Part 16

Maurice Barrés’ _Greco, Le Secret de Tolède_, has firm, accurate upbuilding; architectural drawing. It gives surety, poise, reliability. Finely done, clear, precise, nobly visioned, with no yawning gaps to be filled futilely. He writes delightfully. He is an old friend, he who tried to establish _le culte du moi_, something old as the hills, because it is what all artists set out to do, but which he succeeded in doing better perhaps than the rest.

The prose of Barrés resembles mural paintings by de Chavannes: _bleu de ciel_, against which white intellectualized figures move. There is an occasional shred of gleaming gold.

The golden age of the colored race is right ahead of us. The concept, _superiority_, is something strange. That joy which civilization has been for centuries draining out of the white race, is stored in them; civilization has killed. If we are to continue to create, something will have to come to light our hearts, and then later on to warm them.

We shall soon have good writing from them, the colored race, painting, music, art, in every department of creative accomplishment. The work is begun.

When the colored mind flowered in the past, the result has been something original, or of rare quality. Stored within them is supply of that joy without which no one can create. In joy, art is rooted.

Two fluent writers had negro blood, Puschkin and Dumas. There may have been negro blood in Heredia, of _The Sonnets_. There may have been a trace of it in the ancestry of Hearne, whose mother was born on one of the islands south of Greece, across which tides of conquest for centuries drifted. The contrary indeed can not be proved. Negro blood influenced the brush of some of Spain’s greatest painters, and it may have been mingled in its Moorish poets. Is it not more than probable that it formed part of the racial inheritance of Matisse, Gauguin? There may have been a trace of negro blood in _El Poeta de America_, Darío, who is not so much poet of America as of the world, because of cosmopolitan training. An astonishing example of receptivity, he, who came from South America to France, and at one gulp swallowed, digested, the cultivation of Europe. In this receptivity I can think of but one parallel: Russian minds of the Eighteenth Century, like Lomonosov’s.

It is too bad there is no good translation of Darío! Could square-toed Saxon reproduce such a poem as his _Aire Suave_ with its fluted, fairy-like fine-stepping?

_Era un aire suave, de pausados giros; El hada Harmonia ritmaba sus vuelos; E iban frases vagas y tenues suspiros Entre los sollozes de los violoncelos._

It was a quarter of a century ago, I believe, that the part-negro poet of Venezuela, Mata, put out _Pentelicas_. Since, his output has been considerable, _Grito Bohemio_, _Idilio Tragico_. The last is called _Arias Sentimentales_. From this volume I quote a verse of the Nocturn:

_Al tragico reproche de la sombra a la luz, la flor secreta de la esperanza recogio su broche, cual recoge su broche la violeta. La noche al fine, poeta! Poeta, al fin la noche!_

The years have made him gloomy. He is tragic, sad. He is a man of cultivation.

At end of the Third and beginning of the Fourth Century of our era, there was a scholar, a Rhetorician, of Negro blood, living in Africa, who was a man of power. His name was Arnobe. He wrote the Latin tongue from the slopes of the Atlas Mountains. It is from him we know best how far south from the Mediterranean, the prodigious cultivation of Rome penetrated. He had the instincts, some of the training, of a scholar. He made attempt to classify dialects of the people among whom he lived, to show in what condition Latin, as spoken language, survived. His contribution to linguistic knowledge has not been slight. There was a man called Leo the African, who about 1511, traveled extensively in the Black Continent, and wrote in Arabic descriptions of Fez, Timbuctoo, the great rivers, and his experiences in crossing the Sahara. Early in the Seventeenth Century he was translated into French and I seem to remember the Elzevir Press published his books. I recall another interesting book (Seventeenth Century) about the Great Black Merchant, Buchor Sano, who declared there were still houses in his country with roofs of gold.

