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2009 From Origins to Annihilation: Symbolic Evil and the Dialectic in Odilon Redon's Noirs Stephanie Chadwick

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FROM ORIGINS TO ANNIHILATION:

SYMBOLIC EVIL AND THE DIALECTIC IN ODILON REDON’S NOIRS

STEPHANIE CHADWICK

A Thesis submitted to the Department of Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

Degree Awarded: Spring Semester 2009

The members of this Committee approve the Thesis of Stephanie Chadwick defended on April 20, 2009.

______Lauren Weingarden Professor Directing Thesis

______Adam Jolles Committee Member

______Richard Emmerson Committee Member

Approved:

______Richard Emmerson, Chair, Department of Art History

______Sally McRorie, Dean, College of Visual Arts, Theater and Dance

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above named committee members.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………… iv Abstract……………………………………………………….…………………………. vi 1. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………..…. 1 1.1 Methodology and Statement of the Problem………………………………….….. 2 1.2 State of the Literature………………………………………………………...... … 4 1.3 Redon in Historical Context……………………………………………………… 6 1.4 Précis of Chapters…………………………………………………………..……. 12 2. THE DUALITY OF EVIL IN REDON’S FLOWERS OF EVIL PRINTS…….….…. 15 2.1 By my Side, a Demon…………………………………………………….….…… 23 2.2 Redon’s Lucifer: Baudelaire’s Satan……………………………….…….….…… 27 2.3 Evil in Myth, Evil in Society………………………………………….……….…. 34 2.4 Redon’s Flowers of Evil Prints in Visual Dialogue………………………….…… 36 3. THE DIALECTIC OF EVIL IN REDON’S SAINT ANTHONY PRINTS…….…… 39 4. THE ARTIST AND APOCALYPSE……………………………….……………..… 56 5. CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………….…… 74 FIGURES………………………………………………………………………….……. 77 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………….…… 95 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH……………………………………………………….…… 105

iii

LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Odilon Redon. Ceaselessly by my side the demon stirs. 1890. Photogravure made from an original drawing (Evely process), in black on ivory wove paper. 25.6 x 20.7 cm. (plate); 44.7 x 31.5 cm. (sheet). The Art Institute, Chicago.

Figure 2: Odilon Redon. Glory and Praise to You, Satan, in the Heights of Heaven, Where You Reigned, and in the Depths of Hell, Where, Vanquished, You Dream in Silence! 1890.Photogravure made from an original drawing (Evely process), in black on ivory wove paper. 21 x 21 cm. (image/plate); 44.7 x 31.4 cm. (sheet). The Art Institute, Chicago.

Figure 3: It is The Devil. 1888. Lithograph on ivory chine affixed to ivory wove paper. 25.3 x 19.9 cm. (image/chine); 43.2 x 31.2 cm. (sheet). The Art Institute, Chicago.

Figure 4: Odilon Redon. Death: "My irony surpasses all others!" 1889. Transfer lithograph on thin ivory wove paper affixed to heavyweight ivory wove paper. 26.1 x 19.7 cm. (image); 34.7 x 45.2 cm. (sheet). The Art Institute, Chicago.

Figure 5: Odilon Redon. Death: "It is I who make you serious; let us embrace each other." 1896. Lithograph on cream chine affixed to ivory wove paper. 30.2 x 21.2 cm. (image); 30.3 x 21.3 cm. (chine); 45.2 x 34.6 cm. (sheet). The Art Institute, Chicago.

Figure 6: Odilon Redon. And His Name That Sat On Him Was Death. 1899. Lithograph on cream chine affixed to ivory wove paper. 31.8 x 22.1 cm. (image/chine); 44.5 x 34.8 cm. (sheet). The Art Institute, Chicago.

Figure 7. Odilon Redon. And I Saw an Angel Come Down from Heaven, Having the Key of the Bottomless Pit and a Great Chain in His Hand. 1899. Lithograph in black on cream chine affixed to ivory wove paper. 30.4 x 23.2 cm. (image); 30.6 x 23.5 cm. (chine); 45.2 x 34.9 cm. (sheet). The Institute, Chicago.

Figure 8: Odilon Redon. And Bound Him a Thousand Years. 1899. Lithograph in black on cream chine affixed to ivory wove paper. 30 x 21.2 cm. (image/chine); 45.1 x 34.6 cm. (sheet). The Art Institute, Chicago.

Figure 9: Rodolphe Bresdin. The Comedy of Death. 1854. Lithograph. 21.8 x 15 cm. (image). Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.

Figure 10: Félicien Rops. The Incantation. 1896. Héliogravure. 37.94 x 25.72 cm. (plate); 29.85 x 19.05 cm. (image). Musée Provincial Félicien Rops, Namur, Belgium.

Figure 11: Félicien Rops. Les Epaves. 1866. Etching, various sizes. Public Domain.

Figure 12: Odilon Redon. The Lost Angel then Opened Black Wings. 1886. Lithograph in black on ivory chine, affixed to white wove paper. 25.6 x 21.4 cm. (image); 25.9 x 21.6 cm. (chine); 44.5 x 31.5 cm. (sheet). The Art Institute, Chicago. iv

Figure 13: Odilon Redon. Captive Pegasus. 1889. Lithograph in black on cream chine affixed to cream wove paper. 34 x 29.7 cm. (image/chine); 60.2 x 43.8 cm. (sheet). The Art Institute, Chicago.

Figure 14: Odilon, Redon. And Man Appeared. 1883. Lithograph in black on light gray chine, affixed to white wove paper. 28 x 21 cm. (image/chine); 47.2 x 34.5 cm. (sheet). The Art Institute, Chicago.

Figure 15: Jacques Callot. The Temptation of Saint Anthony. 1635. Engraving. 34.9 x 46.1 cm. The Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS.

Figure 16: Gustave Moreau. The Apparition. c. 1874-76. Oil on canvas. 142 x 103 cm. Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris.

Figure 17: Félicien Rops. The Temptation of St. Anthony. 1878.Watercolour preparation, non- fixed pastels and gouache. 73.8 x 54.3 cm. Bibliothéque Royale de Belgique, Brussels.

Figure 18: John Haynes after John Hamilton Mortimer. Death on a Pale Horse. 1784. Etching. 71 x 51 cm. The British Museum.

ABSTRACT

In this thesis, I consider how Odilon Redon symbolized the theme of evil in many of his black and white prints. I examine Redon’s compilation of these prints into portfolios in dialogue with literary interpretations of evil in Charles Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil, Gustave Flaubert’s Temptation of Saint Anthony, and the New Testament Book of Revelation. I consider word and image interaction in Redon’s engagement of these traditional and contemporary literary sources. I demonstrate that Redon’s prints participated in Symbolist discourses, using traditional myths and symbols in new and evocative ways. Further, I show that Redon’s prints, like the Symbolist texts with which they were in dialogue, participated in wider cultural discourses informed by traditional and contemporary theories of evolution and degeneration. I argue that the symbolism in these prints aligns with Redon’s writings on art and spirituality, representing evil as a duality and part of a dialectical process of enlightenment. Redon’s writing represented evil as false morality and unreflective adherence to societal norms in decadent society. Redon’s portfolios depicted evil and alienation in bourgeois culture, using light and dark symbolism and the tropes of the Devil, the serpent, and the skeleton to connect with canonical myths while symbolizing resistance to dogma and contemporary materialism. I demonstrate that Redon symbolized evil in these prints, in alignment with his writings, as an element to be overcome in a dialectical process of spiritual growth.

