76 - Browning III: Art
Browning on artistic integrity, John Calhoun on Nullification, and film reviews of "Kochiyama Soshun" (1936) and "The Hidden Fortress" (1958)
Browning III – Art
A good time, was it not, my kingly days?
And had you not grown restless... but I know—
‘Tis done and past: ‘twas right, my instinct said:
Too live the life grew, golden and not grey,
And I’m the weak-eyed bat no sun should tempt
Out of the grange whose four walls make his world.
How could it end in any other way?
You called me, and I came home to your heart.
The triumph was—to reach and stay there; since
I reached it ere the triumph, what is lost?
Let my hands frame your face in your hair’s gold,
You beautiful Lucrezia that are mine!
“Rafael did this, Andrea painted that;
“The Roman’s is the better when you pray,
“But still the other’s Virgin was his wife—”
Men will excuse me. I am glad to judge
Both pictures in your presence; clearer grows
My better fortune, I resolve to think.
For, do you know, Lucrezia, as God lives,
Said one day Agnolo, his very self,
To Rafael . . . I have known it all these years . . .
(When the young man was flaming out his thoughts
Upon a palace-wall for Rome to see,
Too lifted up in heart because of it)
“Friend, there’s a certain sorry little scrub
“Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how,
“Who, were he set to plan and execute
“As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings,
“Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours!”
To Rafael’s!—And indeed the arm is wrong.
I hardly dare . . . yet, only you to see,
Give the chalk here—quick, thus, the line should go!
Ay, but the soul! he’s Rafael! rub it out!
Still, all I care for, if he spoke the truth,
(What he? why, who but Michel Agnolo?
Do you forget already words like those?)
If really there was such a chance, so lost,—
Is, whether you’re—not grateful—but more pleased.
- from “Andrea del Sarto” by Robert Browning
Andrea del Sarto, most famously, got paid for a commission by Francis I but bolted with the money to please his wife. Browning approaches this from, perhaps, an unusual angle: his main fault with del Sarto is that the painter betrayed his art, with the pecuniary peccadillo frowned upon but then really passed over prior to the section quoted above.
Our narrator comes to us in a rather depressing situation. His young wife is with him, and they have their stolen riches, but del Sarto is being cuckolded by his wife’s “cousin”, and worse, he is clearly aware of the greater glory he has given up in favour of such treatment.
Artistic honesty, not pecuniary trustworthiness, is so vital to Browning that it alone can supercede the supremacy of love. This is a man who eloped into nigh-permanent exile with a woman of fragile health and, perhaps, emotions. A lot is worth sacrificing for love. Art, perhaps alone, is not.
A good time, was it not, my kingly days?
And had you not grown restless... but I know—
‘Tis done and past: ‘twas right, my instinct said:
Too live the life grew, golden and not grey,
And I’m the weak-eyed bat no sun should tempt
Out of the grange whose four walls make his world.
How could it end in any other way?
You called me, and I came home to your heart.
Andrea must make excuses for Lucrezia, and for himself. It was she who had “grown restless” – but of course, actually, Andrea discovered an instinct within himself that matched her restlessness. Remarkably, the court of France was too lively, too golden. Francis the First was one of the greatest patrons of the arts in European history, and that was the problem; del Sarto, you see, poor dear, was overwhelmed. He is, really, a homebody, and Lucrezia’s restlessness was that of a magnet seeking its pair. How romantic!
Let my hands frame your face in your hair’s gold,
You beautiful Lucrezia that are mine!
“Rafael did this, Andrea painted that;
“The Roman’s is the better when you pray,
“But still the other’s Virgin was his wife—”
Men will excuse me. I am glad to judge
Both pictures in your presence; clearer grows
My better fortune, I resolve to think.
Yes, people might prefer Raphael’s work (though I am unclear on why Browning calls him a Roman, being rather famously born at the Montefeltro court in Urbino), but they can compare Lucrezia’s beauty to the Virgin’s herself. Del Sarto is quite sure he has won on the deal. Of course, we hear the question mark hiding in every period; we see the old man reaching out to his adulterous younger wife, the hands framing her face silently pleading for her to stay. Even without a speaker, we hear all this, without any particularly flashy language from Browning. Browning is not an imagist, he does not delect the inner eye; he is a poet of structure, of the carefully chosen neutral word. “Resolve” is scarcely dramatic. It is a verb that can only take colour from its surroundings. Here, the sheer volume of del Sarto’s prior protestations of satisfaction make it precisely a statement of irresolution.
For, do you know, Lucrezia, as God lives,
Said one day Agnolo, his very self,
To Rafael . . . I have known it all these years . . .
