Two men seem to represent and renew the periods that follow them, and the eternal tendencies of humanity. These two men offer a similitude and a contrariety so strange, that it seems as if God had opposed the one to the other to make the balance equal. Their skulls even, and the form of their faces, present striking analogies. The expression is contrary, but the mark is the same.Both, born a hundred years apart, have inhabited the same country; both have passed the greater part of their lives in two villages that touch each other, and these two villages, so obscure before their time, have through them attained extraordinary celebrity. Each has been the object of the world's attention, and each the goal of eager pilgrimages. The eighteenth century rushed with ardor to Ferney; the nineteenth goes to Ars in greater transports. As the nineteenth century is to Catholics the retaliation for the eighteenth, so Ars is the retaliation for Ferney. [Footnote 90]
[Footnote 90: This expression is from the Abbé Monnin, a missionary at Ars, who has given to the life of the Curé d'Ars several popular works of rare merit.]
These are the resemblances, and great they are. The differences are greater still.
One, to speak properly, personifies the genius of evil. Scepticism, wicked irony, hardness of heart, corruption of mind and senses, egotism and cupidity, united in forming a modern corypheus. The other personifies the spirit of good. Truth, purity, self-abnegation, love of God and man, the spirit of sacrifice and mortification, in a word, all of moral grandeur revealed to man by Christ himself, has rarely an exemplifier more perfect. One is the type of the Christian, elevating himself to the saints, to the angels; the other is the anti-Christian type, descending to the cursed, to the demons.
Each has attracted the attention of man by the most opposite means: the first by his delicacy of wit equalling his duplicity; the second by his integrity and a simplicity of character brightened apparently by supernatural rays; the first by his pride, the second by his humility; the first by noise, the second by silence. Each has exercised toward his contemporaries results the most contrary. The refined in wickedness, the utterly corrupted, visited the scholar to plunge deeper in perversity. Entire populations, just men and men of good will, visited the priest to establish themselves in justice, or submit their doubts to him, and go on toward perfection. Both still effect by their minds and their remembrance—from one portion of the world to the other—the same consequences.
And that is not all.
The world flies from the first, as his character and doctrines become better elucidated. It approaches the second, as he is better known, and the beauty of his character developed. Ferney was abandoned shortly after the death of him who was its centre; the factitious or true admiration accorded him by the most brilliant and perverted of his age could not survive the perishable attraction which Voltaire exercised. To-day Ferney is only visited by amateurs in human curiosity. Ars, on the contrary, grows greater and greater. The sentiment which attracts people thither increases hour by hour, and the entire world knows the name of the obscure village, whose echo even seems to arouse the most indifferent. Multitudes flock there incessantly, and when Ferney and the memory of Voltaire, the hero of impiety of the last age, shall by degrees have disappeared, Ars and the memory of its curé, the hero of truth and of the present age, will attract still greater crowds, still greater homage.
By a circumstance not less strange than those already mentioned of these two men so totally different, the erection of a statue to each is now occupying the public mind. Unheard of efforts have been made to erect that of Voltaire—as Raymond Brucker says—by the hand of the executioner, for the meanest stratagems and the most trifling falsities have been resorted to; and by dint of puffing and scandal, our little Voltairians, whom Voltaire himself would disown, will perhaps attain their glorious end.And without effort, without puffing, without scandal or imposture of any kind, by the simple emotion of love and of Christian veneration, to the saint of the nineteenth century is being erected a statue worthy of him.
Before criticising this work, lately inaugurated at Ars with great solemnity, I will relate its history. It is sufficiently striking to merit being known, and places in bold relief one side of the person it is destined to represent.
The Curé d'Ars obstinately refused to sit for his portrait. On this point he was more obdurate than a Mussulman, and never lent himself to any proposition or stratagem the end of which was to reproduce his person. Several artists, working openly, had been rejected; others, using hidden means, watching for the priest, and following him in the street or in church, had been warned to keep quiet. Under these circumstances, M. Emilien Cabuchet, the author of the statue of which we are going to speak, presented himself at Ars. He was furnished with a letter from the bishop, and numerous recommendations. He did not doubt his success, and accosted the curé, and spoke of his business with a deliberate air. "No, no, I do not wish it," said the curé; "neither for monseigneur, nor for you, my artist-friend! At least," added the priest, changing his mind, and taking up a favorite idea, "unless monseigneur will permit me to go away immediately, and weep overmy poor life!" "But, Monsieur le Curé—" "It is useless."
The discomfited artist ran to relate his adventure to the missionaries established near the curé. They gave him new courage. "Persevere!" said they to him. "You are not here to make your court to the Curé d'Ars, but to make his portrait. Go on, we will sustain you."
