01-082 [Family]
1883.07.[?] Paris
From: José Rizal
To: [most probably to parents and siblings][1]
Tour of Paris continued — The Bullier — Musée de Grivin — The Louvre Museum — Its vastness and treasures.
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[Paris, July 1883]
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boy, energetic and inspired, unlike those we have over there who are effeminate and phlegmatic; One Eve, the Sibyl of Cumae, Abel, etc. Among the paintings, the most notable is the Roman orgy, in the period of decadence, in the present of the statues of the virtuous patricians of the republican epoch and the consulate. Judging by the grave looks of the statues it seems that their shadows are irritated at the sight of the imprudent bacchanals. The death of Julius Caesar, a grand painting reproduced in Cantu’s.[2] The last days of Corinth and the capture of Jerusalem give an idea of the horrors of the sack of a city. Virginia, lying dead on the beach, is a poetic and melancholy composition. Cain fleeing with his family is frightful; the birth of Venus by Bouguereau seems like morbid and elastic flesh, and other paintings that are [vexingly] beautiful.
The Bullier is a dance hall to which all students go and even those who are not. They go there to dance phrenetically and the hall, despite its spaciousness, is full of men and women. The French dance consists of to and fro and twirling. The quadrille is a dance in which the men make contortions like puppets. I don’t understand it except the drunken or mad enthusiasm of the dancers. There we met some personages of various embassies, and as we were there — Zamora, Cunanan, and I — they said in a low voice that we were perhaps the envoys of Tonkin sent there to settle the question of the war. The admission fee is one peseta.
The Musée de Grévin belongs to a private person and being such one has to pay 2 francs to enter it. Exhibited there are wax figures of personages are so accurate and lifelike that one is completely deceived. There are wax figures of Bismarck, Garibaldi, Arabi, Czar Alexander II, Alexander III at his coronation, De Lesseps, Victor Hugo, Skobeleff, Sarah Bernhardt, Gambetta, Emilie of Zola, Alphonse Daudet, Gounod, and others.
I visited also the Louvre Museum and to go through it rapidly I spent three days, from 10 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon without rest. That was filled with foreigners. The Louvre — that old palace of Francis I that his royal successors went on embellishing, that resisted so many centuries, wars, and revolutions, the theater of the plots and mysteries of the Valois, Medicis, and Bourbons — is perhaps the most important edifice of Paris. It stands on the bank of the Seine; its exterior is quite severe, somber, and august, in spite of its numerous sculptures, bas reliefs, and other decorations that bear the stamp of the different conquering races. Part of it was burnt down by the Commune. It is very big and perhaps as long as from Capitana Danday’s porter’s lodge to that of Captain Basio or longer. Its courts are immense and can serve for horseback-riding for twenty-five equestrians galloping at full speed. When I recall as I look at it so many histories, so many events, so many crimes, as well as so many glories, that took place there, it seems to me that momentarily a historic face would appear on its balconies. But times have changed and there no longer strolls through its immense galleries neither a Francis I nor a Henry II to meet Gabriel of Montgomery, nor ailing Francis II with Mary Stuart, nor Charles X, silent and pensive, unhappy in his youth, nor the criminal Henry III nor Henry IV with his court — nothing of this sort is now seen. Instead of the ladies, soldiers, musketeers, pages, and nobles, instead of the Guises,[3] Bueil,[4] Bayards,[5] only curious Englishmen, Germans in dark suits are seen there and nevertheless the places are the same, the same staircases worn out by so many generations, the same alcoves and even the same paintings.
