spacious house even handsomer than the House of the Red Branch; and
it is described in great detail, as fashioned after “Tara’s Mead
Hall,” and of great strength and magnificence; and it was stocked with
quilts and blankets and beds and pillows, as well as with abundance
of meat and drink. Then he invited the high king and all the nobles
of Ulster to come to the feast. An amusing touch in the saga is the
frank consternation of the heroes who were thus asked. They felt
themselves helpless before the wiles of Bricriu, and at first refused
outright to go, because they were sure that he would contrive to set
them to fighting with one another; and they went at all only after
they had taken hostages from Bricriu and had arranged that he should
himself leave the feast-hall as soon as the feast was spread. But
their precautions were in vain, and Bricriu had no trouble in bringing
about a furious dispute among the three leading chiefs, Loigaire the
Triumphant, Conall the Victorious, and Cuchulain. He promised to each
the champion’s portion, on condition that each should claim it. Nor
did he rest here, but produced what the saga calls “the war of words
of the women of Ulster,” by persuading the three wives of the three
heroes that each should tread first into the banquet-hall. Each of the
ladies, in whose minds he thus raised visions of social precedence,
had walked away from the palace with half a hundred women in her
train, when they all three met. The saga describes how they started to
return to the hall together, walking evenly, gracefully, and easily
at first, and then with quicker steps, until, when they got near the
house, they raised their robes “to the round of the leg” and ran at
full speed. When they got to the hall the doors were shut, and, as they
stood outside, each wife chanted her own perfections, but, above all,
the valor and ferocious prowess of her husband, scolding one another as
did Brunhild and Krimhild in the quarrel that led to Siegfried’s death
at the hands of Hagen. Each husband, as in duty bound, helped his wife
into the hall, and the bickering which had already taken place about
the champion’s portion was renewed. At last it was settled that the
three rivals should drive in their chariots to the home of Ailill and
Meave, who should adjudge between them; and the judgment given, after
testing their prowess in many ways, and especially in encounters with
demons and goblins, was finally in favor of Cuchulain.
One of the striking parts of the tale is that in which the three
champions, following one another, arrive at the palace of Meave. The
daughter of Meave goes to the sun-parlor over the high porch of the
hold, and from there she is told by the queen to describe in turn each
chariot and the color of the horses and how the hero looks and how the
chariot courses. The girl obeys, and describes in detail each chariot
as it comes up, and the queen in each case recognizes the champion from
the description and speaks words of savage praise of each in turn.
Loigaire, a fair man, driving two fiery dapple-grays, in a wickerwork
chariot with silver-mounted yoke, is chanted by the queen as:
“A fury of war, a fire of judgment,
A flame of vengeance; in mien a hero,
In face a champion, in heart a dragon;
The long knife of proud victories which will hew us to pieces,
The all-noble, red-handed Loigaire.”
Conall is described as driving a roan and a bay, in a chariot with two
bright wheels of bronze, he himself fair, in face white and red, his
mantle blue and crimson, and Meave describes him as:
“A wolf among cattle; battle on battle,
Exploit on exploit, head upon head he heaps”;
and says that if he is excited to rage he will cut up her people
“As a trout on red sandstone is cut.”
Then Cuchulain is described, driving at a gallop a dapple-gray and a
dark-gray, in a chariot with iron wheels and a bright silver pole. The
hero himself is a dark, melancholy man, the comeliest of the men of
Erin, in a crimson tunic, with gold-hilted sword, a blood-red spear,
and over his shoulders a crimson shield rimmed with silver and gold.
Meave, on hearing the description, chants the hero as:
“An ocean in fury, a whale that rageth, a fragment of flame and
fire;
A bear majestic, a grandly moving billow,
A beast in maddening ire:
In the crash of glorious battle through the hostile foe he leaps,
His shout the fury of doom;
A terrible bear, he is death to the herd of cattle,
Feat upon feat, head upon head he heaps:
Laud ye the hearty one, he who is victor fully.”
Bricriu lost his life as a sequel of the great raid for the Dun Bull
of Cooley. This was undertaken by Queen Meave as the result of the
“bolster conversation,” the curtain quarrel, between her and Ailill as
to which of the two, husband or wife, had the more treasure. To settle
the dispute, they compared their respective treasures, beginning with
their wooden and iron vessels, going on with their rings and bracelets
and brooches and fine clothes, and ending with their flocks of sheep,
and herds of swine, horses, and cattle. The tally was even for both
sides until they came to the cattle, when it appeared that Ailill had
a huge, white-horned bull with which there was nothing of Meave’s to
compare. The chagrined queen learned from a herald that in Cooley there
was a dun or brown bull which, it was asserted, was even larger and
more formidable.