Olandah Egniano was an African; his moving story of how he was kidnapped, then brought to America in a slave ship, is more than interesting. The date was 1793. One of the earliest dramatic _voyages_ to the African West Coast was made long before the discovery of America, by that indefatigable Portuguese explorer, Gomes Azurara, who was born in 1434. Other valiant Portuguese adventurers, such as Filippo Pigafetta, made many charming maps, some of them heightened with color, of Africa, in the early days. The first Hollander to describe the coast of the Great Black Continent was Marees, in 1617.

As long ago as 1808 a _History of the Literature of the Negro_ was published, somewhat lavishly, in France. The book adds a rather long list of Negroes who have written upon science and art.

Stored in the Negro, there is an unexpanded race-soul, which will be one of the future’s gifts. Whatever art in the U. S. of North America happens to be, in that the Negro will have part credit as originator.

I have visited a collection of works of Degas. Marvellous, luscious color, clothing bodies that are ugly, drawn with scorn, rage; contempt for that which is women. The walls flashed colors that make the heart ache; masterly drawing, drawing that contains the skill of surgeon and observer.

No. 64—A green we dream in English springs. Fresh, impatient brushing in! The usual daring, unplanned arrangement. The intrepidity of individual vision united with quaint, appealing ugliness of costume.

No. 59—An interior with two women. Neither is young nor beautiful. Both are soberly clad. They wear black bonnets. Superb assurance of brush lends interest. The white of a curtained window back of them, rich with faint shadow-modeling, tones in which one _feels_ jade, sad pink. A dull rose on front of a bonnet gleams derisively. Painted in high, fine rhythm.

No. 1—Masterly drawing in black of an ugly woman, whose hair keeps royal shades of red-amber. In the line that shows it there is the joy of great Chinese masters. But it does not equal them because nothing can do that.

No. 14—A small picture of three women. Drawn sharply, crisply; and with black. Marvellous brushing in of yellow fluted ballet skirts. It gives sensation of a chrysanthemum torn in a too cold wind of autumn. Behind the body of the standing woman, a wash of red, dramatic, splendid. It has effect of one of the prolonged, prodigious notes of Caruso. A fine, angry, dominant note, like an outflung cloud of storm. There is one touch of green; subtle, wondrous.

No. 63—A woman seated, combing red hair. She wears a yellow robe. Behind her a dash of blue of unequalled depth. The general effect upon the senses is of luscious, tropical fruit one may not name. Over all superb, dry surface light.

No. 39—Large canvas. Two dancers. Drawn in black against vague green. Upon the skirt of the first dancer, a dash of magenta, of orange, so splendid it recalls wild audacities of South American orchids. Something to dream over forever! Intensities, that could have been born only in the mind of a solitary genius like Degas.

No. 60—Long picture of two seated dancers. They wear skirts of pink that make one commit sudden infidelity to the memory of Watteau. This, against a yellow, rare, too lovely.

The color-key of each picture catches, then holds you with emotion, as music does. Imperative, inescapable things, made so seldom we can afford to take time to consider them.

Brushing in as beautiful, blond, unforgettable, as summer over northern seas.

No. 4—Figures of three dancers. They make a striking ensemble. They have the firm totality of carved jade. Blue of a haunting but slightly acid tint. The daring emphasis of ugly things.

No. 26—The picture keeps the effect of blown flame in some boisterous wind of spring, or neglected nasturtiums in a burnished, overturned British garden. With beauty, one somehow remembers England! A group of ballet girls; gay spirits.

No. 40—Again ballet girls. Sober. Restrained. Distinguished. A wall of sullen, silken yellow. A yellow that only Arabian or Indian textiles know. Gauguin would have loved it.

Degas sometimes shows pale, regretful blue that attunes the mind like a melody of Schumann, heard when November snows begin to fall, then filter flower-bought sunlight. Like chalcedony! Colors personal, that expressed the lonely soul that could find no pleasure in people. His pleasure, his companionship, was in tone the rainbow knows in unreachable heavens.

