Long-Legged Fly by William Butler Yeats : Analysis and Commentary

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

That civilization may not sink,

Its great battle lost,

Quiet the dog, tether the pony

To a distant post;

Our master Caesar is in the tent

Where the maps are spread,

His eyes fixed upon nothing,

A hand upon his head.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream

His mind moves upon silence.

That the topless towers be burnt

And men recall that face,

Move most gently if move you must

In this lonely place.

She thinks, part woman, three parts a child,

That nobody looks; her feet

Practice a tinker shuffle

Picked up on a street.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream

Her mind moves upon silence.

That girls at puberty may find

The first Adam in their thought,

Shut the door of the Pope's chapel,

Keep those children out.

There on that scaffolding resides

Michael Angelo.

With no more sound than the mice make

His hand moves to and fro.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream

His mind moves upon silence.

Commentary

 The first line of this poem alerts us that something of monumental importance—no less than the survival of civilization—is at risk. For this reason, the speaker of the poem asks that precautions be taken against potential distractions. The dog should be silenced, and the pony should be tied to a “distant post.” The next lines introduce the subject of this first stanza. None other than Caesar himself is plotting his next battle. He is in his tent, “where the maps are spread,” but his gaze is “fixed upon nothing.” The “nothing” that he focuses on could be the destruction that will result from the battle to come, the very battle that he is, even now, planning. However, this immediate destruction will have the paradoxical effect of ensuring civilization’s survival, as the opening line contends. To this end, Caesar’s mind, the speaker says, “moves upon the silence” “like a long-legged fly upon the stream,” with quickness and certainty, a fluid movement of consciousness.

 
In the next stanza, the poem moves from Caesar to Helen of Troy, she of the face that launched a thousand ships. Helen’s mother is Leda, the Spartan queen who was raped by Zeus in the guise of a swan. As a result of their union, Helen was born and, upon her abduction, the Trojan War was waged: “A sudden shudder in the loins engenders there/ The broken wall, the burning roof and tower/ And Agamemnon dead.” The line in “Long-Legged Fly,” “That the topless towers be burnt,” recalls the line “The broken wall, the burning roof and tower” from “Leda and the Swan.” This is the same event that Leda, in “Leda and the Swan,” was allowed, perhaps, to see. Now, Helen is beginning to develop her charms. (Here, we see her practicing a dance, whereby, we may suppose, she will develop grace.) Her development will require an uninterrupted silence, just as quiet was needed for Caesar to plot his strategies. That’s why we are asked to “Move most gently if move” we “must/ In this lonely place.”
 

 The third stanza concerns the artist Michelangelo at work on the Sistine Chapel. It may seem amusing that the speaker suggests that the importance of this work will be to ignite lust in young women. “Girls at puberty,” upon viewing the nude men in the artist’s painting will have their first thoughts of men as men—that is, their first sexual thoughts concerning men—“the first Adam in their thought.” However, we should remember that civilization’s continuance is predicated as much—or more—upon such thoughts and their attendant actions as it is on the winning of wars. For the sake of the artist—or perhaps for art’s sake—the speaker, once again, calls for the elimination of all distractions, including not only children but also the Pope himself, who might quarrel with Michelangelo’s use of nudes in his painting:

That girls at puberty may find

The first Adam in their thought,

Shut the door of the Pope's chapel,

Keep those children out.

The chapel is as quiet as a mouse, so to speak, as the great artist works, his mind, like that of both Caesar’s and Helen’s, moving “upon the silence” “like a long-legged fly upon the stream.” 
 

 
A great general, a great beauty, and a great artist—three famous persons of celebrated accomplishment, each in a different area of life—share the same genius, for the mind of each “like a long-legged fly upon the stream/ . . . moves upon silence.” In each case, the genius requires nothing more than silence to perform, since the movement upon that silence is a movement of the mind, which is subjective and unique rather than objective and general. The poem suggests that the rest of us also have a part to play in the accomplishments of such genius. What is more, our part may be neither as small nor as insignificant as it might first seem. It is the ordinary person who is called upon to “quiet the dog,” to “tether the pony,” to “move most gently,” to “shut the door of the Pope’s chapel,” and to “keep those children out” so that the great men and women of genius can exercise their genius. In short, it is we, ordinary men and women, who are called upon to maintain order and to sustain civilization so that, within the peace and quiet afforded by such orderly life, genius can develop and create.

Head of a Skeleton with a Burning Cigarette (1886)

Artist: Vincent Van Gogh

Translating Images into Words

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Alive in Shape andColor: 17 Paintings by Great Artists and the Stories They Inspired, an anthology edited by Lawrence Block, is Block's “encore” to InSunlight and Shadow: Stories Inspired by the Paintings of EdwardHopper. This time around, the writers themselves picked the paintings (or, in a couple cases, the statues) upon which they based their contributions. Their choices vary from Norman Rockwell's The Haircut and Art Frahm's Remember All the Safety Rules to Rene Magritte's The Empire of Light and Vincent van Gogh's Cypresses. There are even a couple of nudes, Jean Leon Gerome's La Verite sortant du puits and Lilias Torrance Newton's Nude in the Studio.

Lee Child's “Pierre, Lucien, and Me” is the shortest of the shorts. The eight-page contribution, set in 1919 and based on Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Bouquet of Chrysanthemums, is told by its first-person narrator, the “Me” of the story's title. Having had a heart attack, he learns that a second, fatal one is inevitable within days, weeks, or months. He has no regrets and no need to put things right, except in the case of Porterfield, a wealthy young heir to a steel fortune, whom he'd duped. 