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

Nineteenth-century French artist Odilon Redon used symbols to represent the abstract and ambiguous concept of evil in many of his black and white drawings and prints. Redon used both form and content symbolically in these images. Because he considered the color black to be especially significant, Redon’s works in black and white media have been loosely termed the Noirs. Some scholars restrict the use of the term Noirs to the original charcoal drawings. Others consider Redon’s Noirs to include related prints, many of which were reproductions of his earlier drawings. Redon considered his prints an extension of the Noirs, writing that through his lithographic prints the Noirs retained the purity of black, unblemished by extraneous color.1 Redon wrote that “black is the most essential color” and an “agent of the spirit” that promotes thought rather than sensuality.2 He compiled many of his black and white prints into thematic portfolios engaging evil in poetry and literature. In this thesis, I consider Redon’s print portfolios of the 1880s and 1890s dedicated to literary examinations of evil. In these prints, Redon used black to both symbolize evil and to provoke thought about it, challenging dogma and promoting personal spirituality and Symbolist artistic ideals. Redon dedicated these portfolios to Charles Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil (Figs.1-2) in 1890, Gustave Flaubert’s Temptation of Saint Anthony (Figs. 3-5) in 1888, 1889, and 1896, and the New Testament Apocalypse of Saint John (Figs. 6- 8) in 1899. These portfolios were informed by, and helped to inform, theories of cultural evolution and degeneration. In this thesis, I consider how Redon participated in Symbolist discourses, using traditional myths and symbols in new and evocative ways in his print interpretations. I consider word and image interaction in Redon’s engagement of traditional and contemporary literary sources. I argue that the symbolism in these prints aligns with Redon’s writings on art and spirituality, representing evil as a duality and part of a dialectical process of enlightenment.

1Odilon Redon, “January 1913 – For a lecture given in Holland on the occasion of an exhibition of his works,” in To Myself: Notes on Life, Art, and Artists, trans. Mira Jacob and Jeanne L. Wasserman (New York: George Braziller, 1986), 103.

2 Ibid.

Redon used light and dark as traditional symbols of good and evil in Western culture. But Redon did not use these symbols simplistically. Instead, he used them evocatively. Redon also used tonal effects symbolically throughout his prints, aligning crepuscular imagery with Symbolist discourses and his own writings on art and spirituality. These shadowy dream-like or otherworldly regions in Redon’s prints signified the Symbolist desire to evoke a contemplative response in the viewer. Redon did this both by accentuating the contrast between light and dark, good and evil, and by blurring the lines between them. For Redon, this symbolism represented both spiritual and material concerns. I argue that the symbolism in the prints played on the confusion of good and evil in a manner that aligned with nineteenth-century notions of evil as a duality, signifying both decadent culture and the artist’s visionary response to it. In these prints, Redon used traditional symbols of evil, such as the Devil, the Serpent, and the skeleton in a similar manner. On the one hand, these symbols represented evil. Yet, on the other hand, these symbols alluded to the perceived complexities of good and evil in modern culture, conceived as paradoxically progressing and degenerating at the same time.

1.1 Methodology and Statement of the Problem Nineteenth-century artists such as Redon conceived of their work as translating their visionary experience of the Ideal to their viewers. Thus, the idea of the imaginative dream became important in Symbolist art and theory. Contemporaneous critics such as Émile Hennequin (1859-1888) praised Redon’s translation of the dream using horrible and grotesque imagery. Hennequin also praised Redon’s symbolic contrast of the heroic and the vile, good and evil, in his prints.3 Current scholars emphasize the fantastic in the Noirs and consider Redon’s darker subjects and themes as part of his overall engagement in spiritual exploration as fantasy. Current scholarly approaches highlight psychological aspects of Redon’s works in considering their connections to contemporary trends such as idealism, science, and esoteric ideas and practices. The emphasis on fantasy in recent interpretations unduly represents Redon’s Noirs as reconciliatory and escapist. Further, these approaches do not adequately consider Redon’s consistent thematic treatment of evil in his print portfolios. I return to Hennequin’s criticism as

3 Emile Hennequin, “Fine Arts: Odilon Redon,” in Symbolist Art and Theories: A Critical Anthology, ed. Henri Dorra (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 49-52.

my point of departure and examine Redon’s representations in relation to the problem of evil in late nineteenth-century consciousness. I consider these images in dialogue with Redon’s larger body of work in the Noirs and with contemporaneous theories of progress and decadence. Because literary texts were integral to Redon’s portfolios, I take a word and image approach in my analysis. Word and image analysis, in which images are viewed in terms of their reciprocal relationship with literary texts rather than merely as illustrations, is especially important to studying Redon’s prints.4 Redon and the Symbolists resisted illustration in both the literary and visual arts. They believed in the importance of evocation and reciprocity between images and texts. Accordingly, I use a methodology that includes formal and iconographic analysis of Redon’s prints as well as discourse theory as elaborated by Michel Foucault. I use a discursive methodology in order to analyze the prints, and the texts with which they were in dialogue, as historically situated within a range of intersecting discourses including those of Symbolism, Idealism, and decadence. I consider Redon’s print interpretations of Baudelaire’ Flowers of Evil and Flaubert’s Temptation of Saint Anthony within the context of Symbolist art and theory informed by German idealism. I also examine Redon’s own writing on contemporary cultural, spiritual, and artistic practices that informed Symbolist ideals. I consider these contemporaneous writings about evil, the individual, and society in relation to the New Testament Book of Revelation and apocalyptic anxieties. Additionally, I consider evil in nineteenth-century socio-cultural myths elaborated by Georges Bataille (1897-1962) in Literature and Evil of 1957.5 I consider the grounding of these socio-cultural myths in canonical myths about evil elaborated by Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) in The Symbolism of Evil of 1967.6 Further, I consider the mingling of these canonical and socio-cultural myths of decadence in

4 Lauren Weingarden, “Art Historical Iconography and Word & Image Studies: Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère and the Naturalist Novel,” in The Pictured Word: Word and Image Interaction, ed. Martin Heusser et al. (Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1998), 49. My methodologies in word and image analysis are drawn from Weingarden’s elaboration of word and image studies in this article.

5 Georges Bataille, Literature and Evil, trans. Alastair Hamilton (London: Marion Boyars, 1985), 51-53.

6 Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson Buchanan (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), 4, 151.

Symbolism and fin-de-siècle consciousness as elaborated by Matei Calinescu (1934-) in his Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism of 1987.7 In addition to examining Redon’s dialogue with writings on evil, I analyze his prints’ discursive relations with visual sources. I consider Redon’s visual dialogue with representations of evil in the work of Rodolphe Bresdin (1822-1885) and Félicien Rops (1833-1898). I explore how Redon’s representations of evil functioned with the other works in his Noirs, and with Symbolist representations, to signify disillusionment with bourgeois culture, the positivist worldview, and materialistic narratives of progress. Further, I argue that Redon rendered evil evocatively in order to prompt reflection and promote personal spirituality. Redon’s prints aligned with his writing on evil as a duality and part of a dialectical process of spiritual growth.

1.2 State of the Literature Nineteenth-century Symbolists conceived art as a material manifestation of their subjective experience of the Ideal. Correspondence between the real and ideal implied a link between moral evil and natural evil, conceived as deprivation, contagion, and death. Redon’s Noirs explored these links just as they explored connections between Naturalism and idealism and between science and spirituality. In his essay “Redon’s Spiritualism and the Rise of Spiritism,” Fred Leeman argues that despite Redon’s spiritual concerns, his interest in science prevented him from entirely subscribing to the ideas of fashionable esoteric groups. Instead, according to Leeman, Redon preferred a kind of symbolism that connected with science. Leeman explores Redon’s peripheral involvement in esoteric circles and considers his use of satanic imagery.8 However, Leeman focuses on that side of satanic imagery that appealed to the fin-de- siècle mystic enthusiasts as transgressive, liberating, and ultimately escapist. In contrast, explore Redon’s representations of evil as engaged in the contemporary spiritual discourses that informed Symbolist artistic ideals.

