In their later periods (after 1900) both Odilon Redon and Claude Deubussy turned to mystical and esoteric themes in their work to express their sentiments about art. That they turned to these mystical themes during their respective late periods shows that they were not only trying to communicate the disenchantment of being misunderstood, but the realization that the true innovative artist became a martyr for his own aesthetic. Odilon Redon’s friend and art critic André Mellerio noted this change in the introduction to the catalogue of an 1894 exhibition of Redon’s work:
The artist isolates the essential concept of the vices, the virtues, the sufferings that surround him. Then, abruptly, he rises above the real world. which presses and oppresses us from all sides, beyond banal and narrow daily contingencies. In ecstatic faces burst out gleams of a divine dream– faces of martyrs for whom the burning stake turns into roses.(1)
During the years from 1909 through 1913, the Italian playwright Gabriele D’Anunzio was in Paris working on his latest production, Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien (henceforth Le Martyre), a play in the symbolist æsthetic. Little has been said about this play in Paris, and the art historian Philippe Jullian considers it to be a work of little artistic merit and too late in its conception for it to have been appreciated fully by the public, since its performance took place in 1911, the tail end of the symbolist vogue. To chose the martyrdom as a subject was already purely symbolic, as many Romantic artists saw themselves as martyrs for their are, but the subject was further charged by being the martyrdom of S. Sebastian, historically one of the most erotic of Christian icons. The subject matter was not intended to be didactic, but to illumen aspects of artistic creation and human desire. Here truly the spirit of the mystical middle ages mingles with the sexual cult of Adonis. St. Sebastian is paralleled in his poem Adonis in which he writes: “Thus died the Adolescent, in a great mystery of Pain and Beauty as imagined by my Dream and Art.”(2)
(Ida Rubinstein as S. Sebastian; 2 sketches by Leon Baskt for D’Annunzio’s passion play)
The play was to be written by this Italian in mediæval French, to further heighten the connection with past mystic plays. And, perhaps the most scandalous and shocking aspect of the work was the choice for the role of the saint: it was to be created by a female, Ida Rubinstein. This blatant effort to heighten the androgyny always attributed to the saint caused a great stir in Paris, with the archbishop condemning the play on the basis of heresy. Ida Rubinstein with her long, thin figure and grace was seen as the perfect choice in the eyes of the poet to fully give the effect of androgyny he wanted to be attached to his saint. He was clearly carrying on a tradition that had been established in iconographic portrayals of the saint ever since the Middle Ages and early Renaissance. D’Annunzio contacted Debussy, asking if he would write incidental music for his mystery play, probably as a result of the growing appreciation of the musician due to the success in previous years of his music drama Pelleas and Melisande. To this Debussy answered:
Mon cher Maître Hotel Krantz Vienna 30 November 1910
Your letter has been forwarded to me here where I am staying for some time and for my sins. Forgive me for not writing at once to say how happy I am to have received it. How could I not love your poetry? The very thought of working with you gives me a kind of advanced fever.
I shall be back in Paris around 20 December. I’m sure I have no need to say how pleased I shall be to see you.Yours most sincerely
C.D. (3)
The collaboration that resulted was a magical one because of the way in which the text and music complemented each other to form a work in which was presented the transcendence of earthly pain, and achievement of inner peace through an inescapable intellectual martyrdom. This resounded heavily with the artists of the time, and Odilon Redon seems to be among them. Debussy’s aesthetic was very in tune with the artistic and psychological requirements of the representation of the life of a martyr; during his work on Pelleas he achieved a style of understated melodic material that relied on harmonic colour, using harmonies to give birth to a melody rather than merely as support. At this time he was engrossed in the study and revision of the writings of the late baroque composer Jean-Philippe Rameau, in whose treatise of harmony he urged that true melody arose from harmony. This concern with the colourist harmonies was one that was shared by Odilon Redon, who around this period had turned to the use of colour to create visual harmonies on the canvas.Though still unclear whether Redon attended a production of this play or not, it is likely that he did given his appreciation for Debussy’s music as well as the fact that at the time, his output reflects a heavy leaning toward pictorial representations of Saint Sebastian that were probably inspired by D’Annunzio’s play and Debussy’s music. This of course is not be the first time that Odilon Redon draws inspiration from musical sources, since he was an ardent music enthusiast, which can bee seen in many of the entries to his journal A Soi-meme:
Music is a nocturnal art, a dreamlike art. It reigns in winter at the hour when our soul is confined. Music shapes our soul in youth and later we stay faithful to our first emotions; music gives them a new life, a sort of resurrection.