Through his roommate, Angelo, the narrator learns of Porterfield's love for Renoir's work. A waiter, Angelo had overheard Porterfield express to his dinner companions his desire to purchase a Renoir before the price of the famous artist's work rises due to Renoir's recent death, and Angelo had told the heir that the narrator, an art expert who works at the Metropolitan Museum, might locate some of Renoir's paintings for him. In fact, the narrator is an amateur artist who works at the museum “unloading wagons,” but he agrees to become Porterfield's agent.

In Paris, the narrator locates Lucien Mignon, a painter and friend of the late painter. His own unsigned works closely resemble those of Renoir, whose work is also available. One of the famous artist's unfinished canvases bears a separate painting in its corner: a vase of chrysanthemums. The narrator purchases the still life, and Mignon cuts it from the canvas, reluctantly agreeing to forge Renoir's name on it, since Renoir did, in fact, paint the chrysanthemums. The narrator also buys twenty of Mignon's own paintings, later forging Renoir's name on each of them as well, and ships Mignon's paintings to Porterfield, keeping the genuine Renoir for himself.

Now that he is dying, the narrator regrets having cheated the naive, trusting young man. To make things right, he takes the actual Renoir painting down from his wall, wraps it, and takes it to Porterfield's home, leaving it with the heir's “flunky,” telling him that he wants Porterfield to have the painting because Porterfield likes Renoir. Returning home, he sits, “waiting for the second episode,” the heart attack that will kill him. “My wall looks bare,” he observes, “but maybe better for it.”

Although Child's story is not a horror story, it's an entertaining, well-written piece. How might Renoir's painting inspire a horror story? The answer, clearly, is in any number of ways. Here, for example, is one possibility, a good title for which might be “Last Respects”:

After the wake that follows a lavish funeral in which hundreds of people paid their last respects, the decedent's widow, Chloe Sullivan, recalls moments of happiness she shared with her late husband: his proposal, their honeymoon in Naples, the elegant home they bought, the births of her children and how her husband had doted on them, the birthdays and holidays they enjoyed as a family. 

She is interrupted by her maid, Juanita, who asks her what she should do with “all the flowers” in the parlor, where her husband's body is laid out. It's a shame to toss them out, she laments. “They are so beautiful, especially the chrysanthemums the family sent.” Chloe snaps, “I'd throw those things in the garbage this instant if Salvatore's son, Guido, had attended the wake, but, even now, he has to screw things up, missing his damned plane! It wasn't bad enough his father put a hit out on my Brody?” The maid tries to console her employer, but Chloe shoos her away. “As soon as Guido pays his last respects, though, that bouquet of chrysanthemums will be the first to go!” she promises herself, as, alone in the parlor, she gazes on her husband's remains.

Block found that he was at a loss for his intended contribution to the anthology, until a friend emailed him a reminder that “Looking for David,” a story Block had written years ago, about Michelangelo's statute of David, would make a perfect addition to the volume. The painting in which Block had sought inspiration for an original story, Raphael Soyer's The Office Girls, serves as the anthology's frontispiece; at the close of his foreword to Alive in Shape and Color, Block invites readers to “come up with a story of your own” for Soyer's painting. “But don't send it to me,” he adds. “I'm done here.”

Joyce Carol Oates based her contribution, "Le Beaux Jours," on this painting, Les  beaux jour, by Bathus

Thomas Pluck based his story, "Truth Comes Out of the Well to Shame Mankind," on Jean Leon Gerome's La Veritie sortant du puits

Remember All the Safety Rules by Art Frahm inspired Jill D. Brock's "Safety Rules"

The volume contains seventeen muses, and there are, of course, hundreds, even thousands, of others available in museums around the world—and online—all waiting for a writer, of horror or other types of fiction, to tell the stories that they, the paintings, suggest. They await, in other words, the translation of images into words.

H. G. Wells: The Art of "The Cone"

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

H. G. Wells's masterful short story, “The Cone,” tells a simple, straightforward tale of vengeance and horror. During his stay with Horrocks, who manages the Jeddah Company Blast Furnaces, the artist Raut, who is making a study of the ironworks, has an affair with Horrocks's wife, talk of which the manager overhears, including his wife's confession of her love for Raut.

During the lovers' conversation, Horrocks's wife insults and denigrates her husband as unimaginative and insensitive and praises Raut for the love and beauty he has brought into her dull, drab life. Like Raut, she has an aesthetic appreciation of life, whereas, she tells Raut, her husband “thinks of nothing but the works and the prices of fuel,” having “no imagination, no poetry.” Horrocks also overhears his wife's mockery of him, before he enters the room and offers to take Raut for a tour of the ironworks so the artist can get a better view of its aesthetic effects.

As the men tour the ironworks, Horrocks points out its “effects,” as he leads the artist along, gripping his arm so firmly that it hurts Raut. On their way through the industrial landscape, Horrocks explains how cones have been added to block the throats of the furnaces so fire doesn't “flare out” of them like “pillars of cloud by day . . . and pillars of fire by night.” Despite the cones, however, occasionally a furnace does belch “a burst of fire and smoke.”

A sign warns, “Beware of the Trains.” As a train approaches, Horrocks shoves Raut into its path, pulling him back at the last moment, so that the artist narrowly escapes death. As they resume the tour, Raut wonders whether Horrocks is aware of his affair with his wife and whether, as a result, he had “just been within an ace of being murdered.”

