The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 32, June, 1860

Boston typifies a peculiar phase of American life; it is the illustration, the exponent, of the cultivated side of our nationality; its thought, its action, its character are taken abroad as symbols of the national thought and action and character, in whatever relates to literature or art. The Professor said truly, Boston does really in some sort stand for the brain of America. Well the brain of America appreciates the stage. It is but a few months since the culture and distinction of Boston nightly crowded a small and inferior theatre, to witness the personations of the young genius who is destined at no distant day to rival the proudest names of the drama. The most brilliant successes Edwin Booth has yet achieved have been achieved in Boston; scholars and wits and poets and professors crowd the boxes when he plays; women of talent write poems in his praise and publish them in the "Atlantic Monthly"; professors of Harvard College send him congratulatory letters; artists paint and carve his intellectual beauty; and fashion follows in the wake of intellect, alike acknowledging his merits. Boston recognized those merits, too, when they were first presented to its appreciation; and now that they verge nearer upon maturity, her appreciation is quickened and her applause redoubled. It cannot be said that the taste or culture of the nation is indifferent to histrionic excellence, when absolute excellence is found.

No other art is yet on such a footing among us. Neither is this because of our partially developed civilization. It is equally so abroad; where the nations are oldest and best established in culture, there, too, a similar state of things exists. No school in painting, no style of sculpture, no kind of architecture has made such an impression on the age as its music, as its dramatic music, its opera. This speaks to all nations, in all languages. No writer, though he write like Tennyson, or Longfellow, or Lamartine, or Dudevant, can hope for such an audience as Verdi or Meyerbeer. No orator speaks to such crowds as Rossini; no Everett or Kossuth, or Gavazzi or Spurgeon, has so many listeners as Donizetti. For the stage is the art of to-day,—perhaps more especially, but still not, exclusively, the operatic stage; the theatre in its various forms represents the feeling of the time so as Grecian and Gothic architecture and Italian painting have in their time done for their time,—so as no pictures, no architecture, no statuary can now do. Painting and statuary, when they do anything towards representing this age, incarnate the dramatic spirit; the literature that has most influence today is journalism,—the effective, present, actual, short-lived, dramatic newspaper, where all the actors speak for themselves: other literature has its listeners, but it lags behind; other art has its appreciators, but it cannot keep pace with the march of armies, with the rush to California, with the swarm to Australia; there is no art on these outskirts but the dramatic. That travels with the advancing mass in every exodus; that went with Dr. Kane to the North Pole (he had private theatricals aboard the Resolute); that alone gave utterance immediately to the latest cry of humanity in the Italian War.

Neither can it be said that the theatre has no more consequence now than it has always enjoyed. At the time when Gothic architects and Italian painters expressed the meaning of their own ages, there was nothing like a real drama in existence, and the Roman theatre was never comparable with ours. The Greeks, indeed, had a stage which was an important element of their civilization, and which took the character of their time, giving and receiving influence; but their stage was essentially different from that of the moderns. Its success did not depend upon the individual performer; its pageantry was perhaps as splendid as what we now see; but the play of the countenance, that great intellectual opportunity offered an actor by our drama, was not known. In this see also a characteristic of the present age. Individuality is a distinctive peculiarity of the nineteenth century; it has been for centuries gradually becoming more possible; but every man now works his own way, acts himself, more completely than ever before. Therefore appropriate is it that the drama should give importance to the individual, and allow a great actor to incarnate and illustrate in his own form and face feelings and passions that formerly were only hinted at; for remember that the Greek players usually wore masks, while their amphitheatres were so large that in any event the expression of the features was lost.

