Memoirs of an Artist

The artist Farroukh lived sweet years of his youth, in the splendor and majesty of art, in Europe, in the shadows of temples and shrines, and in the galleries of museums, and his spirit drank deep of those immortal masterpieces of art... Here the artist continues, in "The Woman's Voice," the publication of these artistic musings, setting before us various examples of the deep spiritual struggle which those ancient nations have lived and still live.
- The Editors -

I continued my rounds in this museum toward the room of the foundling artist (Tomas), who recorded his feelings in his canvases, perfect in their colors, weeping in their lines. One of them depicts a woman hiding her face as she gives birth to a child still in swaddling clothes, weeping with shame before the traditions of a hypocritical, unjust society — that society which stabs with the right hand it extends in greeting, and deals treachery with the left.

This artist has great pictures, among them the one portraying that girl cast into prison by her oppressors for her love of her homeland. She did not despair, nor did she flinch: there in prison she set about weaving bandages for the wounded among her countrymen, the defenders of freedom and dignity.

With this canvas the artist means to say to the people of his society: "That woman whom you have wronged and treated harshly — she is the one who feels dignity and feels your pains, and she binds your wounds, you who wounded her heart and stabbed her pride..."

When I reached the central hall, my eye was caught, in the place of honor, by a mighty canvas ten meters in length, depicting the people of Rome — men and women, youths and old men — come to save their homeland with their money and their jewels, after they had failed to save it with their lives.

This is a magnificent example which art immortalizes in the field of patriotism, as it has immortalized others before in the field of nature, in society, and in the field of humanity, and as it ranges through every other field among all the fields of life. And is there any true society or life without art, as Taine said?...

And here are pictures by the young artist (Cremona), whose spirit could not endure that any barrier should stand between it and artistic expression; so he took the color between his fingers and began painting with it his canvases, full of delicate feeling. But the poisons [...] of the deadly pigments seeped into his body and destroyed him.

This artist gave his whole life to singing for us the splendor of love and the greatness of love. Among his canvases: The Lovers, or The Arbor Tree; The Cousins; and others.

And here there loomed before us, in all its grandeur and might, that canvas which greets all who enter as if it were a piece of life itself, its size reaching fifteen meters, from the brush of the artist (Michetti). This canvas presents a biting critical picture of certain pagan traditions that had crept into Christianity. His conscious soul, his limpid creed, and his pure, sound faith refused to keep silent about such errors, and he set about portraying them in a powerful canvas, in the frank style of a critic, thereby creating a social revolution in the liberation of thought. It left the best of impressions on his society, which valued his work both on the intellectual side and on the artistic — for its style was so very bold that certain pedants and conceited men rose up in uproar against it and attacked him. He answered them with a small canvas: (The Shepherdess and Her Sheep), which was exhibited beside the large one so that the difference might be seen.

This method was a practical reply that silenced the opponents, slapped their ignorance, and laid bare their conceit, by the power, precision, and classicism embodied in it — things they were incapable of matching. And so he won the battle, thanks to the nation's artistic maturity and awareness and its love of goodness, progress, and truth. The government bought this singular canvas and exhibited it in its greatest museums, and his work was a new artistic conquest.

And let us say a word about that artist who found in the animal a world all beauty and peace... and devoted his art and his life to working for it, producing for us a collection of animals full of delight, gentleness, and wisdom. Nor is this strange: how many great sages and men of letters have consecrated their literature and their learning to the speech of animals — and thereby taught that... speaking... animal, this human child of Adam!...

And here is the voice of the museum guard calling to the visitors, announcing that time is up. So I left this paradise in spite of myself... but I shall return to it...

That night I took to my bed believing myself the happiest of men. Of course, things in this life are relative... Some may see happiness in counting coins and sleeping on them... some in sitting at a green table... or over yellow piasters... Some see it in pouncing upon a table laden with every sort of delicious dish... and some see it in drinking wine and sitting with a beauty — and so on to the end of the tale of this world's many kinds of pleasure. But I hold that intellectual pleasure is the immortal one, and that everything short of it, however violent and extravagant it may grow, remains within the circle of this narrow, perishing body.