Cleveland daily leader. [volume] ([Cleveland, Ohio]) 1865-1873, 1865-11-29

Come a. you came in the desert
Ere we We're women and men,
When the tiger passions were in Us,
And love as you loved me then -
1t is manifest that physical life is getting
the ascendant in the world of thought,
and our men Of letters and our painters
have Joined Bacchus and his tipsy crew,
and, like gayest jewellers, sing Anacreon
odes and delight in the wild and sinuous
dance of wine-hushed Bacchantes. The
stories, the poems and the pictures of the
day express a passionate greed of pleasure,
an avid appetite for all soul-seducing de
lights and mans pride of life. In pain
tiers this passion for sensation shows itself
in devotion to the beautiful in poets it
betrays itself with sensuou words-with
words full of y%oluptuOus suggestion.
In modern art two of the most striking
pictures of the year, in fact two OF the
most intellectual efforts exhibited in Paris,
were GerOme's "LAlmee and Moreaus
" Gdipus and the Sphinx The former
is well known here as the most nude and
voluptuous work ever INTRODUCED to an
American public. The latter is a serious
and profound, and also a symbolical, eX-
preston of what Gerome rendered literal
", but which the more delicate and eleva-
ted and occult genius of Moreau tells by
implication rather thar in rude confession.
The splendor if not the beginning of this
bold treatment OF ~sensuality, this empha-
sis Of thought on the life Of the body, is to
be found among the licentiOus and superb
Italians of the sixteenth century. And
among modern works that illustrate the
same theme with a worthy purpose, we
may mention Couture's noble painting,
lies Romans de la Decadence," now in
the Luxembourg Gallery. The picture
represents the elfeminate and voluptuOus
Romans jaded with pleasure and incapable
of sensation. We have at hand descrip-
tions, vivid and mournfully beautiful like
the composition itself:
" Beneath the blue skies of Italy, andin
the court of a stately temple, through
whose many columned porticos CLEAN the
stern and solemn forms of antique statues,
a matlev group of jewellers is gathered to
a holiday of wanton and tumultuous mer-
riment. On the floor lie broken vases and
trailing vines; their wan brows are grid
with faded chaplets; their languid bodies
intertWine in every posture of voluptuous
indulgence; and their looks are, by turns,
reckless, haggard, frantic, oblivious. as
they drown the past, the present, and the
future, in ever-deepening draughts of
golden wine. Two noble figures alone,
representative of the old adorers of Jupi-
ter. draw their mantles closely about them,
and, with faces full of inexpressible sor-
row, gaze upon the orgies as if they felt
that the prophecy Of Romulus was fulfill
ed, and the last vulture had Tapped his
ominOus wings oyer twelve centuries of
vanished glory"
The successors of Couture, the most Gel
ebrated of his young contemporaries, do not
introduce the wanton and sensual to mag
Nifty a moral greatness that no more ex-
lists. They select these themes because
they enjoy them, and Cabanal and GerOme,
and many painters more or less able, re-
vive the Pagan worship of the beautiful in
their works, and united to realism or nat
uralism, their art ceases to be unimpas-
stoned art, and becomes rude nature. The
remarkable correspondence between the
dominant thoughts and motives that vital
ize modern poems and pictures and sto-
ries, frames a question which we mus an
swer.
For ourselves, We see in this a reaction
against the somewhat chilling Influences
of the rariiied air of pure art and science,
and the consequent negation Of feeling,
generated by the moral and intellectual
life fifty years ago. Goethe in Germany,
Wordsworth in England, and Comte in
Franco, succeeded in giving the ascendant
to intellectual culture; the last, elevating
positive silence, the former the artistic
spirit. and Wordsworth intoxicating pan
theism while Emerson in our own coun-
try, speaking from simple intellection,
rave great p-reponderance to the mental
life, and discredited the more simple one
Of the senses. The first reaction against
this partial development was in Germany
always first in new movements in the
world of letters. Heinrich Heine in Ger
MANY. George Sand in France, and Byron,
and, later, Robert Browning in England,
have used the whole force of their literary
GENIUS to celebrate sensation and rejoice in
life.
The great masters have found a host of
imitators that, pleased with the sensuality
or the s-ensuousness of those full-blooded
writers, have found an excuse to hawk
their studies of the nude" and even
place them before us at every ssep we take
What is written bias unquestioned access
to our family life, and creates an ener.
waiting atmosphere in the very sanctuary
of home. 1t p~rematurely subjects th'
young to a corrupting stimulus; corrupt
ing, because it anticipates love and mar
rage, and makes prurient what is KEEP
noble by energy and passion.
The ethics Of this most aesthetic subjec
remain for a bold and skilful writer, fol
as Browning writes:
"Our interests on the dangerous edge Of things
The honest Thief, the tender murderer,
The superstitious atheist, demireps
That love and save their souls ia new
French books.
We watch while these in equilibrium keep
The giddy line midway: one step aside,
They re classed and done with
The most striking and noble sign of
reaction against sensual and naturalism-
I tho Castor and Pollux of modern art
that sternly beautiful tragedy, recent
published. called ATLANTA in Calydon
Although every verse unfolds to our gai
the awful face of an unyielding fate, 1t
: full of pity without indulgence, and J
whole spirit is opposed to the mello
sweetness of a life of pleasure-oppos,
to the exaltation of love and passion
this it eorrects Browning, it correC
George Sand. 1t opposes v~oluptuousnf
|. and pleasure and caprice, and 50 1t &C
reefs the Influence of Heine, of Keats
Byron. But it is doubtful whether al
|, form of art can oppose the bewilderi
J, seduetions of a strong and beautiful phi!
ical life; and the strength of modern
and modern literature will consist not
a rival of the classic, but in the use OF
= sensual, not to debase, but to exalt US, a
:. - ~ n-nntnass of q chastn nassiOn. ]