The entire ground floor is occupied by the Egyptian and Assyrian museum, Greek and Roman sculpture, the Christian, Renaissance, and modern sculpture, and the antiquities of Asia Minor. In the Egyptian museum on the ground floor are colossal sphinxes, Isis, Osiris, and Apis; chapels monoliths, cippus, Egyptian sepulchers, also monoliths, papyrus with inscriptions, paintings, sacred vessels; and going upstairs one sees Egyptian objects pertaining to worship, civil life, sepulchers, mummies, idols, crocodiles, cats, dogs, and birds all mummified – the whole world, the world’s social political, civil, and religious life, seemingly a mute corpse but in fact expressive and eloquent that tells us about the past, the past grandeur, sufferings, and crimes perhaps. The impression that these objects make on the visitor is sad. On seeing them one is carried back to those temples of Karnak of Philae, or to the pyramids built by so many Pharaonic dynasties. But it is observed that religion is the most common stamp of Egyptian life which is not so among the Assyrians. In the Assyrian Museum are big, enormous pieces of stone with colossal bas reliefs (see Cantu) of men with body of a bull and with wings, statues of the Assyrian Hercules who choked lions without effort, friezes, capitals, bas reliefs of the chase animals, and sacrifices belonging to the palaces of Nineveh and Babylon, of the Khorsabad, built by Sennacherib, Sardanapalus, and others. There are also Phoenician sarcophagi of marble. I don’t know whether because this museum is always deserted, not frequented by visitors like the others, or because it recalls very ancient cities enveloped in the dust of ruins and destruction – the truth is that it is desolate and recalls to mind those feasts of Balthazar, Semiramis, Nisus, Cyrus, and the Darius. I imagined the mysterious hand writing Mane, Thecel, Phares.[6]
The Asiatic antiquities (of Asia Minor) demonstrate the cradle of Greek art. In this museum are seen archaic statues. From the standardized, symbolic, religious rigidity art little by little developed Hellenic grace and elegance. But attracting attention are two enormous pieces, pieces of fluted column from a Greek temple (Apollo Didyma) of two and a half meters in diameter. If one would reconstruct in his imagination the building whose columns are before him and he recalls the elegant proportions of Greek art, this temple, in my opinion, must be gigantic and larger than the known ones. Friezes of combats of amazons showing that the warriors in fighting them seize them forthwith by the hair.
The museum of antique marbles, or rather Greek and Roman sculpture, is the largest collection I have seen of first class works, though it is said that it does not surpass much the great ones of Italy. There a complete course in mythology can be studied by just looking at the statues and groups; another course on Roman history with the busts of the consuls and emperors as well as with their statues. The very celebrated “Venus of Milo” is there, recognized as the best of all despite its being armless; a colossal Melpomene of four meters. The statues that I had seen only in pictures are all there and one spends three hours in going through them superficially and comes out of it with a confused imagination. Christian sculpture presents a great contrast to that of the pagan, and in spite of its infancy it gives nothing but a feeling of grace and beauty, of mysticism, something that speaks of heaven and the soul.
The sculpture of the Renaissance and of the modern period despises the pagan and scarcely deigns to cast a glance at the Christian. It is indeed beautiful, genuine, elegant, grandiose, and at times sublime. Calling attention are two slaves by Michelangelo, a Diana by Coujon, and several by Pudget and Coustou.
The second floor is assigned to painting and Greek, Roman, and Etruscan antiquities, and jewels of the kings of France. There are the Italian school with Leonardo de Vinci, Raphael, Titian, and Correggio with their best virgins; the Dutch with their landscapes by Ruysdael, Bergheim, and others; the German with Sebald Behann, Helbein, and others; the Flemish with Rubens and Van Dyck: the Spanish with Murillo, Velasquez, and Rivera among which is the great “Concepción” by Murillo alongside the masterpieces…
[1] Fragment of a letter to his parents, judging by its similarity to his preceding letters to them about Paris.
[2] Cesar Cantu’s History of the world. A very popular book then, was read by Rizal at the age of 12 when he was studying at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila.
[3] Name of a powerful French noble family: Duke of Guise (1519-1563), Henri I de Lorraine (1550-1588), and others.
[4] Jean de Bueil (1405-1480), called “The Scourge of the English,” associated with the glory of Jeanne d’Arc.
[5] Cierre du Terrail, Lord Bayard (1473-1524), French captain, whose bravery and generosity aroused the admiration even of his enemies, winning him the appellation of “Knight without fear and without reproach.”
[6] “Counted, weighed, divided”, the ominous words that appeared mysteriously on the wall of the banquet hall of King Balthazar.