Continuing the tour, Horrocks points out additional effects, such as the canal. “You've never seen it? Fancy that! You've spent too many of your evenings philandering,” Horrocks tells Raut.

They take an elevator to a “narrow rail” overhanging a furnace seventy feet below. “That's the cone I've been telling you of,” shouts Horrocks, “and, below that, sixty feet of molten metal, with the air of the blast frothing through it like gas in soda-water.” He adds that the cone's “top side” is 300 degrees, which is hot enough to “boil the blood out of you in no time.” Raut tries to escape, struggling with Horrocks, who detains him, and Raut plunges into “empty air.” Although his lower body makes contact with the “hot cone,” Raut manages to cling to the chain from which the furnace's cone is suspended, the tremendous heat singeing his hands and causing “intense pain” to assail “him at the knees.” Raut tries to ascend the chain, but Horrocks flings coal at him, shouting, “Fizzle you fool! Fizzle, you hunter of women! You hot-blooded hound! Boil! boil! boil!”

Only after Raut, still clinging to the chain, has been immolated does Horrocks's anger pass and “a deadly sickness [comes] upon him.” as he smells “the heavy odour of burning flesh . . . . his sanity” returning.

From “below was the sound of voices and running steps. The clangour of rolling in the shed ceased abruptly.”

* * *

The plot of Wells's story is itself a thing of beauty. Tight, unified, and artistically executed, with every detail leading to the final effect, it's a tale of terror worthy of Edgar Allan Poe.

Beyond the plot itself, Wells's story is a masterpiece of literary excellence because of its style. A tale of vengeance against an artist, the story is rendered as if Raut himself might have painted it, as a series of images, some impressionistic, others surreal. Wells's protagonist doesn't only speak of the aesthetic effects of his workplace, but the omniscient narrator's artistic descriptions of these effects is like detailed verbal paintings, as these few samples indicate:

The night was hot and overcast, the sky red, rimmed with the lingering sunset of mid-summer. . . . The trees and shrubs of the garden stood stiff and dark; beyond in the roadway a gas-lamp burnt, bright orange against the hazy blue of the evening. Farther were the three lights of the railway signal against the lowering sky.

* * *

Horrocks pointed to the canal close before them now: a weird-looking place it seemed, in the blood-red reflections of the furnaces. The hot water that cooled the tuyeres [“a nozzle through which air is forced into a smelter, furnace, or forge”] came into it, some fifty yards up—a tumultuous, almost boiling affluent, and the steam rose up from the water in silent white wisps and streaks, wrapping damply about them, an incessant succession of ghosts coming up from the black and red eddies, a white uprising that made the head swim.

* * *

They went . . . through the rolling-mills [“a factory or machine for rolling steel or other metal into sheets”], where amidst an incessant din the deliberate steam-hammer beat the juice out of the succulent iron, and black, half-naked Titans rushed the plastic bars, like hot sealing-wax, between the wheels. . . . They went and peeped through the little glass hole behind the tuyeres, and saw the tumbled fire writhing in the pit of the blast-furnace. It left the eye blinded for a while. Then, with green and blue patches dancing across the dark, they went to the lift . . . .

These descriptions support Horrocks's view of the ironworks as itself an artistic setting as well as a technological marvel. Unlike Raut and his own wife, Horrocks is able to see the beauty of technology and industry. It is ironic that such beauty, as Horrocks perceives it and the narrator describes it, should be the background to the artist's demise at the hands of Horrocks and the technology of the ironworks itself.

But Wells achieves yet more through the figures of speeches, allusions, and point of view his omniscient narrator employs in describing what, to Horrocks, is a work of art and what is to his victim, “Gehenna,” “a place of burning, torment, or misery.” From Horrocks's point of view, the ironworks is described as a work of art; the furnace is personified as Horrocks's “pet” (“I packed him myself, and he's boiled away cheerfully with iron in his guts for five long years. I have a particular fancy for him”); and the water of the steaming canal is described with an allusion to “sin” and “death,” just as the “flames” that once erupted from the “throats” of the furnaces looked like God, as He revealed Himself to Moses and the Israelites, as “pillars of cloud by day . . . and pillars of fire by night” (Exodus 13:21-22) as they journeyed through the wilderness.

Wells's descriptions are dynamic, not static; they move and act, as if the ironworks is itself a conscious entity, a willing instrument of its manager's revenge. The movement prevents the plot from slowing, keeps up the pace of the action, and is perfectly suited to the tour of his workplace that Horrocks conducts. The descriptions heighten and underscore the unity between Horrocks and his beloved ironworks, emphasizing the relationship that exists between him, as a man, and the industry and technology of the works he manages.

Horrocks's appreciation of the beauty of the ironworks also suggests that both the artist Raut and Horrocks's wife underestimate his sensitivity, intelligence, and imagination. It is not that he lacks the ability to appreciate beauty, but that the type of beauty he appreciates differs from that of Raut and Horrocks's wife. They are detached from the material world, thinking in terms of “effects” and of romantic passion; a man of the earth, a “Titan,” Horrocks is immersed in the physical world of labor and sweat, of industry and technology. To him, the ironworks is a place of beauty, whereas, to Raut, it is a “Gehenna,” a blot upon the beauty of the countryside, and, to Horrocks's wife, it is a stifling, suffocating place devoid of beauty and love. The story suggests that it is the illicit lovers who are unable to appreciate beauty—at least the beauty that Horrocks is able to see.

