The Devil's Pool and Other Stories

The Devil’s Pool (1845)

c 87 The Devil’s Pool (1845) 1. The Author to the Reader By the Sweat of thy Brow Thou shalt maintaine thy meagre Life; After long Suff’ring, Toyle & Strife, DEATH takes thee from the Plough. This quatrain in archaic French, printed below a picture by Holbein,1 has a profoundly sad naïveté. The woodcut shows a farmer driving his plow across a field. A vast expanse of countryside extends into the distance; a few squalid huts are visible there; the sun is setting behind a hill. A hard day’s work is ending. The peasant is old, stocky, dressed in rags. Before him he’s driving a team of four gaunt, worn-out horses; his plowshare is digging into rough, unruly ground. One creature alone is light and nimble in this scene of “Sweat” and “Suff’ring.” He is a weird character indeed, a skeleton armed with a whip, running alongside in the next furrow and lashing the terrified horses—doing the work of the old farmer’s plowhand. He is Death, the specter whom Holbein introduced allegorically into the series of philosophical and religious scenes—gloomy and clownish at one and the same time— known as The Dance of Death. In this collection—or rather this vast composition, where Death plays his part on every page and is the leitmotiv and dominant theme—Holbein has summoned up rulers, pontiffs, lovers, gamblers, drunkards, nuns, harlots, robbers, beggars, soldiers, monks, Jews, travelers, the entire world of his own day and ours; and everywhere the specter of Death is taunting, threatening, and triumphing. From one scene only is he absent: the scene where 88 The Devil’s Pool and Other Stories poor Lazarus lies on a dunghill at the rich man’s gate and declares that Death holds no terrors for him—presumably because he has nothing to lose; his very life is Death anticipated. Is it really a comforting thought, this Stoic notion devised by the half-pagan Christianity of the Renaissance? Does it really satisfy religious people? Self-seekers, sneaks, tyrants, libertines, all the proud sinners who misuse life, will suffer when they’re in Death’s clutches, no doubt. But what about the blind, the beggars, the madmen, the poor peasants? Will the thought that Death can’t do them any further harm make amends for a whole lifetime of misery? Of course not. Over the artist’s work hangs an inexorable gloom, a dreadful inevitability. It’s like some bitter curse hurled at the doom of humanity. Holbein’s astute portrait of the society he saw before him is, in fact, grimly satirical. Everywhere he was struck by crime and misfortune. But what shall we depict—we artists living in a different age? Should people nowadays be rewarded with the thought of death? Should we today invoke death to punish injustices and put sufferings right? No; we are no longer dealing with death, but with life. We no longer believe either that the grave will wipe out everything, or that blessings will be gained by compulsory acts of renunciation ; we want to have a good life, because we want to have a fruitful one. Lazarus must leave his dunghill, so that the poor will no longer gloat over the death of the rich. Everyone must be made happy, so that the happiness of a few won’t be a crime and a curse in the sight of God. The plowman, sowing his wheat, must recognize that he is working for the cause of life, and not rejoice over the fact that Death is walking alongside him. In short, death must be seen neither as a punishment for prosperity nor as a compensation for hardship. God hasn’t appointed it to be either a punishment or a compensation for life; he has blessed life,2 and the grave mustn’t be seen as some refuge to which we can send people when we don’t want them to be happy. Some present-day artists, serious observers of the world around them, devote themselves to the task of portraying wretchedness , abject poverty, Lazarus’s dunghill. No doubt that does come within the scope of art and philosophy; but when they depict poverty as being so hideous and degraded, and sometimes so corrupt and criminal, do they really achieve their purpose, and is 89 The Devil’s Pool (1845) the result as salutary as they...