(When the young man was flaming out his thoughts
Upon a palace-wall for Rome to see,
Too lifted up in heart because of it)
“Friend, there’s a certain sorry little scrub
“Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how,
“Who, were he set to plan and execute
“As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings,
“Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours!”
Andrea is so satisfied that he cannot drop the comparison with Raphael. Of course he’s happier with Lucrezia than painting in Rome, but even Michelangelo said that – should he put his mind to it – del Sarto would match and perhaps surpass Raphael. The thesis is not tested, but we sense that this is true, or at least that del Sarto sincerely believes it to be true – and rues it.
(About the flashiest image in the whole poem is used to describe Raphael’s work, by the by.)
To Rafael’s!—And indeed the arm is wrong.
I hardly dare . . . yet, only you to see,
Give the chalk here—quick, thus, the line should go!
Ay, but the soul! he’s Rafael! rub it out!
In the present, though, del Sarto’s very hand has lost its strength. The arm is wrong! Perhaps this is just age, but I think we know it is more. The desperation…and then the correction, which leads only to an imitation of Raphael’s work. Michelangelo had said that del Sarto could surpass Raphael, but here he is, a mere imitator.
Still, all I care for, if he spoke the truth,
(What he? why, who but Michel Agnolo?
Do you forget already words like those?)
If really there was such a chance, so lost,—
Is, whether you’re—not grateful—but more pleased.
A devastating moment: Lucrezia doesn’t even know who del Sarto is talking about, because she’s not really listening, and certainly doesn’t care about other jobbing artists. Here del sarto finally names his choice for what it was: “a chance, so lost”. It could only be worth the losing if Lucrezia is, if not beholden to del Sarto, at least happy to be with him.
She is not, of course. But here is a question: if she had been loyal, if she had been loving, would the bargain have been worth it?
This is an impossibility by definition, I think. For Browning, this is a form of art-based virtue ethics; a woman who would inveigle upon you to steal money and, worse, abandon your art could never be a loyal and loving wife. The bargain could never be worth it, because the bargain is to choose corruption over the transcendent.
In equal measure, if you are the kind of man who would choose such corruption, be you never so talented, you have lost access to the wellspring of grace and beauty; you end up with no original spark, no matter how brightly burning you started.
For Browning, one suspects, eloping with the sickly Elizabeth was the opposite of del Sarto eloping with the gold and the girl: it was the surrender of security in favour of love and art (and love of a woman of art), not the grasping of lust and lucre over true beauty and achievement.
Quote of the Week – John Calhoun’s Theory of Nullification
“Calhoun conceded that the Constitution did not explicitly give states the right to review federal law. Neither did it explicitly give the Supreme Court the right to review federal law. Yet the court did review federal law. So should the states. And the states had a constitutional advantage over the court, on account of the Tenth Amendment which unambiguously reserved to the states and the people those powers not delegated to the central government. ‘Like other reserved rights,’ Calhoun said of the states’ right of review, “it is to be inferred from the simple fact that it is not deferred.’”
– from Heirs of the Founders by H.W. Brands
The debate over nullification may be taken to emerge from one of two problems:
(1) That if the central government of the United States does not have final power over the states, it can hardly be said to be a government – indeed it comes close to being weaker than the government of the Articles of Confederation;
or
(2) That if the central government of the United States does indeed have final power over the states, then the states can hardly be said to true sources of subsidiary power and legitimacy. Once the Constitution was ratified, the states ceased to exist except as fictions of law, whose competencies and rights could be adjusted and changed at a whim whenever a sufficient majority held Washington. They were more like – and this was precisely one of Calhoun’s comparisons – an American or English county than a proud constituent state.
There is a certain practical necessity for granting the reality of the first problem. It is also the problem that subsequent events “sided with” and resolved favourably to the central government. Nullification (that is, the power of constituent local governments to simply disregard ordinary national law, up to an including, say, declarations of war), in the light of the nature of states throughout history, seems an obvious absurdity. Indeed, Calhoun’s position was seen as ridiculous even by men who sided with him over Jackson’s “force act”; Randolph of Roanoke was prepared, sick as he was, to lead Virginian militia to resist Jackson, but he thought nullification an obvious legal absurdity.
Nonetheless, part of the problem of design within the American Constitution and its early Amendments was to leave unresolved the question Calhoun identified. John Marshall, a centralist and Federalist (but I repeat myself), arrogated the right of judicial review to a national, Washingtonian body appointed by the Senate. The States of course therefore had some contribution, but to the tune of 1/24th each during the Nullification Crisis. Yet that right of review was not in the Constitution, and may be a necessary consequence of it, but in either case Calhoun’s argument seems to have force: if the states exist as continuing members and guarantors of the Union, then why should the power of review have been delegated away from them? If Washington can review law by its court, cannot South Carolina by its court or legislature or whatsoever other form it desires?
