Salvator Rosa

Master Francois Villon, par excellence, is this latter, and one whose poetry, full of imagination, is no doubt on account of those presentiments which the ancients attributed to their fates, continually marked by a singular foreboding of the gallows, on which the said Villon one day nearly swung in a hempen collar for having looked too closely at the color of the king's crowns.

This same Villon, who more than once outran the watch started in his pursuit, this noisy guest at the dens of the Rue Pierre Lascot, this sponger at the court of the Duke of Egypt, this Salvatore Rosa of poesy, has strung together elegies the heartbreaking sentiment and truthful accents of which move the most pitiless and make them forget the ruffian, the vagabond, and the debauchee before this muse drowned in her own tears.

Besides, amongst all those whose but little known work has only been familiar to men for whom French literature does not begin the day when Malherbe came, Francois Villon has had the honor of being the most pillaged, even by the bigwigs of modern Parnassus.

They threw themselves upon the poor man's field and coined glory from his humble treasure.

I did not wonder that the foreigners would not stay, for this was no region to sleep in.

It was too much like a landscape of Salvatore Rosa, too much like some forbidden woodcut in a tale of terror.

But even all this was not so bad as the blasted heath.

I knew it the moment I came upon it at the bottom of a spacious valley, for no other name could fit such a thing, or any other thing fit such a name.

The supposed enemy of Christian society was therefore already becoming a stage role why witchcraft prosecutions and beliefs still remained within living memory.

At almost exactly the same historical moment, Salvatore Rosa's Witches at Their Incantations, painted around 1646, shows another extraordinary stage in that transformation, because the painting piles together nearly every nightmare component the visual tradition had accumulated.

naked witches, an aged crone, a cauldron, a corpse hanging from a dead tree, magical instruments, a wax effigy, a broom, a ritual circle, body parts, monsters, necromancy, and an infant being held toward the jaws of a grotesque creature.

Yet the painting was probably produced for a wealthy Florentine collector, and according to Rose's own correspondence, it was hung behind a curtain at the end of a gallery so that it could be suddenly revealed to unsuspecting visitors.

I did not wonder that the foreigners would not stay, for this is no region to sleep in.

It was too much like a landscape of Salvator Rosa.

too much like some forbidding woodcut in a tale of terror but even all this was not so bad as the blasted i knew it the moment i came upon it at the bottom of a spacious valley for no other name could fit such a thing or any other thing fit such a name It was as if the poet had coined the phrase from having seen this one particular region.

It must, I thought, as I viewed it, be the outcome of a fire, but why had nothing new ever grown over those five acres of grey desolation that sprawled open to the sky like a great spot eaten by acid in the woods and fields? It lay largely to the north of the ancient road line, but encroached a little on the other side.

Divestissement Angois.

the power of music its origin and influence relation to nature bach mozart and beethoven sources of their inspiration autobiographical sketch liszt as a lad his voluntary exile revival of the home feeling his love of nature Religious feeling, the gypsies, a famous visit to them, picturesque surroundings, wild dances, talks with the old men, the gypsy hags, an impromptu orchestra and wonderful music, a weird night scene, Salvatore Rosa effects, grotesque cavalcade, the concert at the inn, a demoniac symphony, wild revel in a thunderstorm, Liszt's Hungarian music.

the work of artistic genius will always remain an enigma to be silently admired by us like the incomprehensible and creative phenomena of nature of which it is by its very essence a part and a speaking likeness transporting the whole nature and again rousing a secret awe in the presence of its mysterious power which like nature itself knows neither good nor evil deliciously revelling in a flood of light as when the first morning of creation revealed the boundless fullness of its form and again filling one with fear and dread of the overpowering immeasurability and the mysterious depths of the original creative power with such varied emotions this creative force of genius fills us especially in music when it confronts us almost face to face with the sense of that secret incomprehensible world force which endlessly destroying creates again and creates only to destroy whence comes the power to a single individual which subdues millions of hearts which for centuries has dictated the laws of thought and feeling which seems even to broaden the limits of creation while it produces pictures and images which were not pre-existent is it not the same with the images of tragic poetry does it not like the antique live an imperishable life by the side of and yet above humanity do not these melodies of mozart and beethoven give us a new and different view of our kind and does not the mighty leipzig cantor sebastian bach construct a dome of mere tones which is a part of the plan and order of the universe we call the cosmos a tangible and perceptible mental structure as apparent as the everlasting abode of deity whence comes we repeat this incomprehensible power this knowledge we are almost inclined to regard as something unprecedented and impossible is it an accident of natural endowment a mysterious inner combination of powers which have no connection with the customary mental processes but expand and work in a time and place which we must consciously recollect in order to comprehend the designated results of its immeasurable creative power the higher spiritual perceptions in their widest development must spread out before the poetical genius ere he can collect the beams which make a new sun life for the world Homer and Sophocles, like Shakespeare and Goethe in their overpowering creations, represent a new world period in the growth of humanity, and Beethoven well knew what he said when, in a letter to Bettina, he called the great, that is the true poet, quote, the most precious treasure of a nation, end quote.