Thus reassured, the artist risked everything, and commenced by following the curate to church. During the Mass he was behind the curate, at the sermon back of the good women, and at the catechism behind the children. Every one assisted him, and took part in the enterprise. The artist held the wax between his fingers, and modelled in the bottom of his hat—his eye now on the curé, now on his work. Sometimes, to mislead the priest, he pretended to pray with fervor, or to follow attentively the instruction. He thought he was very adroit.
One day the curé bent toward him.
"You are well aware, monsieur," said he in a gentle tone, "that you are causing distraction to every one—and to me also!"
What was he to do? How defend himself to a man so very polite! "I would have preferred harshness," said the artist to me. "This gentleness disconcerted me."
He returned to the monastery decided to renounce the enterprise. "Persevere!" again said the missionaries.
The artist renewed his work.
Two days after, in the street, where he now worked from choice, the curé again addressed him:
"Have you, then, nothing to do at home?"
"O Monsieur le Curé! one would think that you would turn me out of doors."
This time the curé was disconcerted.
"No, no," said he eagerly, and slightly embarrassed. "Stay as long as you choose, but don't begin again!" …
The next day, seeing the curé so surrounded that he could not disengage himself, and in danger of leaving his cassock in the hands of the pilgrims, the artist ran to his relief and offered him his arm.
"I constitute myself your bodyguard," said he gallantly.
"Then I am emperor! … But this is not the question. Do you know, I would like to excommunicate you?"
"Really, Monsieur le Curé, what a tremendous word! Have I, then, committed so shocking a crime?"
"Bah! you understand me well enough."
"Well then, what?"
"You cause me constant distraction; and when you think seriously, would it not be far better to take the head of the first dog you meet?"
"O Monsieur le Curé!"
And when the model was finished and the curé saw it,
"Well," said he, "it is not a subject of rejoicing! Look at the poor Curé d'Ars! How odd it is," added he, "your power of giving life to plaster!"
I have given this dialogue at length, as it was repeated to me by the artist. If I am not deceived, it represents well the character of the good priest; his humility, his humor, his brusqueness touched with raillery, his politeness and goodness—all are well portrayed. All this is reproduced in the statue. It gives us the character of the dialogue, and the almost legendary figure that our contemporaries have seen, and which will pass to posterity.
The Curé d'Ars is kneeling in his cassock, with the surplice, rabat, and stole. His hands are joined, his eyes uplifted to heaven. A sweet smile brightens his face. His hair, cut off square, falls on his neck in abundant locks, and shaven closely on the top of his head; his forehead is left free. The priest prays with such fervor and such faith, I may say a passion which makes us think of paradise. Angels must pray in this way. His hands are extended toward heaven with an intensity of emotion; the eyes have so much ardor in their expression that the spirit of prayer seems to lift the body from earth and carry it to heaven. I know no work with more life in it; there does not exist a more impassioned statue. Faith, love, and desire, transfigured in this marble block, animate it and give it a striking reality.
As a whole, the work offers a new and excellent type of the religious sculpture of our age. The artist has set aside classical lessons and proved himself in the right. The remembrances of antiquity should not interfere in the realization of an ideal taken from the very heart of contemporary life and the present Christian age. Gothic traditions are even neglected, and the author has been careful to give the figure the seal of its own time, his good taste causing him to avoid the quicksands into which so many others have fallen. Wishing to represent a man of our time, the sculptor would have committed an anachronism to be regretted if he had impressed his character with a mysticism and power which distinguished the personages of the art of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In the spirit of truth he was to give to the world a saint, and in this saint the beatific expression which in the prerogative of the saints of every age; but over and above this general feature there was an order of secondary shades he was obliged to respect, to give to the figure its age and physiognomy.
M. Cabuchet has admirably seized and rendered the double character I have tried to define. His saint is as mystical as the saints of the middle ages, yet he has the reality of a man of our time. Gothic, or rather Christian, in sentiment, he is modern, and even French, in his exterior aspect. Such, in a few words, is the exact appreciation shown in this work of M. Cabuchet, and the double reflection gives him, in my opinion, the highest rank among sculptors of his age.
The imitation of antiquity would have produced a dead work; the imitation of the middle ages would have produced a work impersonal and hieratic; but going out of himself and all national traditions, inspired only with his subject and his time, the artist has brought to light a new and striking piece of work, a true specimen of religious and modern sculpture.
It is easy to see what remembrances and what masters have directed this statue. French sculpture, as its painting, has particular traits which are easily recognized. Less correct, perhaps, and less noble than Greek or Italian sculpture, it has an ease, a power, a life, that has no equal. Puget and Houdon are the two foremost artists in our school, so essentially French. Using Greek models only to simplify and enrich their style, they have sought beyond everything expression and the power of motion. M. Cabuchet has followed their example, and, walking in their footsteps, has given us a work of which his masters could not be ashamed.
