May 4. Seville — The Beauty of Cruelty
What a people are these,—these Spaniards! This afternoon—Sunday—I saw my first bull-fight. One need never wonder again at the Roman Arena and its horrors. It is as incredible that human beings can sit through such spectacles as that women could have reversed their thumbs when a staggering, bloody barbarian turned up a glazed eye to seek mercy.... And this, after two thousand years of Catholicism, of Christianity!
These Spaniards say—staring stupidly at your horror—“Mas, no es Cristianos. They are only animals.” Animals!—and yet Christians dare talk of divine mercy; of their faith having softened hearts, and sweetened human nature. Civilization has done so, in truth, but where this faith reigns most arbitrarily such an atrocious spectacle is permissible; goes undenounced of its priests.
It is not the baser sort alone who love this cowardly butchery. In the same box with ourselves sat a woman and her two daughters, evidently members of the upper classes. The arena below was crowded with the people—women in sulphur-coloured shawls, embroidered with sharp blues and scarlets—men of all classes—dandies and workmen cheek by jowl—but the rows of boxes above held the women and children of the well-to-do, even the aristocracy. The Royal family itself patronizes the arena.
The women, whose faces I watched instead of the shambles after the fight began, grew devilish, a hard smile drew their lips back over their teeth; their eyes glittered; a look of lust strained the lines about the nose. They forced the children—some of whom cried, and shrank from the horrid sight—to turn and see the blood and the struggle.
I believe the secret charm of this gory game to many is the prick that the sight of blood gives to the senses. The history of war is full of evidence of this fact—that the sight of horrors spurs the passions. It was curious to think that many of the people there owed their existence to just such a stimulus as this. Cruelty thus lies, hereditarily, at the very roots of their being; intensified in each generation.
For the same reason, I suppose, that so much of my life seems to me a glamour of tangled shadows, elusive and shifting, with no definite line between the real and the unreal, between to-day and all the yesterdays—for that reason the arena’s gaunt, windowless walls and passages seemed startlingly familiar. Equally familiar the yellow, sand-strewn circle; the glaring blue sky above the bright-coloured maelström of faces; the whirl of fans all around the ring—as of a circle of innumerable dancing butterflies; the cries of the venders; the clang of the trumpets; the glitter of the tinsel and gew-gaws; the bold rush of the black bull; the quick spatter of the applauding hands....
No animal was ever more beautiful than this splendid beast, the perfect focus of power and rage. He knew that he was facing murder. There was desperation in his glance from the first moment, but he simply didn’t know the meaning of cowardice. He knew there was no use in anything he might do; that his courage, and beauty, and long battle for life, would not stir to pity one of those hard, handsome faces with their dark shaven jaws and tight lips, but he struck at his foes with all his force in mere sullen fury. He tore open the bellies of the shivering, sweating, blindfolded horses, who staggered a few steps trailing their entrails in the sand and then crumpled helplessly; he caught a man in the breast and tossed him over the barrier with blood spurting from the hole his horn had made. He himself leaped the fence once, as agile as a deer, and brushed the crowd back like flies, but he did it all without a sign of hope, and never made a sound.
Pricked, goaded, red streams running over his satin skin and searing his eyes, stumbling wildly here and there, his sides sunk in, his muzzle dragging in the dust, dumb, dull fury in his heart at his useless torture, spurred to new effort by explosive darts that tore his flesh into gory, pendulous ribbons, hissed by the women, he fell at last upon his knees in blind helplessness....
How it ended I don’t know. A rage of horror squeezed my heart till the tears spurted from my lids. It seemed necessary to seize some weapon and slaughter indiscriminately the men who were murdering this poor brute for mere amusement, the women who were hissing his death throes. In such horrid sequence does cruelty engender cruelty.
The people about me regarded my emotion and retreat with surprise and contempt. Some such sensation, I suppose, as would have been felt by a Roman who should have seen me shed tears when the big cats of the arena crushed the bones of some brave young barbarian or Christian. These creatures were so far beneath him in the scale of existence that he could not conceive of any poignancy of suffering or emotion in such a mere animal. Was not one hair of a Roman worth many sparrows—or Christians?
The Jewish democrat tried to teach the world to recognize the value of the individual, the sanctity of each human life—when will a Christ of the beasts arise?
May 5.
This old world, with its horrors and its beauties, how tame it makes our smug, comfortable America appear!... Yesterday I wished to make a hecatomb of the Spaniards. To-day I forgive them everything because of the Sevillian dancers. My lusts are all of the eye. I can quite conceive Herod tossing the Baptist’s head to the supple Salome in an ecstasy of approval. Dancing, when it is good, is more beautiful to me than music. And this dancing is very good.
The muscular gymnastics, which modern Italy has imposed upon the world as dancing, are as dissimilar from the real thing as the fiorituri singing is from the old bel canto. The Spaniards make dancing—as all arts should be made—the poetical expression of life and love. Such ardour and seduction, such abandon to the joy of living, such rage and daring, such delicate coquetry and wild wooing!... there is nothing like it out of Spain, the country where they torture helpless animals for sport.
Is there, perhaps, some secret tie between cruelty and beauty; between crime and art? It is certain that religious reformers have always thought so, and have acted with logical fury. In our peaceful, decent country, beauty, except such as Nature herself affords, is rare. A race that loves its neighbour as itself seems incapable of creating an art. The good Swiss have done nothing for the mind’s delight: the virtuous Spartans could not even appreciate loveliness when they saw it. Nearly all the great periods of flowering in art come after the roots of a nation have been watered in blood, after some frightful crise of suffering. It would seem as if bringing forth must be always accompanied by birth-pangs.