The characters live in different worlds, which results in a conflict of aesthetics, passion, and love that ends in horrible death for Raut, a realization of the darkness within him for Horrocks, and the end of an affair that Horrocks's wife said opened “a world of love” to her. The story suggests that life, like the setting in which it is experienced, may be a place of beauty which suggests the presence of God, as the ironworks does for Horrocks, or a “Gehenna” of torment and anguish suggestive of hell for those who cannot fathom the beauty and majesty of the place. The story also suggests the significance and power of aesthetics, for it is both the appreciation of the ironworks's beauty, on Horrocks's part, and the failure to appreciate the beauty of such a place, on Raut's and Horrocks's wife's part, that leads to adultery, betrayal, vengeance, and murder and to the horrific death of the artist at the hand of the ironmaster:

His human likeness departed from him. When the momentary red had passed, Horrocks saw a charred, blackened figure, its head streaked with blood, still clutching and fumbling with the chain, and writhing in agony—a cindery animal, an inhuman, monstrous creature that began a sobbing intermittent shriek.

Abruptly, at the sight, the ironmaster's anger passed. A deadly sickness came upon him. The heavy odour of flesh came drifting up to his nostrils. His sanity returned to him.

“God have mercy upon me!” he cried. “O God! what have I done?”

He knew the thing below him, save that it moved and felt, was already a dead man—that the blood of the poor wretch must be boiling in his veins. An intense realisation of that agony came to his mind, and overcame every other feeling. For a moment he stood irresolute, and then, turning to the truck, he hastily tilted its contents upon the struggling thing that had once been a man. The mass fell with a thud, and went radiating over the cone. With the thud the shriek ended, and a boiling confusion of smoke, dust, and flame came rushing up towards him. As it passed, he saw the cone clear again.

Demons Old and New

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

In the old days, demons were personifications of destructive natural forces. Later, these evil external spirits became inner demons. After the cosmos filled up with demons, many of whom entered Christian thought, for example, as deposed gods and goddesses from other religions, theologians sought to classify and catalogue them, and the science, as it were, of demonology arose. Demons, some such cataloguers believed, formed a hierarchical social structure that essentially parodied that of the angelic order.

According to one such system--that of Sebastian Michaelis--there are three hierarchies. The highest, or first, hierarchy consists of Beelzebub (arrogance), Leviathan (heresy), Asmodai (lust), Berith (murder and blasphemy), Astaroth (laziness and vanity), Verrin (impatience), Gressil (impurity, uncleanness, and malice), and Sonneillon (hatred). The second tier is composed of Lilith (Adam’s first wife and a succubus) and Azazel, the angel of death. Three demons make up the third hierarchy: Belial (arrogance and adversity), Olivier (fierceness, greediness, and envy), and Jouvart (sexuality).

There are additional demonologies, including those of The Testament of Solomon, of Michael Psellus, of Alfonso de Spina, of Peter Binsfeld, of Francesco Maria Guazzo, of Francis Barrett, and others. Some give to their demons such worldly titles as great marshal, knight, president, great president, earl, great earl, duke, great duke, and the like, up to emperor. Those who do not warrant inclusion among the demonic nobility make up the peasantry, as it were, which divides into numerous legions. The ranking demons typically rule over one or more emotional or attitudinal element or elements.

Many demons come from pagan religions, but others are supplied by Jewish folklore, Gnosticism, and various mythologies. Most have specific adversaries against whom fight continuing cosmic battles.

Frequently, demons are depicted as monstrous entities, with eyes instead of nipples in their breasts, with bats’ wings on their backs, with mouths in their bellies, with horns growing from their skulls, and so forth. The imagination is free to run wild in its conception of these evil spirits, and artists give full vent to their most outrageous fancies in giving form to these demonic beings, as the following gallery suggests.

Aamon

Astaroth

Baal

Baphomet

Beelzebub

Buer

Dagon

Incubus

Lilith

Moloch

Satan

Times have changed since the ancient and medieval demonologies were compiled, and the demonic has gained new forms to supplement the largely bestial and insect shapes that demons previously often took. Many of these new forms are hybrids of men (or women) and machines, reflecting the dehumanization of today’s people in terms not so much bestial as mechanical. To be demonic is seen, increasingly, as not so much a matter of being animalistic as it is of being artificial. The demonic is the perfunctory and the robotic, the mechanized and the programmed, the automatic rather than the autonomous. Painters such as biomechanical artists H. R. Giger, fantasy artists such as Frank Frazetta and Julie Bell, and filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg and Joss Whedon depict the contemporary demon, just as, in previous terms, such artists as Hieronymus Bosch, Gustave Dore, and others depicted the demon as he, she, and it was understood in their days.

Birth Machine by H. R. Giger

Whether insect-like, animalistic, or mechanical, the demon always depicts the worst aspects of the human personality, for it is the demonic which leads human beings downward, toward the carnal and the sensual or the otherwise blasphemous and idolatrous, and only God can lead them upward, toward self-transcendence and the sacred realm of the transpersonal divine. No doubt, as something replaces the machine, the mechanical demon will be joined by new expressions of evil.

Jar Jar Binks

Perhaps, as with the demon Moloch the Corruptor, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s “I Robot, You Jane,” the latest transformation is already underway, for, in this episode’s contribution to demonic lore, before the demon appears as a robot, it is simply a spirit that escapes from a book as it is scanned into a computer’s memory, whereupon it gains unfettered access to cyberspace. The electronic demon, it seems, has already arrived. In this episode of Buffy, it symbolizes the dangers to teens of Internet chat rooms.