7 Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1987), 153-157.

8 Fred Leeman, “Redon’s Spiritism and the Rise of Mysticism,” in Odilon Redon: Prince of Dreams, 1840-1916, ed. Douglas W. Druick (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1994), 215-236.

In her book, The Dark Side of Nature: Science, Society, and the Fantastic in the Work of Odilon Redon, as in her articles “Evolution and Degeneration in the Early Work of Odilon Redon” and “The Franco-Prussian War and Cosmological Symbolism in Odilon Redon's ‘Noirs,’” Barbara Larson discusses Redon’s works in relation to scientific and technological developments and theories of evolution and degeneration. Larson’s thorough studies of Redon’s graphic works examine his treatment of microcosmic and macrocosmic themes. In these studies, however, she emphasizes Redon’s interest in science and evolution rather than Symbolist representation or spirituality. Larson considers Darwin’s Origin of Species as informing Redon’s interest in evolution and in rendering hybrid and monstrous forms. She also considers Redon’s interest in astrophysics and his use of comet imagery in the Apocalypse of St. John album. Larson postulates that eclipse studies, and specifically the December 1870 eclipse, generated interest in ancient cosmological symbolism, in which the eclipse, or black sun, was considered a portent of doom rather than merely a Baudelairian symbol of gloom. Larson argues that Redon’s work signifies a sense of impending doom and the desire to escape the somber mood in the aftermath of French defeat in the Franco-Prussian war.9 Although Larson discusses Redon’s use of microcosm/macrocosm themes and engagement with discourses on evolution, she does so from a scientific, rather than primarily artistic or spiritual, viewpoint. I consider the function of Redon’s representations of evil, in discourse with theories of evolution and degeneration, as integral to his spiritual beliefs and artistic practices within the Symbolist ethos. Vojtěch Jirat-Wasiutyński considers Redon’s interest in science in relation to his spirituality. In his essay, “The Balloon as Metaphor in the Early Work of Odilon Redon,” Jirat- Wasiutyński argues that Redon’s images of balloons, eyes, and floating heads represent a modern and scientifically attuned engagement with the idea of spiritual transcendence. Jirat- Wasiutyński argues that Redon used the image of the hot-air balloon as a modern-day metaphor of transcendence. Jirat-Wasiutyński acknowledges that such images represent personal introspection and contemporary fascination with mysticism. He also discusses Redon’s

9 Barbara Larson, The Dark Side of Nature: Science, Society, and the Fantastic in the Work of Odilon Redon (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005), 125; Larson, “Evolution and Degeneration in the Early Work of Odilon Redon.” Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 2, No. 2 (Spring 2003); Larson, “The Franco-Prussian War and Cosmological Symbolism in Odilon Redon's ‘Noirs.’” Artibus et Historiae 25, No. 50 (2004): 127-138.

symbolism in relation to contemporary ideas on the human being as a fallen angel seeking resurrection and reconnection with the divine.10 Despite discussing depictions of Satan as a fallen angel, Jirat-Wasiutyński does not adequately consider Redon’s consistent thematic rendering of evil in his print albums. I consider Redon’s print portfolios dedicated to literary examinations of evil and how they connect to contemporaneous spiritual and Symbolist discourses. Stephen Eisenman postulates that Redon’s desire to reconcile positivism and idealism in his prints paralleled his desire to reconcile the psychological conflict between his bourgeois lifestyle and his nineteenth-century artistic ideals. Eisenman proposes a social dimension in Redon’s use of grotesque and monstrous imagery in the print medium, which he argues upset societal norms. In this way, according to Eisenman, Redon’s work functioned as a kind of hazy version of the Baudelairian mirror of society, reflecting the distortions of a decadent and materialist culture.11 Although Eisenman considers ethical and social elements in Redon’s work, he also emphasizes its representation of nineteenth-century desires for reconciliation. Further, despite his analysis of the grotesque and the monstrous in the Noirs, Eisenman does not consider these elements as Redon’s thematic treatment of the problem of evil and its relationship to nineteenth-century Symbolism and spirituality. Eisenman’s interpretation thus aligns with the majority of scholarship on Redon. While demystifying myths of the outsider artist, these approaches undervalue the significance of Redon’s representations of evil. I consider Redon’s symbols of evil in his prints as signifying desire for spiritual fulfillment in modern society and engaging related nineteenth-century discourses.

1.3 Redon in Historical Context Redon’s innovative use of symbols to evoke multiple associations and responses, rather than to illustrate or didactically narrate, qualified him a Symbolist. In this thesis, I explore how

10 Vojtěch Jirat-Wasiutyński, “The Balloon as Metaphor in the Early Work of Odilon Redon.” Artibus et Historiae 13, No. 25 (1992): 195-206.

11 Stephen Eisenman, The Temptation of Saint Redon: Biography, Ideology, and Style in the Noirs of Odilon Redon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 3, 53, 56, 205.

Redon emphasized mythic and poetic dimensions in his prints by referencing traditional and contemporary literary sources. I argue that Redon’s prints were in dialogue with these literary sources rather than merely illustrating them. Images worked with text in the Noirs to connect to both contemporary discourses on modernity and traditional discourses on evil as self-betrayal that harms the individual and society. I assert that Redon took a unique approach to rendering evil within the context of nineteenth-century French Symbolism. Yet his renderings of evil exceeded the individual introspection on which he prided himself and instead signified a culturally-constructed fear and fascination with the problem of evil in an era of perceived spiritual crisis. Redon’s symbolism of evil in the Noirs represented his engagement with nineteenth-century discourses on spirituality, Symbolist art and theory, and theories of evolution and degeneration. Redon’s prints aligned with his writing, alternately exploring and challenging canonical and socio-cultural myths and promoting personal reflection and spirituality. Competing views of reality and religious and spiritual practices emerged during the nineteenth century in France in response to the perceived emptiness of bourgeois positivism, ambivalence toward the Church, and nostalgia for traditional folk practices. Auguste Comte’s (1798-1857) positivist philosophy, which advocated materialism and humanist morality based on Enlightenment notions of progress, fostered secular culture in urban centers such as Paris. Many Parisians were dissatisfied with positivism, however, which they viewed as merely the champion of bourgeois power and socio-cultural myths advocating a false, production-based, morality. Despite their dissatisfaction with the dogmatic and outdated morality of the Church, many Parisians were unsatisfied with the perceived spiritual void in secular culture. Spiritualism (non- institutional religion) and spiritism (esoteric and cult practices) were the two main approaches to spirituality in French culture uneasy with both Catholic dogma and positivist materialism. Although these groups resisted Catholic mores, the spiritualist and spiritist movements had more in common with Catholicism than with positivism. These movements paralleled the Catholic revival in rejecting positivism and emphasizing spirituality over materialism.12 Redon’s own

