Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/175

 "Master," said I to him, "it is easy to guess, on seeing you, that you are not ignorant of any of the secrets of your art; but have you never executed paintings of other kinds than frescoes? Historical and landscape pieces are in the first rank in the domain of the painter's art; imagination enriches them with all its charms, and the cold severity of mathematical lines does not stop at every step the soaring of the artist, as in this false animation that you give to stone by the illusions of perspective."

Berthold, whilst listening to me, laid aside his pencil; he leaned his burning forehead upon his hand, and replied to me in a slow and grave tone of voice:

"Do not profane the holiness of art, by establishing among its works those degrees of inferiority which degrade the humble subjects of a despot. The true artist is not always he who, overstepping the limits traced by rule, loses himself in the spheres of the unknown. It is dangerous to attempt to wrestle with the Creator. Recollect, my young friend, the fable of Prometheus. This great artist of the ancient world had stolen the fire of heaven to animate men of clay; but you know what his punishment was. God does not allow the mystery of his power to be penetrated with impunity."

"But, Berthold," replied I, "what guilty temerity can you find in the re-production of beauty and exterior life, by painting, sculpture, and the other arts of imitation?"

"Those are, in truth, but child's play," replied the painter with a bitter smile; "that is a pitiful simplicity which imagines that anything is created by daubing, with brushes dipped in colors, squares of cloth of all dimensions. Poor madmen are they who allow themselves to be absorbed by such labors! But when the soul of the artist quits terrestrial regions to spring towards the ideal world, when, a new Prometheus, he attempts to imprison in the work of his hands some spark ravished from the world of spirits, it is then that an irresistible force draws him into the quicksands, and by a fatal illusion, the devil Pride makes him see at the bottom