the highest flights of the plastic perceptions combined with the objective results of technical skill through long generations at last make possible the appearance of a phidias and a raphael who has fully comprehended that grand musical architect sebastian bach who looks down from the true heights of humanity on a whole generation of spirits who lived and thought in that other world in which the very creation seemed to repeat itself through the mere ethereal tone vibrations nay more a creation was fashioned having nothing to do with the other world and if one may credit the bold hypotheses of the philosophers able to exist without it and mozart can we fancy an existence in which the tenderest graces of life bloom like roses and violets without a development of those sources in the human breast in their endless breadth and ineffable depth and reaching their full maturity from which melody flows and in which the eternal power of creation reveals itself like the reason in idea and word and then beethoven deeply concealed world pervading and far-reaching influences must have preceded the supernatural power of volition and inspiration before such a phenomenon could appear and like a new solar system enter the firmament which seems already open for him Had we not these remote and world-old proofs of this highest human inspiration preceding all culture, did we not know the deeds, did we not possess the songs of our mighty ancestors which sing them, were it not for these known and observed influences, a phenomenon like Beethoven could not be comprehended.

He then gives a description of Raiding, his birthplace, accompanied with the warmest and heartiest praise of Hungary and its people.

to them though of older stock belong the gypsies apparently the most scattered and wasted of all people on earth and yet a homogeneous race which more than all the others has its own peculiar gift and has given it to the world as its contribution to the aggregate of human culture the gypsy music Young Liszt, Ferenc, Hungarian for Franz, like them was also a musician in the sense that nothing in the world could transcend in his estimation such a sole possession, while he, and perhaps he alone, could fully realize that blessing which is the holiest thing to men and which is born spontaneously in all its perfection and purity of this art of tone, religion.

