Earthwork Out Of Tuscany
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Maurice Hewlett >> Earthwork Out Of Tuscany
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So when I learn from the works of Ruskin that he can "read a picture to
you as, if Mr. Spurgeon knew anything about art, Mr. Spurgeon would read
it,--that is to say, from the plain, common-sense Protestant side"; or
when I learn from the works of Mr. George Moore that Sir Frederick Burton
made of the National Gallery a Museum; or when one complains of a picture
that it is not didactic, and another that it holds a thought, I make haste
to laugh lest I should do wrong to Tuscany, that looked upon the world to
love it: for she saw that it was very good.
III
A SACRIFICE AT PRATO
_(An Old-fashioned Narrative)_
[Footnote: Perhaps I may be allowed to explain that this article was
written from the standpoint of a cultivated Pagan of the Empire, who
should have journeyed in Time as well as Space.]
The rim of the sun was burning the hill tops, and already the vanguard of
his strength stemming the morning mists, when I and my companion first
trod the dust of a small town which stood in our path. It still lay very
hard and white, however, and sharply edged to its girdle of olives and
mulberry trees drenched in dews, a compactly folded town, well fortified
by strong walls and many towers, with the mist upon it and softly over it
like a veil. For it lay well under the shade of the hills awaiting the
sun's coming. In the streets, though they were by no means asleep, but,
contrariwise, busy with the traffic of men and pack-mules, there was a
shrewd bite as of night air; looking up we could perceive how faint the
blue of the sky was, and the cloud-flaw how rosy yet with the flush of
Aurora's beauty-sleep. Therefore we were glad to get into the market-
place, filled with people and set round with goodly brick buildings, and
to feel the light and warmth steal about our limbs.
"It would seem fitting," said I, "seeing that day is at hand and already
we enjoy the first-fruits of his largess, that we should seek some
neighbouring shrine where we might praise the gods. For never yet was land
that had not, as its fairest work, gods: and in a land so fair as this
there must needs be gods yet fairer, and shrines to case them in." This I
said, having observed pious offerings laid upon the shrines of divers gods
by the road. At the which, looking curiously, it seemed to me that the
inhabitants of this country were favoured above the common with devout
thoughts and the objects of them--gods and goddesses. You might not pass a
farm without its tutelary altar to the genius of the place, some holy
shade, or--as she was figured as a matron--some great land-goddess,
perhaps Cybele, or the Bona Dea; and pleasant it was to me to see that the
tufts of common flowers set before her were for the most part smiling and
fresh with the dew that assured an early gathering. In the streets of the
city, moreover, I had seen many more such, slight affairs (it is true) of
painted earthenware, some gaudily adorned with green and yellow colour and
of workmanship as raw, some painted flat on the wall of a recess (in which
was more skill, though the device was often gross enough--to dwell upon
death and despair), and some again of choice beauty, both of form and
colour, and a most rare blitheness, as it might be the spirit of the
contrivers breaking through the hard stone. And all of these I knew to be
gods, but the devices upon them were hard to be read, or approved. There
was a naked youth pierced with arrows, wherein the texture of smooth flesh
accorded not well with the bitterness of his hurt; a young man also,
bearded, of spare and mournful habit and girt with a rope round his
middle; in his hands were wounds, as again of arrows, and there was a rent
in his garment where a javelin had torn a way into his side. Such
suffering of wounds and broken flesh stared sharply up against the young
flowers and grasses which spoke of healthy wind and rain and a sun-kissed
earth. Goddesses also I saw--a virgin of comely red and white visage;
yellow-haired she was, crowned like a king's daughter; at her side a
wheel, cruelly spiked on the outer edge and not easily to be related to so
heart-some a maid. But before them all (with one grim exception, to be
sure) I saw the Earth-Mother who had been upon the farm and homestead-
walls, of the same high perfection of form, and in raiment stately and
adorned, yet (it would seem) something sorrowful as she might mourn the
loss of lover or young child. Now the darkest sight I saw was that
exception before rehearsed; and it was this. A black cross stood In the
most joyful places of the city, and one suffered upon it to very death.
