Riffs
Philip St. George Cooke
Radical
Freelance, Esq.
William Gibson, USN
Augustus Ely Silliman
Texts by Anonymous
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Harper's
Anonymously published travelogue with
extensive commentary on Italian scenery and art. The writer adopts the
persona of a Protestant minister from "the prosaic West." This 1858
Harper's article has been overlooked in scholarship on Melville,
but internal textual evidence points to Melville as the anonymous western
critic. Melville had recently spent almost two months in Italy, from
18 February to 15 April 1857. He kept a journal of his Italian
travels which appears to inform a number of descriptions and commentaries
in "Criticisms on Italy." For relevant entries and background, see
Melville's Journals, ed. Howard C. Horsford with Lynn Horth
(Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and the Newberry
Library, 1989), pp. 100-125; plus editorial notes and discussions at pp.
452-518. Melville also lectured on Italian statuary during the
winter of 1857-8; see his reconstructed lecture "Statues in Rome" in
Melville's Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, ed. Harrison
Hayford, Alma A. MacDougall, G. Thomas Tanselle, et. al. (Evanston
and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and the Newberry Library,
1987), pp. 398-409. Melville's talk focused on the Vatican. Other
famed sites such as the Coliseum and Forum were invoked but reluctantly
passed over by Melville: "I regret that the time will not allow me
to speak more fully of these surroundings" (407). "Criticisms on
Italy" devotes particular attention to the Coliseum and Forum, restoring
and re-peopling them along the lines suggested in Melville's journal
notations, more elaborately and vividly than we find him doing in the
reconstructed lecture on "Statues in Rome."
The initially sober tone of "Criticisms on Italy" gives way to
romantic enthusiasm in the latter half of the article, when the narrator
imaginatively resurrects people and
scenes from ancient history to enliven his experience of Italy's most
celebrated landmarks. Just arrived in Rome, Melville made a note in
his journal on the importance of linking scenery with history:
"The whole landscape nothing independent of
associations" (Journals,
106). In remarkably similar language the writer of "Criticisms on
Italy" observes the importance of "associations
with the past" and argues that "the principle of local
association must do more
for Italian travel than for any other" (374).
On another page of his 1856-7 journal Melville wrote:
"More imagination wanted at Rome than at home to appreciate
the place" (158). In multiple variations on the same idea, Melville
recorded his thought of "Restoring ruins," to "restore" the
Coliseum and "repeople it" with figures represented in Roman statuary and
sculpture. "Criticisms on Italy" triumphantly realizes Melville's
notion of restoring ruins and then re-populating the landscape with famous
figures from classical times.
See how fantastically the western critic does Melville's
job of restoring the ruins of Rome:
...The plot
thickens. We are moving just under the eminence on which is strewed
all that remains of the palaces of the Cćsars. Immediately in front
appears a triplet of decaying columns. Where can it be but in the
Old Forum? The forum, sure enough! with here a single shaft; before
us the facade of a temple; on our left the Capitoline, overhanging a large
group of ruins; on our right a succession of arches; and beyond all, and
above all, and more than all, what surely is the imperial Colosseum. Io
triumphe! Now rules the Past from her shattered urn. Now
shoutest thou, O heart, as we pace up and down this eloquent dust!
Now what choiring and exulting of long sleeping memories and enthusiasms,
as we try to fill up the broken
outline of monuments and decipher inscriptions; as we take our way
under triumphal arches and across gladiatorial arenas; as we frown on the
rope-making in the Basilica of Constantine, and the surpliced procession
passing through the Antonine Portico; as we descend into this excavation
white with discomfited marbles, and ascend to the site of that
Senate-house where so long sat the majesty of the Roman people!
Do we dream? Lo,
crowds of patrons and clients! See the dignity of Conscript Fathers
sweeping by! Hark to the hum of the thirty tribes met in swarming
Comita! Watches the censor, vetoes the tribune, hastens the dictator
to see that the republic receive no detriment. Along the Via Sacra
filleted white oxen are being led to the altars of Jupiter Capitolinus.