12 Thomas Kselman, Death and the Afterlife in Modern France (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 125-126, 133-135. 7

approach can best be described as spiritual, since he wrote of belief in God and an afterlife but not in distorted or dogmatic religious or cult practices, which he considered to be evil.13 Both the positivists and the spiritualists based their views on theories of evolution and degeneration. The positivists drew largely upon the philosophy of Auguste Comte (1798-1857), the scientific theories of Charles Darwin (1809-1882), and even the pseudo-scientific theories of conservative social critic Max Nordau (1849-1923). The spiritualists drew upon traditional Western and non-Western religious narratives and Neo-platonic idealist philosophy. They also incorporated scientific and pseudo-scientific theories, such as those of Camille Flammarion (1842-1925), in addition to spiritualist texts such as those published by Emanuel Swedenborg (1868-1772). In short, Symbolist artists such as Redon were able to draw from a rich repertoire of theories of material and spiritual evolution and degeneration. Ultimately, the Symbolists drew from this repertoire to develop their own theories of art and decadence. These Symbolist theories articulated the late nineteenth-century milieu in terms of Charles Baudelaire’s (1821-1867) criticism and his poetry in the Flowers of Evil. Paul Bourget (1852-1935) fostered the appropriation of Baudelaire as a paradigm of decadence in his “Essai de psychologie contemporaine” of 1881.14 The ideas of evil and decadence go hand in hand. Notions of what constitutes evil differ according to historical and cultural context and can even differ within specific contexts. Western cultures have traditionally conceptualized evil as a duality, in which it is the polar opposite of good. Late nineteenth-century French culture was no exception. Yet the fin-de-siècle idea of evil took on an additional dimension that is exhibited in Redon’s Noirs. This new notion of evil, and Redon’s symbolism of it, alluded to another duality. Redon’s symbols alluded to two views of evil in modern society, building alternately on notions of progress and decadence. The positivist view held that society was gradually evolving and progressing for the betterment of humanity. This view, which emerged with bourgeois power, entailed an ethic of production that emphasized material existence. Within this ethos, those who sought a meaningful or pleasurable life at the expense of production were considered decadent. The other view, held by the

13 Redon, “Journal Entry 1870,” in To Myself, 35.

14 Paul Bourget, “Essai de psychologie contemporaine,” in Symbolist Art and Theories, ed. Henri Dorra (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 128-131.

Symbolists, was that material progress paradoxically led to degeneration due to the increasingly mechanistic and dehumanizing conditions in modern society.15 Redon and the Symbolists, inspired by Baudelaire, viewed the symbol of evil was a double signifier. On the one hand, symbolic evil alluded to the problems of bourgeois materialism. Yet, on the other hand, evil also represented the possibility of liberation from the oppressive bourgeois morality of production. Thus, within Symbolist discourses, modern evil was conceived as a duality, signifying everything wrong with bourgeois culture and at the same time representing the possibility of liberation from oppressive societal norms and ideologies of progress. This conception of duality, and competing views of evil, fostered cynicism, pessimism, and ultimately the embrace of evil among Symbolist writers such as J.K. Huysmans (1848-1907) and artists such as Félicien Rops (1833-1898). But it also set up a complex dialectic or conceptual process by which artists such as Redon envisioned spiritual progress. Among theorists, the dialectic took many forms, the most common being between spirit and matter, good and evil, and the individual and society. Redon symbolized all of these forms in his print portfolios. Although they responded differently to the duality of evil, the Symbolists shared a conception of evil as anything that contributed to the loss of an individual sense of the sacred within mass culture and materialistic modern society. Redon shared this view of evil, writing in his memoirs, To Myself, that real evil is false authority in the dual forms of religious and positivist dogma.16 Redon’s writing and artistic production connected with nineteenth-century discourses on evil as false morality and a product of unreflective adherence to societal norms within decadent culture. In The Symbolism of Evil, Paul Ricoeur writes that, since these abstract concepts are not directly accessible, they are necessarily mediated, symbolic, and speculative. The main ideas associated with the symbolism of evil as a duality are the ideas of individual freedom and the “servile will.”17 These ideas, conceived as a dialectical struggle between the will of the individual and the will of God, or, alternately, between the individual and society,

15 Calinescu, 153-157.

16 Redon, “Journal Entry 1870,” in To Myself, 35.

17 Ricoeur, 4, 151.

were important aspects of nineteenth-century spirituality and philosophy elaborated in the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) among others. In his book Literature and Evil, Georges Bataille examines Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil as manifesting historically-shaped notions of evil in relation to the crisis of identity in modern Paris. Bataille connects the theme of evil in Baudelaire’s poetry to romantic notions of individual liberty as well. He analyzes the connections between evil and choice, impotence, loss, and sacrifice in bourgeois culture and considers the consequences of dichotomies between nature and culture and the individual and society. Bataille brings a Marxist concept of negation and the dialectic to his analysis. According to Bataille, within the strengthening bourgeois culture of nineteenth-century France, good was represented as a morality of production, which Baudelaire challenged in his writing. This collectively pragmatic bourgeois construction of morality reinforced confusion about whether evil was an internal problem or an external conflict “between God and the devil.”18 Baudelaire played on this confusion in his poetry in a kind of satanic negation or rebellion against a false, bourgeois morality.19 These notions of evil as negation are important to interpreting Redon’s challenge to socio-cultural myths. Nevertheless, I argue that the Hegelian dialectic, conceived as an ascending spiral, is most relevant in interpreting Redon’s prints. Redon symbolized evil in his print portfolios in alignment with his writing. This symbolism alluded to evil as part of a dialectic of spiritual progress, alternately building upon and challenging tradition rather than merely negating religious and positivist views. Like Baudelaire before him, Redon worked toward a synthesis of art and nature, of the real and the ideal, to a greater degree than many of his contemporaries. The idea of dialectical synthesis elaborated in German idealism, most notably in the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel (1770- 1831), reached the French Symbolists, and filtered into artistic consciousness and practices, primarily through the writing of Schopenhauer. Baudelaire and the Symbolists also drew upon the eighteenth-century mystic Emanuel Swedenborg’s theory of correspondences in elaborating the importance of synthesizing subjective and objective experience in art production. In late nineteenth-century Parisian culture, artists drew upon the tenets of German idealism, essentially

18 Ricoeur, 51-53.

19 Eisenman, 178-179.

a form of mysticism, in order to reject positivism and reconcile Christian and Neo-platonic spiritual ideals with modern life. In this way, art was conceived as a means to represent the artist’s unique view of reality, translating his experience of the Ideal to the viewer.20 I argue that Redon drew upon Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil in symbolizing evil as a duality within this context. Further, I argue that Redon drew upon Gustave Flaubert’s (1821-1880) Temptation of Saint Anthony, itself based on Hegel’s philosophy, in symbolizing evil as part of a dialectical spiral. These earlier writers, working at mid-century, and the Symbolists, working at the end of the century, symbolized evil as ambiguous, problematic, and irreconcilable in order to evoke feelings and promote thought. Baudelaire often lamented this irreconcilability in his poetry, alternately embracing and rejecting evil and despair. Similarly, Redon wrote of conflicting feelings about evil and indicated that his symbolism was meant to evoke and not to resolve such issues.21 I argue that Redon’s symbolism of evil in his print portfolios that were in dialogue with Baudelaire and Flaubert both problematized evil and alluded to the good. Further, Redon’s prints that were in dialogue with the New Testament Book of Revelation subordinated evil to good in a dialectical process of spiritual development. Ricoeur writes that the history of evil is the history of mythologies of metaphysics, spirituality, and transcendence.22 I argue that, just as Redon symbolized dual forms of evil, he represented dual forms of myth in his prints. Redon depicted evil in canonical myths and in socio-cultural myths of originality and production, and evolution and degeneration, that built on tradition. Redon’s symbolism of evil drew upon mythic types and their narrative associations to connect to evolving discourses on the human condition and to challenge the very myths he rendered. Redon participated in his own myth-making, and was widely known for constructing his artistic persona in accordance with mythologized notions of the artist as a sage. Baudelaire and Symbolists, such as Jean Moréas (1856-1910) and Gustave Kahn (1859-1939), had

20 H.R. Rookmaaker, Gauguin and 19th Century Art Theory (Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1972), 22-23, 26-32, 183-185.

