1848 Michelet – Géricault
Géricault Life
Introduction
Jules Michelet’s remarks on Théodore Géricault and his art occupy a special place in Géricault scholarship and have been widely quoted. Michelet’s remarks, however, need to be seen in context. Michelet uses the example of Géricault to make a larger argument about the choices facing France, and his students in particular. Michelet composed this argument for a lesson he intended to teach at the College de France, in 1848, a lesson which he never delivered.
(*Michelet switches voices frequently at the beginning of his lecture.)
Lesson Five – Géricault
What obstacle impedes a young man? – In the family? In society? In himself? – It is principally in the dispersion of his spirit – Discouragement and dissolution – Géricault towards 1823 – He had opposed the reactionary nature of his time – His discouragement, his isolation, his death, 1824 – Social relations and immersion among others should have rescued him – Demand anew that we reconcile isolation and society.
“These suggestions – to mix the company of others with books, observation with study, and to see reality closely are truly excellent – for my neighbor, that is. But for me? No!”
This observation goes straight to the point, my friends. These suggestions, so wise, seem crafted for just one audience: for the wealthy young man who has time and leisure, and who has no clear path to follow. Many others face a more pressing challenge, those of us who are poor and must hurry. Those offering these suggestions do not realize, perhaps, that many among us are truly miserable. Our families have but one income! We are under pressure, we get letters from our fathers like this:
“Hurry! Get moving, and complete your exams! Talk to the examiner. You are sucking the family dry. You amuse yourself while we starve! What are you doing taking such a course unconnected to your career? It is not science that is our concern today! You are not studying for science, but to get your grades; you can always go back to science. Secure your place! Competition is stiff! Right now you must work on all fronts and strive to please such and such a gentleman…Why don’t you go to see our local representative?”
That is not all. The mother also writes: “My son, my son, your expenses in Paris prevent us from marrying off your sister; the fifty thousand francs you devour is precisely the sum we require; nothing less will do. Hurry then, and take the shortest path. See our local representative if you wish, but it will be much better if you go and see the good bishop, who is in Paris. The gentle abbot, there is a man for young people. He is so good! He found a place for one, a marriage for another – your old companion, but that is a fine topic for later. What is now demanded of you? Nothing, but to attend to your studies and save your soul, whilst making your fortune. Cultivate good relationships! Join this conference composed of all the best people!” In the exchange of letters which follows we learn that a conference will not suffice; her son must join an order.
Me? I tell the families: “Respect your children! Spoil them if you wish, but do not ruin their characters and their honor. Pious woman, do you believe, thus, that to save his soul we must stifle his conscience? This peaceful suffocation – when gradual and done with care, and without open apostasy, produces no scandal, it is true. No matter! This soft method bears the same fruit. Once these values are well-established like God in his heart, you will then see how your lessons fall back upon you. “It is more valuable to obey God than man.” But now his God is money, and he will obey that God, just as you wanted. Before your teachings you had a son; thanks to you, your son has become an heir, a man who waits. He has hopes, other mothers say. And it is because of these hopes for wealth, which reside in death, that they wish him for their daughters.
But, the parents insist: “We are not rich, we simply need to hurry.” Reflect well then, and quickly, upon how will you proceed. Understand well from the beginning that which you desire. If you are rushed, you must not take the long path with a lengthy classical education. Rather, you must send your son into the world at the age of fourteen, into practical work, or into business. At a counter, on a vessel, no matter; he will see, he will learn. The two educations are both good. Business, travel, personal observations, count as high culture and are worth desiring. Bonaparte quit books and the school of Brienne to pursue action. Hoche quit action and through the natural progress of a good spirit discovered books: he read Condillac to the Army of the Vendee. That is what I say to families.
To young people, I say that an authority exists superior to all, it is that of honor. Learn to become comfortable with starvation. This is the first of the arts because it grants liberty to the soul. You rely on your families in good faith. But, tell me frankly, is this entirely the result of natural obedience and filial respect? The embarrassments of wealth, do they not count for something? Maternal counsels, are they not gilded with some secret supplement of funds? Such things are not unheard of.