He knew purples, pinks, that quickened his heart. He knew talkative, loquacious yellows that were like sensations. He knew savage, slashing reds, hues of crime and temptation, that gave him the feeling of languorous liaisons, flattered, foolish gayety with women; love; delightful debauchery. He knew greys that kept the self-commendatory feeling of discipline and restraint.

This was the way he was active and energetic. In imagination he dashed across lush, green hunting fields, with the wet, warm wind on his mouth, hounds at his heels, and gay companions, and grew dizzy at the scent of the grasses. This was life. This was society for him. He never allowed anything to divert him from his one joy, _painting_.

Never for a moment was he unfaithful. There was nothing that could tempt him. Therefore his reward was great. He spilled the gold coin of his heart like a dazzled spendthrift. His buying was commensurate. Only the generous, the self-forgetful, can buy as he did.

Art critics have given scant attention, and measured scantily, their courtesy to Tami Koume, Japanese extremist in painting. But sometimes there are more things concealed in painting than even in the philosophy of critics, good in concealing or great in ignorance.

Here modernism is manipulated by a wizard Eastern hand, and seen, then estimated through the ancient trained mind of the Orient. He expresses what he thinks by line, color, without confusing form, without complexity of object; telltale, indiscreet fact. In this way it is art purified.

He gives his brush, sensations music gives. He has done well. He has a spiritual subtlety that did not belong to French and Italians who did the same thing, something of a more exquisite, older race. _Heard melodies are sweet but those unheard are sweeter._ Koume has brought unheard melodies.

Essentials of sensation, line, color, have become revolutionists, forsworn allegiance to fact. They have started independent existence. Like lost ships on uncharted oceans, they are careening toward the unknown.

No. 7—Only the deep sea when it weaves pearls can equal the dumb loveliness of this, by Koume. This spirit was working in painting on silk, made in China, centuries ago. It would not have astonished Sung Masters. They knew rhythms like these, they understood weight, and unweighable excellences of structure, felt subtly by ancient people, who have known Loveliness long enough not to be vexed with her, in any mood. And always at least, on friendly terms.

At last I have seen paintings by Ilya Repin! I thought the time would never come when I could. To see them means a trip to Russia. They are full of enjoyment and feeling. They are vehement, passionate, proud; and pagan in beauty; rich in firm characterization. His famous _Black Sea Pirates_ (large canvas) does not need a frame. Curiously enough the pale green foam of the pictured sea frames it. It is as important as the boat, or its occupants.

The portrait of his son, Yuri, likewise a painter whose canvasses of the Finnish Sea I have seen, is eloquent. Picture to yourself a face pale, dark, expressive, impassioned. It might symbolize Russia’s poet of tragic days, in youth, Puschkin. I could with difficulty look away.

The head is slightly turned to the left, a pose frequently chosen by Repin. He wears a coffee-colored caftan, bordered dully with white. He has dark brown eyes; large, beautiful, soulful. He has brown, dark, wavy hair; thick, a trifle long. The gesture of the folded arm and shoulder-line is arresting, peculiarly noble. The poetry of the Don Cossack country, the songs Schevschenko wrote in youth by the shores of rivers great as seas, are in the face. I recalled a song I translated years ago, from this Cossack poet, while I was looking at it:

When I die I pray you bury Me upon a hill, Where the great steppe’s circles widest My Ukraine Land fill, That the broad out-spreading meadows, The great river’s shore, And the bright on-rushing Dneiper I may see, and hear the roar, When it sweeps the foreign soldiers— The red blood of them we slew— Far away where skies are blandest Where my dear Ukraine lies blue.

The face has the warm, slightly sensual pallor, we see in painted dreams of proud Italian masters. An eloquent, impassioned brush caresses it to life. Yuri died during The War. Not long after this memorable portrait was made by his father! It stands for an ideal of Cossack youth.

Repin is a portraitist! Russian subtlety combined with forceful line. His portrait of Kerensky is interesting. It shows a blond, youthful figure with indecision in it. He is painted sitting by an open window, through which falls light strangely ruddy; a little wild. The line is sure, quick.

