Look! Across the plain yonder, those three figures, dark and gaunt
against the sky.... Who are they? What are they? One of them is
pointing with rigid arm towards the gnarled trees that from the
hillside stretch out their storm-broken boughs and ragged leaves
against the sky. Shifting thither, my eye discerns through the shadows
two horsemen, riding slowly down the incline. Hush! I hold up a warning
finger to my companion, lest he move. On what strange and secret tryst
have we stumbled? They must not know they are observed. Could we creep
closer up to them? Nay, the plain is so silent: they would hear us; and
so barren: they would surely see us. Here, under cover of this rock, we
can crouch and watch them.... We discern now more clearly those three
expectants. One of them has a cloak of faded blue; it is fluttering in
the wind. Women or men are they? Scarcely human they seem: inauspicious
beings from some world of shadows, magically arisen through that
platform of broken rock whereon they stand. The air around, even the
fair sky above, is fraught by them with I know not what of subtle bale.
One would say they had been waiting here for many days, motionless,
eager but not impatient, knowing that at this hour the two horsemen
would come. And we--it is strange--have we not ere now beheld them
waiting? In some waking dream, surely, we have seen them, and now dimly
recognise them. And the two horsemen, forcing their steeds down the
slope--them, too, we have seen, even so. The light through a break in
the trees faintly reveals them to us. They are accoutred in black
armour. They seem not to be yet aware of the weird figures confronting
them across the plain. But the horses, with some sharper instinct, are
aware and afraid, straining, quivering. One of them throws back its
head, but dares not whinny. As though under some evil spell, all nature
seems to be holding its breath. Stealthily, noiselessly, I turn the
leaves of my catalogue... 'Macbeth and the Witches.' Why, of course!
Of the two horsemen, which is Macbeth, which Banquo? Though we peer
intently, we cannot in those distant shadows distinguish which is he
that shall be king hereafter, which is he that shall merely beget
kings. It is mainly in virtue of this very vagueness and mystery of
manner that the picture is so impressive. An illustration should stir
our fancy, leaving it scope and freedom. Most illustrations, being
definite, do but affront us. Usually, Shakespeare is illustrated by
some Englishman overawed by the poet's repute, and incapable of
treating him, as did Corot, vaguely and offhand. Shakespeare expressed
himself through human and superhuman characters; therefore in England
none but a painter of figures would dare illustrate him. Had Corot been
an Englishman, this landscape would have had nothing to do with
Shakespeare. Luckily, as an alien, he was untrammelled by piety to the
poet. He could turn Shakespeare to his own account. In this picture,
obviously, he was creating, and only in a secondary sense illustrating.
For him the landscape was the thing. Indeed, the five little figures
may have been inserted by him as an afterthought, to point and balance
the composition. Vaguely he remembered hearing of Macbeth, or reading
it in some translation. Ce Sac-espe're...un beau talent...ne'
romantique. Hugo he would not have attempted to illustrate. But
Sac-espe're--why not? And so the little figures came upon the canvas,
dim sketches. Charles Lamb disliked theatrical productions of
Shakespeare's plays, because of the constraint thus laid on his
imagination. But in the theatre, at least, we are diverted by movement,
recompensed by the sound of the poet's words and (may be) by human
intelligence interpreting his thoughts; whereas from a definite
painting of Shakespearean figures we get nothing but an equivalent for
the mimes' appearance: nothing but the painter's bare notion (probably
quite incongruous with our notion) of what these figures ought to look
like. Take Macbeth as an instance. From a definite painting of him what
do we get? At worst, the impression of a kilted man with a red beard
and red knees, brandishing a claymore. At best, a sombre barbarian
doing nothing in particular. In either case, all the atmosphere, all
the character, all the poetry, all that makes Macbeth live for us, is
lost utterly. If these definite illustrations of Shakespeare's human
figures affront us, how much worse is it when an artist tries his hand
at the figures that are superhuman! Imagine an English illustrator's
projection of the weird sisters--with long grey beards duly growing on
their chins, and belike one of them duly holding in her hand a pilot's
thumb. It is because Corot had no reverence for Shakespeare's
text--because he was able to create in his own way, with scarcely a
thought of Shakespeare, an independent masterpiece--that this picture
is worthy of its theme. The largeness of the landscape in proportion to
the figures seems to show us the tragedy in its essential relation to
the universe. We see the heath lying under infinity, under true sky and
winds. No hint of the theatre is there. All is as the poet may have
conceived it in his soul. And for us Corot's brush-work fills the place
of Shakespeare's music. Time has tessellated the surface of the canvas;
but beauty, intangible and immortal, dwells in its depths
safely--dwells there even as it dwells in the works of Shakespeare,
though the folios be foxed and seared.
The longer we gaze, the more surely does the picture illude us and
enthral us, steeping us in that tragedy of 'the fruitless crown and
barren sceptre.' We forget all else, watching the unkind witches as
they await him whom they shall undo, driving him to deeds he dreams not
of, and beguiling him, at length, to his doom. Against 'the set of sun'
they stand forth, while he who shall be king hereafter, with the
comrade whom he shall murder, rides down to them, guileless of aught
that shall be. Privy to his fate, we experience a strange compassion.
Anon the fateful colloquy will begin. 'All hail, Macbeth' the unearthly
voices will be crying across the heath. Can nothing be done? Can we
stand quietly here while... Nay, hush! We are powerless. These witches,
if we tried to thwart them, would swiftly blast us. There are things
with which no mortal must meddle. There are things which no mortal must
behold. Come away!
So, casting one last backward look across the heath, we, under cover of
the rock, steal fearfully away across the parquet floor of the gallery.
'CARLOTTA GRISI'