Michael Angelo, with his statues of David and Moses, proved that
Phidias and Praxiteles had not exhausted the marvelous possibilities
of the art of sculpture. Rodin, with his “Thinker,” has shown,
while Phidias and Praxiteles demonstrated the possibility of giving
immortality to the unsurpassed beauty of Grecian form, and while
Michael Angelo revealed the power of expressing grace, as in David,
and commanding leadership, as in Moses, that the achievements of these
two schools of art were the Pillars of Hercules, not marking the limit
of art, but the open gateway to uncharted seas and undiscovered realms
in the art of reshaping marble. There is not a lofty sentiment of the
soul, a struggling aspiration toward goodness, or form of idealism
that cannot be made to live in marble, and exert undying influence.
There is more than “an angel in the block of marble.” There are all the
hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, laughter and tears, longings and
aspirations, desires and despairs; there is all that is manly, noble,
and heroic, lying in any block of marble awaiting the coming of the
liberating chisel. What inspiration to the young artist of to-day, and
what joy to all lovers of the beautiful! The depths of earth are stored
with a wealth of unquarried statues.
The progress of civilization is ofttimes hindered because youth, in
thinking of statues, consider the pedestals upon which they rest rather
than the depth from which they were quarried. They very often do not
care to begin life at the right place. Because they covet praise, and
enjoy the warm, congenial atmosphere of appreciation, they shun the
depths, hours of loneliness, the unrequited toil of preparation, and
the laborious efforts of beginning. Modeling clay is an important part
of the achievement; but getting the proper marble is one of the first
essentials.
The experience of Michael Angelo is common to all men of real
achievement: he found that the market place does not offer marble
blocks of sufficient size for him to work out his divine conception.
Hucksters and makers of money in the market place seldom understand
ambitious youth that asks for larger blocks than they are capable
of handling. Their idea of a great thought is an ornament for the
mantelpiece. But men of achievement will not be daunted. Locking
his studio, Angelo went to superintend the breaking of blocks in
the mountain of Carrara, and when the sluggish-minded people of the
mountains refused to do his bidding, he opened new quarries in Seravez.
Before he could carve his statue he knew that he must quarry a block of
marble sufficiently large. He knew also that the block of marble could
be had for the digging. He found what he needed but did not exhaust the
treasury. The world still has the material, richer than that which made
Angelo and Rodin famous, awaiting the youth of ambition to undertake
great things, and the willingness, at any cost, to superintend the
breaking of the marble blocks from the buried storehouses.
The pleasure of nature is to store her raw material in seemingly
inaccessible strongholds. She does not willingly yield them to men
lacking vision and great conceptions. If they were of easy access,
common men would crush them to make roads for donkeys to tramp over.
Nature’s treasures are too valuable for ignorance to destroy, so she
locks them in secret depths or inaccessible heights, awaiting the
coming of the man of genius. If only a man yields himself to the divine
leadings, and catches a vision of a statue like Moses, or a façade
for the Church of San Lorenzo, or for a mausoleum for the Medici,
no mountainside is too steep to chisel a roadway through the jagged
rocks, no morass so yielding but that a solid highway may be erected,
no water so troubled but that boats may safely transport the precious
marble. He will not depend upon hirelings nor lean upon borrowed
strength. The dream of beauty must be wrought in marble, the unquarried
statue must be lifted from obscurity and made to live in some public
place, therefore he will personally attend to the breaking of the
blocks.
It is not an easy matter to live out a divine idea and make it a thing
tangible and real for a critical world to examine and criticize and
afterwards love and venerate. Sluggards and lovers of ease cannot do
it. To them an unquarried statue is only a stone. For centuries no one
has given it any attention; why should they? They would rather have
something to eat and drink. A cushioned chair is far more comfortable
to sit on, and a potato is much more substantial food. What they want
is something to eat, and a place in which to lounge, and because they
do not see the value of great ideas they can never be forgotten when
dead, for they were never known while living.
He lives who forgets to live and concentrates all his powers in
bringing to light the vision of his beauty-loving soul. It may be
the beauty of art or the beauty of worthy living; it may be the
beauty of perfect workmanship in shop or factory, or the beauty of a
wholesome influence flowing from noble character; it may be loveliness
of sympathetic serving, or the beauty of aggressive battle for
righteousness; it may take any one of many forms of exalted thinking
and endeavor, yet its realization comes only when one eats, and drinks,
and bends every energy, not for the sake of living, but for the
realization of that which is more than living.
How lamentable for a human life to end and find at the final judgment
that all its days were of less value to the world than that of a coral
polyp! How wonderful for one to be made out of dust, and after a while
to crumble back into dust, and yet, refusing to grovel in the dust,
leave the world richer, and better, and more beautiful, so that people
of another age will breathe his name in reverence as they behold that
which he hath wrought. Professor Finsen, the inventor of the “light
cure,” was an invalid for many years, yet he labored like a slave, in
the severest self-denial, to bring his invention, without compensation,
to the service of the world’s sick and suffering. He had but one dread
and that was the regret of dying, and leaving his little five-year-old
boy without any memory of his father. He desired to live long enough
to impress his face and life upon the memory of his son, that, in the
after years, the growing man would never forget the one who toiled so
earnestly for him. He did not want to be forgotten. How little did he
dream of the immortality that was his! He found an unquarried statue
in the sunbeam where others had overlooked it. Through ceaseless toil
he brought it within the vision of the world and gained a name that
countless ages will not forget.
How wonderful to be the son of such a man! And though the image of the
father’s face be blotted from the memory, the statue that he carved
will help and heal the generations. How wonderful to be the son of such
a man, but how much more wonderful it is to be the man himself! To
fight with optimistic heart against the ravages of disease, to overcome
the natural yearnings of a father’s heart, to endure the most slavish
toil without thought or hope of compensation, to be a sick man fighting
for others who were sick; a dying man making battle against disease
that others may not taste of death!
This is the joy unspeakable, to know that life is not in vain, but
everlastingly worth while. The visions shall not fade as summer clouds
at twilight time, but shall live in that which is as imperishable as
marble. Each one can say with deep resolve: “Men shall behold the
beauty of my soul by beholding the beauty of my daily life. Since
words are blossoms, I shall, with gracious speech, show my friends how
choice a garden I have planted in my heart. Since every blossom bears
a seed I shall take pleasure in planting them within the hearts of
others, that the beauty of my life may live in them. Out of the marble
block that it has been mine to break from its hiding place, I shall
carve the image I have treasured so long within my heart.” To do this
is to find a joy unspeakable. Life is not useless, but gloriously worth
while. Eating, and drinking, and toiling for that which is far more
than life, one can never die.