_ Four individuals, in whose fortunes we should be glad to interest the
reader, happened to be standing in one of the saloons of the
sculpture-gallery in the Capitol at Rome. It was that room (the first,
after ascending the staircase) in the centre of which reclines the noble
and most pathetic figure of the Dying Gladiator, just sinking into his
death-swoon. Around the walls stand the Antinous, the Amazon, the Lycian
Apollo, the Juno; all famous productions of antique sculpture, and still
shining in the undiminished majesty and beauty of their ideal life,
although the marble that embodies them is yellow with time, and perhaps
corroded by the damp earth in which they lay buried for centuries. Here,
likewise, is seen a symbol (as apt at this moment as it was two thousand
years ago) of the Human Soul, with its choice of Innocence or Evil close
at hand, in the pretty figure of a child, clasping a dove to her bosom,
but assaulted by a snake.
From one of the windows of this saloon, we may see a flight of broad stone
steps, descending alongside the antique and massive foundation of the
Capitol, towards the battered triumphal arch of Septimius Severus, right
below. Farther on, the eye skirts along the edge of the desolate Forum
(where Roman washerwomen hang out their linen to the sun), passing over a
shapeless confusion of modern edifices, piled rudely up with ancient brick
and stone, and over the domes of Christian churches, built on the old
pavements of heathen temples, and supported by the very pillars that once
upheld them. At a distance beyond--yet but a little way, considering how
much history is heaped into the intervening space--rises the great sweep
of the Coliseum, with the blue sky brightening through its upper tier of
arches. Far off, the view is shut in by the Alban Mountains, looking just
the same, amid all this decay and change, as when Romulus gazed
thitherward over his half finished wall.
We glance hastily at these things,--at this bright sky, and those blue
distant mountains, and at the ruins, Etruscan, Roman, Christian, venerable
with a threefold antiquity, and at the company of world-famous statues in
the saloon,--in the hope of putting the reader into that state of feeling
which is experienced oftenest at Rome. It is a vague sense of ponderous
remembrances; a perception of such weight and density in a bygone life, of
which this spot was the centre, that the present moment is pressed down or
crowded out, and our individual affairs and interests are but half as real
here as elsewhere. Viewed through this medium, our narrative--into which
are woven some airy and unsubstantial threads, intermixed with others,
twisted out of the commonest stuff of human existence--may seem not widely
different from the texture of all our lives.
Side by side with the massiveness of the Roman Past, all matters that we
handle or dream of nowadays look evanescent and visionary alike.
It might be that the four persons whom we are seeking to introduce were
conscious of this dreamy character of the present, as compared with the
square blocks of granite wherewith the Romans built their lives. Perhaps
it even contributed to the fanciful merriment which was just now their
mood. When we find ourselves fading into shadows and unrealities, it
seems hardly worth while to be sad, but rather to laugh as gayly as we may,
and ask little reason wherefore.
Of these four friends of ours, three were artists, or connected with art;
and, at this moment, they had been simultaneously struck by a resemblance
between one of the antique statues, a well-known masterpiece of Grecian
sculpture, and a young Italian, the fourth member of their party.
"You must needs confess, Kenyon," said a dark-eyed young woman, whom her
friends called Miriam, "that you never chiselled out of marble, nor
wrought in clay, a more vivid likeness than this, cunning a bust-maker as
you think yourself. The portraiture is perfect in character, sentiment,
and feature. If it were a picture, the resemblance might be half illusive
and imaginary; but here, in this Pentelic marble, it is a substantial fact,
and may be tested by absolute touch and measurement. Our friend
Donatello is the very Faun of Praxiteles. Is it not true, Hilda?"
"Not quite--almost--yes, I really think so," replied Hilda, a slender,
brown-haired, New England girl, whose perceptions of form and expression
were wonderfully clear and delicate. "If there is any difference between
the two faces, the reason may be, I suppose, that the Faun dwelt in woods
and fields, and consorted with his like; whereas Donatello has known
cities a little, and such people as ourselves. But the resemblance is
very close, and very strange."
"Not so strange," whispered Miriam mischievously; "for no Faun in Arcadia
was ever a greater simpleton than Donatello. He has hardly a man's share
of wit, small as that may be. It is a pity there are no longer any of
this congenial race of rustic creatures for our friend to consort with!"
"Hush, naughty one!" returned Hilda. "You are very ungrateful, for you
well know he has wit enough to worship you, at all events."
"Then the greater fool he!" said Miriam so bitterly that Hilda's quiet
eyes were somewhat startled.
"Donatello, my dear friend," said Kenyon, in Italian, "pray gratify us all
by taking the exact attitude of this statue."