If the family sees the young man, serious, studious and frugal, the family does not write to him of shameful acts. If the family truly has hopes for a man, it defers to his destiny, the family conserves it, respects it, hesitates to try to tame it; it would rather remove the last piece of bread from his lips. I have seen in the least elevated fathers this paternal religion; they provide all for their sons, as their expiation and their future redemption.
“Where, then,” says the young man, “do I obtain money?” Where? In the secret bank belonging to all men, even the poorest. A bank, a resource, which denies none. And which resource is that? – A vice! Yes, all men have a vice (such as women, gambling, pride; all today suffer the vanity of appearance, etc. etc…). This vice is a harsh lender who complains ceaselessly, who coerces, and demands ransom. Well, then, instruct vice to be silent, tell vice he must wait, take him ransom in turn.
“But what is this?”, says another. “If all men have a vice, who has the right to speak morally?” – All, sir! Those even who sin. We speak of the entire world. Let us continue then to preach among ourselves. If we wait for this man without flaws, without vices, to come to earth among us, we will have to wait a very long time. We will have to wait for another sky, another earth. And while we wait, will the world become better?
Let us return to our topic. We always blame external forces such as the family, such as society, not ourselves – and with reason in general. This is not everything, however. If we accuse ourselves, are we not closer still to the truth? The young man awakes, eats, and reads in the papers of shameful, frightening trials; corruption private and public, he is shocked, he is indignant. As for him, what will he do in the evening? He has three destinations before him, he must choose: the library open at night, – some ball more or less well-known, – finally some influential political salon, where we dispatch flattery to deny thought. Corruption offends him in the morning. In the evening – in the evening, what then?
The newspaper tells him everyday: “France is very sick; society is badly organized, etc., etc…” Nothing is more evident. However, to this observation we must add: “…and each member of this society represents too faithfully in himself this general organizational unhealthiness; it afflicts us all, it is within me. – Society at the highest level corrupts…and is corruptible down to the root. This rain of shame fall upon very little rebellious ground; ground which in each of us is prepared well to receive it. Now, consider balancing and managing the forces within each of us. In my own case, my powers, my moral faculties, my passions fight among themselves for control of this vice, or that; my struggling interior turns to tyranny, which in turn creates more disorder; an endless cycle of violent alternatives which promises only death.
What is death? No first-year student at his first dissection has not silently wrestled with this thesis, whilst out loud his elders mock him. Me? I care not for mockery; and I say to all: “Whatever death may be in itself, I can describe to you the true feeling of death. You have tasted it already – when in the morning after the ball, exhausted and with an empty purse, soul depleted, and head enfeebled, you have no appetite for anything – not for rest, not work, not the past, not the future.”
That is death, and is perhaps worse than death. A dead man upon the table of your amphitheater (consult your eyes and the physical phenomenon) is a man who is returning to the elements, a man who permits his molecules to disperse, a man, who in a definitive impotence of aggregation and attraction, loses the unity of his body. He in whom the mutual attraction of parts has perished whilst alive is of the living dead. This man, this society is, in a sense, dying, or dead, divided and dispersed. For when the society is divided and dying, so too are its members. Do not say simply that: “France is divided.” – Say also, “I am divided and dispersed within myself. I allow my power and my unity to follow the four winds of the earth; nothing of me remains. I keep no attracting power to draw others to me.” Oh! If there were a complete man in all his powers, strong in all his attractions, the mass of floating atoms would whirl around him, and gather the one to the others, this whirling cloud would make a world!
What is increasing in France? Is it union, or division? Is it life? Is it death? This is a daunting question, one which contains all destinies. The statistician responds to me, satisfied, that production is increasing. True – the production of things; but not of men, of souls, of character; the moral capital in France is not increasing at all. All that France has of genius is old or aging – and has nothing of equal stature or power to follow behind. – You can tell yourself this as you leave for the ball: “France is in decline, it is aging; life diminishes as death increases. And I, too, will join this march of death.”