In looking at the statue of the Curé d'Ars the spectator is reminded of the celebrated statue of Voltaire by Houdon; not only that the resemblance of the two faces is unaccountably striking, but because the build and the exterior appearance of the marbles offer incontestable analogies. In both statues we find the same amplitude, the same facility, the same light and soft manner; in both the details are uniformly sacrificed to the whole, and the whole owes to this mode of execution a more decorative and lifelike representation.
Voltaire is seated, his hands leaning upon, almost clinching, the arms of his chair. The Curé d'Ars is on his knees. Voltaire smiles with a cynical air, as if rejoicing in the ruin he has made. "Dors tu content, Voltaire, et ton hideux sourire." [Footnote 91]
[Footnote 91: "Rest content, Voltaire, and thy hideous smile."—Alfred De Musset.]
The Curé d'Ars smiles with the ineffably sweet smile of those who see God and dream of the happiness of their equals. In the two marbles, the head is the same; the forehead is the same; the two cheek-bones, so prominent, are the same; the receding chin is the same; the mouth opens by the same smile. In one it has a repulsive and satanic character; in the other it is angelical and attractive. Everything is similar except the expression. The features are brothers—twins, I might say; the souls that animate these features are as divided as the poles. In each face the cornea of the eye is represented by a deeply cut circle, a style of carving peculiar to the best age of statuary. This has given to each an intensity of look; and while that of Voltaire is lowered toward the earth, and only expresses the baser passions, that of the Curé d'Ars is uplifted to the sky, and reflects the joys of his moral superiority.
Thus, we see, the two statues give perfectly the character and life of their respective models. The first seems to rise from regions of hope and love, the second from despair and malevolence. One represents the consoler and saviour, the other the spoiler, the demolisher of souls and consciences.
It would be easy to point out other resemblances and other contrasts.
To complete this analysis it is well to add, that the statue of the Curé d'Ars recalls an element that the author has not taken from our own school. Every one conversant with art will remember the figure of San Diego in Murillo's picture vulgarly called the Kitchen of the Angels. The saint prays to God for the actual necessities of the abbey, and God sends his angels to prepare the repast of the monks. Several gentlemen, visiting the convent, look on with astonishment at the saint raised from the earth, ravished with ecstasy, his hands joined, his eyes uplifted to heaven, while the angels are getting ready the dinner. The natural and supernatural were never more widely separated. Murillo has painted the personages working a miracle as he would any person in any ordinary action of life; yet who that has seen this picture will ever forget it? It is evident that our artist was struck by it, and that the San Diego of Murillo has occurred to him more than once when he represented the Curé d'Ars. He has been inspired by it as a true artist, guarding his own originality. His hero has very much the same simplicity that characterizes the saint of the Spanish painter, the same natural in the supernatural, the same ease of vision and ecstasy. Both see, and in seeing they evidence none of the fear or surprise which could actuate the less assured believer. They see; they are in heaven with God and his angels; they converse with them, and their faces express no other sensation than the tender and deep joy of the man who has discovered his ideal.
Delicate and profound characteristic! shade difficult to seize, and which constitutes the true essence of men living in God, and beginning on earth their immaterial existence. It needs more than an artist to fix this and give it form. Only a simple and pious Christian could crown the heads of our blessed ones with the mystical aureole that the believer alone discovers; only a Christian could give to the figures of which we speak the attitude and life so manifestly stolen from regions of beatitude. The great difficulty of the work consisted in this shade, and that may be said to form the perfect whole. The artist's title to glory is in his having known how to comprehend and realize this, and so give to his statue the freedom of none other.
Let us dwell on this expression of sanctity—the distinctive feature in the personage produced by M. Cabuchet. Sanctity has a strikingly physiological character. It changes the exterior man, and transforms his countenance. The action of Jesus Christ, dwelling constantly in the soul, gives to the features a reflection of a superior order. Sanctity, to speak properly, represents the fusion of divine and human nature. The pervading feature of saints is a calm, a serenity, a natural goodness which attracts and subjugates us. The transfigured soul transfigures its envelope, and we might imagine divinity showing itself through the encasement of the body. If the beautiful is the glory of truth, the saint is the glory of good.
The statue of the Curé d'Ars possesses to a striking degree thissuprasensibleaspect that I have just noticed. By contact with divinity the marble itself is transfigured—grace sheds its beams and gives to the features a kind of immaterial transparency. Jesus Christ is present and breathes into the passionate and ravished eyes, into the lips and the blessed smile; the personage lives in another world; his attitude, his movements have nothing in common with earth. If the spectator could ignore the name of the priest represented, his attention would not be less arrested, and he would easily recognize in his face the presence of a supernatural element, heightening the human personality.
