Dos crónicas desconocidas de José Martí

Carlos Ripoll

I ) ONE OF THE GREATEST MODERN PAINTERS
The Career and the Works of the Spaniard, Eduardo Zamacois

Madrid is a charming city. There men and women promenade, laugh, and love more than in any other city in the world. In the mild and genial winter evenings the theatres are filled with spectators. The favorite actors are those who create laughter. Men who are tired love to laugh. Among these favorites is a small, delicate young man formerly a soldier, the brother of a cantatrice and of a great painter. He has the talent of imitation. He duplicates the voices, gestures, and peculiarities of society people. Aside from his imitative powers, and despite his non-chalant air, high voice, and peculiar eyes, you might say that he is a very bad actor; but when you hear him mock the accent of popular tragedians and comedians, and see him counterfeit the melancholy airs of the poets of the day, you will roar with merriment and recognize his extraordinary power by furious hand clappings. Like the sublime and the beautiful, ridicule has its genius. The mimicry of individuals and the exaggeration of human foibles, however contemptible it may seem to great hearts, is useful and salutary. It is a criticism unblinded by either jealousy or hatred. This young actor, Zamacois, arranging his costumes on the stage and imitating anybody to perfection, is a veritable bull in a china shop. His genius is critical. He is a living caricature, without the elevation which characterized his brother, the painter. He has the same talent of parody and the same gayety, without his brother's profundity. Whence comes his wonderful mimicry? He has been a student at the military college, a nest of scapegraces. He has led a wandering life, in which talent, like a neglected plant, withers and dies. All this undoubtedly has its influence, for the young man is naturally a keen observer. But he probably draws his genius from the same source as his caustic and observing brother, whose steady hand has left upon the canvas pictures clear and vibratory and more powerful in the reconstruction of the past for the service of the future than the laborious delineations of artists who devote themselves to the task of seeking isolated facts in dead ages.

The talent of fixing an epoch on canvas, or on a few sheets of paper, is not given to the vulgar. Human genius is an indefatigable father. His children resemble each other only in strength. They live in distinctions. To vary is to charm. Eyes fatigued with a sameness of color, tone, and form, brighten with admiration over a new shade, whether sad or gay. It is enough that it is new. Young Englishmen with long willowly whiskers go crazy with joy when, dressed like brigands, they eat the grapes of Malaga in the society of would-be brigands. It is something realistic and new. Spanish painting is the same. This is the secret of its wonderful and lasting success in the artistic world. It is only the reflection of the sky under which it is done; yet, with the steadiness of a Gothic hand, it has emptied upon canvas the soul that shines in a brilliant face, and the light which warms that soul.

Here let us look at two of the extraordinary peculiarities of Eduardo Zamacois. In looking at the vigor of his satire you might say that he had used the whip rather than the brush. Ask monks, courtesans, and kings: they will all return with the same answer. His only possessions were the Gothic hand and the light that warms the soul. He was a philosophical painter. There are women of fashion, and there are courageous women who defy fashion. There are slaves who bend under the yoke, and others who break it. The man who pleases the fickle tyrant fashion without degradation, ought to be happy. The great man is the man who knows how to profit by this power of pleasing, and who uses it as the means of expressing a strong and durable thought. Zamacois drove out the unworthy just as the money changers were driven from the temple. He saw the worthless monks who did not understand the God they interpreted, who thrived on the fears of those who did not know how to die, who petrified the souls of the people in the walls of their churches, who sold pardons for the sins which they caused and committed, and he raised his scourge. He saw the children of luck, whose greatness was measured by the number of men whom they had killed in battle, and by the number of weeping women whom they had sent into the harems of kings decorated idlers fed by the people whom they devoured and he raised his scourge. Nor did he forget to castigate the king who profited by these flatterers and hypocrites, who turned men into buffoons and made them fearful of their chief, who forced reverence for monks whom he despised, and who strangled the people who knelt before him. He too, was scourged. Monks, nobles, and monarchs, all felt the lash. The pictures were solid. The drawing was of steel; the color of fire. The strength of Cervantes, the satire of Molière, and the solidity of Meissonier were there. They are little pictures greater than many great pictures living, shining, and burning. They are perpetuated ideas, opulent in light and skillful in execution. They reveal the individuality of a true son of genius. They are the precision of grace, repose, fidelity, and strength.

He who exaggerates loses in himself all that he exaggerates in others. To be useful he must be exact. To become strong he must bind himself to truth. He may lose preliminary skirmishes, but he will win the decisive battle. To be invincible he must make himself unassailable. To become the master of others, he must be master of himself even in the heat of just anger. Zamacois was more prudent with his colors than many great authors with their pens. Caricature while lowering its object lowers the caricaturist. Zamacois never descended to caricature. He loved the beautiful too much to paint the ugly. He knew that to exaggerate truth was to weaken it. Injustice, however small, is a powerful weapon in the hands of those who have been injured.