lists knew this unfortunately fortunate wandering people with their music they had first revealed to his soul that deep supernal world as we above characterize their music out of the passionate stir of all the mental powers as well as of pleasure in their impetuous rhythms had come to him the irrepressible longing for a purer and higher mental expression which resounded in their gipsy melodies like the sole lament of the world he had experienced and realized that to him as to the gypsies music was an all a hold upon life itself scarcely weaker than the natural bonds of the closest human intimacy or of the love of children and parents he knew that to this miserable people without home or place without social affiliations or culture even without religion this spontaneous art of music was all that the world offers beyond mere nature and her gifts culture and customs it was to them those higher thoughts and deeper emotions of human life we call religion and god himself as a boy he had realized the expiation which must be made for the attainment of such a spiritual condition he had heard these tones rising from the lowest depths of a mysterious being and pervading his earliest emotions with all the energy of a heart full of the inexhaustible power of youth and he had felt himself alternating between rapture and sorrow between tears and delight between pride and desire the plaything of those uncomprehended and eternal powers which nevertheless are the source and essence of life for years he had acquired and exercised in the great world that immense skill which complete devotion to an external object secures he was deeply absorbed as well as passionately delighted as his hands rested upon the keys as his spirit floated in tones as his eyes were full of a higher delight in the sight of a world transcending the senses as his breast heaved with the unaccustomed fullness of the impressions of such feeling and of such a spectacle and he fully shared the boundless and enthusiastic impressions which his art his magical plaything exercised all this he had realized a hundredfold why then should his heart not beat when he saw the gypsies again and when he heard again those tones which so to speak had summoned him to life for his life was and is yet only music and these gypsy melodies are as it were the soul of the country to which above all other countries of the world they peculiarly belong it was this country which first appreciated this music for hungary or a magyar festival without it is no hungary no festival the gypsies and their music are like another and ideal fatherland in that of hungary the most sadly longing as well as the most deliriously passionate expression of its national existence liszt unquestionably the greatest son which this hungary has yet produced has paid a tribute to that race the gipsies apparently the weakest of all earth's people which with conscientious fidelity tells the story of what they really are and what he himself owes to them the description of his hungarian fatherland of his beloved countrymen and then of the manner of life and ideas of those restless wanderers their mysterious origin and still more mysterious endurance as a people the mystery of their moral duration if one may so call it in all their outward change and constant privation the atmosphere of poetry or of the actual world spirit as one might say which surrounds them as it does all the simple products of nature all this one must read in the volume the gypsies and their music in hungary for tender love delicate observation faithful portraiture deep intellectual perception ethical criticism and genuine poetical ideal clearness one can find no parallel to the manner in which he has described for us his apparently god and world forsaken people maintaining their right to exist it is a beautiful heart and soul tribute which the great artist has paid them one part of this volume his visit to the gipsies confirms in every particular what we have said above of the influence of their art upon him and of the divine free inspiration and untrammeled genius of music as the direct outcome of the primitive force of the world itself we shall let our volume tell the story it is a variegated picture and as salvator rosa among the robbers is once said to have studied the absolute unrestraint and individuality of their natural life and the consequent incomparable variety of character and characteristics of landscape figures groups costumes colors and forms so we shall find in this highly colored picture at least one of the numerous germs and shoots which enlist develop into such a strong and vigorous tree from these genuine children of nature he acquired at least the one indispensable element of all our creation a complete freedom and absolute consecration of the entire nature to it liszt relates that on his first return to hungary in the summer of eighteen thirty eight he wished to refresh his youthful recollections with some of their liveliest impressions and to see again these gipsy bands in the woods and fields in the picturesque promiscuity of their marches and halting-places with all the contrast of the union of ages passions and varying moods free from any conventional gloss or mask rather than in the stifled city streets whose dust they gladly shake off preferring to wound their feet with the thorns and stubble of the heath than with the rough pavements i visited them in their outdoor kingdom slept with them under the open heavens played with the children made presents to the maidens gossiped with their rulers and chiefs listened at their concerts given to gratuitous audiences and by a hearth-fire whose place chance determined salvatore rosa among the robbers thereupon follows a description which strikingly contrasts the extreme naturalness of these wandering hordes with the splendor of cities particularly of the world-ruling paris and with the education and polish of the child of the salon who was nevertheless an artist and who could say to himself afterwards i became myself a wandering virtuoso in my fatherland like them i was like them a stranger to the people like them i pursued my ideal in a complete devotion to art if not to nature stretched out upon the close crisp fleeces of their lambskin mantles out of which they prepare a couch of honour resting upon freshly plucked and fragrant flowers before it a row of lofty ash-trees whose wide-spread branches seem to support the blue sky stretched out like a broad pavilion and ornamented with curtains of vapoury clouds at his feet a mossy turf sprinkled with the brightest meadow flowers like those tapestries of the mexican caciques he spent hours listening to one of the best of the gipsy orchestras whose playing was animated by the beauty of the summer day and the abundance of its favourite drink and accompanied with indescribable ardour the dances of their women who shook their tambourines with gentle cries and fascinating gestures during the intervals of rest so he says he heard the creaking of the poorly greased axles of their wagons which had been removed to one side to leave more room for the dancers and the huzzas of the boys in their own jargon which the musicians politely translated into en list verens or hurrah for franz liszt then came shouts of delight at sight of a meal composed of meat and honey a noisy cracking of nuts by white-toothed children and bright laughter mad leaps somersaults and a wild whirl and bustle a genuine lyric of untamed nature and caprice actual battles were fought over favorite delicacies such as some sacks of peas around which tattered megara with their disheveled hair bleared eyes toothless jaws hands trembling like aspen leaves danced incredible sarabands for these gifts which promised to satisfy the greediness the men to whom he had given beautiful horses laughingly showed their dazzling teeth and cracked their finger joints like castanets threw their caps high in air strutted about like peacocks and then commenced the fiery rhythms of their dances with a vigor which soon became a frenzy and at last reached that delirious whirl which forms the culminating point of the ecstasy of the dervish dances truly a tempting bit for the brush of a genuine netherlander but can any one paint their music as well we shall see but we will first continue the narrative which leads us to the very verge of this singular unrestrained and apparently purposeless nomadic existence he conversed for a long time with the old men of the tribe and besought them to tell him some of their experiences from their own recalling their memory however did not extend beyond the limits of the living generation and he was obliged to help them in recalling the course of events so that they could keep them in regular order once they have secured the thread of a story so this close observer informs us they experience extraordinary pleasure and seem to regain in all their original freshness feelings which have been long concealed under later impressions the less frequently this occurs however the greater is the delight with which they again sound the strains of the old time and with growing enthusiasm often with a bizarre kind of poetry and with imagery tinted with a constantly increasing oriental glow they describe the scenes which they have drawn from their recollections The description itself was only the expression of momentary and accidental passion, not of a well-considered purpose or regularly developed plan.