This is not some tale which I tell, but is taken from reality. A sad exchange of just this kind occurred around 1823, at the entrance of the Opera Ball, between one of my friends – a man of the world, an infinitely spirituel artist – and a young man, a great man – struck to the heart, a man who seemed to be searching for death in his headlong pursuit of pleasure. I speak of the first painter of the century, the unfortunate Gericault.
My friend found him dressed in fine clothing and yellow gloves, but already much changed and terribly sad amidst this joyful crowd – the ornamented women, the carriages, the lights,. The infinite emotion of his powerful gaze had given way to the bitter expression captured in the terrible mask which you have all admired. His visage had always been one of genius, but was no longer one of force, but rather one of desperation, the world slipping from his fingers; from deep, sunken sockets stared the savage eye of the falcon.
My friend, who loved him – and who saw in Géricault the embodiement of France and her art in their highest expression, tried to stop him, begging and supplicating there – in vain. Sad and sombre, Géricault was swallowed up in the glittering maelstrom.
He died in 1824, as you know, that same year in which Byron died. Two months separated the two great poets of death. Byron said of England, that he believed England would triumph; Géricault painted the shipwreck of France, this raft without hope, floating, signaling to the waves – seeing no rescue. Géricault, too, could see no rescue in sight, and allowed himself to slip beneath the waves.
This genius, extraordinarily firm and severe, whose first blow painted the Empire, and judged it and the war to be invalidated ideas. He began with the officer of the guides, the terrible cavalier who all the world has seen, the brilliant captain, seasoned, tanned, bronzed. But the defeat, the retreat, the soldiers, and people touched his heart deeply in another way. In 1814, he produced a kind of epitaph for the soldier. This is the cavalier on foot, the cuirassier, this good giant, so pale, large in stature, and yet so a man, and so touching! A soldier, yes, but still a man; the war we feel so clearly has not hardened him. He strains vainly to control his massive courser upon the slope, quick, and slippery. He will not escape. Behind, we see the flat black thunderclouds of the Russian winter, it is said, – the shadow of night, and of death. There would be no morning. And yet, all the remaining parts are so similar to a landscape in France, the land of his birth. He returns home after touring the world, returning – to die.
We know the strange reaction of 1816, and how France seemed to deny herself. Yet, throughout this time, Géricault drew her ever closer, caring for France. He protested for her, with the completely French originality of his genius, and by choosing exclusively national types. Poussin painted Italians; David, Romans, and Greeks. Géricault, amidst the mixed bastardizations of the Restoration, conserved the national identity firm and pure. He did not submit to the invasion, he surrendered nothing to the reaction.
Mark, gentlemen, the grave difference between those who follow the times, and those who march forward, mastering the times.
A great, a powerful writer published the Genius of Christianity when we reopened the churches in 1800. This writer followed the events of his time. In 1822, Géricault painted his raft and the shipwreck of France. (*1819) He set his course alone, pushing towards the future, without maps, without the aid of events. It is this which is heroic.
For it is France itself, our entire society, which Gericault places upon the raft of the Medusa…an image so cruelly true that the first viewers refused to recognize this truth. Some recoiled before this terrible painting, others passed quickly before it, while others endeavored to not see it, and to not understand it. “This painting is too sad; there is too much death; could not he make a happier shipwreck?”
No buyer wished to purchase this painting, except for a loyal friend of Géricault, Mr. De Dreux Dorcy [Pierre de Dreux d’Orcy]; he bought it for 6,000 francs upon the death of the painter, refusing enormous offers from foreigners, and for the same price, gave it to the Louvre museum. What an inspiring example! Such works, in fact, belong to nobody, to any particular person. Who, without committing a great crime, could keep an unpublished work by Descartes, Rousseau, or Montesquieu in his private home? Is it not our duty to deliver the work to the public? The fatal nature of painting, or drawing, is still crueler. Each object is unique, and cannot be reproduced like books. (Engraving is a creative art in its own right, and much more than reproduction.) It is therefore critical that the most important works remain in public view in places which are accessible to all, in national museums whenever possible. We do not know how much a simple comparison of these great works together would render them more fecund. Alas! poor artists, who will have pity on you, thinking only of the highest attributes of genius, of unity? You are cruelly ripped apart, your members dispersed across Europe. Barbarians keep you thus dismembered, sometimes imprisoned, interring thoughts which might inspire the world!…How does one not sense the impiety of keeping the parts of a man in his home? – Of a man? No, in Géricault we speak of much more; we speak of the national artist of an epoch. It was he alone, at this time, who was the the tradition. I say it and say it again: at this moment Géricault was France. – It is the duty of those who possess his paintings and his drawings to donate them, or sell them to the Museum. All should be reunited in one site, which should be called the Museum of Géricault.)