Stand aside! here come the lictors with their fasces, clearing the way for
a Tarquin, a consul, a decemvir, an imperator! What tramp is that?
A herald dashes in with news, from the legions in Britain, of new
victories. What tramp is that? A veteran cohort, fresh from
the Euphrates, comes proudly home, bearing aloft the all-conquering eagle,
to repose upon its laurels. A troop of Dacian gladiators on their
way to the Flavian! and see how the people are forsaking their shops, and
the magistrates their porticoes, and the senators their palaces, to
follow! Let us fall into this stream of togas. Tier upon
tier―ninety thousand spectators―brave Goths sinking on the bedabbled
sands, with the sword pausing at each throat. Shall they live?
No! says the fierce popular thumb, and all is over.
Leaving the ampitheatre, we pass between the Celian and
Aventine, by the baths of Caracella and the tomb of the Scipios, into
the Appian Way. Right hand and left,
at Fancy's bidding, the profuse
ruins of miles start up into noble sepulchres, and between them
Horace and his friends are driving gayly to Brundusium. A menage
of Numidian lions on their way to the Circus Maximus! Proconsuls
going meet proconsuls returning. Some fast young Fabian dashing
along to Baić is accosted by some fast young Claudian dashing along to
the capital. Steeds strangely caparisoned; stranger chariots;
promenading Brummels and Nashes in togas; couriers, procurators,
qućstors, prefects in route for the provinces; all bear us company as we
pass along: though men who see with eyes only would discern naught
save a ruined street, through which pace
three musing barbarians.
What are these? Two mounds just beyond the fifth mile-stone―ah,
friend Livy, we remember! These are the tombs of the Horatii and
Curatii; and here is their battle-field. Say nothing, ye Niebhurs―we will have
nothing to do with your provoking skepticism. The combat took
place, took place just here, and we will even sit down over the dust of
the heroes and see the thing all done again till we have faithfully
alleged that ultimate reason of travelers―a sandwich.
(375-376)
The old Romans would have regarded
the western critic and his two companions as "three musing barbarians."
The writer of "Criticisms on Italy" is thus one of a threesome.
Significantly, perhaps, the notes in Melville's Mediterranean journal
include a projected title, "Frescoes of Travel," for a travelogue "by
Three Brothers," originally conceived as a "Poet, Painter, and
Scholar" (Journals,
154). Melville later cancelled "Scholar" and substituted "Idler."
Melville's cancelled word Scholar is most suggestive in light of
the western critic's use of the same word in the context of making
historical associations on a tour of Italy:
...the principle of local association must
do more for Italian travel than for any other . From the Alps to
Spartivento it will be one long thrill to
the scholar. (374)
...
"Et quć tanta fuit Romam tibi causa videndi[?]" ['And what was the great
occasion of your seeing Rome?'; quoting Virgil's Eclogues 6.1:26.]
Certainly not her churches and scarlet hierarchy. Nor was it her
galleries of art, so famous and so admirable. It was
chiefly to hold converse with the
spirit of Old Rome, through her dust and crumbling monuments.
Hence, not for thee, renowned St. Peter's! nor for thee, O Vatican!
shall we set out this morning. Nothing less than the Tiber, and the
Capitoline, and the Forum, and the Appian Way, will satisfy us. So
sally we forth. Now for such a day as comes to
the scholar but once!
(375) Possibly, then, Melville
changed Scholar to Idler in his outline for a story by three
traveling brothers after he had made literary use of the scholar's
perspective in "Criticisms on Italy."
Contemporary newspaper reports of
Melville's 1857-8 lecture on "Statues in Rome" show that Melville (who
never attended college) introduced his subject by admitting his lack of
technical expertise in the fields of the fine arts, art history, and
aesthetics. Melville took pains to establish his right as a lay
person to offer commentary and criticism on Italian sculpture.