The single portrait of a _Black Sea Pirate_ is superb. Dramatically poised; brutal. It keeps wise contrast of pale blue and angry red, between which the brown, naked body rises; strong, muscled, slender. There is hint of Greece in this Black Sea body.

Repin has a brownish-yellow that is his. It is a dream of the deserts of his ill-fated Eastern forbears, under some slanting, despairing sun of desert autumn. His other _Black Sea Pirate_ has a different face, one of Mongol type, with controlled, still, ill-concealed ferocity of Asia. Past ages speak dazzlingly here.

_The Bandoura Player_ is gorgeous! A noble bit of color, with strength of some sublime, some savage past. There is red in it which totals the cruel splendor of a century of lost Black Sea sunsets. It fires muscular edge of arms, shoulders. It blazes, a sun which can not set, upon the head. There is something in form of the standing musician that is tantamount to defiance of death, destiny. There is, too, the flash of white teeth in song! The line of youth, and lift of love. Behind, a sky troubled, indeterminate; a sky with something of the sweet _souplesse_ of sound. A figure of glorious daring, unequalled spontaneity. Proud! Resentful! There is redoubling of rose-hues at end of the _bandoura_. It is echo of his song. With the brush Repin is a profound historian. History, perhaps, is written most weakly with words.

It is not easy to estimate what the poetry of such a technician, such a powerful virtuoso in words as d’Annunzio, was to me in an isolated village upon the plains, where everything was ugly, cheap, except the magnificent land-levels, and the sunsets. And it is not easy to estimate either how hard it was to get money to buy the books. New Italian writers came high. They were not procurable in the inexpensive outputs of older men. And then the long waiting for books to come. I ordered from Italy. When they did come, I literally wore out the pages of _Canto Novo, Intermezzo_.

I went around like a sleep walker for days. I forgot to eat. I sat up at night. I increased, if possible, the disapproval, the ill-concealed hatred of my relatives. It burst upon my thirsty, surprised senses like stars at midnight. The beating beauty of broken worlds was flung about me. It dazzled me. I published in obscure newspapers, the first translations from d’Annunzio to be printed in English.

My money reached only to buy one more verse-book—_Isottea_, and one novel: _Le Vergini della Rocce_. To read, where I lived, _in the daytime_, was one shade less criminal than stealing. I was a convicted culprit of long standing. The neighbors looked at me with untranslatable expressions in depths of their eyes, just as you look at people who have recently served a prison term.

I bought Leopardi (his verse), next. He was an older writer. He did not cost so much. I could procure a copy for a few _lire_. I waited all one long hot summer for that book to come. I read his magnificent _Ode to the Moon_ by light of a prairie moon no whit less lovely, in a sky no less purple tinged and cloudless, than that of Italy.

_Dove vai silenziosa luna?_

When I read it over again today, and the _Hymn to an Asiatic Shepherd_, I see the superb, languid moons of autumn above the plains, as they looked long ago. I sweep back the years; I become young again, and happy. That is one of the great poems of the world. And written by one of the world’s exquisite artists.

Leopardi was a favorite of Gladstone. I translated then and published, Gladstone’s favorite among his verses, _The Infinite_.

Gladstone ranked him with masters of antiquity, Greeks of flawless technique. It was from the Greeks he learned his technique, lofty standards, unswerving measure of judgment.

When I finished reading what was inside the book, I read all the advertisements on both covers, over and over. There is no shabby writing done by people who have been thoroughly _thrashed_ through their Greek and Latin.

One can sit in reverence before the great soul of Leopardi, as one sits at foot of Attic marbles, dumb, worshipful, dazed with unreachable beauty. Someone should coin a phrase for him as fine as Gautier coined for Tertullian. I wrote to Italian publishers to send me lists of their new books. Out of these lists I got the same pleasure a hungry cat gets out of a canary in a lovely, gold, glittering, swinging cage.

