In Paradise (Musaicum Must Classics). Paul Heyse
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this submission, I will show you something that until now very few mortal eyes have had the privilege of seeing."
He approached the great veiled group in the middle of the studio, and began cautiously to unwrap the damp cloths in which the work was everywhere enveloped.
The figure of a youth appeared, of more than mortal strength and stature, lying stretched upon the ground in an attitude of perfect and natural grace and beauty. Sleep seemed to have just left his eyes; for he lay with his head a little raised, leaning upon his right arm, and passing the left across his forehead as though to clear away the mists of some deep dream. Before him--or behind him, as it appeared to the spectator--knelt upon one knee a youthful female figure, bending over him in a posture of innocent wonder. This figure was much less advanced toward completion than that of its male companion--there being, indeed, scarcely anything left to do on the latter excepting a little delicate work upon the luxuriant hair and the hands and feet. And yet, though the lines of the woman's figure were still almost in the rough, and her beautiful form seemed only the fruit of a few days' labor, the modeling of the whole was so broad and strong, the bend of the neck and the posture of the arms were so expressive, that no one could fail to catch the full force of the whole, even from the unfinished work, and to see that the two figures were worthy of one another, and of equal birth.
Felix uttered an exclamation of delight. Then, for a full quarter of an hour, he stood motionless before the mighty group, and seemed altogether to forget the sculptor in his work.
At length the dog, which came beside him and began again to lick his hand, aroused him from his reverie.
"The old-time Hans still lives!" he cried, turning to Jansen. "And more than that--this is for the first time the complete, genuine Dædalus, who has thoroughly learned to use his wings. Listen, old boy; it is gradually dawning upon me that I must have been altogether mad and absurd when I introduced myself to you as a kind of fellow-artist!"
"You shall go to the art-club to-morrow, and gather new courage when you see some of your other colleagues," said Jansen, dryly. "However, I am glad the thing pleases you. You remember how I used to dwell on the germ of the idea of this work years ago. The First Man face to face with the First Woman--hardly daring as yet to actually touch the being who for the first time makes his human existence full and complete; while she--more mature already, as a woman is, and having had time while he slept to recover from her first surprise--feels herself drawn by a strange and joyful yearning to him who is to be her lord, and to call forth for the first time her true woman's nature. It is a subject that stirs one to the core; it touches all that is deep and sacred in a man's fancy; and yet it is not impossible to reproduce it with the means our art affords. I have made more than one study of it, and yet not satisfied myself. It was only this spring, when I realized one day, to my horror, how this wretched business next door--this money-getting and trying to please priests and women--was threatening to demoralize me, that for three weeks I never set foot in my saint-factory, but locked myself in here and expanded my soul again with this work. I know that I am only doing it for myself and for a little group of true friends, as restless as I am. Where could I put such a thing as that nowadays? True Art is homeless and without a place to lay her head. A dancing Bacchante is sure to find a lover in some rich man who will put her in some niche in his salon, and think when he looks at her of the ballet-girls who have been his associates. But Adam and Eve, before their fall, in all their rude and vigorous strength, with the fragrance of the fresh earth lingering, as it were, about them--they are as useless for a decoration as they would be for the altar of a chapel. Even their heroic proportions would pass for brutal! But, after all, they are my old favorites; and, if they please me, to whom does it matter?"
Felix did not answer. He was again absorbed in gazing at the group.
"A good friend of mine, whose acquaintance you will soon make, by the way," continued the sculptor, "one Schnetz, who likes to play the Thersites, advised me to put a fusilier's uniform on Adam, and make Eve into a sister of charity, with a medicine-glass and spoon in her hand. Then the group would perhaps be adopted to ornament the pediment of some hospital. His satire on the present condition of our art was so true that I had almost a mind to try it for a joke. My first man and woman, without an inkling of all the ills of our pestilential century, enthroned over the door of a lazaretto--what do you say to that as a piece of colossal humor?"
"Only finish it, Hans!" cried the younger man. "Dream out your dream, and I will vouch for it that, however stupidly and sleepily men are plodding on, this lightning-stroke of genius will dash the scales from their eyes! Why haven't you made more progress with your Eve?"
"Because I have never yet found a model; and because I will not botch my work by mere patching together of my own recollections, or by the last resort of borrowing from the Venus of Milo. Ah, my dear fellow--the fine figures you think you saw in the streets to-day--psha! you'll soon think otherwise. The German corset-makers, the school-room benches, and the miserable food we live on, may possibly leave enough of dear old Nature for me to make a laughing-doll out of, like my dancer there; but a future mother of mankind, untouched as yet by any breath of want or degradation, and fresh from the hand of her Creator--what do you think our professional models would say to that--or the seamstresses or flower-girls that money or persuasion can induce to enter the service of art? If it were a Roman, now, or a Greek, or any untamed child of Nature who had grown up under a happier heaven than ours! And that is what makes the ground here fairly burn under my feet--and if they were not fettered with leaden fetters--"
He suddenly checked himself, and a dark shadow passed across his face; but Felix shrunk from the effort to draw from him by a question any confidence beyond what Jansen offered willingly.
At this moment the clock in a neighboring tower struck twelve; and for a few moments the bells for mid-day service filled the pause that had interrupted the talk of the two friends.
The sculptor began to wrap up the group again, after he had given it a thorough sprinkling. And then, while Felix examined in silence the other sculptures, many of which were familiar, he went to a wash-stand in a corner, where he washed the traces of the clay from his hands and face, and exchanged his working-blouse for a light summer-coat.
"And now," said he, as he finished his toilette--"now you shall go with me to our high mass--one that we never miss on Sundays. At the stroke of twelve we working-bees forsake our hives, and swarm to that great flower-garden, the Pinakothek, to gather our store of wax and honey for the whole week. Do you hear the door slam above us? That is my neighbor in the upper story--a right good fellow, by the name of Maximilian Rosenbusch, but called 'Rosebud' for short by his friends. An excellent youngster, not in the least cut out by Nature for a desperado--but rather inclined, on the contrary, to all the more delicate pursuits of the muses. He is suspected of being secretly engaged on a volume of 'Poems to Spring,' and you could have heard his flute up-stairs an hour ago. But at the same time he paints the most tremendous battle-pieces--generally in Wallenstein or Swedish costume--battles of the bloodiest sort, and where there is no quarter. In the studio next to his lives a Fräulein, a thoroughly estimable woman, and by no means a despicable artist. Among her friends she goes by the name of Angelica, but her real name is Minna Engelken. This good creature--but there they come now down the stairs. You can make their acquaintance at once."
CHAPTER V.
It was certainly an odd pair that they found waiting in the yard. The battle-painter, an animated young fellow, with a clear, bright, rosy complexion, wore an enormous gray felt hat, with a small cock's-feather in the band; and an abundant red beard, that looked as queerly against his pink-and-white face as though a girl had tied a false beard round her chin, in the attempt to disguise herself as a brigand. Looking at the face closely, there was a decidedly spirited and manly look in the clear blue eyes, while a merry laugh lurked constantly about the mobile mouth. Beside him, his companion--though she was apparently still under thirty--seemed almost as though she might be his mother, there was such a weighty seriousness and prompt decision in her movements. She had one of those faces in which one never sees whether they are pretty or ugly; her mouth was a little large, perhaps; her