21 Redon, “Suggestive Art,” in Theories of Modern Art, ed. Herschel B. Chipp (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 117; Redon, “Journal Entry 1870,” 32-38.

22 Ricoeur, 4, 151.

contributed to this myth-making in their critical writings.23 Redon built upon these contemporary myths. At the same time, his ambiguous depictions of evil disrupted dogmatically adhered to canonical and socio-cultural myths and bourgeois narratives of progress to promote personal reflection and spirituality. Redon’s representations, in dialogue with myth and contemporaneous discourses on evil, thus represented more than merely fashionable imagery or the mythic posturing of the artist as tortured outsider. Rather, I argue that the prints represented a key element of Redon’s work in the Noirs as engaged with important issues of the day; issues that were historically situated while signifying engagement in seemingly timeless discourses on the human condition.

1.4 Précis of Chapters In this introduction, Chapter One, I have elaborated my intent to study representations of evil in Redon’s Noirs in relation to traditional myths and contemporary literary representations. I have outlined my intent to demonstrate that these prints built upon and challenged traditional and contemporary myths, representing the complexities of evil in modern society and depicting evil as part of a dialectical process of spiritual evolution. I have outlined my methodology and provided an overview of the historical context in which Redon produced his print portfolios. In the following chapters, I will examine specific images from Redon’s literary print portfolios. In Chapter Two, “The Duality of Evil in Redon’s Flowers of Evil Prints,” I examine Redon’s symbolism of evil as a duality in his print album dedicated to Baudelaire’s poetry (Figs. 1-2). Redon and the Symbolists considered Baudelaire’s writings on evil instrumental in informing their artistic practices. I argue that Redon’s print album of Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil of 1890 was important because it used symbols and appropriated myths to promote personal reflection and to challenge mythologized norms. Baudelaire sensationalized evil. Indeed, he played with the duality between seduction and destruction in the very concept of evil. But Baudelaire also elaborated the evils of bourgeois culture, its overemphasis on material existence, and the false dichotomy between the real and the ideal. Baudelaire likened cultural decadence to

23 Jean Moréas, “Symbolism – a Manifesto,” in Art in Theory 1815-1900 : An Anthology of Changing Ideas, ed. Charles Harrison et al. (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1998), 1014-1016; Gustave Kahn, “Response of the Symbolists” in Art in Theory 1815-1900, 1016-1017; Rookmaaker, 19- 26, 29-33.

physical decay, using death as a signifier of the duality of evil and of individual and cultural decline.24 Within this context, Baudelaire represented the figure of Satan as analogous to the artist as tortured outsider in decadent culture. I argue that Redon’s symbols alluded to these views of evil in modern society, building alternately upon notions of progress and theories of degeneration. Redon’s symbols of evil in his Flowers of Evil prints represented his long-term interest in the theme of evil as part of his overall absorption with spirituality and metaphysics. Redon’s prints in the album were in dialogue with Baudelaire’s descriptions of the evils of bourgeois society and mythic narratives of progress. Consequently, Redon’s images aligned with Baudelaire’s writing, advocating individual introspection in opposing bourgeois positivism. The prints also aligned with Redon’s writing on the merits of a personal quest for enlightenment, rather than a primarily religious experience of the sacred. In Chapter Three, “The Dialectic of Evil in Redon’s Temptation of Saint Anthony Prints” (Figs. 3-5), I explore Redon’s emphasis on introspection in the struggle with both internal and external evil. I argue that Redon’s symbolism of evil in his Temptation of Saint Anthony portfolios of 1888, 1889, and 1896 alluded to the nineteenth-century myth of the artist as a visionary sage who could translate his visions to his viewers. Redon and the Symbolists considered Gustave Flaubert’s Temptation of Saint Anthony a paradigm of Symbolist literary ideals. I argue that Redon appropriated Flaubert’s characterization of Saint Anthony, the legendary third-century Christian hermit plagued by demons, as an ideal model of the artist as an outsider and a sage. Like Flaubert’s novel, Redon’s prints depicted Saint Anthony’s personal struggle to overcome evil and his erroneous embrace of dogma. Both the novel and the prints emphasized subjectivity and promoted personal reflection. In depicting Anthony as a visionary outsider analogous to the artist, Redon alluded to art as a surrogate for religion in an increasingly secularizing culture. Within the context of the novel’s skepticism towards Church dogma, Redon’s prints embodied the play of tensions between different notions of evil and new understandings of morality in modern culture. In this chapter, I explore how Redon exceeded Flaubert’s text, depicting evil as part of a dialectic of spiritual enlightenment rather than emphasizing its seeming irreconcilability.

24 Calinescu, 153-157.

In Chapter Four, “Redon: Artist and Apocalypse,” I examine representations of evil in the apocalyptic images of Redon’s Apocalypse of St. John album of 1899 (Figs.6-8). These images represented New Testament ideas on the connection between origin and end, and between evil and retribution. They related to the New Testament text and fin-de-siècle apocalyptic narratives as well as Symbolist literary and visual representations of evil. These prints also connected with Baudelaire’s writings elaborating evil as moral contagion threatening the spirit of the individual in modern society. I argue that these prints represented Redon’s embrace of Saint John as another ideal figure analogous to the artist as an outsider and a sage. Rather than merely alluding to art as a surrogate for religion, however, Redon’s Apocalypse of Saint John album of 1899 promoted personal spirituality that also aligned with ideas of salvation espoused by the Catholic Church. Redon’s Apocalypse of Saint John album aligned with the Catholic revival in France and represents heightened fin-de-siècle apocalyptic anxieties. At the same time, Redon’s representations of evil in this album intersected with nineteenth-century mystical thought, which included idealist and spiritualist discourses on cultural decadence. Redon’s Apocalypse of Saint John album aligned with these discourses and with his own writing elaborating the artist as a conduit of the Ideal. Ultimately, in this chapter I explore Redon’s manipulation of themes and symbols in alignment with his writings on art, spirituality, and evil advocating evolution through dialectical processes. Redon’s Apocalypse of St. John portfolio marked the culmination of his thematic treatment of the problem of evil in black and white print albums at the close of the nineteenth century. Redon continued to explore spiritual themes throughout the remainder of his career, but preferred to do so in colorful pastels. Considered in this light, Redon’s symbols of evil in this album represented his conceived artistic and spiritual synthesis promising a new beginning for a new century. The images aligned with Redon’s writing, treating evil as an individual and a social phenomenon and part of a dialectical struggle for spiritual progression toward the ideal. The social dimensions in these representations challenge the mere escapism of which Redon is frequently accused. These dimensions reveal that Redon’s poignant and complex renderings of evil did not merely romanticize or sensationalize the dark side of human existence. Rather, Redon’s Noirs represented a culturally and historically constituted desire for communion with the sacred within an increasingly secularizing and modernizing society.