It was months before I could buy another book. When at length the pennies were scraped together, the selection was careful and painstaking, like that of a miner sifting gold. I at length decided upon the _Odi Barbare_ of Carducci, to whom Dante’s words apply without strain: _Degli alti poeti ognore e lume_.

Reading Carducci gives something the sensation of looking at the etchings which Piranesi made of Rome; noble, imperial, history-freighted, unforgettable.

The only difference is that Piranese made his pictures upon paper, while Carducci chiseled upon resisting stone. I have always liked best the ode to Rome, entitled merely _Roma_.

_Roma ne l’aer tuo lancio l’anima altira Volante, accogli o Roma e avvolgi l’anima mia di luce, Non curioso a te de le cosa piccole io vengo, Chi le farfalle cerca sotto l’arco di Tito?_

To be sure, who would pause to chase fire-flies under the Arch of Titus? Who would care what one’s neighbors, what one’s relatives thought, when one could stand beneath that same Arch, and look up at the sky of Italy?

Carducci, like poets of the south, such as Apollinaire, (whose real name I believe savored of the north, being Ostrowsky) liked the romantic, serious minded German poets of long ago. He read and translated some of Klopstock, Platen, while a friend of Carducci’s translated him back again into Latin, where he really belongs.

If your pocketbook refuses a ticket to Italy, do not be unhappy. Read Carducci! Read d’Annunzio! There is usually somewhere an _Ersatz_, something to set, without discord, in place of the thing desired.

I wished to read English, American books, but they cost too much. They were seldom procurable at a price less than a dollar. There were almost none in the village. The few who owned books would not lend them. I read Shakespeare and Poe first in German. Admirable, adequate translations they were! The cheaply-priced books of the old world, of Italy, France, Germany, are a blessing. They are the well in the desert to them who are thirsty. I recall buying some plays of Alfieri, put out by Georgio Franz, Monaco, bearing the publishing date of 1846; tiny, tiny books they were, printed on grey newspaper paper with no separate outer cover. They cost about four pennies each. And I bought a large cheap Ariosto, on similar unbleached paper, which was priced at a quarter. The _Orlando Furioso_ is a charming fable. I can not commend it too highly. It has delighted me just as _Alice in Wonderland_ delights a child. It is a gracious, bright-hued, arabesque, that has kept color throughout the centuries.

Then I learned northern tongues from printed advertisements sent by a clothing house, for the purpose of selling men’s clothing. A pile of little books they sent; one in English, the others, literal translations into various northern tongues, to sell to untamed Westerners, whom New York’s more untamed imagination had evidently given wild tongues, civilized, conventional clothes. It was of course an incomparable piece of humor. But it was useful to me. It is a poor sail-boat indeed that can not take advantage of an opposing wind or any wind that happens to blow.

I used to hope, every New Year’s Day, to be able to subscribe to _Century_, or _Harper’s_, our leading magazines. But I never reached such height of reckless extravagance. I read Dante the oftener instead. I knew pages by heart. Repeating him aloud was all the music there was in the lonely place in which I lived. There was hardly a wheezy asthmatic melodian. Luck, you see, was not wholly absent.

Once an old Italian priest, noble of heart and mind, came to the lonely, white chapel of his faith, that had been erected upon the plains. He used to recite Dante with resonance, and a kind of regretful, tragic fury, in which unuttered homesickness centered. He was very old then. It must have been an half century since he had seen Italy. He could say superbly, too, the sonnets of Petrarch. He said oftenest the one beginning:

_La vita fugge e non s’arresta un’ora, e la morte vien dietro a gran giornate, e le cose presenti e le passate mi danno guerra, e le future ancora:_

I used to wonder what things, in the past, he was remembering when he said it. Because even a priest must remember! If his body dies, his mind does not.

Someone asked me one day why I read so much.

Are you ambitious?

No.

Why then?

For pleasure perhaps! I have no desire to know anything.

Then why?

It may be this. Some one asked the giraffe why his neck was long. He replied: Because the distance from head to body is great. I read because the distance from birth to death is great. Some way, it has to be filled in.