Here, however, I will make a remark. The body of the Curé d'Ars is not in unison with his face; it is too material, too vigorous, too vulgar even, if I dare speak from my heart. "The cassock of the Curé d'Ars seems to have nothing under its large folds," said the biographer. … "He was a shadow," added he still further. Now, the Curé d'Ars of the artist has nothing of a shadowy appearance. His shoulders are strong, his breast large, his hands knotty. The sculptor has wished to express the humble origin of the priest, but in my opinion he has forgotten the transformation which the contemplative and mystical life had necessarily operated in the organization of the saint.
This remark, necessary to be made, detracts nothing, or almost nothing, from the merit of the work; it could only be appreciated by those who have personally known the Curé d'Ars, and ceases to be of import since his death.
We can now understand the character and various merits of the statue of M. Cabuchet. All who see it retire satisfied, and the mass of spectators are struck by the pious and compassionate expression of the holy priest. Connoisseurs admire the freedom of the effect and of the execution. The author may be proud of his success. He has paid for it by effort and anguish of every kind, and it is well to know sometimes these artist-struggles, that we may rightly value the works that charm us so much.
When the statue came from the workshop of the finisher, the sculptor did not recognize it. He had expected his model to be reproduced on a less grand scale, and the difference of proportion rendered it not easy to be known again. At such a result Cabuchet experienced one of those counter-blows which have made certain young artists of twenty grow old in a quarter of an hour, and only those who have tried to realize an ideal can perfectly understand such emotion. Benvenuto and Palissy in similar moments were taken with fevers which brought them to the very portals of the tomb. Sigalon, noticing his picture of Athalie compromised by difference of light, saw his hair turn gray in two minutes. Cabuchet had no less trouble, and the wonder is he escaped a similar shock; he withstood it, however, and, seeing no other means, he did what any valiant artist would have done in his place; he took his chisel and mallet, and in the style of Michael Angelo and Puget he attacked the marble. Each blow knocked off a piece, but each blow soothed the heart of the sculptor, for in reducing his statue he re-established it in its first form, and restored its true physiognomy.
Cabuchet has devoted a year to such labor. For a whole year he has worked with chisel and mallet, seeking the form, the movement, the life; and finding, little by little, this form, movement, and life at the end of his tools. He played a dangerous game; the first stroke of the hammer could have destroyed his work. Driven to a corner, the artist acted as a great captain. He risked all to gain all. Fortune, which encourages audacity, or rather the good God who sustains energetic and faithful artists, came to his aid; and at the end of a year Cabuchet saw his statue re-created by his chisel, and become truly and doubly the daughter of his brain and of his hands. He gained more than one wrinkle at this task and more than one white hair. According to his own expression, hesweated many shirts. But he forgot difficulties and anxieties when he saw the long dreamed of figure, the ideal of his days and nights, realized and looming before him!
They have given this excellent work a reception worthy of it. At its arrival at the dock at Villefranche, near the village of Ars, a numerous cavalcade, and a multitude composed of the entire surrounding population, rushed to meet it, and received it with transports of love and admiration. The faithful, the penitents of the holy curé, saw again their master and their model. The parish saw again its venerated father. They surrounded the marble, they tried to touch it; many fell on their knees, and prayed as before the images of the saints. On the day of the inauguration the demonstrations were the same; every moment a newly collected crowd prostrated itself at the foot of the statue; flowers were hung on it, and rosaries and medals laid on the pedestal. Each believed that new and strengthening virtue would escape from the marble and regenerate those happy enough to approach it; and yet this marble was nothing more than a work of genius; it had not even been blessed, it had no place in the church, it had received no certificate or consecration from Rome—no matter! the crowd saw none of these obstacles. Abandoning themselves without after-thought to the impression which sanctity always produces on the masses, they rushed to the image of the man who appeared to them a saint, as we seek the Consoler and Alleviator of all human suffering.
The inauguration was conducted with a ceremony befitting the occasion. Monseigneur de Langabrie, Bishop of Belley, a prelate as remarkable for the urbanity of his manners as his superior mind, came himself to preside over the occasion. A great admirer and friend of the Curé d'Ars, he wished to give to his memory some proof of his affection. More than a hundred priests of neighboring parishes accompanying him, presented an imposingcortége. Quietly, calmly, and with recollection, they rendered homage to the remembrance and virtues of a saint. The secular and official element was represented by the Comte de Carets, a true Christian gentleman, and for thirty years the friend of the Curé d'Ars. A numerous crowd from all the neighboring country testified by repeated manifestations the ardor of its faith and sentiment. The church of Ars, enlarged by a talented architect, was entirely too small for all this wealth of offering.