Moreover, Melville argued that ordinary people without specialized
training might actually do a better job of understanding and commenting on
art than the professional (and not infrequently pretentious) art critics.
Very similar claims for the legitimacy of art criticism by non-specialists
are advanced in "Criticisms on Italy." The terms and structure of
the western critic's argument are very close to Melville's, as may be seen
by comparison of the texts as we have them in the Harper's article
and Melville's reconstructed lecture. If anything, the western
critic makes Melville's points more elaborately and more eloquently than
Melville himself, although it must be stressed that no manuscript version
of Melville's talk has survived―we have only
transcriptions from newspaper reviews.
Melville's lecture "Statues in
Rome"
"Criticisms on Italy," Harper's 17 (Aug 1858): 371
(text quoted from NN Piazza Tales, pp. 398-399)
| It might be supposed that the only
proper judge of statues would be a sculptor, but it may be believed
that others than the artist can appreciate and see the beauty of the
marble art of Rome. If what is best in nature and knowledge
cannot be claimed for the privileged profession of any order of men,
it would be a wonder if, in that region called Art, there were, as to
what is best there, any essential exclusiveness. True, the
dilettante may employ his technical terms; but ignorance of these
prevents not due feeling for Art, in any
mind naturally alive to
beauty and grandeur. Just as the productions of nature may be
both appreciated by those who know nothing of Botany, or who have no
inclination for it, so the creations of Art may be, by those ignorant
of its critical science, or indifferent to it. Art strikes a
chord in the lowest as well as the highest; the
rude and uncultivated
feel its influence as well as the polite and polished. It is a
spirit that pervades all
classes. Nay, as it is doubtful whether to the scientific
Linnaeus flowers yielded so much satisfaction as to the unscientific
Burns, or struck so deep a chord in his bosom; so may it be a question
whether the terms of Art may not inspire in artistic but still
susceptible minds, thoughts, or emotions, not lower than those raised
in the most accomplished of
critics. Yet, we find that many thus
naturally susceptible to such impressions refrain from their
utterance, out of fear lest in their ignorance of technicalities their
unaffected terms might betray them, and that after all, feel as they
may, they know little or nothing, and hence keep silence, not wishing
to become presumptuous. There are many examples on record to
show this, and not only this, but that the
uneducated are very
often more susceptible to this influence than the learned. May
it not possibly be, that as Burns perhaps understood flowers as well
as Linnaeus, and the Scotch peasant's poetical description of the
daisy, "wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower," is rightly set above the
technical definition of the Swedish professor, so in Art, just as in
nature, it may not be the accredited wise man alone who, in all
respects, is qualified
to comprehend or describe.
With this explanation, I, who am neither critic nor
connoisseur, thought
fit to introduce some familiar remarks upon the sculptures in Rome, a
subject which otherwise might be thought to lie peculiarly within the
province of persons of a kind of
cultivation to which I
make no pretension. The topic is one of great extent, as Rome
contains more objects of interest than perhaps any other place in the
world. I shall speak of the impressions produced upon my
mind as one who looks
upon a work of art as he would upon a violet or a cloud, and admires
or condemns as he finds an answering sentiment
awakened in his soul.
My object is to paint the appearance of Roman statuary objectively and
afterward to speculate upon the
emotions and pleasure
that appearance is apt to excite
in the human breast.
(398-399) |
But it is as a repository of art rather
than of natural beauty that Italy prefers the greatest claims on our
attention. To be
qualified to judge of these claims, it seems to us that nothing
is needed beyond good eyes and good sense. The one merit of a
copy is fidelity to nature. In a fancy-piece the artist selects
his objects and the arrangement of them, and the merit of the work
depends not only on the objects and groupings being according to
nature, but also on their being fitted
to please or move the soul.