The Raft returned, amidst derisive criticisms, to the painter’s home from the Louvre. In punishment for having felt for France, he remained alone before this portrait of despair. Géricault tried to escape, visiting Italy, England; but his heart was too rooted in his homeland. He returned, he found the universal triumph of the false – in politics, the bastard schools, the absurd dogmatism of our Anglo-French, in theatre and in painting, in the fashion of agreeable improvisation and hasty vulgarity. Surrounded, and almost smothered by these kind people, sick of the false smile of the Restoration, alone, in mourning and sad, he wanted to escape and to forget. He searched for violent sensations, seeking only those perils which he could freely pursue – riding fiery horses, frantic, impossible. He plunged into the whirlpool of balls, the vertigo of crowds, anonymous and obscure pleasures, and was sadder still.
Yet, he knew well that the greatest producers of art: Titian, Michelangelo, Rubens, Rembrandt had wisely and skillfully arranged their lives, saved time and strength. They were great masters in the art of life…Him, he wanted to die.
It was not that he had experienced the influence of the sad, sterile schools, which in our days are systematically teaching boredom and despair. The solitairy genius of Obermann and of The Last Man is not that of Géricault. The satanic genius of the author of Manfred has no connection to that of Géricault except in entirely exterior qualities. The genius of Géricault was eminently social. The English lived to hate England. The Frenchman died believing France would die.
This is the grave reproach which must be made of Géricault. He did not have faith in the eternal life of our nation.
How did he not believe this? He had just created his powerful and immortal symbols, his first popular painting. France was in him. He ignored it, he no longer wanted to live. He demanded help from nature, since the homeland had forgotten him, he forgot himself.
Nature heard him. And death, a slow and cruel death, gave him time to savor all the bitterness of a great destiny unachieved. Horrifying! It was only in the impotence of illness, when he could no longer paint, that he understood the immensity of what he would have done, and could no longer do. He planned, in a great painting (the horse races in Rome,) to show how much the long study of the horse adds to our study of man, and how the horse, in certain ways reproduced in a grander proportion, explains and interprets the human form. He had great rivals among the artists the past in other respects, but in the depiction of the horse Géricault stood above all. – And it was only then, when he was ready to deploy this sovereign originality, that death took him.
The infinite bitterness Géricault felt towards all appears in the melancholy letter which he wrote to Mr. Collin*, and most clearly in these final words: ‘…I so truly envy you the faculty to work, to paint, that I can, without fear of being accused of pedantry, encourage you not to lose a single instant that your good health permits you to well employ. Your youth also will pass, my young friend.’ (*In fact addressed to Eugène Isabey.)
He died feeling that he was in the first era of his own heroic age, of will, of effort. Grace was still denied him; feminine charm, movement, the smile of a child, of a woman – all this eluded him. He searched for this in vain: “I begin a woman,” he said, “and this becomes a lion.”
Taken too young, he was nonetheless a hero of the arts. He did not live to attain a state of grace, that happy period where the masters repose. And yet this grace radiated in all his person, in his large, oriental eyes; it was in his heart, and, as a painter, he attained it. In his life, he needed to persist with his struggles: to live, to hope, to love.
In place of death, he needed to grow, expand his life, and not remain on the cold, dull surface which he encountered in high society; he needed to descend among ordinary people. France, back then, still simmering from her battles, more sensitive after her bad times, awash in heroic tears, would have warmly received her great artist.
France had no need of fair-weather friends, or envious painters. It required a man demanding more than such friendship, more than ephemeral affairs; France needed a great love, which would always advance, love progress, expand, increase the sentiment of the homeland. It needed to extend to the highest, the lowest and the farthest. He would have grasped and secured the three things elusive and almost unattainable to art: women, the ordinary crowds, and the light.