The young man laughed, and threw himself into the position in which the
statue has been standing for two or three thousand years. In truth,
allowing for the difference of costume, and if a lion's skin could have
been substituted for his modern talma, and a rustic pipe for his stick,
Donatello might have figured perfectly as the marble Faun, miraculously
softened into flesh and blood.
"Yes; the resemblance is wonderful," observed Kenyon, after examining the
marble and the man with the accuracy of a sculptor's eye. "There is one
point, however, or, rather, two points, in respect to which our friend
Donatello's abundant curls will not permit us to say whether the likeness
is carried into minute detail."
And the sculptor directed the attention of the party to the ears of the
beautiful statue which they were contemplating.
But we must do more than merely refer to this exquisite work of art; it
must be described, however inadequate may be the effort to express its
magic peculiarity in words.
The Faun is the marble image of a young man, leaning his right arm on the
trunk or stump of a tree; one hand hangs carelessly by his side; in the
other he holds the fragment of a pipe, or some such sylvan instrument of
music. His only garment--a lion's skin, with the claws upon his
shoulder--falls halfway down his back, leaving the limbs and entire front
of the figure nude. The form, thus displayed, is marvellously graceful,
but has a fuller and more rounded outline, more flesh, and less of heroic
muscle, than the old sculptors were wont to assign to their types of
masculine beauty. The character of the face corresponds with the figure;
it is most agreeable in outline and feature, but rounded and somewhat
voluptuously developed, especially about the throat and chin; the nose is
almost straight, but very slightly curves inward, thereby acquiring an
indescribable charm of geniality and humor. The mouth, with its full yet
delicate lips, seems so nearly to smile outright, that it calls forth a
responsive smile. The whole statue--unlike anything else that ever was
wrought in that severe material of marble--conveys the idea of an amiable
and sensual creature, easy, mirthful, apt for jollity, yet not incapable
of being touched by pathos. It is impossible to gaze long at this stone
image without conceiving a kindly sentiment towards it, as if its
substance were warm to the touch, and imbued with actual life. It comes
very close to some of our pleasantest sympathies.
Perhaps it is the very lack of moral severity, of any high and heroic
ingredient in the character of the Faun, that makes it so delightful an
object to the human eye and to the frailty of the human heart. The being
here represented is endowed with no principle of virtue, and would be
incapable of comprehending such; but he would be true and honest by dint
of his simplicity. We should expect from him no sacrifice or effort for
an abstract cause; there is not an atom of martyr's stuff in all that
softened marble; but he has a capacity for strong and warm attachment, and
might act devotedly through its impulse, and even die for it at need. It
is possible, too, that the Faun might be educated through the medium of
his emotions, so that the coarser animal portion of his nature might
eventually be thrown into the background, though never utterly expelled.
The animal nature, indeed, is a most essential part of the Faun's
composition; for the characteristics of the brute creation meet and
combine with those of humanity in this strange yet true and natural
conception of antique poetry and art. Praxiteles has subtly diffused
throughout his work that mute mystery,which so hopelessly perplexes us
whenever we attempt to gain an intellectual or sympathetic knowledge of
the lower orders of creation. The riddle is indicated, however, only by
two definite signs: these are the two ears of the Faun, which are leaf
shaped, terminating in little peaks, like those of some species of animals.
Though not so seen in the marble, they are probably to be considered as
clothed in fine, downy fur. In the coarser representations of this class
of mythological creatures, there is another token of brute kindred,--a
certain caudal appendage; which, if the Faun of Praxiteles must be
supposed to possess it at all, is hidden by the lion's skin that forms his
garment. The pointed and furry ears, therefore, are the sole indications
of his wild, forest nature.
Only a sculptor of the finest imagination, the most delicate taste, the
sweetest feeling, and the rarest artistic skill--in a word, a sculptor and
a poet too--could have first dreamed of a Faun in this guise, and then
have succeeded in imprisoning the sportive and frisky thing in marble.
Neither man nor animal, and yet no monster, but a being in whom both races
meet on friendly ground. The idea grows coarse as we handle it, and
hardens in our grasp. But, if the spectator broods long over the statue,
he will be conscious of its spell; all the pleasantness of sylvan life,
all the genial and happy characteristics of creatures that dwell in woods
and fields, will seem to be mingled and kneaded into one substance, along
with the kindred qualities in the human soul. Trees, grass, flowers,
woodland streamlets, cattle, deer, and unsophisticated man. The essence
of all these was compressed long ago, and still exists, within that
discolored marble surface of the Faun of Praxiteles.
And, after all, the idea may have been no dream, but rather a poet's
reminiscence of a period when man's affinity with nature was more strict,
and his fellowship with every living thing more intimate and dear. _