The vast amount of musical language employed, not only by Redon, but his contemporaries is a testament to this idea. His works depicting the legend of Parsifal also serve as an example of Redon utilizing the elements found in music-drama as a springboard for creation, clearly drawing from Wagnerian influences which were so dear to the symbolist generation. Given this strong bond between music and pictorial art, it is not unusual that Redon was inspired by the collaboration between Gabriele D’Annunzio and Claude Debussy in Le Martyre, even if no stress is ever made in the literature concerning Redon.
It was in the years surrounding the production to Le Martyre, from 1909 to 1913, and only around those years, that portrayals of the Saint appear Redon’s oeuvre. This strange, and not discussed, parallel of events is the germ for the speculation that there was a mutual inspiration between this group of artists that, as seen above, admired each other’s works. Let us now turn to a detailed discussions of the works in question. The first work depicting this subject that is documented in the artist’s catalogue is a watercolour from 1910. In this work, we find the saint tied to an offshoot of a tree that is of a blue hue; his figure is one of repose, his eyes closed, his head tilted. It is a composition of graceful beauty with the saints body posed in an organic matter that seems to be almost reclining against the trunk as if languishing upon nature’s divan. Saint Sebastian’s figure, pure and lean, emerges from the gnarled rough bark the tree turned cradle. The arrows and the violence they represent disappear into the composition giving way to the sublimity of the act of submission and sacrifice for the ideal.
The same year (1910) he produced a work dealing, once again, with the subject of Saint Sebastian’s martyrdom.
For this work he chose to use pastels, a medium which he employed often after his turn to colour. This work contains a lot more colour than the earlier piece. In comparing these two pieces it is possible that the watercolour might have been created as a study for the pastel work because of the similarities in composition and the use of colours. In any case, this work in pastel adheres closer to more realistic hues than the watercolour; the background gives the impression of a mountainous landscape draped in a beautiful blue sky that is highlighted by golden tints so as to suggest the twilight of the day, in an attempt to capture the same twilight of the Saint’s life. The plane is once again divided vertically by the tree to which is fettered the the lean body of Sebastian, pushed back against the trees by the impact of the arrows; he stands on a bed of small red blossoms which stand in sympathetic harmony to the spilled blood of the one who is steadfast in his ideals.
Another watercolour of the same subject appeared in 1912, this time the composition is extremely unusual and is more an expression of a personal fancy or sentiment rather than a strict narrative of the martyrdom.
In this particular depiction the Saint is not in any was fettered to a tree, but rather within a womb-like outline, which points to a Freudian desire for safety and protection; within this womb we find, once again, a backdrop of flowers. The martyr is not, however, free from his danger since within this structure the arrows are still present, presenting the dichotomy that the martyr (or the artist) can find little refuge from his fate, even within the uterine enclosure. Pictorially this is a work that is one that is greatly lacking in perspective; the arrows (and here Redon uses more arrows than in any other depiction) serve mainly to highlight the flatness of the pictorial plane because they approach the Saint from all directions and surround him in a most menacing way. Once again, the martyr appears with closed eyes, which remove it from the plane of reality into the real of escape or the false paradise.
There are three other works from this period in which Redon portrays S. Sebastian, always alone, in a firmament of flowers or blue.
Is there a connection with the D’Anunzio-Debussy play? Did he view himself as that artist/martyr? His life was one of struggle, searching his inner world for the images that would give life to his deepest sentiments and tribulations, exposed like the martyr to the world, naked; fettered to his life only to accept willingly (but not without pain) the arrows of scorn and misunderstanding by those who thought him different. He writes:
How sweet it would be to age if the stream of years dried up in us the source of pain! But no. On the slope on which we are descending, we have a too faithful companion: the heart does not leave us.
Questions remain to be answered, perhaps they are hidden neath a scattered gold foliage.
(To be continued, perhaps)
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(1) Dorra, Henri. Symbolist Art Theories. Berkley: University of California Press. 1995. p. 58.
(2)quoted in: Jullian, Phillippe. D’Annunzio. New York: Viking Press Inc. 1971.
(3) translation from the original French in: Nichols, Roger. Debussy Letters. London: Farber and Farber. 1987. p. 227.
