PAGE 3
The Madonna of the Future
by
“We are the disinherited of Art!” he cried. “We are condemned to be superficial! We are excluded from the magic circle. The soil of American perception is a poor little barren artificial deposit. Yes! we are wedded to imperfection. An American, to excel, has just ten times as much to learn as a European. We lack the deeper sense. We have neither taste, nor tact, nor power. How should we have them? Our crude and garish climate, our silent past, our deafening present, the constant pressure about us of unlovely circumstance, are as void of all that nourishes and prompts and inspires the artist, as my sad heart is void of bitterness in saying so! We poor aspirants must live in perpetual exile.”
“You seem fairly at home in exile,” I answered, “and Florence seems to me a very pretty Siberia. But do you know my own thought? Nothing is so idle as to talk about our want of a nutritive soil, of opportunity, of inspiration, and all the rest of it. The worthy part is to do something fine! There is no law in our glorious Constitution against that. Invent, create, achieve! No matter if you have to study fifty times as much as one of these! What else are you an artist for? Be you our Moses,” I added, laughing, and laying my hand on his shoulder, “and lead us out of the house of bondage!”
“Golden words–golden words, young man!” he cried, with a tender smile. “‘Invent, create, achieve!’ Yes, that’s our business; I know it well. Don’t take me, in Heaven’s name, for one of your barren complainers–impotent cynics who have neither talent nor faith! I am at work!”–and he glanced about him and lowered his voice as if this were a quite peculiar secret–“I’m at work night and day. I have undertaken a CREATION! I am no Moses; I am only a poor patient artist; but it would be a fine thing if I were to cause some slender stream of beauty to flow in our thirsty land! Don’t think me a monster of conceit,” he went on, as he saw me smile at the avidity with which he adopted my illustration; “I confess that I am in one of those moods when great things seem possible! This is one of my nervous nights–I dream waking! When the south wind blows over Florence at midnight it seems to coax the soul from all the fair things locked away in her churches and galleries; it comes into my own little studio with the moonlight, and sets my heart beating too deeply for rest. You see I am always adding a thought to my conception! This evening I felt that I couldn’t sleep unless I had communed with the genius of Buonarotti!”
He seemed deeply versed in local history and tradition, and he expatiated con amore on the charms of Florence. I gathered that he was an old resident, and that he had taken the lovely city into his heart. “I owe her everything,” he declared. “It’s only since I came here that I have really lived, intellectually. One by one, all profane desires, all mere worldly aims, have dropped away from me, and left me nothing but my pencil, my little note-book” (and he tapped his breast-pocket), “and the worship of the pure masters– those who were pure because they were innocent, and those who were pure because they were strong!”
“And have you been very productive all this time?” I asked sympathetically.
He was silent a while before replying. “Not in the vulgar sense!” he said at last. “I have chosen never to manifest myself by imperfection. The good in every performance I have re-absorbed into the generative force of new creations; the bad–there is always plenty of that–I have religiously destroyed. I may say, with some satisfaction, that I have not added a mite to the rubbish of the world. As a proof of my conscientiousness and he stopped short, and eyed me with extraordinary candour, as if the proof were to be overwhelming–“I have never sold a picture! ‘At least no merchant traffics in my heart!’ Do you remember that divine line in Browning? My little studio has never been profaned by superficial, feverish, mercenary work. It’s a temple of labour, but of leisure! Art is long. If we work for ourselves, of course we must hurry. If we work for her, we must often pause. She can wait!”