Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/180

 Thus spoke one day the old painter, Stephen Birkner, to the parents of Berthold. They sold all that they possessed to furnish the valise of their son with the modest baggage that he needed; and soon this Raphael in embryo found himself at the height of his wishes. His first essays had given preference to landscape paintings; but when he found himself at Home, in the midst of artists and amateurs, he heard constantly repeated that historical painting was the only style that merited the name of art, and that all others signified nothing. These exalted opinions, in the midst of which lived young Berthold, joined to the magic effect produced on him by the contemplation of the Vatican frescoes, masterpieces of Raphael Sanzio, decided his new vocation. He set himself about copying, on a reduced scale, the works of the best masters, and was not without encouragement in this dry labor; but he was unceasingly pursued by the thought that the artist only exists by the originality and life with which he stamps his works. Did he try to sketch a creation, he felt his strength fail him; the idea, seen for an instant, suddenly fled, and was lost in the misty distance, as soon as he thought that he could seize it, and he found nothing on his canvas but features without character and immovable scenes. The result of these useless strugglings was to throw Berthold into a savage melancholy; and he went out alone, every day, far from the city, in desert places, and there, in secret, he tried to draw his sketches; and his grief increased to find that he had even lost much of his facility in this style; and he began to doubt his vocation and despair for the future. He wrote a very sorrowful letter to Birkner: but the old artist remembered that he had himself passed many days of anxiety and discouragement.

"Have patience, my son," replied he to Berthold: "he who, filled with a blind presumption, imagines that he can advance in the career of arts progressively, is a poor madman, from whom there is nothing more to hope. Leave routine to the timid, clear with one bound the common track, and when thou shalt have created a path where none can follow thee,