With this individuality, this opportunity for each to develop his own identity and intensity, the nineteenth century strangely combines another peculiarity, that of association. All these units, these atoms, so marvellously distinct, are incorporated into one grand whole; though each be more, by and of himself, than ever before, yet the great power, the great motor, is the mass. The mass is made powerful by the added importance given to each individual. And you may trace without conceit a state of things behind the scenes very similar to this in front of the footlights. In the theatre, also, the many workers contribute to a grand result. The manager would be as powerless in his little empire, without important assistants, as a monarch without ministers and people. What makes the French army and the American so irresistible is the thought that each private is more than a machine, is an intellectual being, understands what his general wants, fights with his bayonet at Solferino or his musket at Monterey on his own account, yet subject to the supreme control. And the theatre, with all its actors and scene-painters and costumers and carpenters and musicians, is only an army on a different scale. The forces of the stage answer to the generals and colonels, the marshals and privates, all marching and working and fighting for the same end. Those splendid dramatic triumphs of Charles Kean were only illustrations of the principle of association,—only illustrations of the readiness of the stage to adapt itself to the times, to seize hold of whatever is suggested by the outside world, to appropriate the discoveries of Layard and the revelations of Science to its own uses,—illustrations, too, of the importance of the individual Kean, as well as of the crowd of clever subordinates.

That the theatre feels this reflex influence, that it appreciates all that is going on around it, that it is not asleep, that it is penetrated with the spirit of the century, whether that spirit be good or evil, the selection of plays now popular is another proof. In France, where the success of the histrionic art now culminates, a contemporaneous drama is flourishing, the absolute society of the day is represented. That society has faults, and the stage mirrors them. "La Dame aux Camélias," "Les Filles de Marbre," "Le Demi-Monde" reflect exactly the peculiarities of the life they aim to imitate. And these very plays, whose influence is so often condemned, would never have had the popularity they have attained in nearly every city of the civilized world, had there not been Marguerite Gautiers and Traviatas outside of Paris as well as in it. Another attempt, perhaps not an entirely successful one, but still a significant attempt, has been made in this country to produce a contemporaneous drama. "Jessie Brown" and "The Poor of New York," and other plays directly daguerreotyping ordinary incidents, at any rate show that the drama is an art that responds instantly to the pulses of the time.

But it ia not necessary for the stage to daguerreotype; it mirrors more truly when it embodies the spirit. And never before was there an age whose spirit was more theatrical, in the best sense of the term; full of outside expression, but also full of inside feeling; working, accomplishing, putting into actual form its ideas; incarnating its passions; intellectual, yet passionate; lofty in imagination, yet practical in exemplification; showy, but significantly showy,—theatrical. An art, then, that is all this, surely expresses as no other art does or can the character of the nineteenth century,—surely is the representative art.

* * * * *

ROBA DI ROMA

THE EVIL EYE AND OTHER SUPERSTITIONS

I have already, in a former article, spoken of some of the superstitions belonging to the Church which are prevalent in Italy; but there are other, and, so to speak, lay superstitions, which also claim a place,—and to them this chapter shall be dedicated.

It is dangerous ground, a twilight marsh, where the will-o'-wisps light us, over which I propose to lead you; and had I not armed myself with all sorts of amulets, I should shrink from the enterprise. But the famous weapon with which Luther drove away the Evil One is at my side, potent as evil, I hope, so long as a pen can be put into it,—and Saint Dunstan's friend is in the corner, ready, at a pinch, for service; and having shut out all those spirits which so sorely tempted Saint Anthony, and locked my door to dark eyes and blue eyes and dark hair and blonde hair, I may hope to get through my dangerous chapter, and—

Strange fatality!—one of Saint Anthony's spirits tempts me from the other room, even at the moment I boast; but I resist,—manfully dipping my pen into Luther's stronghold,—and it vanishes, and leaves me face to face with—the Evil Eye. Yes! it is the Evil Eye, the Jettatura of Italy, that we are boldly to face for an hour.

This is one of the oldest and most interesting superstitions that have come down to us from the past; and as it still lives and flourishes in Italy with a singular vitality and freshness, it may be worth while to trace it back to some of its early sources. Its birth-place was the East, where it existed in dillomnt forms amongst almost every people. Thence it was imported into Greece, where it was called Baskania, and was adopted by the Romans under the name of Fascinum. Solomon himself alludes to it in the Book of Wisdom. Isigonus relates that among the Triballi and Illyrii there were men who by a glance fascinated and killed those whom they looked upon with angry eyes; and Nymphodorus asserts that there were fascinators whose voices had the power to destroy flocks, to blast trees, and to kill infants. In Scythia, also, according to Apollonides, there were women of this class, "quoe vocantur Bithyoe"; and Phylarchus says that in Pontus there was a tribe, called the Thibii, and many others, of the same nature and having the same powers. The testimony of Algazeli is to the same effect; and he adds, that these fascinators have a peculiar power over women. We have also the testimony of Aristotle, Pliny, and Plutarch, who all speak as believers, while Solinus enumerates certain families of fascinators who exerted their influence voce et linguâ, and Philostratus makes special mention of Apolloius Thyaneus as having been possessed of these wonderful powers. Indeed, nearly all the old writers agree in recognizing the existence of the faculty of fascination; and among the Romans it was so universally admitted, that in the "Decemvirales Tabulae" there was a law prohibiting the exercise of it under a capital penalty:—"Ne pelliciunto alienas segeles, excantando, ne incantando; ne agrum defraudanto." Some jurisconsults skilled in the ancient law say that boys are sometimes fascinated by the burning eyes of these infected men so as to lose all their health and strength. Pliny relates that one Caius Furius Cresinus, a freedman, having been very successful in cultivating his farms, became an object of envy, and was publicly accused of poisoning by arts of fascination his neighbors' fruits; whereupon he brought into the Forum his daughter, ploughs, tools, and oxen, and, pointing to them, said,—"These which I have brought, and my labor, sweat, watching, and care, (which I cannot bring,) are all my arts." Let those who consider the moving of tables as wonderful listen to the surprising statement of Pliny as to an occurrence in his own time, when a whole olive-orchard belonging to a certain Vectius Marcellus, a Roman knight, crossed over the public way, and took its place, ground and all, on the other side.8 This same fact is also alluded to by Virgil in his Eighth Eclogue, on Pharmaceutria (all of which, by the way, he stole from Theocritus):—

"Atque satas aliò vidi traducere messes."

"Now," says the worthy Vairus, who has written an elaborate treatise on this subject in Latin, well worthy to be examined, "let no man laugh at these stories as old wives' tales, (aniles nugas,) nor, because the reason passes our knowledge, let us turn them into ridicule, for infinite are the things which we cannot understand, (infinita enim prope sunt quorum rationem adipisci nequimus); but rather than turn all miracles out of Nature because we cannot understand them, let us make that fact the beginning and reason of investigation. For does not Solomon in his Book of Wisdom say, 'Fascinatio malignitatis obscurat bona'? and does not Dominus Paulus cry out to the Galatians, 'O insensati Galatoe, quis vos fascinavit'? which the best interpreters admit to refer to those whose burning eyes (oculos urentes) with a single look blast all persons, and especially boys."

It seems to have been a peculiarity in the superstitions as to the fascinum, that boys and women were specially susceptible to its influence; and in this respect, as well as in some of the symptoms of fascination, it bears a curious resemblance to the effects of modern witchcraft as practised in New England. Dionysius Carthusianus, speaking of the nomad tribes of the Biarmii and Amaxobii, who, according to him, were most skilful fascinators, says that they so affected persons with their curse that they lost their freedom of will and became insane and idiotic, and often wasted away in extreme leanness and corruption, and so perished: "ut liberi non sint nec mentis compotes, soepe ad extremam maciem deveniant, et tabescendo dispereant." Olaus Magnus agrees with him in these symptoms; and Hieronymus says, that, when infants suddenly grow lean, waste away, twist about as if in pain, and sometimes scream out and cry in a wonderful way, you may be certain that they have been fascinated. This, to be sure, looks mightily like a diagnosis for worms; but we would not measure our wits with the grave Hieronymus. Still, as an amulet against such fascination, "Jaynes's Vermifuge" might be suggested as efficient, or at least a grain or two of Santonina.

In Abyssinia, it is supposed that men who work in iron or pottery are peculiarly endowed with this fatal power of fascination, and in consequence of this prejudice they are expelled from society and even from the privilege of partaking of the holy sacrament. They are known by the name of Buda, and, though excluded from the more sacred rites of the Church, profess great respect for religion, and are surpassed by none in the strictness of their fasts. All convulsions and hysterical disorders are attributed to these unfortunate artificers; and they are also supposed to have the power of changing themselves into hyenas and other ravenous beasts. Nathaniel Pearce, the African traveller, relates that the Abyssinians are so fully convinced that these unhappy men are in the habit of rifling graves in their character of hyenas, that no one will venture to eat quareter or dried meat in their houses, nor any flesh, unless it be raw, or unless they have seen it killed. These Budas usually wear earrings of a peculiar shape, and Pearce states that he has frequently seen them in the ears of hyenas that have been caught or trapped, and confesses, that, although he had taken considerable pains to investigate the subject, he had never been able to discover how these ornaments came there; and Mr. Coffin, his friend, relates a story of one of these transformations which took place under his own eyes.9

This is the old superstition of the were-wolf, which existed also among the Greeks and Romans. Those endowed with this power of transforming themselves into beasts were called Versipelles. Pliny makes mention of them, and cites from a Greek author the case of a man "who lived nine years in the shape of a wolf"; but, credulous as he is, he says that the superstition "is a fabulous opinion, not worthy of credit." For myself, I can say that I have known many men who were wolves; and we all remember what Queen Labe used to do with her lovers.

Fascination was of two kinds, moral and natural. Those in whom the power was moral could exert it only by the exercise of their will; but those in whom it was natural could but keep exercising it unconsciously. And these latter were the most terrible. It is generally explained by ancient writers as being a power of the spirit or imagination, (as they termed it.) exhibited in persons of a peculiar organization, and diffusing radios salutares vel perniciosos. Though the terms employed by them, as well as their notions of its origin, are very unphilosophical and vague, it is plain that they considered it as a species of mesmeric or biologic power, operating by nervous impression. The fascinator generally endeavored to provoke in his victims an excited and pleased attention, for in this condition they were peculiarly predisposed to his influence. And inasmuch as persons are thrown off their guard of reserve and attracted by praise, those who flattered excessively were looked upon with suspicion; and it was a universally recognized rule of good manners and morals, that every one in praising another should be careful not to do so immoderately, lest he should fascinate even against his will. Hieronymus Fracastorius, in his treatise "On Sympathy and Antipathy," thus states the fact and the philosophy,—and who shall dare gainsay the conclusions of one so learned in science, medicine, and astrology as this distinguished man?—"We read," he says, "that there were certain families in Crete who fascinated by praising, and this is doubtless quite possible. For as there exists in the nature of some persons a poison which is ejaculated through their eyes by evil spirits, there is no reason why infants and even grown persons should not be peculiarly injured by this fascination of praise. For praise creates a peculiar pleasure, and pleasure in turn, as we have already said, first dilates and opens the heart and then the spirit, and then the whole face and especially the eyes,—so that all these doors are opened to receive the poison which is ejaculated by the fascinator. Wherefore it is most proper, whenever we intend to praise a person, that we should warn him, and use some form to avert the ill effects of our words, as by saying, 'May it be of no injury to you!' There are, indeed, some, who, when they are praised, avert their faces, not to indicate that praise in itself is unpleasant, but to avoid fascination; it being thought that fascination is often effected by means of praise";10 or in other words, the poison being given in the honey of flattery. Now in order to close up this dilatationem or opening of the system, a corona baccaris was worn, which, by its odoriferous and constipating qualities, produced this effect, as Dioscorides assures us.11 Virgil, in his Seventh Eclogue, alludes to the same, antidote:—

"Aut si ultra placitum laudant, baccare frontemCingite, ne vati noceat mala lingua futuro."

Tertullian, in his work "De Virginibus Velandis," states the same fact as Fracastorius, and says that among the heathens there are persons who are possessed of a terrible somewhat which they call Fascinum, effected by excessive praise: "Nam est aliquod etiam apud Ethnicos metuendum, quod Fascinum vocant, infeliciorem laudis et gloriae enormioris eventum."

To avert this evil influence, every well-mannered person among the ancients said, "Proefiscine," before wishing well to another,—as clearly appears from the following passage cited by Charisius12 from Titinius in "Setina." One person exclaims, "Paula mea, amabo–" Whereupon a friend who stands by says, "He was going to praise Paula!" "Ecce qui loquitur, Paulam puellam laudare parabat!" And another friend present cries out, "By Pollux! you should better say, 'Proefiscini,' or you may fascinate her": "Pol! tu in laudem addito Proefiscini, ne puella fascinaretur."13 This same custom exists at the present day among the Turks, who always accompany a compliment to you or to anything belonging to you with the phrase, "Mashallah!" (God be praised!)—thus referring the good gifts you possess to the Higher Spirit. To omit this is a breach of courtesy, and in such case the other person instantly adds it in order to avert fascination; for the superstition is, that, if this phrase be omitted, we may seem to refer all good gifts to our own merit instead of God's grace, and so provoke the divine wrath. The same custom also exists in Italy; and the common reply to any salutation in which your looks or health may be complimented is, "Grazia a Dio!" In some parts of Italy, if you praise a pretty child in the street, or even if you look earnestly at it, the nurse will be sure to say, "Dio la benedica!" so as to cut off all ill-luck; and if you happen to be walking with a child and catch any person watching it, such person will invariably employ some such phrase to show you that he does not mean to do it injury, or to cast a spell of jettatura upon it. The modern Greeks are even more jealous of praise, and if you compliment a child of theirs, you are expected to spit three times at him and say, [Greek: Na maen baskanthaes], ("May no evil come to you!") or mutter [Greek: Skordo], ("Garlic,") which has a special power as a counter-charm. So, too, in Corsica, the peasants are strict believers in the jettatura of praise, which they call l'annocchiatura,—supposing, that, if any evil influence attend you, your good wishes will turn into curses. They are therefore very careful in praising, and sometimes express themselves in language the very reverse of what they intend,—as, "'Va, coquine!' says Bandalaccio, in M. Merimée's pleasant story of "Colomba," 'sois excommuniée, sois maudite, friponne!' Car Bandalaccio, superstitieux comme tous les bandits, craignait de fasciner les enfans en les addressant les bénédictions et les éloges. On sait que les puissances mystérieuses qui président à l'annocchiatura ont la mauvaise habitude d'exécuter le contraire de nos souhaits." Perhaps our familiar habit of calling our children "scamp" and "rascal," when we are caressing them, may be founded on a worn-out superstition of the same kind.

But it is not only praise administered by others which may inflict evil upon us,—we must also be specially careful not to have too "gude a conceit of ourselves," lest we thereby draw down upon us the fate of a certain Eutelidas, who, having regarded his image in the water with peculiar self-satisfaction and laudation, immediately lost his health, and from that time forward was afflicted with sore diseases. During a supper at the house of Metrius Florus, where, among others, Plutarch, Soclarus, and Caius, the son-in-law of Florus, were guests, a curious and interesting conversation took place on the subject of the Fascinum, which is reported by Plutarch in one of his Symposia. The existence of the power of fascination was admitted by all, and a philosophical explanation of its phenomena was attempted. In reply to some suggestions of Plutarch, Soclarus says there is no doubt that their ancestors fully believed in this power, and then cites the case of Eutelidas as being well known to his auditors, and celebrated by some poet in these lines:—

"Eutelidas was once a beauteous youth,But, luckless, in the wave his face beholding,Himself he fascinates, and pines away."14

Fascination was excited by touch, voice, and look. The fascination by touch was simply mesmerism, or rather the biology of the present day, in an undeveloped stage. There were said to be four qualities of touch,—calidus, humidus, frigidus, et siccus, or hot, cold, moist, and dry,—according to which persons were active or passive in the exercise of the fascinum. Its function was double, by raising or by lowering the arm,—"modo per arteriæ elevationem, modo per ejusdem submissionem" says the worthy Vairits; "for," he continues, "when the artery is thrown out and is open, the spirits are emitted with wonderful celerity, and in some imperceptible manner are carried to the thing to fascinate it. And because the artery has its origin in the heart, the spirits issuing thence retain its infected and vitiated nature, and according to its depravity fascinate and destroy."