CHAPTER 2 THE DUALITY OF EVIL IN REDON’S FLOWERS OF EVIL PRINTS

Redon and the Symbolists considered Charles Baudelaire’s writing instrumental in forming their artistic practices. In 1890, Redon produced an album of prints dedicated to Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil). Redon’s dialogue with Baudelaire in the album was important because it appropriated canonical myths in order to promote introspection and challenge socio-cultural myths of morality and productivity in modern society. As discussed in the Introduction, Redon’s symbols alluded to two approaches to the problem of evil in modern culture, building alternately on notions of progress and decadence. To Redon and the Symbolists inspired by Baudelaire, the symbol of evil was a double signifier. On the one hand, symbolic evil alluded to the problems of bourgeois materialism. Yet, on the other hand, evil also represented the possibility of liberation from an oppressive bourgeois morality of production.25 Thus, within Symbolist discourses, modern evil was conceived as a duality. This duality alternately signified everything wrong with bourgeois culture and represented the possibility of liberation from oppressive societal norms based on ideologies of progress. This conceived duality, and competing views of evil, complicated the idealist dialectic between spirit and matter, good and evil, and the individual and society. Redon’s print interpretations of Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil aligned with Baudelaire’s poetry and critical writing elaborating evil as a duality in modern society. The prints also aligned with Redon’s writing, embodying this duality, and a complex dialectic, as a means to envision spiritual development in modern culture. Redon used traditional symbols in new and evocative ways in his Flowers of Evil portfolio. Redon used light and dark as traditional symbols of good and evil in the album but he did not do so simplistically. Instead, he used them evocatively. Redon illustrated the good-evil dichotomy using black and white. But he also mingled the two in tenebrous, dream-like areas of his prints. This crepuscular symbolism created ambiguous spaces that blurred the lines between good and evil. Redon’s use of crepuscular symbolism paralleled Baudelaire’s poetry in the Flowers of Evil. Matei Calinescu’s writes that Baudelaire’s symbolism of cultural decay, as interpreted and disseminated by Paul Bourget, informed ideas of modern cultural decadence

25 Bataille, 152, 162.

among the Symbolists in Europe.26 According to Calinescu, idealists and Symbolists viewed Western culture as declining due to belief in bourgeois materialism that promised fulfillment through progress but delivered instead “spiritual alienation and dehumanization.”27 Using an organic model, Baudelaire likened the process of cultural decay to natural cycles of life and death. For Baudelaire, as for Redon, twilight symbolized the strange allure and dread associated with evil and mortality. This symbolism alluded to the perceived complexities of good and evil in modern culture, conceived as paradoxically progressing and degenerating at the same time. Redon also used figures symbolically in his Flowers of Evil portfolio. In these prints, Redon figured good and evil, and the ambiguous boundaries between the two in fin-de-siècle culture, using the symbols of Satan and the male and female bodies. In this chapter, I examine two of these prints, which were made from drawings done in the 1870’s. First, I analyze the print Ceaselessly by My Side the Demon Stirs (Fig. 1). Second, I consider Glory and Praise to You, Satan, in the Heights of Heaven, Where You Reigned, and in the Depths of Hell, Where, Vanquished, You Dream in Silence! (Fig. 2). Redon uses light and dark for symbolic effect in both prints. He also uses figures associated with good and evil in evocative ways. In Ceaselessly by My Side the Demon Stirs (Fig. 1), Redon depicts a figure group consisting of a man, woman, and child typically associated with a family. The figures are grouped in a conventional triangular composition, yet are depicted in a perplexing manner. The figures occupy a gloomy, dream-like setting. Although they are represented in proximity to one another, their pose is not an intimate one. Rather, the female holding the child has her back to the male. Both figures have rather malevolent expressions that are difficult to decipher. Their postures and expressions reinforce the forlorn sense of the image. The figures allude to Baudelaire’s poem “Destruction.” Both the image and the poem represent ideas about correspondences between spirit and matter, and the problem of evil as a duality, in fin-de-siècle culture. The print Glory and Praise to You, Satan (Fig. 2) refers to Baudelaire’s poem “Litanies of Satan” and uses the Devil as a traditional symbol of evil. In the print and the poem, however, Satan is used as a double signifier, alluding to the problem of the individual in decadent culture. Redon again used light and dark

26 Calinescu, 158.

27 Ibid., 162.

symbolically, using dark, dense lines to inscribe Satan’s wings and the spiritual darkness in which the figure resides. The figure’s wings refer to his status as a fallen angel. He crouches in an ambiguous pose in a shadowy, otherworldly region. All of the symbols worked together in the image, and in its connection to Baudelaire’s poem, to prompt reflection on good and evil in modern society. The symbolism also alluded to the artist as a visionary exile working against the grain to act as a mirror of decadent society and a conduit of the Ideal. The Symbolists admired Baudelaire’s poetry treating the aporia of evil in modern society.28 Similarly, Symbolist writers such as Huysmans, Hennequin, and Mallarmé, praised Redon’s work for its ambiguous depictions of bizarre and grotesque imagery.29 The Symbolists believed such qualities shocked the viewer, emphasizing subjective experience and challenging academic convention and bourgeois materialism. Redon’s symbols of evil in his Flowers of Evil prints represent his long-term interest in the theme of evil as part of his overall absorption with spirituality and theories of evolution and degeneration. Considered within the context of Symbolism, Redon’s writings, and the rest of his oeuvre, these prints suggest the need to restructure social and spiritual narratives suited to the modern condition. Redon’s Flowers of Evil prints were in dialogue with Baudelaire’s literary symbols of evil, including satanic imagery. Redon’s prints were also in dialogue with representations of evil in Symbolist art and theory. But Redon’s work represented a more positive, and less extreme, symbolism of evil than that of contemporaries such as Huysmans, who depicted cruelty, decadent excess, and fashionable satanic ritual in his novels La-Bas (Down There) and A Rebours (Against the Grain). Redon’s symbols of evil diverged from Symbolist discourses, and the literary texts with which they were in dialogue, by signifying a more positive outlook attuned to his eclectic, even pantheistic, spirituality. Redon studied with Rodolphe Bresdin during the 1860’s and Bresdin’s influence is apparent in Redon’s prints. The macabre, fantastic, and medieval imagery in Bresdin’s prints appealed to Romantics and Symbolists (Fig. 9). But Bresdin’s work was more attuned to the Romantic aesthetic. Redon drew from Bresdin’s romantic depictions of evil and

28 Peter Nicholls, Modernisms: A Literary Guide (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). 24.

29 Hennequin, 52.

vanity in Biblical and Danse Macabre scenes. 30 Redon added a sense of Symbolist ambiguity and complexity to his representations of evil and satanic imagery in his Flowers of Evil prints. In contrast, Symbolist artist Félicien Rops emphasized irreverence and satanic negation of socio- cultural values in works such as The Incantation of 1896, which aligned more with Decadent writers such as Huysmans (Fig. 10). In the frontispiece for the 1866 Belgian publication of Baudelaire’s Les Épaves (The Wreckage), a collection of poems that had been banned in France, Rops represented those elements of Baudelaire’s poetry that celebrated evil as liberating (Fig. 11). Redon’s prints embodied some of these same non-traditional values. But, as critic Emile Hennequin noted in his essay “Fine Arts: Odilon Redon” of 1882, Redon’s prints also contained heroic elements that opposed the vile, conveying the “most profound modern ideas on corruption, depravation, and ruse, and on the grandiose and the beautiful.”31 Redon’s prints embodied the elements in Baudelaire’s text that critiqued evil in decadent society rather than merely celebrating it, depicting evil as a signifier of both destruction and liberation. Redon’s prints aligned with Baudelaire’s text and Symbolist representations in their depiction of evil as a double signifier in response to the alienation of modern culture. Yet the prints diverged from Baudelaire’s text and Symbolist representations in highlighting Redon’s more positive outlook, representing evil as part of a dialectic that built on theories of evolution, as well as degeneration. Although Redon explored dual notions of evil in his Flowers of Evil prints, he did so as part of a larger program in his oeuvre, in which evil participated in a dialectical process of spiritual growth. Redon’s interpretation of evil in Baudelaire’s poetry did not merely represent an escapist philosophy nor an overt cultural critique. In conjunction with Redon’s writing, these images symbolized a rethinking of metaphysics and morality, and a pantheistic spirituality, in response to the positivism and alienation of modern bourgeois culture. In this chapter, I examine Redon’s symbolism of evil as a duality in his Flowers of Evil album. I begin my analysis of Redon’s prints with an introduction to Baudelaire’s poetry, his critical writings, and the critical reception of his work. Then I consider Redon’s prints in relation to Baudelaire’s text. I examine ideas about evil, society, and the will of the individual in idealist

30 Larsen, The Dark Side of Nature, 24-25.

31 Hennequin, 52.

philosophy because these ideas informed contemporary currents of thought and Redon’s own artistic theories and practices. In this section, I draw from the theories of twentieth-century philosopher Georges Bataille, whose theories build on Baudelaire’s elaboration of evil in nineteenth-century bourgeois society.32 Finally, I consider Redon’s symbolism of evil as a duality within the context of Symbolist painting and printmaking. In his poetry, Baudelaire likened cultural decadence to physical decay, using cycles of life, sexuality, and death as signifiers of the duality of evil and of individual and cultural decline.33 Baudelaire’s treatment of evil and sexuality was viewed as morally outrageous by nineteenth-century standards. He was prosecuted for immorality as a result of a harsh review in Le Figaro after publishing his Flowers of Evil in 1857. Copies of the collection were impounded and Baudelaire had to stand trial. Baudelaire was eventually ordered to remove six of his poems from the volume, one of which was his now famous “Les Métamorphoses du Vampire” (“The Metamorphoses of the Vampire”).34 The two subsequent nineteenth-century French editions of the Flowers of Evil, one in 1861 and a posthumous edition in 1868, did not include the banned poems. The Symbolists were familiar with these publications and with Baudelaire’s Belgian publication of the banned poems in his Les Épaves (The Wreckage) collection of 1866, for which Rops produced the frontispiece (Fig. 11).35 Baudelaire also wove his views about decadence into his critical writings on art and literature. One of his most widely-read critical texts was his essay titled “Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Works,” which he published in his translation of Poe’s Tales in 1852. In this essay, Baudelaire aligned with Poe and equated evil with modern bourgeois culture.36 It is this placement of evil at the doorstep of modern bourgeois society, also

32 Bataille, 54-57.

33 Calinescu, 153-157.

34 F.W.J. Hemmings, Baudelaire the Damned (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1982), 150-151, 153; Charles Baudelaire, “The Metamorphoses of the Vampire,” in The Flowers of Evil (1866), trans. William Aggeler (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954), http://fleursdumal.org/toc_1866_epaves.php (accessed March 22, 2009).

35 Ellen Holtzman, “Félicien Rops and Baudelaire: Evolution of a Frontispiece.” Art Journal 38, no. 2 (Winter, 1978-1979): 102-106.

36 Baudelaire, “Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Works,” in Seven Tales by Edgar Allan Poe , trans. W.T. Bandy (New York: Schocken Books, 1971),12-14. 19

apparent in Baudelaire’s poetry, that differentiated him from his Romantic contemporaries and made him an appealing figure for the Symbolists.37 In his “Essai de psychologie contemporaine: Charles Baudelaire” of 1881, writer Paul Bourget outlined Baudelaire’s “psychological peculiarities,” including his poetic interplay between the sensual and the morbid. Bourget described Baudelaire as a “disquieting” yet “disturbingly seductive” man of the times and a “theoretician of decadence.”38 Like many Symbolists, Bourget held Baudelaire to be the paradigm of the individual artist working against the grain of a society in decline. Because of their dissatisfaction with the modern condition, the Symbolists were willing to explore alternatives to the positivist banality of bourgeois culture. Symbolist artists embraced the ambiguity of Baudelaire just as they embraced the subjectivity of idealism over the mimesis of Realism. Redon’s work also represented a spiritual response to quotidian bourgeois existence. Redon created his print album in honor of Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil in 1890, toward the end of the period for which he is best known for his Noirs and nine years after Bourget’s influential essay on Baudelaire. Yet the album is a good starting point for analyzing Redon’s symbolism of evil because of its dialogue with Baudelaire’s writings and use of traditional myths and symbols in new ways. Critic Barbey d’Aurevilly had supported Baudelaire’s claim at his trial that his Flowers of Evil collection was structured by a “secret architecture,” in which evil elements were balanced by good in a Dantean comedy of life.39 This idea aligned with the Baudelairean symbol of the mirror that reflected the foibles, as well as the strange beauty, of modern society. Thus, Baudelaire’s writing on the evils of nineteenth-century French society served as a twisted ethic that aligned with, and helped to inform, Symbolist art and theory. Redon’s prints engaged Baudelaire’s play with evil in modern society and his ethical challenge to both canonical and contemporary socio-cultural myths. In alignment with Baudelaire’s text,

37 A.E. Carter, Charles Baudelaire (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1977), 57.

38 Bourget, 128-131.

39 James R. Lawler, Poetry and Moral Dialectic (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Press, 1997), 13, 16.

Redon’s prints depicted both the heroic and the vile. Redon’s prints aligned with his writing, however, in representing the duality of evil and emphasizing a more positive worldview. In 1889 Redon proposed to Belgian publisher Edmond Deman a set of interpretations of Baudelaire’s poetry. The series consisted of nine plates, including the cover and tailpiece.40 Deman published the series in an edition of forty three sets in 1890 using the Evely photogravure process.41 Deman also printed a smaller sized series that year, which he used to illustrate his publication of an edition of Baudelaire’s poetry.42 Redon’s album received less than favorable reviews due to what critics considered its overly illustrative qualities.43 Further, the Evely photogravure process was criticized for its poor print quality in general. Nevertheless, the images in the album are crucial to analyzing Redon’s symbolism of evil because of both their form and content. Redon formally and thematically composed his Flowers of Evil album in dialogue with Baudelaire’s literary works. Redon connected his representations in the Flowers of Evil portfolio explicitly to Baudelaire’s text by using lines of Baudelaire’s poetry as titles for his prints. The text is printed on the plate paper just below the images.44 Redon’s symbolism in the images, like Baudelaire’s writings, challenged nineteenth-century positivist narratives. Redon’s symbolism of evil combined image, myth, and poetics, suggesting the possibility of constructing new social and spiritual narratives suited to the modern condition. Thus, the prints aligned with Redon’s writing on the duality of evil in decadent society, alluding to the problems of evil as possible catalysts for new beginnings.

40 Alfred Werner, introduction to The Graphic Works of Odilon Redon (New York: Dover Publications, 1969), xxvii.

41 Redon, “Interpretations for Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs Du Mal,” at http://www.maitres- des-arts-graphiques.com/-EXBArchive.Fleurs%20du%20Mal.html (accessed March 22, 2009). Léon Evely was a renowned late nineteenth-century Belgian printer, well known for experimenting with refined variations in inking, exotic and antique papers, and, evidently, novel graphic processes. He was James Ensor's first printer, and worked regularly with Félicien Rops on perfecting heliogravure techniques, the plate being first photomechanically etched and then retouched with drypoint, aquatint, or roulette.

42Fred Leeman, “Odilon Redon: The Image and the Text,” in Odilon Redon: Prince of Dreams, ed. Douglas W. Druick (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1994), 193.

43 Ibid.

44 The Art Institute of Chicago. http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/79813 (accessed Jan. 12, 2009).

