Читать книгу In Paradise (Musaicum Must Classics) - Paul Heyse - Страница 14

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When his friends overtook him in the street he remained silent and serious; while Rosenbusch praised, in the most extravagant language, the beauty of the picture.

"If my heart were not already in such firm hands," he said, with a sigh, "who knows what might happen! But constancy is no empty dream. Besides, Angelica would scratch any one's eyes out who tried to play the Romeo to her Juliet. But where are you dragging us to, Jansen?"

"We are going to see 'Fat Rossel.'"

"Then I prefer to withdraw at once to my feeding-place and to await you there. I have made a solemn vow never again to visit that accursed Sybarite just before meal-time. It smells so devilishly of ambergris, pâti de foie gras and East-Indian birds'-nests, so that after coming away a man feels like a thorough vagabond over his wretched dumplings. The devil take these lazy voluptuaries! Long live energy and sauerkraut!"

After this fierce outburst he nodded smilingly to the two others, slouched his big hat over his left ear, and turned, whistling, into a side street.

"Who is this 'Fat Rossel' against whom our friend Rosebud displays all his thorns?" asked Felix.

"He isn't really so fierce as he tries to make himself out. The two are good comrades, and would go through fire and water for one another in case of need. This so-called 'Fat Rossel'--one Edward Rossel--is a very rich man who isn't obliged to earn his living by painting--and for that reason lets his great talent lie fallow. However, he has reduced his intellectual laziness and amateur enjoyment of art to a system, and concerning this system Rosenbusch invariably falls foul of him; for he himself, in spite of all his 'energy,' has never produced anything of much account. Here we are at the house."

They passed through the pretty little front garden, before which they had halted the day previous while on their way to the Pinakothek, entered the door of a villa-like house, and mounted a staircase covered with soft carpets. The hall shone with polished marbles, bronze candelabra, and beautiful flowering plants in porcelain pots, that perfumed the whole vestibule.

When they entered the high-studded room above, that served as a studio, but looked more like a museum of choice objects and works of art than it did like a regular artist's workshop, there rose from a low divan, covered with a leopard's skin, a singular figure. On a portly but by no means clumsy body rested a stately head, in which sparkled a pair of exceedingly bright black eyes. The face was of a very white complexion, the beautiful hands were daintily cared for. The cut of the features, with the close cropped silky hair, and the long black beard, recalled the beautiful, dignified type of the high-bred Orientals. This impression was still further heightened by a little red fez, shoved back on the head, and a variegated Persian dressing-gown with slippers to match, into which his bare feet were thrust, while the dressing-gown apparently served in lieu of any other clothing.

Slowly, but with great cordiality, the painter advanced to meet his friends, shook hands with them, and said: "I made your acquaintance yesterday from a distance, Herr Baron--through the blinds, when that sly dog Rosebud was trying to entice me out into the noonday heat with his flute. But that kind of thing is against my principles. It may be all very meritorious to eat one's bread in the sweat of one's brow. But as for enjoying art when reeking with perspiration--never! Excuse the costume in which I receive you. I have just been taking a douche bath and afterward resting a quarter of an hour. In five minutes I shall be in a condition to present my material part with propriety."

He disappeared into a side chamber, that was only separated by a magnificent piece of Gobelin tapestry from his studio, and went on talking with his friends while completing his toilet.

"Just take a look at my Böcklin, that I bought the day before yesterday--over there by the window on the little easel--I am quite happy over the possession. Well, what do you say to it, Jansen? Isn't that something to console one's self with for a while, in the midst of this universal poverty of art?"

It was a little forest picture, that stood in the most favorable light, near the window; it represented a dense wood of lofty oaks and laurel bushes, through a little cleft of which could be seen a slender strip of the distant horizon, and in one corner a patch of blue sky. At the feet of the shady trees a brook rippled through the luxuriant grass, on the banks of which reclined a sleeping nymph, with her nursling at her side, its blunt little nose pressed close against the full maternal breast, from which it seemed to be feeding quietly. In the centre of the picture, leaning against a luxuriant tree, stood the young father, a slim, well-built faun, looking down well pleased upon his family, and holding in his hand the shepherd's flute with which he had just played his wife to sleep.

Felix and Jansen were still absorbed in the contemplation of this charming work when Rossel again appeared.

"Such a thing is refreshing, isn't it?" he said. "It is a comfort to know that there are still men who have such beautiful dreams, and the courage to tell them to others, no matter if advanced and sensible humanity, which now, thank God, has outgrown its baby shoes, and every day sets its foot down more squarely on the broad sole of realism, does shake its head and talk about having gotten beyond such standpoints. This man is one of the few who interest me. You have undoubtedly seen his splendid pictures in the Schack Gallery? No? Well, since you have only been two days in Munich, I will forgive your ignorance. I will take you there; it will afford me the greatest pleasure to recruit a quiet list of worshipers for my few idols."

"First of all," said Felix, smiling, "you would do me a greater favor if you would show me something by one Edward Rossel, to whose acquaintance my friends have led me to look forward with great curiosity."

"My own immortal works!" cried the painter, threatening Jansen with his finger. "I know who is behind all this. I know the sly cabals of my much-esteemed friends, who seize every opportunity to parade my unproductiveness before my eyes. I know that they mean no harm, and give me credit for some talent; I ought to be ashamed of myself for not sharing this good opinion and at last rousing myself to action. But it all glances aside from the armor of my own self-knowledge. I don't deny that I have all sorts of good qualifications for an artist, sense and brains and some insight into the true aims of art. Unfortunately, there is only one little thing lacking--the disposition to really produce something. I should have been just the man to have been born a Raphael without hands, and would have borne this fate with the greatest complacency. But won't you light a cigar, or do you prefer a chibouque? By the way, a little refreshment wouldn't be out of place, considering this tropical temperature."