New demons should represent new threats, not old, for, otherwise, what need have we of new ones? The mechanical--and biomechanical--as well as the electronic demons that have begun to emerge from artists’ exercise of their imaginations seem to represent such menaces as the dehumanizing effects of rampant industrialism and the near-omnipresence of surveillance and control mechanisms that the Internet provides or seems to provide the government, the depraved, the faceless stalker, and other menaces especially representative of our time and day.

Note: All illustrations are from Wikipedia, which takes most of them from Creative Commons.

Guest Speaker: Edgar Allan Poe on Nathaniel Hawthorne

Note: In Graham’s Magazine (May, 18842, pp. 298-300, Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) reviewed Nathaniel Hawthorne’s (1804-1864) Twice-Told Tales, an anthology, published in 1837, which, among others, contains the following short stories: “The Minister’s Black Veil,” “The May-Pole of Merry Mount,” “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe,” “Wakefield,” “The Great Carbuncle,” “The Hollow if the Three Hills,” “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment,” and “The Ambitious Guest.” The tales were reprints of earlier publications. Poe’s review of Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales follows.



We said a few hurried words about Mr. Hawthorne in our last number, with the design of speaking more fully in the present. We are still, however, pressed for room, and must necessarily discuss his volumes more briefly and more at random than their high merits deserve.

The book professes to be a collection of tales, yet is, in two respects, misnamed. These pieces are now in their third publication, and, of course, are thrice-told. Moreover, they are by no means all tales, either in the ordinary or in the legitimate understanding of the term. Many of them are pure essays, for example, "Sights from a Steeple," "Sunday; Home," "Little Annie's Ramble," "A Rill from the Town Pump," "The Toll-Gatherer's Day," "The Haunted Mind," "The Sister Years," "Snow-Flakes," "Night Sketches," and "Foot-Prints on the Sea-Shore." We mention these matters chiefly on account of their discrepancy with that marked precision and finish by which the body of the work is distinguished.

Of the essays just named, we must be content to speak briefly. They are each and all beautiful, without being characterized by the polish and adaptation so visible in the tales proper. A painter would at once note their leading or predominant feature, and style it repose. There is no attempt at effect. All is quiet, thoughtful, subdued. Yet this repose may exist simultaneously with high originality of thought; and Mr. Hawthorne has demonstrated the fact. At every turn we meet with novel combinations; yet these combinations never surpass the limits of the quiet. We are soothed as we read; and withal is a calm astonishment that ideas so apparently obvious have never occurred or been presented to us before. Herein our author differs materially from Lamb or Hunt or Hazlitt--who, with vivid originality of manner and expression, have less of the true novelty of thought than is general supposed, and whose originality, at best, has an uneasy or meretricious quaintness, replete with startling effects unfounded in nature, and inducing trains of reflection which lead to no satisfactory result. The essays of Hawthorne have much of the character of Irving, with more of originality, and less of finish; while, compared with the Spectator, they have vast superiority at all points. The Spectator, Mr. Irving, and Mr. Hawthorne have in common that tranquil and subdued manner which we have chosen to denominate repose; but, the case of the two former, this repose is attained rather by the absence of novel combination, or of originality, than otherwise, and consists chiefly in the calm, quiet, unostentatious expression of commonplace thoughts, in an unambitious unadulterated Saxon. In them, by strong effort, we are made to conceive the absence of all. In the essays before us the absence of effort is too obvious to be mistaken, and a strong undercurrent of suggestion runs continuously beneath the upper stream of the tranquil thesis. In short, these effusions of Mr. Hawthorne are the product of a truly imaginative intellect, restrained, and in some measure repressed, by fastidiousness of taste, by constitutional melancholy and by indolence.

But it is of his tales that we desire principally to speak. The tale proper, in our opinion, affords unquestionably the fairest field for the exercise of the loftiest talent, which can be afforded by the wide domains of mere prose. Were we bidden to say how the highest genius could be most advantageously employed for the best display of its own powers, we should answer, without hesitation--in the composition of a rhymed poem, not to exceed in length what might be perused in an hour. Within this limit alone can the highest order of true poetry exist. We need only here say, upon this topic, that, in almost all classes of composition, the unity of effect or impression is a point of the greatest importance. It is clear, moreover, that this unity cannot be thoroughly preserved in productions whose perusal cannot be completed at one sitting. We may continue the reading of a prose composition, from the very nature of prose itself, much longer than we can persevere, to any good purpose, in the perusal of a poem. This latter, if truly fulfilling the demands of the poetic sentiment, induces an exaltation of the soul which cannot be long sustained. All high excitements are necessarily transient. Thus a long poem is a paradox. And, without unity of impression, the deepest effects cannot be brought about. Epics were the Spring of an imperfect sense of Art, and their reign is no more. A poem too brief may produce a vivid, but never an intense or enduring impression. Without a certain continuity of effort--without a certain duration or repetition of purpose--the soul is never deeply moved. There must be the water upon the rock. De Beranger has things--pungent and spirit-stirring--but, like all immassive bodies, they lack momentum, and thus fail to satisfy the Poetic Sentiment. They sparkle and excite, but, from want of continuity, fail deeply to impress. Extreme brevity will degenerate into epigrammatism; but the sin of extreme length is even more unpardonable. In medio tutissimus ibis.