Meave announces that by fair means or foul the dun bull shall be hers,
and she raises her hosts. A great war ensues, in which Cuchulain
distinguishes himself above all others. All the heroes gather to the
fight, and a special canto is devoted to the fate of a very old man,
Iliach, a chief of Ulster, who resolves to attack the foe and avenge
Ulster’s honor on them. “Whether, then, I fall or come out of it, is
all one,” he said. The saga tells how his withered and wasted old
horses, which fed on the shore by his little fort, were harnessed to
the ancient chariot, which had long lost its cushions. Into it he got,
mother-naked, with his sword and his pair of blunt, rusty spears, and
great throwing-stones heaped at his feet; and thus he attacked the
hosts of Meave and fought till his death. In the Cuchulain sagas the
heroes frequently fight with stones; and the practice obtained until
much later days, for in Olaf’s death-battle with the ships of Hakon
his men were cleared from the decks of the Long Serpent by dexterously
hurled stones as well as by spears.
Partly by cunning, Meave gets the dun bull upon which she had set her
heart. Then comes in a thoroughly Erse touch. It appears that the two
bulls have lived many lives in different forms, and always in hostility
to each other, since the days when their souls were the souls of two
swineherds, who quarrelled and fought to the death. Now the two great
bulls renew their ancient fight. Bricriu is forced out to witness it,
and is trampled to death by the beasts. At last the white-homed bull is
slain, and the dun, raging and destroying, goes back to his home, where
he too dies. And this, says the saga, in ending, is the tale of the Dun
Bull of Cooley and the Driving of the Cattle-Herd by Meave and Ailill,
and their war with Ulster.
The Erse tales have suffered from many causes. Taken as a mass, they
did not develop as the sagas and the epics of certain other nations
developed; but they possess extraordinary variety and beauty, and in
their mysticism, their devotion to and appreciation of natural beauty,
their exaltation of the glorious courage of men and of the charm and
devotion of women, in all the touches that tell of a long-vanished
life, they possess a curious attraction of their own. They deserve the
research which can be given only by the lifelong effort of trained
scholars; they should be studied for their poetry, as countless
scholars have studied those early literatures; moreover, they should be
studied as Victor Bérard has studied the “Odyssey,” for reasons apart
from their poetical worth; and finally they deserve to be translated
and adapted so as to become a familiar household part of that
literature which all the English-speaking peoples possess in common.
AN ART EXHIBITION
AN ART EXHIBITION
The recent “International Exhibition of Modern Art” in New York was
really noteworthy. Messrs. Davies, Kuhn, Gregg, and their fellow
members of the Association of American Painters and Sculptors did a
work of very real value in securing such an exhibition of the works of
both foreign and native painters and sculptors. Primarily their purpose
was to give the public a chance to see what has recently been going on
abroad. No similar collection of the works of European “moderns” has
ever been exhibited in this country. The exhibitors were quite right
as to the need of showing to our people in this manner the art forces
which of late have been at work in Europe, forces which can not be
ignored.
This does not mean that I in the least accept the view that these men
take of the European extremists whose pictures were here exhibited. It
is true, as the champions of these extremists say, that there can be
no life without change, no development without change, and that to be
afraid of what is different or unfamiliar is to be afraid of life. It
is no less true, however, that change may mean death and not life, and
retrogression instead of development. Probably we err in treating most
of these pictures seriously. It is likely that many of them represent
in the painters the astute appreciation of the power to make folly
lucrative which the late P. T. Barnum showed with his faked mermaid.
There are thousands of people who will pay small sums to look at a
faked mermaid; and now and then one of this kind with enough money will
buy a Cubist picture, or a picture of a misshapen nude woman, repellent
from every standpoint.
In some ways it is the work of the American painters and sculptors
which is of most interest in this collection, and a glance at this
work must convince any one of the real good that is coming out of the
new movements, fantastic though many of the developments of these new
movements are. There was one note entirely absent from the exhibition,
and that was the note of the commonplace. There was not a touch of
simpering, self-satisfied conventionality anywhere in the exhibition.
Any sculptor or painter who had in him something to express and the
power of expressing it found the field open to him. He did not have
to be afraid because his work was not along ordinary lines. There was
no stunting or dwarfing, no requirement that a man whose gift lay in
new directions should measure up or down to stereotyped and fossilized
standards.
For all of this there can be only hearty praise. But this does not
in the least mean that the extremists whose paintings and pictures
were represented are entitled to any praise, save, perhaps, that they
have helped to break fetters. Probably in any reform movement, any
progressive movement, in any field of life, the penalty for avoiding
the commonplace is a liability to extravagance. It is vitally necessary
to move forward and to shake off the dead hand, often the fossilized
dead hand, of the reactionaries; and yet we have to face the fact
that there is apt to be a lunatic fringe among the votaries of any
forward movement. In this recent art exhibition the lunatic fringe
was fully in evidence, especially in the rooms devoted to the Cubists
and the Futurists, or Near-Impressionists. I am not entirely certain
which of the two latter terms should be used in connection with some
of the various pictures and representations of plastic art--and,
frankly, it is not of the least consequence. The Cubists are entitled
to the serious attention of all who find enjoyment in the colored
puzzle-pictures of the Sunday newspapers. Of course there is no reason
for choosing the cube as a symbol, except that it is probably less
fitted than any other mathematical expression for any but the most
formal decorative art. There is no reason why people should not call
themselves Cubists, or Octagonists, or Parallelopipedonists, or Knights
of the Isosceles Triangle, or Brothers of the Cosine, if they so
desire; as expressing anything serious and permanent, one term is as
fatuous as another. Take the picture which for some reason is called
“A Naked Man Going Down Stairs.” There is in my bathroom a really good
Navajo rug which, on any proper interpretation of the Cubist theory,
is a far more satisfactory and decorative picture. Now, if, for some
inscrutable reason, it suited somebody to call this rug a picture of,
say, “A Well-Dressed Man Going Up a Ladder,” the name would fit the
facts just about as well as in the case of the Cubist picture of the
“Naked Man Going Down Stairs.” From the standpoint of terminology each
name would have whatever merit inheres in a rather cheap straining
after effect; and from the standpoint of decorative value, of
sincerity, and of artistic merit, the Navajo rug is infinitely ahead of
the picture.