The Correggio of suffering, he who will cast upon the canvas the nervous tremors of sorrow – the great master of Pity, who, possessing an invincible genius, will shatter selfishness and restore the heart of man, has he already come? The crowd, all the mysteries of the great mass of humanity, the phantasmagoria of somber studios, the formidable movements of armies, the visible sound of riot, who will paint all this?
A great career awaited him. He had, above all, the genius of pathos. – The first drawings of the Shipwreck, much more touching than the Raft, say enough of the heart within him. This heart, so heroic, could not have been more tender; he loved all the young artists, he hated nobody, not even the envious. – A rare and singulier thing that made his friends smile; in his vulgar relationships, those in no way respectable, when carried there at times by his isolated existence, without family, he preserved respectful and sensitive manners, either out of a natural delicacy, or through the memory of the mother he had lost.
He dwelt alone, but nothing in this existence resembled some egotistical, solitary school – isolated and cloaked in an impenetrable pride. He was born to be an interpreter, the organ of a free society, and to risk this world, to be the magistrate of painting, whose every painting would have been a heroic lesson. For his frescoes, we would have needed to give him all the walls of a grand city, of a glorious Paris, where France and the world would have to come to learn of liberty, of the love of humanity; it would have sufficed to look upon the walls to read all this, and the noblest hearts would become greater still in contemplating Géricault there.
Such a France was not there, however. France still existed, living and strong, but hidden in the earth, buried beneath the invasion. Géricault did not descend there, he could not see it.
As this great man served us with his life, allow his death to do the same. Do not surrender to discouragement as he did. We must be willing to descend, gentlemen, deeper into the subterranean world, to penetrate and explore the immense depths of society, instead of simply staying on the surface and then sitting down to die. If this first layer where we travel seems frigid and sterile, what do we understand of the heat unknown below? The earth is dry and cold, you say, but if we plow again and more earnestly, do we not descend from winter into summer?
Consider one thing, the beauty and severe necessity where this world places you. Today, just as during the epoch in which Géricault stuggled and failed, you will find everywhere the obstacles of the old world. No matter what you wish to do or to love, no matter what object your soul desires, you will find the resistance of these obstacles more inflexible than drought, the immutability of death. And this state will endure. Ideas do not change by a simple political change. The dead survive a long time; why? One cannot kill them. Go to the Museum of Sculpture; you will find there that we produce Anubis everyday, centuries after the death of the Egyptian world. – So much is death alive!
Thus, we do not have to wait until the last dust of the last mummy has disappeared from the earth; we do not have to be discouraged because the past still survives, nor say, to excuse our inaction, that we will begin our labor once it has entirely gone; we must, from today, call forth our inventive forces, to test that which we have within us of the positive, of the living, of generation. If we live, let use create. Against a world of hatred, let us build a world of sympathy which is ours and the fruit of our souls.
The difficulty, I know well, is that to produce this child, thusly, we require two conditions – to be at one time sociable and solitary: solitary to preserve the sap and let the germs grow; and sociable to make these elements fertile. These things are in no sense exclusive. The strong among the strong: Moliere, Shakespeare, Rembrandt, had these two strengths; their solitude was sociable, and, in closed societies, even constricting at times, their powers preserved their solitude. They created within the crowd, with the crowd, and despite it, even as the obstacles remained.
The glorious young man whom I have described to you did not know how to unite these two things. An austere genius, but tender and sensitive to society, he could not bear its indifference. He was saddened by the emptiness of the passing world, and he no longer felt he carried within him another that would never pass.
Let us profit from his faults in the new art that commences. The silent symbols of the ancient arts all full of a prophetic inspiration, like those left by this great painter, still do not say enough. It no longer suffices to be a Prometheus who works on canvas and with clay, let us each be a Prometheus of living works. Another humanity, a new creation, waits for us – calls us, it reclaims life. Let us create this. Let us give this the great soul of a better genius to comfort the world.”
(This lecture was scheduled for January 13th, 1848.)