Zamacois was serious and satirical. He attracted both the frivolous and the thoughtful; he was seductive even to those whom he scourged; he was admirable through the bleeding wounds which he opened. His was an experimental satire, suitable to a century when people draw conclusions from facts. It was also a logical satire, in which, as in all good comedies, the lesson comes of itself, without any painful effort that belittles the energy of the author.

In studying his pictures you see the piercing glance of Rabelais, and you hear the hearty laugh of the creator of Sancho Panza. The poor and the ignorant never smarted under his hand. His problems were solved by directing your attention to fine silk attire and curled wigs. Methodically, periodically, and courageously he laid bare the baneful existence of courts and convents, but without hatred, without an unbridled imagination, and without seeking painful extremes. He exposed such sores as laziness, baseness, hypocrisy, fear, and deceit. He never sought isolated cases or transitory faults, however true. He painted nobles smiling in their palaces. He depicted priests dining gaily while asking charity, interrupting the tête-à-tête of a new married couple to secure a cup of good chocolate, fooling in their churches, and roaring with merriment at the doors of their monasteries. The pictures excited contempt for both monks and courtiers. It was not the painter but it was the courtiers and monks who were responsible. They were limned just as they were haughty, attired in silk; robust and sensual, dressed in drugget.

The durable painter delineates what is true. The man who contents himself with copying and ornamenting the perishable is himself destined to perish. To gain the admiration of men you must show them that they are understood. Zamacois painted constant defects in a brilliant style. This was the secret of his success. Many secrets contributed to the charm of the generating idea. He corrected without wounding, because he based his criticism on a past epoch. This gave his satire beautiful force. With justice we call some men great painters; with respect we say of Zamacois, "Here is a thinker." His control of himself was his power. Even generous indignation may lead too far. Perhaps a superiority of painting over literature is that it compels reflection, study, amelioration, and changes. The pen has wings, and travels too rapidly; the brush has weight, and does not fly so swiftly. Like painting, writing is an art. Like an actor a writer quietly selects the best form of expressing what has been conceived in the heat of love or of indignation. He builds his work the same as a carpenter constructs a house. And what a magnificent builder was this Spaniard! He was born in a country where men are honest and women are beautiful, but where both men and women believe that they are defending their natural rights in dying for the pleasure of Don Carlos the monarch of the priests. A living, honorable hatred is germinated in the generous souls of the handsome, proud, and candid young men of Biscay. Priests light and relight the torch of civil war, and the young fellows fall like corn under the sickle in harvest time. The Biscayans cannot love these priests.

Cherishing this honest hatred Zamacois saw fat, lazy priests hopping like ravens through the lonely lanes of Saragossa, the dark alleys of Pampeluna, and the Arab streets of Cadiz. He saw the monk of a century ago still reigning in Spain living by an excess of goodness and ignorance in others. He determined to kill the monk. At this time a woman who had been corrupted by those who wished to use her power, was glorified in Spain. France was under the heel of an uneasy parvenu, before whom men like Prevost Paradol and Laboulaye bowed their heads. No wonder Zamacois hated these courts. Their brilliancy stifled reason. Their breath, surcharged with the fetid odors of the unjust battles by which monarchies are sustained, rotted the heart. It would not do to throw this salutary hatred to the winds. It was better to letter these human shames on canvas to feature them with the freedom of Holbein, Albert Dürer, and Brauwer. The wretched things would not die; they must be stigmatized so strongly that they would life forever. Youth is a half mad butterfly. It burns in the first light its fragile wings with all their delicate burden of dreams. Zamacois knew this. To preserve himself, he kept out of the light. His filmy wings became wings of steel. He fashioned them with Meissonier. None but a faultless draughtsman could work in his silent and sumptuous house. His pupils must know how to paint the hairs on the head of a white horse and the fibbers of a block of wood. Dominant qualities alone make his pupils masters. They derive their power of execution from observation. Meissonier admits to his atelier only those who can reproduce the flesh. They learn to color it. There are poetic painters, who generalize in order to paint. In this century of positive doctrines it is meet that there should be an analytical painter. Sad it is that painters lack that which is lacking in the philosophy which inspires them, in the lovers of art who buy from them, and in the time which praises them the science of the unborn. In devoting themselves purely to the study of the external, they have lost the interior power of animating the external. They cannot paint. Like young people of fashion, they give too much time to their toilet either to understand or to realize serious things.