Were we called upon however to designate that class of composition which, next to such a poem as we have suggested, should best fulfill the demands of high genius--should offer it the most advantageous field of exertion--we should unhesitatingly speak of the prose tale, as Mr. Hawthorne has here exemplified it. We allude to the short prose narrative, requiring from a half-hour to one or two hours in its perusal. The ordinary novel is objectionable, from its length, for reasons already stated in substance. As it cannot be read at one sitting, it deprives itself, of course, of the immense force derivable from totality. Worldly interests intervening during the pauses of perusal, modify, annul, or counteract, in a greater or less degree, the impressions of the book. But simple cessation in reading would, of itself, be sufficient to destroy the true unity. In the brief tale, however, the author is enabled to carry out the fullness of his intention, be it what it may. During the hour of perusal the soul of the reader is at the writer's control. There are no external or extrinsic influences--resulting from weariness or interruption.

A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents--he then combines such events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. The idea of the tale has been presented unblemished, because undisturbed; and this is an end unattainable by the novel. Undue brevity is just as exceptionable here as in the poem; but undue length is yet more to be avoided.

We have said that the tale has a point of superiority even over the poem. In fact, while the rhythm of this latter is an essential aid in the development of the poem's highest idea--the idea of the Beautiful--the artificialities of this rhythm are an inseparable bar to the development of all points of thought or expression which have their basis in Truth. But Truth is often, and in very great degree, the aim of the tale. Some of the finest tales are tales of ratiocination. Thus the field of this species of composition, if not in so elevated a region on the mountain of Mind, is a table-land of far vaster extent than the domain of the mere poem. Its products are never so rich, but infinitely more numerous, and more appreciable by the mass of mankind. The writer of the prose tale, in short, may bring to his theme a vast variety of modes or inflections of thought and expression--(the ratiocinative, for example, the sarcastic or the humorous) which are not only antagonistical to the nature of the poem, but absolutely forbidden by one of its most peculiar and indispensable adjuncts; we allude of course, to rhythm. It may be added, here, par parenthese, that the author who aims at the purely beautiful in a prose tale is laboring at great disadvantage. For Beauty can be better treated in the poem. Not so with terror, or passion, or horror, or a multitude of such other points. And here it will be seen how full of prejudice are the usual animadversions against those tales of effect many fine examples of which were found in the earlier numbers of Blackwood. The impressions produced were wrought in a legitimate sphere of action, and constituted a legitimate although sometimes an exaggerated interest. They were relished by every man of genius: although there were found many men of genius who condemned them without just ground. The true critic will but demand that the design intended be accomplished, to the fullest extent, by the means most advantageously applicable.

We have very few American tales of real merit--we may say, indeed, none, with the exception of "The Tales of a Traveller" of Washington Irving, and these "Twice-Told Tales" of Mr. Hawthorne. Some of the pieces of Mr. John Neal abound in vigor and originality; but in general, his compositions of this class are excessively diffuse, extravagant, and indicative of an imperfect sentiment of Art. Articles at random are, now and then, met with in our periodicals which might be advantageously compared with the best effusions of the British Magazines; but, upon the whole, we are far behind our progenitors in this department of literature.

Of Mr. Hawthorne's Tales we would say, emphatically, that they belong to the highest region of Art--an Art subservient to genius of a very lofty order. We had supposed, with good reason for so supposing, that he had been thrust into his present position by one of the impudent cliques which beset our literature, and whose pretensions it is our full purpose to expose at the earliest opportunity; but we have been most agreeably mistaken. We Know of few compositions which the critic can more honestly commend then these Twice-Told Tales." As Americans, we feel proud of the book.

Mr. Hawthorne's distinctive trait is Invention, creation, imagination, originality--a trait which, in the literature of fiction, is positively worth all the rest. But the nature of originality, so far as regards its manifestation in letters, is but imperfectly understood. The inventive or original mind as frequently displays itself in novelty of tone as in novelty of matter. Mr. Hawthorne is original at all points.

It would be a matter of some difficulty to designate the best of these tales; we repeat that, without exception, they are beautiful. "Wakefield" is remarkable for the skill with which an old idea--a well-known incident--is worked up or discussed. A man of whims conceives the purpose of quitting his wife and residing incognito, for twenty years, in her immediate neighborhood. Something of this kind actually happened in London. The force of Mr. Hawthorne's tale lies m the analysis of the motives which must or might have impelled the husband to such folly, in the first instance, with the possible causes of his perseverance. Upon this thesis a sketch of singular power has been constructed.

"The Wedding Knell" is full of the boldest imagination--an imagination fully controlled by taste. The most captious critic could find no flaw in this production.

"The Minister's Black Veil" is a masterly composition of in which the sole defect is that to the rabble its exquisite skill will be caviare. The obvious meaning of this article will be found to smother its insinuated one. The moral put into the mouth of the dying minister will be supposed to convey the true import of the narrative; and that a crime of dark dye, (having reference to the "young lady") has been committed, is a point which only minds congenial with that of the author will perceive.

"Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" is vividly original and managed most dexterously.

"Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" is exceedingly well imagined, and executed with surpassing ability. The artist breathes in every line of it.

"The White Old Maid" is objectionable, even more than the "Minister's Black Veil," on the score of its mysticism Even with the thoughtful and analytic, there will be much trouble in penetrating its entire import.