The Mass was celebrated with pomp; at the gospel the Abbé Ozanam, vicar-general, mounted the pulpit, and described the most striking points of physiognomy of the Curé d' Ars.Inspired by his text from St. Paul, he showed how God always employed the same means to act upon and govern the earth; weakness to confound strength, humility to confound pride, and littleness to confound grandeur; all that is despicable in the eyes of man to confound all that is powerful and worthy his respect. A staff in the hands of an old man is sufficient for God, and well represents the instruments he sometimes employs to rule the world. The Curé d'Ars was of obscure parentage; the Curé d'Ars was humble, ignorant, illiterate, according to the world, without power, without birth, withoutprestige. He seems of still less repute, in that before God he so completely annihilated himself. Son of a poor farmer, with difficulty he reached the seminary, with difficulty he staid there, with difficulty he attained the different grades. Everywhere, always, the weakness of his faculties proved the signal of distrust from his superiors, of contempt from his equals. He knew but one thing, to love, to pray, to humble himself—above all to humble himself. The less he felt himself, the less he made himself; the more he was despised, the more he despised himself. But wait! the hand of God appeared, and the ordinary movement of the see-saw was reproduced. The lower the world placed him at one end, the higher God uplifted him at the other, and he became the instrument God always uses for his great works—an instrument lowly yet powerful, and that confounds, attracts, and subjugates the whole world. This humble priest—powerless, lacking ability, and awkward in appearance—saw millions of men, great and small, wise and ignorant, known and unknown, flock from all corners of the earth to hear his word, see his countenance, listen to his advice, feast on his holy expressions—to touch his vestments. He will govern consciences and hearts; he will read their souls, enlighten them, touch them. He will predict the future, will overcome nature, and subject to his will the world of mind and the world of matter. … Admirable effect of humility which produces sanctity! The most humble shall become the most celebrated, and his name resound from pole to pole. He shall agitate multitudes, and no living man can hear him without thrilling with love or anger. His image will provoke enthusiasm. The world will prostrate itself before it and kiss its very traces; and when other images, other glorified, other renowned conquerors, poets, legislators, politicians, are only a remembrance, a vain sound which cannot thrill a single human fibre, the name of the obscure, the despised Curé d'Ars will radiate in an ever new orbit of splendor, and produce emotions and effects ever new in millions of hearts. Strange consequence! Contrast truly striking; which shows that Catholicism by a brilliant overthrow of events is alone heard to give glory and immortality!
After the Mass, monseigneur was heard in his turn, and related the efforts made at Rome to obtain the canonization of the defunct whose memory was then and there celebrated. He spoke of the hope which he cherished to see ere long the Curé d'Ars and his image among the glorified ones, and placed on those altars where public veneration had already given them a place.
After the ceremony was over, the priests and some of the pilgrims coming to the solemnity united in an old-fashioned feast at the house of one of the missionaries.
The day was passed in recalling the virtues and actions of the saint, while the crowd continued its homage and demonstrations.
Nothing could be more striking than the appearance of the village of Ars during thisfête. The spectator goes backward several centuries; he lives in the earliest age; legend becomes reality in his eyes, and the natural world is entirely forgotten in the consciousness of the supernatural that surrounds him. M. Renan speaks somewhere with contempt of times and populations for whom the natural and supernatural have no exact limit. Ars presents every day, and especially those days in which the saint is honored, the same character. The natural and supernatural touch and mingle. The multitude kneels, it intercedes, it asks; and sometimes, in the simplest manner, extraordinary favors are granted, which strike with wonder the Christians of our day, so much less habituated than others to the manifestations of the immaterial world. The church is always full; the tomb of the good pastor, recognizable by a black slab, covered perpetually by an eager crowd. Some are kneeling, others standing awaiting their turn, and prostrating themselves as soon as a vacant place offers itself. They dispute a corner of the tomb of the Curé d'Ars, as during his life they disputed a corner of his confessional or an end of his cassock. All pray, some weep, others kiss the funereal marble. Mothers bring their sickly children, and rest them on the slab. Paralytics and the lame take their places. Each one touches the tomb with his cross, his medals, or his beads, and carries it away persuaded of its renewed efficacy. Every object, every part of the church, bears the trace of what I may call a pious vandalism. The confessional, the pulpit in which the holy priest passed nearly all his life, are cut in a thousand places. Each one has chipped the wood to carry off a relic.