A great proof of talent is to know how to escape the influence of a great talent. To know how to disobey is a science. Zamacois displayed this mark of genius. Glance at his shining pictures, exquisitely finished, and painted with the same line in all the corners, and you say, "There is the pupil of the painter of 1807"; yet in his pictures à la Meissonier you see somebody not Meissonier. The style is there, but the art is magnified. In the pupil you salute a greater master.

Zamacois was ever in repose. Yet, unlike Fortuny, he did not hate noise. Educated in Paris, he lived upon noise. He listened to it with pleasure. When invited to go and see the great works of nature, he laughingly turned to study the nature of man. Human nature was his nature. "I take my finish," he might have said, "from my master, Meissonier, and from my love of observation. I keep in my palette the solidity, the placidity, and the coloring of my old land of Biscay. My mountains are moral elevations; my rivers and seas are the passions of men, and my dream is to kill the vile, to punish flatterers, and to make men better by holding before them a true mirror a mirror which not only reflects the body, but reproduces the accusing, naked, sickly, and chilled soul. Away with you, painters of the pretty. Go, copy the clouds. I am a painter of the serious. I win paint men."

To know his subjects he lived with them. He took his monks from monasteries and his courtiers from courts. Men still live who esteem it an honor to kneel before a yawning king and pass him his shirt. Bitter as were his satires, no one got angry with the artist. The French were pleased with his big Spanish monks, and the Spaniards were not displeased because he ridiculed the Spaniards of past centuries. A cunning fellow was this painter. He had eager purchasers because his pictures were gay. He made them laugh, and he was readily pardoned. He lived in the age of detail, and his paintings were filled with details. They were sure to please. In the coming century artists will enlarge on what we have examined, particle by particle, in our day.

Zamacois had a vigorous character. His gifts displayed themselves. He expressed great thoughts brilliantly, solidly, and prudently. He was already known and praised when one of his pictures attracted universal attention at the Paris Exposition in 1867. It was superior to "The King's Favorite," exhibited in the following year, and to "The Return to the Monastery," which caused so much laughter in 1869. Everybody saw that his work was careful, elaborate, thoughtful, and clear. His sought-for object found, he went straight at it. He made no isolated pages. Each page was part of an immense volume, brilliant and profound. The gaining of an object is the quality of a strong character. "The Buffoons of the Sixteenth Century" is a wonderful picture. You see the genuine ante-chamber of King Henry III. The painter's critical insight is developed in the physical awkwardness of these intelligent men. Nearly everybody has seen the picture, and those who have seen it can never forget it. The faces speak. Your eyes fill with tears before a picture in which everything, even to color, is laughing. The poor men stand before you full of strength, unfortunate and degraded. The half-crazy courtiers are assembled in a hall of the royal palace. It is an obscure hall, yet without gloom. It is sober in ornamentation, so as not to smother the scene passing there. While awaiting the call of their vile and cruel masters, the courtiers pretend to amuse themselves. One of them, whose seeming mirthfulness is so naturally depicted that you involuntarily raise your hat, is Zamacois himself, with prominent nose and large mouth. His searching eyes seem to have seen everything. Apparently despising nearly everything, he still seems to love something. A man with the look of a statesman is seated cross-legged on the ground. He is Worms, a painter who has thrown French grace into Spanish subjects without violating the originality of the country which inspired him. He it was who exhibited the "Romance à la Mode," placing a delicious page of the Directory at the side of "The King's Favorite." What a face! The forehead is rounded like a hemisphere. The expression is one of calm despair, of a night without a morning, of the slow, constant, inconsolable grief of a hunchback the heart of a Victor Hugo beating under the crooked back of a Quasimodo. There is another face. Its satirical spirit has given to its vulgar features an extraordinary strength. It is the portrait of Raimundo Madrazo, author of "Departing from the Ball." His black beard brings into the foreground a mouth filled with cruel but just railleries. His pug nose fairly scents in the air the shameful secrets of his enemies. His eyes sparkle like diamonds. Look at the buffoon in the doubtful costume. The costume itself gives his features the precision of contempt. How imposing is the grief of the jester represented by Worms, and what vengeance and implacable hatred burn in the face for which Madrazo posed. They are superb dwarfs. Once seen, we carry them forever in our memory.

There is a little rigidity in this picture. We see a trifle too much of the costumes. The green has not been happily blended with the yellow. At times the fire of the Spaniard overcomes the precision of the Frenchman. They are honorable faults the impatience of genius, the excess of force. Too much manliness adds to the beauty of honest young fellows. Zamacois did not wear himself out by an indiscreet use of his powers. Some great souls, however, are consumed in fireworks.