It is true that different persons are, to some extent, moved by
different things; but this diversity is superficial. As the
immeasurable granite is found underlying the varying soils and
products of all countries, so not far beneath the surface, in all
sound minds, we reach the one substratum of those great principles of
taste which have their foundation in essential human nature. It
is to these that the true artist appeals;
not to something special in
his own class, and the few others, who have been able to make a
study of art. Consequently, nothing more is needed to a correct
judgment in this field than a
really entire and unsophisticated mind. That
mind may be most
unlettered, and quite unable to state the grounds of its conclusions,
and yet, through its instincts, come to as decided and accurate a
result as the most cultivated
connoisseur. This is no new doctrine.
..."Ask the swain,
Who journeys homeward from a summer's day's
Long labor, why forgetful of his toils
And due repose, he loiters to behold
The sunshine gleaming, as through amber clouds,
O'er all the western sky. Full soon I ween
His rude expression and
untutored air,
Beyond the power of language, will unfold
The form of beauty smiling at his heart,
How lovely, how commanding! ―Heaven
In every breast has
sown these early seeds
Of love and admiration."
[quoting from Book III in Mark Akenside's Pleasures of
Imagination, also touted by Melville's "man with the weed" in
chapter 5 of The Confidence-Man (1857): "What do I
carry? See"―producing a pocket-volume ― "Akenside―his
'Pleasures of Imagination.' One of these days you will know it."]
And simply because he is more likely
to be the oracle of these natural sentiments, we would rather take the
verdict of one who has brought to the examination of the picture, the
statue, and the architecture nothing but the resources of a general
culture, than his who has super-added a special tutoring and
theorizing in art.
These views relate to those branches
of the fine arts which address themselves to the eye, but seem
applicable, in a degree, to that other branch which addresses itself
to the ear. We must, however, speak of Italian music with
diffidence. Doubtless its best specimens are to be found in the
operas and theatres of the capitals, and to these a Christian minister
does not care to find his way.... (371) |
Textual Parallels: "Criticisms
on Italy" in Harper's New Monthly Magazine 17 (August 1858:
368-377) and Herman Melville's Journals, ed. Howard C. Horsford
with Lynn Horth (Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and
the Newberry Library, 1989).
Herman Melville's Journal (Feb-April 1857)
Text of "Criticisms on Italy" (August 1858)
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Cold & raining all day....Came on violent rain; & walked home in it.... Raining pretty much
all day, at times violently. (Journals 114-115)
[Rome] March 3d, Tuesday....A
cold, raw, windy, dirty, & horribly disagreeable day. (109)
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Especially let every one to whom
it is any thing of an object to make sure of a soft winter not to stop
at Florence. We found there the cold, the blasts, and the snows of
New England—not the expected snow of distant mountain-tops, but the
unexpected of city streets—down to the very lip of the Arno. We could
tell of winds most skillful at anatomy; of slush quite as well
authenticated as any on the banks of the Connecticut... (369)
...though we did find a good deal of wet, chilly
weather in March in Lombardy, and a bit too much cold at Rome in
February. (369)
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[morning] To Pitti
gardens,
rather Boboli. Noble views of Florence & country. Strolled about
generally to churches, piazzas, &c. (Journals 114)
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What a
morning was that in the
Boboli Gardens! What courage it took to turn a corner, to cross a
bridge, to encounter the abandon of a
piazza! For once in our life we
were in favor of the south side view. (369)
[image of piazza makes the
writer think of "the south side view," perhaps a telling association
in that it recalls Melville's elaborate argument for the north side
view in "The Piazza," first chapter in The Piazza Tales
(1856).]
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Grand scenery. Long reaches of
streams through solitary vallies.
No woods. No
heartiness of scenery as in
New England. (Journals 116)
|
though
there is little tree-glory
anywhere, though we must confess to having found no such purity of
atmosphere as ought to strike
a New Englander, though there is little or nothing of that
embellishment of Nature by the taste of the people which has made such
a picture of England, still we must pronounce Italy a beautiful land.
