The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-03-03
6usfave DOre's Purgatory and Paradise.

UusAave Dore's Purgatory aud Paradise, I
uSstave Dor6 has, on the whole, succeeded /
In Illustrating the Pur9afory The drawinns |
are hNie too like those ia the Inferno. too |
Dreadful 700 little penetrated by the idea of |
hope, to realise perfectly the idea which oue |
attaches TO Che Catholic Purgatory, the place |
OF puiihcstitut rather than OF punishment
only, but stiV hey are very wonderful draw
ipgs. In some, as for example, in the one
where Araobne Is seen stretched out into a
gigantic spider, the Internal idea, punishment
,or the cake OF punishment, is too manifest;
but in others, the higher notion of an Infinite
dreariness. through which souls all but lost
pass on to Paradise, is realized as only Done
could have realized it.
There is very little in It, nothing indeed but
one Of those dark shadowy depths which only
Gustave Dor6 has learned perfectly to draw;
but above the ravine fits or marches the
yelled shadowy host, halt angelic, which some
how one feels rather than sees will reach
heaven, but is now in misery, misery not
utter, not fatal to reflection, or even to a faint
interest In things around but still misery OF
an intense kind. The use of shsdowy forms
with lighted outlines is apparently the instru-
ment by which Gustave Dor6 hopes to pro-
duoe his effect, grand idea of endurance
which would not be endurance, which would
almost be happiness, were there only light
and he does produce it most effectually, even
when be strains the thought almost beyond
throws us violently back upon purely
physical conception of toll. Labor
in itself Is scarcely punishment,
and, for all that appears, labor In itself is the
punishment present here. His greatest defect
Is that, again and again, punishment takes that
form OF pure maligDity, OF bootless in6otion
of suffering, which is the farthest from the
catholic and from the true idea of Gods pro-
vidence in dealing with His creatures. The
spirit OF torture rises and Yises-as also It
does in the poem-tili in the figures which
the flames lick but cannot burn exciting an
agony OF fear rather than an agony Of physi-
cal pain, we have men TO whom hell with its
permanence were almost redemption. And
yet criticism of this kind on the Parga-
tory Is not criticism. Look the draw
ings, through slowly, medtatively,
thinking OF Dante. and not either of
theology or Do,e; and slowly, as we deem,
1t will somehow dawn upon you, unwilling to
accept it. that in these heights and these
depths, these tricks of the perpendicular-for
they are trioks-these CLEANS of an invisible
sun, and hints of present angels, In this deep
gloom over all which yet leaves men human
and souls beautiful, in these clouds which do
not hide rays, but hide their source, in these
professions without a shrine-the monkish
idea of acts has caught Gustave Dore-pro-
cessions in which there is q sub-idea some-
times of horror, sometimes of grotesquerie
(vide page l64, where beasts with the bat
wings which Dore gives the Devil, and
women's breasts, and heads Of ami
NAL or bird, are driving the sages Of
mankind), the true thought of half
inspired poet has found an expression almost
as full as itself; less near perhaps to our
hearts; more near to those physical emotions
within MS, those horrors, repulsions, disgusts,
Of which the nearest and the truest we can say
is that they are instructive, that they are
coordinate in origin with the reason which
judges them, and, therefore, beyond perfect
analysis by an equal power. The illustrations
which can effect this impression are great,
even though a minute study of them might
reveal the email adroitnesses by which the i'm
preston is created.
The Paradise does not strike us equally.
The leading idea OF the series of drawings
figures bathed in light wheeling in eccentric
circles round half visible CENTRE figures
usually wipged-in itself somewhat feeble
notion-has striking but rather indistinct
effect (in 352 1t is decidedly operatic), and
the bevies of sanity women, in long dresses
falling perpendicularly, fail 70 impress us at
all. They are serious and beautiful but not
divine. The Cross borne by wreaths of angels
who are Motif we may be allowed so nun
dane critioism-aN flying the same way,
would be o wonderful hint for Dieppe work.
ers in ivory, but is too material altogether for
the idea it is intended to convey, at least to
minds which feel in Jesus something more
than the Being extended on the GROSS and suf-
IorlDB uutOlu agony w 10 kopAiu ny triumph
beyond words. Nothing shocks us in Gustave
Dore's Paradise, and nothing can be said to
fail; but nothing succeeds fully, nothing salts
4 fes the longing in every heart to conceive Of
what PARADISE" the home of the redeemed,
may be. There are fair landscapes,
and sanity figures, and glorious ideas
of q new relation to something above
ourselves; but Of peace, and light, and beati-
fude, of the peace which passeth expression,
of the light which comes from His presence, of
the beatitude which should be in the souls of
those who are with Him, there is no trace.
Some faint CLEAN OF joy, of the rapture OF
satisfied benevolence. ought surely to be appa-
rent In the face of the watching Dante, and ia
not, though once 1t is irradiated by angelic
light. The artist would say we are demanding
too much. Possibly, but then we are not de-
I manding more than Dante, by the consent oi
mankind, has in some more or less material
istic way succeeded in giving. We cannot say,
and we speak as admirers of M. Dore's
genius, that we think he also has succeeded
a II was not open to him, perhaps, to give nj
the true Paradise, the place-f0r TO Dante 4
was place--beyond all human imagination
10 fix the divine Dreams that fiOated before tn,
luthor of the Apocalypse, but IL was open t.
linn 10 do what Southey did, draw place II
khich ut least the human heart could res
ktisfed that the highest human IDEAL eartl
ithout sin, has been exoelled. This M. Dor
las not done, and while his Inferno will liv
lille Dante's lives, and the PTgatOrio will
aare. without quite deserving, its immortal
", the Paradise will, we fear, be quoted onl
- proof how close the inexorable limit
a a. 10