Let us look at "The King's Favorite." If we could lay out the body of a monarchy in the light of the courts of the Regency, of Philip IV, and of Charles II, just as an unknown body is stretched in a morgue, stripped naked, that body would show the wounds that bleed in this picture of the favorite. A thick-set buffoon, followed by a miserable dog, climbs the steps of his master's palace. It is the lesson taught by a monarchy, painted pitilessly and entirely. In tone the picture has a resemblance to Gérôme's "L'Eminence Grise." The painting is rich, but it lacks suavity. The artist was not yet an absolute master of color. He seemed to paint his canvas too much. Excessive labor frequently makes a thing appear unfinished. The motive here is simple, but perpetual. Courtiers and high dignitaries salute the King's buffoon in the mockery of fear. Others sarcastically salute the dog. The buffoon is a living accusation, bespeaking the culpability of the lazy and cowardly nobles. What a painter was the man who could give such variety, such vivacity, such extraordinary clearness, and so striking a color of vice to so many faces!

"The Good Pastor" hung by the side of "The Return to the Monastery" in the Salon of 1869. Like a rose, this picture has its thorns and its soft leaves. A dry and hard priest, shaped like a thorn, represents brambles and severe penances; and a gentle, smiling, perfumed priest represents the soft rose leaf. To please the women, you must dress the Lord in rose colors. Of course, a crowd of penitents follow the smiling priest, while an air of desolation alone surrounds the severe priest. The picture is fine, not because it is a parody on the well-known and highly prized picture of Heilbuth, but because it is a painter's method of solving a human problem in the purest of good humor. The full scope of this method is shown in "The Return to the Monastery." A monk is struggling with a donkey at the door of a monastery, and his brethren are laughing at him. You laugh with them. You can't avoid it. In the dispute between the monk and the donkey the provisions have fallen to the ground. Here another profitable lesson is given. While overburdened with cares men seek an asylum in a monastery; but the donkey won't go in. In the picture the donkey has a very funny head. It is a head of exquisite finish. Many a man would like to have such a head. The monk pulls the bridle with all his strength, while his comrades are laughingly trying to unload the patient animal. Everyone who sees the picture instinctively asks whether the monk is not a greater ass than the donkey. It is pleasantly painted and charmingly colored. It is an innocent but powerful satire. Even monks laugh when they see it. They all know a brother who resembles the brother with the donkey.

The indefatigable painter suffered from phthisis. He grew pale and thin, but remained as good-hearted as ever. He was a good friend. He it was who brought Fortuny to Goupil, and who introduced him to W. H. Stewart, thus opening for him the gate of fortune. He worked in the studio of Fortuny while that great artist was in Paris. Zamacois began to droop while working at his most glorious picture, "The Education of a Prince." Despite its gayety, it is severe. Although everything in it is smiling, it is a picture full of tears. In this cloud of rich colors, in which a storm is hidden, the painter reached the highest degree of his rare talent that of synthesis. Look at the picture. It combines European history with the history of humanity. Look at it again. It depicts the triumph of force, flattered by man. It tells you that to kill is to govern. A little prince lying on a rich carpet plays at war. They are teaching a baby the art of murder. His playthings men and cannon are terrible. The August child is so skillful that at a single shot he knocks down several soldiers. To be sure, they are of wood. Yet, in human life, men who kill and allow themselves to be killed for the pleasure and vanity of their masters, are also wooden men. How the courtiers smile, and how seemingly happy they are! What a good future king! What a splendid murderer the child will make! If the vile people dare to raise their heads, he will crush them as he crushes his wooden soldiers. There is nothing to fear. Under his rule civil dignitaries, priests, and soldiers will all continue in the possession of the riches wrung from the sweat of the people. See the crowd of flatterers in the corner. The child is the master in the picture, but not the true master. Ah, no. The true master is the painter, who, at a time when people were fond of small things, made of his noble art a whip for the hands of justice, an accusation against regal criminals, a tranquil voice for human woes, and a brilliant conductor of thought. The taste of the age may give it little consideration, for it often compels artists to place their greatest works in obscurity; but it is a splendid work.

The war came, the cruel war of France, which killed Henri Regnault, the generous young painter of Prim. Zamacois loved his country. He returned to Spain. The malady which was sapping his life gave activity to his brush. It was a good year for Spanish artists. The young Italian King Amadeus invited them to paint living national scenes. Gisbert was to depict "The King's Entry into Carthagena," Rosales "The Entry to Madrid." Casado "The Oath in the Cortes." Paimaroli "An Official Reception in the Palace of the King," and Eduardo Zamacois "The Salon of the Ambassadors of the Royal Palace." In January, 1871, he died.

In time due honor will be paid this great painter. He was a great critic. He chose a noble aim and hit the mark. Seeing the wounds of the great human heart, he tried to cure them. He was a true son of art, and he defended his true mother, Liberty.

JOSE MARTI

(The Sun, XLIX, 60 [Nueva York, 30 de octubre de 1881], p. 3, col. 1-3.)