Hence, these impetuous, unrestrained, unsubdued impulses make dissimulation unnecessary.

I did not wonder that the foreigners would not stay, for this is no region to sleep in.

It was too much like a landscape of Salvator Rosa, too much like some forbidding woodcut in a tale of terror.

but even all this was not so bad as the blasted heath i knew it the moment i came upon it at the bottom of a spacious valley for no other name could fit such a thing or any other thing fit such a name It was as if the poet had coined the phrase from having seen this one particular region.

It must, I thought, as I viewed it, be the outcome of a fire, but why had nothing new ever grown over those five acres of gray desolation that sprawled open to the sky like a great spot eaten by acid in the woods and fields? It lay largely to the north of the ancient road line, but encroached a little on the other side.

I did not wonder that the foreigners would not stay, for this was no region to sleep in.

It was too much like a landscape of Salvatore Rosa, too much like some forbidden woodcut in a tale of terror.

But even all this was not so bad as the blasted heath.

I knew it the moment I came upon it at the bottom of a spacious valley, for no other name could fit such a thing, or any other thing fit such a name." It was as if the poet had coined the phrase from having seen this one particular region.

Chapter two, Diversissement en Gois.

The power of music, its origin and influence, relation to nature, Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, sources of their inspiration, autobiographical sketch, Liszt as a lad, his voluntary exile, revival of the home feeling, his love of nature, religious feeling, the gypsies, a famous visit to them, picturesque surroundings, wild dances, talks with the old men, the gypsy hags, an impromptu orchestra and wonderful music, a weird night scene, Salvatore Rosa effects, grotesque cavalcade, the concert at the inn, a demonic symphony, wild revel in a thunderstorm, Liszt's Hungarian music.

The work of artistic genius will always remain an enigma to be silently admired by us like the incomprehensible and creative phenomena of nature of which it is, by its very essence, a part and a speaking likeness.

Transporting the whole nature and again rousing a secret awe in the presence of its mysterious power, which, like nature itself, knows neither good nor evil, deliciously reveling in a flood of light, as when the first morning of creation revealed the boundless fullness of its form, and again filling one with fear and dread of the overpowering immeasurability and the mysterious depth of the original creative power, with such varied emotions, this creative force of genius fills us, especially in music, when it confronts us almost face to face with the sense of that secret, incomprehensible world force which, endlessly destroying, creates again and creates only to destroy.

One part of this volume, his visit to the Gypsies, confirms in every particular what we have said above of the influence of their art upon him, and of the divine free inspiration and untrammeled genius of music as the direct outcome of the primitive force of the world itself.

We shall let our volume tell the story.

It is a variegated picture, and as Salvatore Rosa among the robbers is once said to have studied the absolute unrestraint and individuality of their natural life, and the consequent incomparable variety of character and characteristics of landscape, figures, groups, costumes, colors, and forms, so we shall find in this highly colored picture at least one of the numerous germs and shoots which, in Liszt, develop into such a strong and vigorous tree.

From these genuine children of nature, he acquired at least the one indispensable element of all art creation, a complete freedom and absolute consecration of the entire nature to it.