Outside of the church the eagerness and veneration are no less. The places frequented by the defunct are pointed out, and into the old presbytery they hurry and almost smother each other on the stairs. One has to pause on his way a quarter of an hour sometimes before reaching the bedroom of the Curé d'Ars. The chamber has been barricaded, and provided with an opening in the wall, that it may escape the general devastation. The door is armed with a strong grating and plated with iron. Without such precaution all would have been long since broken open, demolished, and carried away. As it is, there is more than one hole in the wood-work, and even the walls are broken in, in places. It is said that workmen armed with crow-bars have attempted to throw down the wall. The shrubs and herbaceous plants in the court-yard are spoiled incessantly; as if the visitors, unable to molest the walls, revenge themselves on the flowers and verdure. But they cannot penetrate into the chamber and are forced to stay behind the barricade. They succeed each other, as on some grand occasion of public curiosity in Paris, when the crowd is unusually large. From the kind of vestibule which forms the opening in the wall the visitor can take in the whole apartment, if not entirely at his ease, on account of the pressure of the crowd, at least without losing any detail. Everything remains as it did during the life of the Curé d'Ars. Here is the bed, sheltered under its green tapestry, a present from the Comte de Carets, in place of another bed which was burned under extraordinary circumstances.Here is the wooden chimney where the priest came each day—after spending from sixteen to eighteen hours in the confessional—to revive his exhausted body by the still living flame of a simple branch. The table is always set, as if it awaited its old companion. An earthen porringer, with a pewter spoon, a little pitcher, also of earth, which held the milk, an earthen plate, and a coarse linen napkin; and nothing more. This modest service, and the necessarily modest repast it supposes, had sustained, for nearly forty years, the most valiant and fruitful life of the age. Man lives not by bread alone; this man lived almost without it; a little milk sufficed him, and on this he existed nearly all his life—a trait not less astonishing than the power and energy with which this milk seemed to inspire him. Two oaken chests, presented also by pious persons, some sacred engravings, enough books to fill the simple shelves, two or three straw chairs, complete the furniture of this poor chamber, as popular today as the apartments of the Louvre or the Museum of Sovereigns. A niche in the wall, covered with a glazed partition, preserves and exposes to the piety of the pilgrims the cassock and cap of the poor priest.
The presbytery is no longer inhabited. No one has been reported, or felt himself, sufficiently worthy to occupy it after its last possessor. There is no longer a Curé d'Ars, there never will be a Curé d'Ars—no one feeling strong enough to struggle with such a remembrance, nor bear the legendary title. The missionaries who during his lifetime were established near the presbytery, do the duties of the parish and suffice for the pilgrims.
Such is theprestigeof the Curé d'Ars since his death; and the influence he exercised during his life was no less astonishing. We are amazed at hearing or reading the details of this exceptional existence. Eighty to a hundred thousand persons came to Ars every year, and from all parts of the world. France, Belgium, Germany, England, Italy, America, Asia, by turns sent their pilgrims; and the enthusiasm of old—of the days of Bernard, Dominic, Francis d'Assise, Vincent Ferrier, Philip de Neri—has been renewed. Petitions were addressed to the Curé d'Ars as to a superior being. Every day he received letters, demands, confidences, and prayers. "One must come to Ars," said he sometimes, "to know the sin of Adam and the evils he has caused his poor family!" Sinners, the ill in body and mind, the suffering of all kinds, went to the Curé d'Ars as the healer sent by God himself. His faith, his humility, his love of God and man, his frightful austerity, his perfect abnegation of self, astonished and ravished souls; the gift given him to read the human heart, his marvellous intuition, his power over nature, his predictions, his miracles, ended by according him the supernatural aureole, and the signs of election which in all ages have carried away multitudes. At Ars one could learn how the Christian religion was founded; by what virtues, what miracles, its initiators had acted on the public mind and conquered. The life of the gospel and the glorious days of the church reappeared; hagiography lived again; the supernatural and legendary history of Catholicism became comprehensible and impressed itself on every mind.
According to calculations which may be called official, nearly three millions of pilgrims have been admitted to the Curé d'Ars. Every kind of human misery has presented itself before him, and how many have been comforted! The blind have seen, the deaf have heard, the paralyzed have walked; bread, wine, and corn have been multiplied; and all the miracles of the gospel, except the resurrection of the dead, have been reproduced. The greatest miracle of the Curé d'Ars was, perhaps, the resurrection of the living and the conversion of sinners, to which the holy priest had dedicated his life, and was the principal end of all his efforts. Notwithstanding his ardent desire for death and heaven, he would have consented to remain on earth until the end of the world to gain hearts for Jesus Christ. It was in thisrôlethat so brilliantly shone the supernatural character of the life and mission of the Curé d'Ars. When we think of the sixteen to eighteen hours of the confessional, of the eighty to a hundred penitents who knelt daily at the feet of the holy priest, we may form some idea of the attraction that he exercised, and the deep furrow he ploughed in the soul of the present age.