(370)
[reference to England echoes Melville's comments on Oxford:
"Union of Art & Nature" (Journals 156)] |
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[Bay of Naples:] Detained on
board till 9 A. M. by Police
being dilatory. (Journals 101)
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...but stop, there comes
the inevitable police
with his Majesty’s permission to go ashore. (371; at Naples) |
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The beauty of the place, in
connection with its perilousness. (Journals 105)
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How the beauty is toned up by the
ruggedness of the background, and the cloudy threat of the volcano!
(371)
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| ...started in veturino
for Civitta Veccia....Desolate ride across desolate country. (Journals
113) ...Rome fell flat on me. ...The
whole landscape nothing independent of associations.
(106) |
Of all Italy the most
uninteresting, in point of scenery, is the Campagna. The ride
from Civita Vecchia to Rome is as dry as Thomas Aquinas; and so are
all the natural surroundings of the Eternal City. There is a
pleasant outlook from the Pincian over the city itself―of
course, one could see prodigiously from the summit of St. Peter's―but,
short of Tusculum, nothing
really attractive in the face of the country can be found.
The lover of nature should
become a lover of art and of the past ere he troubles himself to see
Rome. (370-371) |
|
Fagged out completely,
& sat long time by the obelisk, recovering from the stunning effect of
a first visit to the Vatican.
(Journals 108) |
The Ufizzi, the superbly
decorated Pitti, the labyrinthian
Vatican, the Museo
Borbonico; what traveler does not despair of even the
physical endurance
requisite to do justice to their prodigious collections! (372) |
|
To the
cathedral. Glorious. More satisfactory to me than St. Peters. A
wonderful grandure. Effect of burning window at end of aisle.
Ascended, —From below people in the turrets of open tracery look like
flies caught in cobweb. — The groups of angels on points of pinacles &
everywhere. Not the conception but execution. View from summit.
Might write book of travel upon top of Milan Cathedral. ...Talk.
About cathedral. (Journals 121) |
By far
the most striking of these [cathedrals at Rome, Pisa, Florence,
Venice, Milan], to our view, is the Duomo of Milan—the most elaborate,
fairy, poetic structure the world has ever seen. Any attempt to
describe it by detail would do it great injustice. The imagination
must be allowed the scope of a sweeping and misty phraseology in order
to rise to the beauty of this great temple. Just think of a Gothic
edifice of white marble almost as large as a small village, wrought
all over as carefully as a statue, surmounted by a forest of
pinnacles, and showing on its mere outside a population / of more than
three thousand statues; while through the pictured twilight of the
interior sweep mighty ranges of columns, around which worship, in
solemn pomp, the noblest vistas, and arches, and vaultings! (373-374) |
|
...Rome fell flat on me.
Oppressively flat. ―
... — Tiber a ditch,
yellow as saffron. The whole landscape nothing independent of
associations. (Journals 106) ...Remarked the banks of
Tiber near St: Angelo — fresh, alluvial look near masonry —
primeval as Ohio in the
midst of all these monuments of the centuries. (107)
|
And, first of all, let us
pay our duty to thee, O Father
Tiber! So away, until at last, by hook and by crook, here
we are, on the bank of a
small, muddy, swift stream. This is not the object of our
search―of course it is not. Still it is
yellow, and the books
tell us of but one stream in the city, and―we protest if there is not
the very island ship of Livy! Well,
Old Tiber, if we must
confess to a little disappointment, thou art yet more to us than ten
Mississippis. We dip
our hand in thee, and―though it be none the cleaner―feel
as though we had touched the great men who dwelt within hearing of thy
murmurs. (375) |
|
[at Patmos:] Was here again
afflicted with the great curse of modern travel―skepticism....
—Heartily wish Niebuhr
& Strauss to the dogs. — The deuce take their penetration and
acumen. They have robbed us of the bloom. If they have undeceived
any one—no thanks to them.
(Journals 97)
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Say nothing,
ye Niebhurs
[sic]―we will have nothing to do with your provoking
skepticism. (376) |
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