As for many of the human figures in the pictures of the Futurists,
they show that the school would be better entitled to the name of
the “Past-ists.” I was interested to find that a man of scientific
attainments who had likewise looked at the pictures had been struck,
as I was, by their resemblance to the later work of the palæolithic
artists of the French and Spanish caves. There are interesting samples
of the strivings for the representation of the human form among
artists of many different countries and times, all in the same stage
of palæolithic culture, to be found in a recent number of the “Revue
d’Ethnographie.” The palæolithic artist was able to portray the bison,
the mammoth, the reindeer, and the horse with spirit and success,
while he still stumbled painfully in the effort to portray man. This
stumbling effort in his case represented progress, and he was entitled
to great credit for it. Forty thousand years later, when entered into
artificially and deliberately, it represents only a smirking pose of
retrogression, and is not praiseworthy. So with much of the sculpture.
A family group of precisely the merit that inheres in a structure made
of the wooden blocks in a nursery is not entitled to be reproduced in
marble. Admirers speak of the kneeling female figure by Lehmbruck--I
use “female” advisedly, for although obviously mammalian it is not
especially human--as “full of lyric grace,” as “tremendously sincere,”
and “of a jewel-like preciousness.” I am not competent to say whether
these words themselves represent sincerity or merely a conventional
jargon; it is just as easy to be conventional about the fantastic as
about the commonplace. In any event one might as well speak of the
“lyric grace” of a praying mantis, which adopts much the same attitude;
and why a deformed pelvis should be called “sincere,” or a tibia of
giraffe-like length “precious,” seems to a reasonably sane view of the
pictures of Matisse a question of pathological rather than artistic
significance. This figure and the absurd portrait head of some young
lady have the merit that inheres in extravagant caricature. It is a
merit, but it is not a high merit. It entitles these pieces to stand in
sculpture where nonsense rhymes stand in literature and the sketches of
Aubrey Beardsley in pictorial art. These modern sculptured caricatures
in no way approach the gargoyles of Gothic cathedrals, probably
because the modern artists are too self-conscious and make themselves
ridiculous by pretentiousness. The makers of the gargoyles knew very
well that the gargoyles did not represent what was most important in
the Gothic cathedrals. They stood for just a little point of grotesque
reaction against, and relief from, the tremendous elemental vastness
and grandeur of the Houses of God. They were imps, sinister and comic,
grim and yet futile, and they fitted admirably into the framework of
the theology that found its expression in the towering and wonderful
piles which they ornamented.
Very little of the work of the extremists among the European “moderns”
seems to be good in and for itself; nevertheless it has certainly
helped any number of American artists to do work that is original
and serious; and this not only in painting but in sculpture. I wish
the exhibition had contained some of the work of the late Marcius
Symonds; very few people knew or cared for it while he lived; but
not since Turner has there been another man on whose canvas glowed
so much of that unearthly “light that never was on land or sea.” But
the exhibition contained so much of extraordinary merit that it is
ungrateful even to mention an omission. To name the pictures one would
like to possess--and the bronzes and tanagras and plasters--would
mean to make a catalogue of indefinite length. One of the most
striking pictures was the “Terminal Yards”--the seeing eye was there,
and the cunning hand. I should like to mention all the pictures of
the president of the association, Arthur B. Davies. As first-class
decorative work of an entirely new type, the very unexpected pictures
of Sheriff Bob Chandler have a merit all their own. The “Arizona
Desert,” the “Canadian Night,” the group of girls on the roof of a New
York tenement-house, the studies in the Bronx Zoo, the “Heracles,”
the studies for the Utah monument, the little group called “Gossip,”
which has something of the quality of the famous fifteenth idyl of
Theocritus, the “Pelf,” with its grim suggestiveness--these and a
hundred others are worthy of study, each of them; I am naming at random
those which at the moment I happen to recall. I am not speaking of
the acknowledged masters, of Whistler, Puvis de Chavannes, Monet; nor
of John’s children; nor of Cézanne’s old woman with a rosary; nor of
Redon’s marvellous color-pieces--a worthy critic should speak of these.
All I am trying to do is to point out why a layman is grateful to those
who arranged this exhibition.
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.
The illustration near the front of the book is the publisher’s logo.
Page 219: “understanded” was printed that way.
Page 287: “knight errants” was printed that way.