So many shining traits give to the Curé d'Ars the most wide-spread fame of his time. Chateaubriand, De Maistre, Goethe, Voltaire even, and others less famous, are only known to the more refined. Their names have not penetrated the stratum of an immense humanity. The Curé d'Ars was known to all, and his name had traversed every country, every ocean, every race. In Europe, America, Asia, it echoed and wakened souls; and everywhere we find his portrait, in every town, in every country. Siberian huts can show the Curé d'Ars. No face—not even that of Napoleon I.—is as popular. His hair, his cap, his cassock, his shoes, his furniture, his books, his breviary, have been sold over and over again for more than their weight in gold. His blood, if taken from him in illness, was collected and treasured as a relic; and we see still at Ars, in several places, vials containing this blood, as pure as the day it flowed: can science account for this? The phenomenon is, to say the least, unique, abnormal. The objects that he blessed were almost taken by assault, and before his death rival countries disputed for his body, and the dispute came near degenerating into a bloody conflict. No honor, homage, or public respect was wanting to the Curé d'Ars, and once again piety and Christian virtues have proven themselves the surest means of acting on the world and attracting the masses, because they represent the superior and eternal ideal of life and of humanity.
But I must pause. I have wished to sketch in a few words the appearance of this remarkable man, but yesterday our contemporary, and of whom an extraordinary work of art has given me the opportunity to speak. I fear I have been prolix, and, forgetting the statue, have occupied my readers' attention with the person represented; but I hope to be forgiven, as the best way, surely, to impress the merit of a portrait is to make known the model the artist has wished to depict. The statue will be better appreciated as the Curé d'Ars himself is fully understood.
Again, it seems to me that the appearance and actions of such a man, in the uncertain times in which we live, are a symptom and hope of something better, to which we cannot give too much weight. Truly the age is bad enough; hardened against God, it is hardened against his church, and tries to sap every foundation of virtue and honesty.It destroys faith, attacks good principles and the virtuous instincts that prompt them, and endeavors to replace the ancient order of consciences by a sort of individual independence which, sowing division, can only produce ruin. Character and manners are falling as low as ideas; cupidity, egotism, unbridled pleasure, sensual enjoyments, sought for and held up as the only end of life; the expansion of luxury by every ingenuity gives to society an ideal of Babylonian civilization; revolution, that is to say, revolt and universal overthrow, cap the climax, and threaten to swallow up everything: behold the situation and its dangers! Seldom have ages been more troubled, or the symptoms more terrible.
But hope revives and the mind is elevated when it contemplates the opposing camp. So long as an age is able to produce a Curé d'Ars, it is full of strength; and if the Catholic faith can excite such a sensation as that of which I have just spoken, she assures her future. Monarchs, generals, politicians, legislators, writers, may become powerless. They could not preserve the society of old, and saints alone saved it, walking in the footsteps of Christ. They reconstructed and regenerated it, because they were the last and unique expression of the true and beautiful in morals, the only pivot of progress, the only lever which lifted a people to lead them onward to God, the only source of life. Producing the same men, modern society may hope for the same regeneration; its cure and its future health will not depend on human means or agents, but on the divine grace exercised by its saints.
The fame of theFiero Ghibellino, as the Italians are wont to call Dante Alighieri, is great, not in extensiveness, but in weight. Wherever and to whomsoever he is known, his name and his works carry a charm and an authority vouchsafed to only a few in the department of authors. Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare arethepoets, whose names are enshrined on an elevation above the rest; they breathe, so to speak, in an atmosphere of their own. They are, indeed, masters and guides,
"Maestri di color che sanno."
In truth, to understand their works, the study thereof must needs be made a specialty. Yet even those who have lisped their names in their mothers' tongue find that "ars longa, vita brevis." The student will drink at those pure fountains with ever-increasing pleasure. "How often have you been in St. Peter's?" asked of us a venerable monk, the first time we entered the Vatican. "Never before, sir." "Well," replied he, "I have been coming here almost every day for the last thirteen years, and every day I find some new thing to admire and study!" The same has been averred by those who have been familiar with Dante, Homer, and Shakespeare.
We well remember how, in our youth, and in our native schools, we were so trained in the study of Alighieri that it was an easy matter to discover whether an author, be he poet or prose-writer, had been formed on Dante, whether he had drunk at the head fountain or at side streams. Only few poets we remember whose verses we read with an enchanted devotion—Gasparo Leonarducci, of Venice; Vincenzo Monti, of Milan; and Alfonso Varano, of Ferrara. Of the prose-writers, Paolo Segneri, Sforza Pallavicino, of the seventeenth, and Pietro Giordani, of the nineteenth century, are the onlyDanteschiin whom we delighted, as we were delighted in reading Homer transformed into thesuccum et saporemof theAEneid. Those above mentioned were poets, historians, and orators, than whom more ardent and persevering students of Dante are not recorded in the annals of Italian literature. Theirs was not, however, a pedantic servility: Dante was the father that engendered their style, the eagle who provoked them to fly; and they did fly, and soared above the rest, and fixed their pupils on the brightness of the sun. Which remarks afford us also the measure by which to value the success of those who have attempted to translate Dante into foreign languages, an attempt which to the Italian scholar sounds almost presumptuous. For, if the style and the meaning of Dante have proven a matter of so much difficulty and labor to the countryman of Dante, how much more laborious and difficult must they prove to the foreign-born student?