"The Hollow of the Three Hills" we would quote in full, had we space;--not as evincing higher talent than any of the other pieces, but as affording an excellent example of the author s peculiar ability. The subject is common-place. A witch subjects the Distant and the Past to the view of a mourner. It has been the fashion to describe, in such cases, a mirror in which the images of the absent appear; or a cloud of smoke is made to arise, and thence the figures are gradually unfolded. Mr. Hawthorne has wonderfully heightened his effect by making the ear, in place of the eye, the medium by which the fantasy Is conveyed. The head of the mourner is enveloped m the cloak of the witch, and within its magic folds there arise sounds which have an all-sufficient intelligence. Throughout this article also, the artist is conspicuous--not more in positive than in negative merits. Not only is all done that should be done, but (what perhaps is an end with more difficulty attained) there is nothing done which should not be. Every word tells, and there is not a word which does not tell.

In "Howe's Masquerade" we observe something which resembles a plagiarism--but which may he a very flattering coincidence of thought. We quote the passage in question.

"With a dark flush of wrath upon his brow they saw the general draw his sword and advance to meet the figure in the cloak before the latter had stepped one pace upon the floor.

" 'Villain, unmuff le yourself ' cried he, 'you pass no farther!'

"The figure, without blenching a hair's breadth from the sword which was pointed at his breast, made a solemn pause, and lowered the cape of the cloak from his face, yet not sufficiently for the spectators to catch a glimpse of it. But Sir William Howe had evidently seen enough. The sternness of his countenance gave place to a look of wild amazement, if not horror, while he recoiled several steps from the figure, and let fall his sword upon the floor."--See vol. 2, page 20.

The idea here is, that the figure in the cloak is the phantom or reduplication of Sir William Howe; but in an article called "William Wilson," one of the "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque," we have not only the same idea, but the same idea similarly presented in several respects. We quote two paragraphs, which our readers may compare with what has been already given. We have italicized, above, the immediate particulars of resemblance.

"The brief moment in which I averted my eyes had been sufficient to produce, apparently, a material change in the arrangement at the upper or farther end of the room. A large mirror, it appeared to me, now stood where none had been perceptible before: and as I stepped up to it in extremity of terror, mine own image, but with features all pale and dabbled in blood, advanced with a feeble and tottering gait to meet me.

"Thus it appeared I say, but was not. It was Wilson, who then stood before me in the agonies of dissolution. Not a line in all the marked and singular lineaments of that face which was not even identically mine own. His mask and cloak lay where he had thrown them' upon the floor."--Vol. 2. p. 57.

Here it will be observed that, not only are the two general conceptions identical, but there are various points of similarity. In each case the figure seen is the wraith or duplication of the beholder. In each case the scene is a masquerade. In each case the figure is cloaked. In each, there is a quarrel -- that is to say, angry words pass between the parties. In each the beholder is enraged. In each the cloak and sword fall upon the floor. The "villain, unmuffle yourself," of Mr. H. is precisely paralleled by a passage at page 56 of "William Wilson."

In the way of objection we have scarcely a word to say of these tales. There is, perhaps, a somewhat too general or prevalent tone--a tone of melancholy and mysticism.. The subjects are insufficiently varied. There is not so much of versatility evinced as we might well be warranted in expecting from the high powers of Mr. Hawthorne. But beyond these trivial exceptions we have really none to make. The style is purity itself. Force abounds. High imagination gleams from every page. Mr. Hawthorne is a man of the truest genius. We only regret that the limits of our Magazine will not permit us to pay him that full tribute of commendation, which, under other circumstances, we should be so eager to pay.

Rene Magritte: The Horror of the Surreal

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Rene Magritte (1898-1967) was a Belgian surrealist whose bizarre, but often humorous, paintings do not seem, at first, to depict images that a viewer might regard as horrifying. However, a second look suggests that his paintings often do suggest elements of horror. The horrific in his work derives from his own idiosyncratic application of surrealism’s challenge to common-sense realism and the categories of existence and understanding that support this worldview.

We have eyes, but we do not see, because, most of the time, we take ourselves and the world around us for granted. We feel that we have learned enough about the subjective and the objective, the fantastic and the real, to make sense of things in general and to draw valid inferences and to make sound assumptions about things about which we don’t know as much. As long as we can find the similarities and the differences between the two, we believe that we can make the necessary leaps of inference.

Art is metaphorical by nature, suggesting, always, that one thing is also another or, at least, is, in some way, like another. Using Freudian terminology, the other may be called the "latent content" (i. e., an attitude, a belief, a concern, an emotion, an image, a motif, an object, a sensation, a value), to which the "manifest content"--the literal, superficial, or direct image--is juxtaposed. Usually, the manifest content is familiar to us; the latent, unusual.

Many of Magritte’s works play upon the dichotomies of subjectivity and objectivity and of fantasy and reality. In everyday experience, the subjective usually aligns with the fantastic and the objective with the real, but Magritte sometimes turns the tables upon the tendency to associate these categories in these ways, so that, instead, the subjective corresponds with the real and the objective with the fantastic. His point in doing so seems to be to indicate that categories, whatever they might be, are invented, not natural, and are, therefore, to some degree, arbitrary and subject to change or misinterpretation.

People do not perceive reality the same way; their perceptions and their interpretations are a form of art, and the question, especially for surrealists, as to whether art is, or can be, representational is open ended. One of Magritte’s paintings, La Clairvoyance, seems to have been created to express just this point. An artist (Magritte himself?), seated at his easel, observes a bird’s egg. However, he paints not the egg that he studies, but its eventual potential result--a bird in flight. Where one sees what is, another, looking at the same thing, may see, instead, what could be. The former sees being; the latter, becoming. An egg is more than an egg; it is what the egg represents in the mind of its perceiver.