The answer might be that states in fact were not such constituents and guarantors; they were, in essence, a legal fiction; that by ratifying the Constitution they had abnegated their own rights and joined Leviathan, and could hardly complain, any more than the individual who decides to submit to a system of law. This essentially Hobbesian view was that of Clay and Webster, of course, at least as it came to the Tariff, Nullification, and Secession.
Yet that had never been the determined view of the situation, nor even the prevailing one. Webster had supported secession in 1812, and considered it a perfectly legal act! Jefferson and Madison had had a hand in the Virginia Resolutions, and few publicly excoriated the Virginia & Kentucky Resolutions. Every state considered itself to be a real entity when it came to its own interests. Calhoun was following that nigh-universal line of thought to a natural conclusion.
Here is a lesson about history and historical events: debates over legal rights and wrongs are rarely clearcut, and come to us resolved by great compromise or by great bloodshed. Clay sought compromise, but by 1860 the nation’s demographics had decided against that, against the slave system, and against coastal agriculture. By then, South Carolina had abandoned nullification, seeing it for the false salvation it surely was; it turned instead to the recourse of secession, which was considered much more legally defensible than nullification. (Indeed, so convinced was the national government of its defensibility in court that – in 1865, when the military debate had been concluded wholly in its favour – it declined to try even Jefferson Davis for treason.)
Kochiyama Soshun, d. Yamanaka (1936)
Yamanaka was an influential early jidai geki (period piece) director who died in China during the War. Only three of his films survive; this is, I am led to understand, perhaps the most accessible. This is a little like Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, a wideranging mix of comic with a dash of tragic fare, covering a wide range of characters in an Edo Period market district. The biggest criticism can be frontloaded here, from that: I took ages to reliably tell characters apart. Costumery, styling, and acting of distinct roles sometimes merged into one early on. That is partly a cost of the ambition.
Otherwise, this is a pretty enjoyable and intelligent take on the decisions of a shopowner involved in the local crime syndicate and a local samurai law enforcer who isn’t really too concerned about the details of his job. The great inciting incident is the theft of a precious tanto by a young hoodlum whose sister runs a food stall; that sister is the 16-year-old Setsuko Hara in a very early and very impressive performance. There is, really, a touch of the Shakespearean tragedy or tragicomedy in this framing and the course of further events, but definitely leaning heavily on the comic. The two characters who have the most positive agency of reaction to these events – the shopowner and the samurai – are well played and their arcs are engaging and compelling. Some of the others characters drift a little on the sidelines. There is a final switch into chanbara (sword movie) mechanics, which is a little surprising, but is executed pretty well, whether or not it fits.
Solid without being great.
3/5
The Hidden Fortress, d. Kurosawa (1958)
Kurosawa was a director of nearly unsurpassed range, even when directing within the same subgenre. He directed many chanbara and adjacent films – they’re his most famous. Throne of Blood and Hidden Fortress, though, share little more than a broad genre. Yes, they’re samurai sword films, but one is a discordant adaptation of Macbeth and one is a fun, good-natured romp which also folds in some pretty serious meditation on virtue and honour.
The Hidden Fortress is most famous to us as a key inspiration for Star Wars, with an honourable swordsman rescuing a princess and gathering up a pair of bickering underlings in the course of things. Here, though, our Jedi-equivalent is Toshiro Mifune, and he has no apprentice – though his sister does sacrifice herself to buy the Princess time to escape. The bickering underlings are ex-soldiers, of a kind, but rank cowards, and seemingly only bonded by their greed for gold – though perhaps there is a little more there. The princess-analog is spunky and courageous like Leia, though much more questioning of her role: why has her guardian’s sister sacrificed herself? Why do so many die in these wars? Of course, we realize, these are eminently good questions for a ruler to ask.
Kurosawa’s blocking and direction are as pitch perfect here as at any point in his career, and there are some excellently put together moments and scenes, of several kinds: the peasant duo’s various scrapes tend to be visually framed in a “comedically broad” manner, there’s a simply fantastic extended duel scene with spears without any real analog in Kurosawa’s oeuvre (you will think more of much later wuxia films, in fact), at one point their cart full of gold ends up being burned at a fire festival but this simply opens up the emotionally most cathartic scene in the whole film, and so forth.
This is sometimes faulted for being emotionally less weighty than Kurosawa’s most famed and respected films, but it does still pack a punch, and perhaps it is alright for a virtuoso to show his variety now and then.
4.5/5