Whoever attempts to translate a poet must join "the fidelity of rendition to the spirit of a poet." The former presupposes a thorough knowledge of the two languages, even to the commonest idioms. Then, unless one is born a poet, the attempt will be the very madness of folly, which truth receives additional evidence when the work to be translated is one of transcendent merit in its originality; ay, more, when it isincomparable: incomparable, we mean, as a human work can be.
Such is theDivina Commediaof Dante Alighieri. Pindaric in flights, supernatural in conception, inventive in expression and language, (for Dante is "the father of the Italian tongue,") Dante stands before the scholar as a most difficult author. Nor are the numberless commentators and voluminous comments, agreeing or conflicting, ingenious or absurd, a mean proof of our assertion!
Commentators have, in fact, pushed their folly and their presumption to an excess equalled only by the absurd twisting of Holy Writ in favor of the thousand and one senses which defenders of opposite doctrines have fancied they read in one and the same text. A witty Italian imagines he sees Dante crouching low, and vainly endeavoring, with wild gesticulations and lusty cries for help, to parry the blows by which clergymen and laymen,laico o cherco, endeavor to force him to admit such meanings into his words as he never dreamt of; at the same time they, falling out among themselves, exchange blows, and throw at each other's head their heavy comments, bound in wood, and rudely embossed with brazen studs. It is related that once the stern poet, while passing by a smithy, heard snatches of his poem sung, but so interlarded with strange words, and the ends of verses so bitten off, that the grating upon his ears was unendurable: whereupon he entered the shop, and fell around wantonly throwing into vast confusion the tools of the churl, who, thinking him mad, rushed upon him and yelled: "What the —— art thou about?" "And what artthoudoing?" retorted Dante, sobering down at once."I am at my work, and thou art spoiling my tools!" replied the smith. "If thou wishest me to leave thy things alone, leave mine alone also." "And, pray, what am I spoiling of thine?" "You are singing my verses, but not as I made them; it is the only art I possess, and you spoil it." [Footnote 92]
[Footnote 92: Had Shakespeare this anecdote in mind when he made Orlando cry out, "I pray you, mar no more of my verses with reading them ill-favoredly"? (As You Like It, act iii. sc. 2.)]
On another occasion the poet met a churl driving before him a mob of donkeys, and enlivening his wearisome journey by singing also snatches of the divine poem. But, very naturally, he would intersperse his songs with an occasional pricking of the haunches of his asinine fellow-travellers with the goad, and the shout ofarri, arri—the Italiang'long, g'long. Dante at once visited the fellow's back with an earnest blow, and cried: "Thatarri, arri, I never put it in that verse!" The poorasinaroshrugged his shoulders, and darted to one side, not well pleased with the uncouth salutation; but when at a safe distance, ignorant as he was of the cause of the blow and of the man who had inflicted it, he thrust his tongue out, and said, "Take that," an indecent act even for an Italian boor. Dante replied: "I would not give mine for a hundred of thine!"
What the smith and the drover did, in their own way, and in Dante's time, has been repeated down to our days. Volumes might be filled with merely the titles of essays, treatises, and theories, at times ingenious, seldom interesting, always betraying the conceit of the writer. Editions innumerable are crammed with interpretations conflicting with each other, and by which the sense of the poet has been cruelly distorted. We, who have been reared in the deepest reverence for Dante's orthodoxy, have always felt indignant at the irreligious and unphilosophical inordinations to which theDivina Commediahas been made to afford foundation and development.
For the nonce we mean to deal with translations, yet not in a general or comprehensive treatise; for to treat of all English translations of Dante, down to Sir J. F. W. Herschel's, the latest of all, would carry us over fields too extensive and uninviting. We have been led to beg for a corner of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, in order to introduce to its readers what, after a close and careful study, we deem the best of all translations of Dante. We allude toThe First Canticle (Inferno) of the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Translated by Thomas William Parsons. Boston: De Vries, Ibarra & Co. 1867.
That Mr. Parsons possesses the spirit of a poet, no one who has read ever so little of his original compositions will gainsay. Whatever he writes has the true ring; there is nothing transcendental in him, and no mannerism; his sentiments are spontaneous, and flow into his diction with a naturalness that takes hold of the heart of the reader at once, like a peaceful streamlet mingling its waters with kindred waves. Opening a collection of his poems at random, we do not hesitate to transcribe, without any studied choice, what first offers itself to our eye. He writes on the death of his friend, the sculptor Crawford, and thus he suddenly gives vent to his feelings: