and they stand wondering at what they had not the sense to see, wringing their hands over the irremediable. It is the Lucy Ashton of vulgar life.

The manners and characters of this play are essentially German; but the _stuff_-the material of the piece-the relative position of the personages, might be true of any place in this christian, civilised Europe. The whole is wonderfully, painfully natural, and strikes home to the heart, like Hood's "Bridge of Sighs." It was a surprise to me that such a piece should have been acted, and with applause, at the Court Theatre at Vienna; but I believe it has not been given since 1849.

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123.

Here is a very good a.n.a.lysis of the artistic nature: "Il ressent une veritable emotion, mais il s'arrange pour la montrer. Il fait un peu ce que faisait cet acteur de l'antiquite qui, venant de perdre son fils unique et jouant quelque temps apres le role d'Electre embra.s.sant l'urne d'Oreste, prit entre ses mains l'urne qui contenait les cendres de son enfant, et joua sa propre douleur, dit Aulus Gellius, au lieu de jouer celle de son role. Ce melange de l'emotion naturelle et de l'emotion theatrale est plus frequent qu'on ne croit, surtout a certaines epoques quand le raffinement de l'Education fait que l'homme ne sent pas seulement ses emotions, mais qu'il sent aussi l'effet qu'elles peuvent produire. Beaucoup de gens alors, sont naturellement comediens; c'est a dire qu'ils donnent un role a leurs pa.s.sions: ils sentent en dehors au lieu de sentir en dedans; leurs emotions sont _en relief_ au lieu d'etre _en profondeur_."-_St. Marc Girardin._

I think Margaret Fuller must have had the above pa.s.sage in her mind when she worked out this happy ill.u.s.tration into a more finished form. She says:-"The difference between the artistic nature and the unartistic nature in the hour of emotion, is this: in the first the feeling is a cameo, in the last an intaglio. Raised in relief and shaped _out_ of the heart in the first; cut _into_ the heart, and hardly perceptible till you take the impression, in the last."

And to complete this fanciful and beautiful a.n.a.logy, we might add, that because the artistic nature is demonstrative, it is sometimes thought insincere; and insincere it _is_ where the form is hollow in proportion as it is cast outward, as in the casts and electrotype copies of the solid sculpture. And because the unartistic nature is undemonstrative, it is sometimes thought cold, unreal; for of this also there are imitations; and in pa.s.sing the touch over certain intaglios, we feel by contact that they are not so deep as we supposed.

G.o.d defend us from both! from the hollowness that imitates solidity, and the shallowness that imitates depth!

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124.

Goethe said of some woman, "She knew something of devotion and love, but of the pure admiration for a glorious piece of man's handiwork-of a mere sympathetic veneration for the creation of the human intellect-she could form no idea."

This may have been true of the individual woman referred to; but that female critics look for something in a production of art beyond the mere handiwork, and that "our sympathetic veneration for a creation of human intellect," is often dependent on our moral a.s.sociations, is not a reproach to us. Nor, if I may presume to say so, does it lessen the value of our criticism, where it can be referred to principles. Women have a sort of unconscious logic in these matters.

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125.

"When fiction," says Sir James Mackintosh, "represents a degree of ideal excellence superior to any virtue which is observed in real life, the effect is perfectly a.n.a.logous to that of a model of ideal beauty in the fine arts."

That is to say-As the Apollo exalts our idea of possible beauty, in form, so the moral ideal of man or woman exalts our idea of possible virtue, provided it be _consistent_ as a whole. If we gave the Apollo a G.o.d-like head and face and left a part of his frame below perfection, the elevating effect of the whole would be immediately destroyed, though the figure might be more according to the standard of actual nature.

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126.

"In Dante, as in Shakespeare, every man selects by instinct that which a.s.similates with the course of his own previous occupations and interests." (_Merivale._) True, not of Dante and Shakespeare only, but of all books worth reading; and not merely of books and authors, but of all productions of mind in whatever form which speak to mind; all works of art, from which we _imbibe_, as it were, what is sympathetic with our individuality. The more universal the sympathies of the writer or the artist, the more of such individualities will be included in his domain of power.

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127.

The distinction so cleverly and beautifully drawn by the Germans (by Lessing first I believe) between "Bildende" and "Redende Kunst" is not to be rendered into English without a lengthy paraphrase. It places in immediate contradistinction the art which is evolved in _words_, and the art which is evolved in _forms_.

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128.

Venus, or rather the Greek Aphrodite, in the sublime fragment of Eschylus (the Danades) is a grand, severe, and pure conception; the principle eternal of beauty, of love, and of fecundity-or the law of the continuation of being through beauty and through love. Such a conception is no more like the Ovidean Roman Venus than the Venus of Milo is like the Venus de Medicis.