Without waiting for an answer, he rang a beautifully chased silver bell.

A young servant-girl, of pretty figure and graceful manner, entered; the painter whispered a word in her ear, whereupon the girl disappeared and returned, five minutes after, with a silver waiter, on which stood a wicker-work bottle and some glasses.

"I brought this wine myself from Samos," said Rossel; "You must at least taste it and drink to our good friendship!"

"Then let me immediately sin against that friendship and ask a somewhat indiscreet question: how is it possible for you to bury, like a dead treasure, a talent which you yourself admit you have?"

"My dear fellow," replied the artist, coolly, "the matter is much simpler than you suppose. My object is, like that of all men--let them prate as much as they like about duty, virtue, or self-sacrifice--to be as happy as possible. But happiness consists, as I believe, in nothing else than in creating for one's self a certain state, a manner of life or pursuit, in which one finds himself at the height of his individuality, in the full enjoyment of his peculiar powers and gifts. Therefore, every man has a happiness of his own; and nothing can be more foolish than for one person to object to another's way of enjoying himself, or to persuade or advise others to exchange their way for his. The more any one makes himself feel, by his manner of life, that he is a particular individual, the more Nature has attained her end in making him, and the more contented he can be with himself and his situation. All unhappiness arises from the fact that men try to do things for which they are not fitted. If you give a million to a man born with a genius for begging, you will make him an unhappy millionaire. He can no longer exercise his talent. A virtuoso in suffering, a Stylites, or a sister of charity, for whom you should suddenly provide a healthy and comfortable life, would at once lose all individuality and so all happiness. For it is undeniable that there are men who are only conscious of their individuality when they are torturing themselves, in the coarser or finer sense of the expression. To such, a state of repose is an abasement, and to this class belong all truly productive artists. To work, to produce something which shall afterward stand as a monument of their power, appears to them the highest happiness; and this happiness ought to be accorded to them all the more readily, from the fact that most of them cannot live without it. Only they ought to be just enough to look at the matter also from the opposite point of view, where an individual only feels conscious of his powers and gifts when in the free enjoyment of an apparently fruitless repose. When I lie on my back and make pictures in the smoke of my cigar, or gaze upon the works which great creative beings have produced in times gone by, am I not, in my way, putting to good use that buried treasure within me in which you were so good as to believe? and making of this individual, whom his friends accuse of culpable laziness, the very thing for which he was really fitted and intended--a perfectly harmonious and happy man? Once in a while, indeed, the vulgar prejudice seizes even me, and I suddenly grow tremendously active. But after the paroxysm has lasted a week, at the longest, I suddenly see the folly of the proceeding and throw the unfinished daub into some dark closet, among other embryos of immortal works. Ah! my dear friend, there is so much struggling, and pushing, and producing going on, that a quiet, inoffensive art-lover of my disposition might well be tolerated as a salutary antidote to this epidemic of activity."

"We will let this old apple of discord drop for to-day," interrupted Jansen, smiling. "I won't yet give up my old bet that some fine day you will cease to take comfort in this bed that you have stuffed with sophisms, and will begin to seek your happiness in some other way. But in the meanwhile you might certainly show yourself at my place again. I should like to know what you would say to my dancing girl; and besides, I have done all sorts of other things since you were there."

"I will come, Hans. You know how I delight to take to heart the frightful example of industry that I see in your saint-factory. By the way--isn't next Saturday 'Paradise?'"

"Certainly. The last before the autumn. Most of the fellows have already begun to make their preparations for the summer vacation, and in fourteen days we three shall probably be almost the only ones who still hold out in the city."

They left the studio, the painter accompanying them as far as the gate of the front yard, and taking leave of Felix with great cordiality and the hope that he should see him often.

"What is this about 'Paradise?'" inquired the latter, when they were alone in the street again.

"You shall soon see for yourself. We come together once a month and attempt to delude ourselves into the idea that it is possible in the midst of this world to throw off the hypocrisy of society, and return once more to a state of innocence. And for a few years past we have really been fairly successful. A little group of good fellows has been brought together, who are all equally impressed with the worthlessness of our social state. But, after all, the German is not a social creature; that which constitutes the charm of such societies among the Latins and Slavs--the delight in talking for talking's sake, a certain delicacy in lying, and, moreover, an early-acquired and really humane tact and consideration for one's neighbors--all this we may possibly gain in time in some of our large cities. But for the time being it is certainly foreign to the genius of our nation, and it is only feebly developed. The consequence is that in this city of art, where of all the arts that of sociability is most behindhand, one has to choose between two evils: the conventional society entertainments, which are chiefly devoted to eating and drinking, and where one is seldom compensated for the constraint of cultivated ennui; or else Philistinism over the beer-table. For this reason we have adopted another plan, which, to be sure, can only be successful when all those who take part in it are united by the same longing for freedom, and the same respect for the freedom of their neighbors. For, when no one wraps a cloak about him, but shows himself unrestrainedly just as he is, no one, on the other hand, has a right to pounce maliciously on the weak spots which his neighbor may possibly expose--and each must, upon the whole, be so constituted that he can show himself in his true character without being disagreeable."