In another of his paintings, Attempting the Impossible, a male artist (again resembling Magritte), dressed in a brown suit and holding a palette onto which only a few colors have been dispensed, is painting the upper arm of a three-dimensional nude female figure whose countenance closely resembles the artist’s own. She stands in a posed attitude, rather stiffly, head high, staring straight ahead, her weight upon her right foot, her completed right arm along her side. Her left leg is slightly bent at the knee, its foot resting upon its toes. She has the look of the professional model, but, one wonders, might she be more? Could she also be the artist’s feminine aspect, or anima? If so, in creating her, is he not also creating part of himself? If she is also his model, in creating her, is he also not creating the subject of his work, giving shape--even life--to his art? Where does the self and the other begin and end? The figure’s left arm is incomplete. In fact, the artist has only begun to paint its upper extremity. The viewer has no idea what the painter will paint as he continues to portray his model. Will her arm lie alongside her other flank, as its mate does? Will it gesture? It could choke the artist to death. Absurd? Magritte is a surrealist, one must remember, for whom anything is possible. This painting seems to reflect the truth that both the viewer and the artist, together, create the meaning of a piece of art, for what the artist encodes with his paint and brushes and canvas, the viewer must decode according to his or her own beliefs, views, attitudes, and feelings. An unfinished painting allows any number of possibilities, and, again, people do not perceive reality the same way; perceptions and interpretations are a form of art, and the question as to whether art is, or can be, representational is open ended. Therefore, the model in progress could, upon her completion. choke the artist to death or do nothing more than continue to pose.

The ideas suggested by Magritte’s paintings--that reality and fantasy are not necessarily always separate and immutable polarities and that subjectivity and objectivity may, at times, become confused or even blend, both with themselves and with the real and the fantastic--can be amusing, but a little thought suggests that these ideas can also be horrifying. They can be terrifying. Moreover, if these categories are more fluid than supposed, might not others be, also? There may be a much finer line--or no line at all--between sane and insane, kind and cruel, life and death, heaven and hell. If one polarity can be negated or fused, even temporarily, why couldn’t all other polarities also be negated or fused? And, if they can be negated or fused temporarily, why can’t they be negated or fused permanently? There is an Alice-in-Wonderland quality to Magritte’s work, and it, like Lewis Carroll’s novel, has a disturbing as well as a charming aspect.

Many of Magritte’s paintings are landscapes (bizarre landscapes, to be sure), but many others are portraits, always more or less (usually more) off kilter. The depiction of landscapes is a shorthand way of depicting the objective, if not always the real; the painting of personal portraits is a shorthand way of depicting the subjective, if not always the subjective. Let’s tale a look at an example of each.

In Blank Check, a horsewoman is seen riding through a woods. As she passes through a stand of trees, she and her horse are segmented. The front of the horse overlaps a tree, as it would appear to do in passing in front of the tree. However, the next segment of its body, is missing. Where the animal’s shoulder and thigh should be, only background foliage and grass can be seen. Then, the midsection of the horse, upon which the woman sits, and its lower left hind leg appear, overlapping the next tree, but its knee is shown against an empty space occupied by background foliage. The right rear leg of the horse and its rear end are shown as they would normally appear, against the backdrop of a third tree. It is as if, in passing the stand of trees, the horse and rider are sliced by the landscape into segments, some of which overlap foreground, and others background, elements of the scene. The painting is something of an optical illusion that, in playing with perception and reality, comments upon them both, suggesting, once again, that the dichotomies between subject and object and fantastic and real are sometimes tenuous at best.

In another painting, The Collective Invention, a strange hybrid creature has washed ashore. The upper half is that of a fish, while the lower portion, from the waist down, is a woman. The image is so bizarre that it takes the viewer a moment to realize that it is an inversion of a more familiar figure--that of the mermaid, whose upper body, to the waist, is that of a woman and whose lower body is that of a fish. The mermaid may be bizarre in her own way, but she doesn’t seem quite as bizarre as Magritte’s fish-woman. The reason for this seems to be that the mermaid retains the woman’s face, or identity, and there is, within her head, a human brain. In other words, the figure retains the essence of humanity. Magritte’s painting of his fish-woman, on the contrary, retains the essence of the animal or, one could argue, represents the sexual aspect of the human as its essence, since the figure does not include face and brain, retaining, instead, the woman’s legs, buttocks, and genitals instead as the human parts of the hybrid’s anatomy. Once again, Magritte suggests the ambiguity and, above all, the arbitrary nature of the categories we create to order perception and experience and to make them, and the knowledge derived from them, manageable and meaningful. The world need not be as we represent it to be and, in fact, could easily be the opposite.

Surrealism is not representational. It only seems to be, at times, and, even then, only in part and for a moment. A closer look shows the dissolution of the subjective-objective and the fantastic-real polarities. On second thought, the neat categories of existence, which are products of consciousness and communication as much as of reason and science, may not be all that neat. Magritte’s art provides this second look at experience as it is generally perceived and understood. His paintings make viewers look again at their perceptions and understandings of themselves and the world (which result from their common-sense realism). Therein lies the horror of the surreal in general and of Magritte’s work in particular. In the final analysis, the world, both the inner and the outer, are imaginary and fluid, which is the reason, it seems, that Magritte said, concerning his work:

My painting is visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, 'What does that mean?'. It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable.

For another article in this blog that discusses the horror that can result from violating categories of perceprual and understanding, visit "The Horror of the Incongruous."