Whereat I marvelled greatly, saying, "Who Is the man thus tormented whom
the people worship as a god?" And my companion answered,
"A great god he is, if the country report lie not, and has many names,
which amount to this, that he has freed this nation from bondage and died
that he may live again, and they too. And of the truth of what they say I
cannot speak; but I think he is Bacchus the Redeemer, who, as you, Balbus,
know, was no wanton reveller in lasciviousness, but a very god of great
benevolence and of wisdom truly dark and awful. Who also took our mortal
nature upon him and suffered in the shades: rising whence (for he was god
and man) like the dawn from the night's bosom, or the flooding of spring
weather from the iron gates of winter, he sped over land and sea, touching
earth and the dwellers upon it. And to those he touched tongues were given
and soothsaying, and to many the transports of inspiration and divine
madness, as of poets and rhapsodists. And tragedy and choral odes are his,
and the furious splendour of dances. But of the worship of Dionysus you
know something, having been at Eleusis and beheld the holy mysteries.
"Now the god of this people has the same gift of tongues and madness of
possession. To him are also sacred priests of the oracle, and high
tragedies, and the wailing of music, and streaming processions of virgins
and young boys. He too agonised and arose stronger and more shining than
before, dying, indeed, and rising at the very vernal equinox we have
mentioned. He too is worshipped in certain Mysteries whereat the
confession of iniquity and the cleansing of hearts come first: and the
sacrifice is just that wheaten cake and fruit of the vine whereof, at
Eleusis, you have praised to me the simplicity and ethic beauty. And he
can inspire his devotees with frenzy. For I have heard that certain men of
the country, on a day, and urged by his daemon, run naked from place to
place in honour of him, lashing their bare backs with ox-goads; and will
fast by the week together, they and the women alike; and that pious
virgins, under stress of these things, swoon and are floated betwixt earth
and heaven, and afterwards relate their blissful encounters and prophesy
strange matters; receiving also dolorous wounds (which nevertheless are
very sweet to them) like to the wounds which he himself received unto
death; and all these things they endure because they are mystically
fraught with the wisdom and efficacy of the god. Nay, I have been told
that in the parts over sea, towards the North and West, he is worshipped,
just as at Eleusis, with pipes and timbrels and brazen cymbals and all
excess of music; and there they dance in his service and suffer the
ecstasies of the Maenads and Corybants in the Dionysiac revel. But this I
find quaint to be believed."
Now when I had heard so much, I was the more desirous to find some temple
where I could observe the cult of this wounded gods and so sought counsel
of my friend versed in the people's learning. To my questioning he replied
that it would be easy. We were (said he) in the market-place among the
buyers and chafferers of fruit, vegetables, earthenware, milk, eggs, and
such country produce; which honest folk, it being the hour of the morning
sacrifice and the temple facing us, would soon abandon their brisk toil
for religion's sake; whereupon we too would go. So I looked across the
square and saw a very fair building, lofty and many windowed, all of clean
white marble, banded over with bars of a smooth black stone, curiously
carved, moreover, in sculptured work of gods and men and of flowers and
fruits--all cut in the pure marble. At one side was a noble rostrum, of
the like fine stone, whereon young boys and girls, as it were fauns and
dryads and other woodland creatures, capered as they list: and above the
midmost door a semicircle of pale blue enamel, whereon was the image of
the Great Goddess in gleaming white. She was of smiling debonnair
countenance and in the full pride of her blossom-time--being as a young
woman whose girdle is new loosed to the will of her lord--and in her arms
was a naked child, finely wrought to the size of life. On either side of
her a beautiful youth (in whom I must needs admire the smoothness of their
chins and the bravery of their vesture shining in the clear light) did
reverence to the Goddess and the child: and there were beings, winged like
birds, with the faces of strong boys, but no bodies at all that I could
see, who flew above them all. This was brave work, very wonderful to me in
a people who, thus excellently inspired and having such comely smiling
divinities and so clear a vision of them before their eyes, could yet be
curious after suffering heroes and stabbed virgins and gods with mangled
limbs. But we went into the temple with the good people of the country-
side to the sound of bells from a high tower hard by. And I was something
surprised that they brought no beasts with them for the sacrifice, nor any
of the fruits which were so abundant in the land; but my companion
reminded me again that the sacrifice was ready prepared within, and was,
as it were, emblematical of all fruits and every sort of meat, being that
wine and bread into which you may comprehend all bodily and (by a figure)
ghostly sustenance. By this we were within the temple, which I now
perceived was a pantheon, having altars to all the gods, some only of
whose shrines I had remarked on the way thither. Dark and lofty it was,
with piered arches that soared into the mist, and jewelled windows
painfully worked in histories and fables of old time:--all as far apart as
conceivably might be from the holy places of my own country; for whereas,
with us, the level gaze of the sun is never absent, and through the
colonnades you would see stretches of the far blue country, or, perchance,
the shimmer of the restless sea, here no light of day could penetrate, and
all the senses might apprehend must be of solemn darkness, longing
thoughts to cleave it, and, afar off and dim, some flutter of even light
as of blest abodes. A strange people! to despise the sure and fair, for
the taunting shadows of desire. But, growing more familiar in the middle
of newness and the awe that comes of it, I was again amazed at the number
of the gods, their nature and sort. I saw again the arrow-stricken youth,
whom we call Asclepius (but never knew thus tormented--as with his
father's arrows!) and again the Maid of the Wheel, Fortune as I suppose:
but with us the wheel is not so manifestly bitter. Then also the wounded
hero, cowled and corded, ragged exceedingly, the like of whom we have not,
unless it be some stripling loved by an immortal and wounded to death by
grudging Fate, as Atys or Adonis. And if, indeed, this were one of them,
the image-maker did surely err in making him of so vile a presence--a
thing against all likelihood that the gods, being themselves of super-
excellent shapeliness, should stoop to anything of less favour. Yet he was
of singular sweetness in his pains, and high fortitude: and he was much
loved of the people, as I afterwards learned. And one was a young knight,
winged and with a sword in his hand; at his feet a grievous worm of many
folds. This I must take for Perseus but that his radiancy did rather point
him for Phoebus, the lord of days and the red sun. But in the centre of
the whole temple was an altar, high and broad, fenced about with steps and
a rail, which I took to be made unto the god of gods or perhaps the king
of that country, until I saw the black cross and the Agonist hanging from
it as one dead. Then I knew that the chief god of this people was Dionysus
the Redeemer, if it were really he. But I had reason to alter my opinion
on that matter as you shall hear.
By this the temple was filled with the country folk who flocked In with
the very reek of their toil upon them and hardly so much as their
implements and marketable wares left behind. They were of all ages and
conditions, both youths and maids, arrowy, tall and open-eyed; and aged
ones there were, bowed by labour and seamed with the stress of weather or
the assaults of unstaying Fate: whereof, for the most part, the women sat
down against the wall and plied dextrously their fans; but the men stood
leaning against the pillars which held the timbers of the roof. And they
conversed easily together, and some were merry, and others, as I could
perceive, beset with affairs of government or business--for they talked
more vehemently of these matters than of others, as men will, even beneath
the very eyelids of the god. And so I could understand that this sacrifice
was not the yearly celebrating of high mysteries, but the common piety of
every day with which it is rather seemly than essential we should begin
our labouring. There were, indeed, signs in the apparelling of the temple
that more solemn festivals were sometimes held, as the delivery of
oracles, the calculation of auspices and such like: that, at least, I took
to be the intention of small recesses along the walls, that, through a
grating of fine brass, a priest of the sanctuary uttered the wisdom of the
god in sentences which the meaner sort should fit with what ease they
might to their circumstances. For, I suppose, it is still found good that
the dark saying of the Oracle shall be illumined by the subtlety of the
initiate and not by the necessities of the simple. And while I was thus
musing I found the ministrants in shining white about the great altar,
busied with the preparation for the rite, lighting the torches (very
inconsiderable for so large a building, but, mayhap, proportionate to the
condition of the people): and they placed a great book upon the altar, and
bowed themselves ere they left. And soon afterwards, to the ringing of a
bell, came the priest's boy carrying the offering of the altar, and the
priest himself in stiff garments of white and yellow.
Now, for the sacrifice, I could not well understand it, save that it was
very shortly done and with a light heart accepted by the people, who (I
thought) held it as of the number of those services whose bare performance
is efficacious and wholesome--on account, partly of reverent antiquity and
long usage, and partly as having some hidden virtue best known to the god
in whose honour it is done. For in my own country, I know well there were
many such rites, whose commission edified the people more than their
omission would have dishonoured the god: wise men, therefore (as priests
and philosophers), who would live in peace, bow their bodies by rule,
knowing surely that their souls may be bolt upright notwithstanding. So
here were many solemn acts which, doubtless, once had some now
unfathomable design and purport, diligently rehearsed, while the
worshippers gazed about with dull unconcern, or being young, cast eyes of
longing upon the country wenches set laughing and rosy by the wall, or,
old, nursed their infirmities. And, on a sudden, a bell rang; and again
rang; and the packed body of men and women fell upon their faces, and so
remained in a horrific silence for a space where a man might count a
score. Thereafter another bell, as of release. So the assembly rose to
their feet and, as I saw, swept from their foreheads and breasts the dust
of the temple floor. But as soon as it was over, a very old priest came
through the press and offered the same sacrifice in a little guarded
shrine at the lower end, amid many lamps and wax torches and glittering
ornaments. Here was more devotion among the people, indeed a great
struggling and elbowing just so as to touch the altar, or the steps of it,
or the priest's hem, or even the rails which fenced the shrine. And with
some show of good reason was this hubbub, as I learned. For here was
indeed treasured the Girdle of Venus (this being her very sanctuary) and
as much desired as ever it was by women great with child or wanting to
conceive. And I looked very curiously upon it, but the Girdle I could
never see; only there was a painted image over the altar of the great
queen-mother, Venus Genetrix herself, depicted as a broad-browed, placid
matron giving of the fruits of her bounteous breasts to a male child. Then
I knew that this was that same Goddess who stood over the outer door of
the place, and was well pleased to find that the people, howsoever
ignorantly, adored the power that enwombs the world--Venus, the life-
bringer and quickener of things that breathe,--and could, in this matter,
touch hearts with the wise. So with this thought, that truly God was one
and men divers, I came out of the temple well pleased, into the level
light of the day's beam.
In the tavern doorway, under a bush of green ilex, we sat down in company
to eat bread and peaches sopped in the wine of the country, and talked
very briskly of all the things we had seen and heard. And soon into the
current of our discourse was drawn a dark-faced youth, who had been
observing us earnestly for some time from under his hanging brows, and
who, growing mighty curious (as I find the way of them is), must know who
and whence we were and of what belief and condition in the world. So when
I had satisfied him, "Turn for turn," said I, "my honest friend: being
strangers, as you have learned, we have seen many things which touch us
nearly, and some which are hard of reading. But this very reading is to us
of high concernment, for these matters relate to religion, and religion,
of what sort soever it may be, no man can venture to despise. For certain
I am, that, as a man hath never seen the gods, so he may never be sure
that he hath ever conceived them, even darkly, as in a mirror. For we are
dwellers in a cave, my friend, with our backs to the light, and may not
tell of a truth whether the shadows that flit and fade be indeed gods or
no. Tell me, therefore (for I am puzzled by it), is the goddess whose
presentment I yet see over your temple-porch, that Mother of gods and men,
yea, even Mother of life itself, to whom we also bend the knee?"
"She is, sir, as we believe, Mother of God; and therefore, God being
author of life. Mother of life and all things living."
"It is as I had believed," said I, "and you, young sir, and I, may bow
together in that temple of hers without offence. For the temple is to her
honour as I conceive?"
"Why, yes," he answered, "it is raised to her most holy name and to that
of our Lord."
"And your Lord, who is this? and which altar is his? For there were many."
"The great altar is His, and indeed He is to be worshipped in all," said
the young man.
"He is then the tortured god, whose semblance hangs upon the black cross?"
"He is."
Then I begged him to tell me why these mournful images were scattered over
his goodly earth, these maimed gods, this blood and weeping; but I may not
set down all that he told me, seeing that much of it was dark, and much,
as I thought, not pertinent to the issue. Much again was said with his
hands, which I cannot interpret here. Suffice it that I learned this
concerning the Agonist, that he was the son of the goddess and greater
than she, though in a sense less. Mortal he was, and immortal, abject to
look upon, being indeed accounted a malefactor and crucified like a thief;
and yet a king of men, speaking wisdom whereof the like hath hardly been
heard. For of two things he taught there would seem to be no bottom to
them, so profound and unsearchable they are. And one of them was this,--
"The kingdom is within you" (or some such words); and the other was, "Who
will lose his life shall save it." Whereof, methinks, the first
comprehends all the teaching of the Academy and the second that of the
Porch. So this man must needs have been a god, and whether the son or no
of the Soul of the World, greater than she. For what she did, as it were
by necessity and her blind inhering power, he knew. Therefore he must have
been Wisdom itself. And thus I knew that he could not be Dionysus the
Saviour, though he might have many of his attributes; nor simply that son
of Venus whom Ausonius alone of our poets saw fastened to a cross. So at
last, "I will tell you," said I, "who this god really is, as it seems to
me. Being of vile estate and yet greatest of all; being mortal and yet
immortal, god and man; being at once most wise and most simple, and (as
such his condition imports) intermediate between Earth and Heaven, he must
needs be the Divine Eros, concerning whom Plato's words are yet with us.
So I can understand why he is so wise, why he suffers always, and yet
cannot be driven by torment nor persuaded by sophisms to cease loving. For
the necessity of love is to crave ever; and he is Love himself. Wherefore
I am very sure he can lead men, if they will, from the fair things of the
world to those infinitely fairer things in themselves whereby what we now
have are so very fair to see. And he may well be son of this goddess and
nourished by her milk; for it behoves us that a god should stand between
Earth and Heaven and be compact of the elements of either, so that he
should condescend the wisdom of his head to instruct the clemency of his
heart. And we know, you and I, that the gods are but attributes of God,
whose intellect (as I say) may well be in Heaven, but His heart is in the
Earth, and is the core of it. For so we say of the poet that his heart is
ever in his fair work."
Thus we took our wine and were well content to sit in the sunshine.
IV
OF POETS AND NEEDLEWORK
The man of our time to class poetry as a thing very pleasant and useful
shall hardly be found. At most the saying will suffer reprint as a
quaintness, a freak, or a paradox; and so it has proved. From Prato, dusty
little city of mid-Tuscany, and with the impress of its Reale Orfanotrofio
(nourisher, it would thus appear, of more Humanities than one) comes an
_"Opera Nova, nella quale si contengono bellissime historie, contrasti,
lamenti et frottole, con alcune canzoni a ballo, strambotti, geloghe,
farse, capitoli e bazellette di piu eccellenti autori. Aggiuntevi assai
tramutationi, villanelle alla napolitana, sonetti alla bergamasca et
mariazi alla povana, indovinelli, ritoboli e passerotti"_; _cosa_,
this legend goes on to say, _molto piacevole et utile_. This is, no
doubt, rococo, and at best a pitiful, catchfarthing bit of ancientry: yet
it looks back to a time when it was indeed the fact that no choice work
could be but useful, and when eyes and ears, as conduits to the soul, had
that full of consideration we reserve for mouth and nose, purveyors to the
belly.
Vasari, Giorgio, he too, _bourgeois_ though he were, and in so far
the best of testimony, knew it when he found Luca's blue and white to be
"molto utile per la state." We should say that of a white umbrella or suit
of flannels; why of earthenware or an adroit _strambotto_? That marks
the cleft, the incurable gulf of difference between a people like the
Tuscans with art in their marrow, and our present selves with our touching
reliance upon a most unseemly hunger after facts. I suppose I should be
stretching a point if I said that _Samson Agonistes_ was _cosa
molto piacevole ed utile_. And yet I name there a great poem and a
weighty, whence the general public suck, or claim to suck, no small
advantage. Is it more useful to them than Bradshaw? I doubt. But here, in
this Opera Nova so furthered, are sixty-three little snatches of Luigi
Pulci's, eight lines to the stave, about the idlest of make-believe love
affairs, full of such Petrarchisms as "Gl' occhi tuoi belli son li crudel
dardi," or
"Tu m' ai trafitto il cor! donde io moro,
Se tu, iddea, non mi dai aiutoro."--
the merest commonplaces of gallantry: called on what account by their
contrivers _molto utile_?
I have urged in my Second Essay that the Tuscans were inveterate weavers
of fancy, choosing what came easiest to hand to weave withal. I dared to
see such airy spinning in that Spanish Chapel from which Mr. Ruskin has
nearly frightened the lovers of Art; I said that the _Summa_ was to
the painters there as good vantage ground as any novel of Sacchetti's. I
now say that Luigi Pulci and his kindred so treated the love-lore which
was solemn mystery to Guinicelli and Lapo and Fazio, or the young Dante
shuddering before his lord of terrible aspect. I would add Petrarch's name
to this honourable roll if I believed it fitting such a niche; but I find
him the greatest equivocator of them all, and owe him a grudge for making
a fifteenth-century Dante impossible. It is true, had there been such a
poet we should never have had our Milton; but that may not serve the Swan
of Vaucluse as justification for being miserable before a looking-glass,
that he starved his grandsons to serve ours. Take him then as a poser:
give him, for the argument's sake, Boccace to his company, Cino; give him
our Pulci, give him Ariosto, give him Lorenzo, Politian; give him Tasso
for aught I care; you have no one left but the sugar-cured Guarino. Dante
stands alone upon the skyey peaks of his great argument, steadied there
and holding his breath, as for the hush that precedes weighty endeavour;
and Bojardo (no Tuscan by birth) stands squarely to the plains, holding
out one hand to Rabelais over-Alps and another to Boccace grinning in his
grave. The fellow is such a sturdy pagan we must e'en forgive him some of
his quirks. Italian poesy, poor lady, stript to the smock, can still look
honestly out if she have but two such vestments whole and unclouted as the
_Commedia_ and the _Orlando_. Let us look at some of her spoiled
bravery. Take up my Opera Nova and pick over Pulci in his lightest mood. I
am minded to try my hand for your amusement.
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