Barbara Larson’s discussion of Redon’s prints in her book The Dark Side of Nature: Science, Society, and the Fantastic in the Work of Odilon Redon and her article “The Franco- Prussian War and Cosmological Symbolism in Odilon Redon's ‘Noirs’” is important in understanding Redon’s connection of science and symbolism. Larson’s book contextualizes Redon’s symbolism within scientific theories of evolution and degeneration, and developments in microbiology and astronomy. Larson also considers the “philosophical offshoots” of science that she argues informed Symbolist representation. Larson provides a fascinating analysis of Redon’s symbolism as signifying a shifting worldview resulting from emerging scientific theory and technology. Yet, her reading of Redon’s work aligns with the majority of scholarship in emphasizing the escapist or reconciliatory qualities of the prints. Larson’s postulation that Redon’s symbolism expressed angst and the desire to escape declining French culture in the aftermath of defeat in the Franco-Prussian war undervalues Redon’s engagement with the problem of evil.45 Similarly, Stephen Eisenman’s analysis of Redon emphasizes an ideal of reconciliation. Eisenman argues that Redon’s desire to reconcile positivism and idealism parallels his desire to resolve the psychological conflict between his bourgeois lifestyle and nineteenth-century artistic values. Eisenman acknowledges that Redon’s use of grotesque and monstrous imagery in his prints contains an ethical dimension. Yet, Eisenman’s emphasis on such imagery as representing nineteenth-century desires for reconciliation remains a largely escapist interpretation and frames Redon’s art as merely his refuge from bourgeois culture. Further, Eisenman does not consider the function of such imagery in Redon’s thematic treatment of the problem of evil in relation to nineteenth-century spirituality.46 These scholarly approaches do not adequately consider how Redon’s dark images connect to one another and to conceptualizations of the problem of evil in nineteenth-century Symbolist discourses. Redon’s Ceaselessly by My Side the Demon Stirs (Fig. 1) and Glory and Praise to You, Satan, in the Heights of Heaven, Where You Reigned, and in the Depths of Hell, Where, Vanquished, You Dream in Silence! (Fig. 2) are important to studying Redon’s dialogue with

45 Larson, The Dark Side of Nature, 195-196; Larson, “The Franco-Prussian War,” 127-138.

46 Eisenman, 3, 53, 56-57, 205.

Baudelaire within the context of Symbolism. These prints were significant because, although they were published in Redon’s 1890 portfolio, they are reproductions of drawings he did in 1870 and 1871, shortly after publication of the posthumous edition of Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil in 1868. Redon valued the print medium as a way of distributing his work to larger audiences. Yet he often selected and combined earlier drawings for his interpretive print albums in order to evoke rather than merely illustrate. 47 This practice exemplified Redon’s Symbolist approach to his prints. The fact that these particular images were conceived nearly twenty years before the compilation of the Flowers of Evil album demonstrates Redon’s long-term dialogue with Baudelaire and his interest in depicting the theme of evil.

2.1 By my Side, a Demon Redon considered his Ceaselessly by my Side a Demon Stirs to be in dialogue with Baudelaire’s poem “Destruction” (Fig. 1).48 The text assigned as the title of the image is a line from the poem and is printed on the plate paper beneath the image. The print epitomizes the problems for which the album as a whole was criticized. As Fred Leeman notes in his “Odilon Redon: The Image and the Text,” even Andre Mellerio, Redon’s staunchest supporter, alluded to his disappointment with the image and with the poor quality of the Evely print.49 The print quality is mediocre at best, rendering the image blurry and difficult to discern. The image itself, depicting a man and woman sitting on an embankment by a body of water, is not one of Redon’s more visually stimulating works. Nevertheless, the ambiguous symbolism in the image combines with the haziness of the Evily process to enhance the evocative, mysterious qualities of the print. This print is also important when studying Redon’s engagement with evil in Baudelaire’s writing and in modern society. The male and female figures in the print sit on an embankment next to a body of water. They are surrounded by rocky crags, which Redon emphasized with bold lines and hatching in multiple directions. The sun appears to rise or set above the water but, in the

47 Lois B. and Francis E. Hyslop, “Redon’s Debt to the Critical Essays of Baudelaire.” Nineteenth-Century French Studies (Fall-Winter 1986-87): 142. These two drawings were inspired by Baudelaire’s poetry, which Redon read in the second and third editions in the 1860’s.

48 Leeman, “Odilon Redon,”193.

49 Ibid.

overall gloom of the scene, the heavenly body could as easily be a full moon. Little light reaches the figures, which are cut off from it by the rugged cliff onto which they lean. The figures, while identifiable as male and female, are not easily interpreted. The female figure appears to hold an infant on her lap. But the curves of her form also suggest pregnancy. The male figure sits on the ground next to her with his knees up and his arms resting across them in a nearly fetal position. The pose also suggests death in its reference to the Andean mummies at the Muséum d’histoire naturelle in Paris.50 The male figure looks at the female with an air of menace. Indeed, both figures’ facial expressions suggest malevolence. It is not clear which of these figures alludes to the demon of Baudelaire’s poem, which reads: Destruction The Demon is always moving about at my side; He floats about me like an impalpable air; I swallow him, I feel him burn my lungs And fill them with an eternal, sinful desire. Sometimes, knowing my deep love for Art, he assumes The form of a most seductive woman, And, with pretexts specious and hypocritical, Accustoms my lips to infamous philtres. He leads me thus, far from the sight of God, Panting and broken with fatigue, into the midst Of the plains of Ennui, endless and deserted, And thrusts before my eyes full of bewilderment, Dirty filthy garments and open, gaping wounds, And all the bloody instruments of Destruction!51 The demon in Baudelaire’s poem takes a female form, but only as a mask or performance. Evil is referred to as both male and female in the poem. Likewise, either or both of the figures in Redon’s drawing could signify evil. Because either figure could represent the

50 Douglas Druick and Peter Kort Zegers, “Painful Origins,” in Odilon Redon: Prince of Dreams, ed. Douglas W. Druick (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1994), 82.

51 Baudelaire, “Destruction” in The Flowers of Evil, (1866), trans. William Aggeler, http://fleursdumal.org. 24

demonic personification, both likely refer to inner demons. In this way, inner conflict is juxtaposed with external forces to characterize the modern experience of evil. The assumption of different gendered embodiments of evil in the print, as in the poem, reinforces the arbitrariness of external appearances in Symbolist idealism. The idea of an infant or emerging being can also signify evil as a conflict of interior and exterior forces embodied in Symbolist artistic production. This image is not sexually charged, but the combination of male and female figures can refer to the seduction of Baudelaire’s poem as well as the reproduction of art, evil, and society. The haziness and ambiguity of gender and evil, and individuality and multiplicity, in Redon’s figures reinforces the idea of evil as a conflation of internal and external forces and evil as both a personal and social problem. The play between the seduction and destruction of evil in the print and the poem emphasizes the idea that evil is conceptually situated between inside and outside, or between personal (or psychological) and social (or cultural) dimensions. The poetic persona of Baudelaire’s poem iterates evil as a kind of contagion from without that, once assumed, becomes his own burden to bear. He laments a world in which the sensuous pleasures of the flesh are not only condemned by a moral code but can also be punished with disease and syphilitic sores. This representation links to the very old discourse on evil as moral contagion that tempts, corrupts, and punishes the individual. This representation also links to discourses on evil as a material threat to spiritual wellbeing. The idea of evil as moral contamination of the individual by society was widely disseminated in the eighteenth-century work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and reformulated in Baudelaire’s writing. Baudelaire elaborated this idea of evil as contagion in his essay introducing Poe’s Tales. In his Introduction Baudelaire also represented Poe to French readers as a tortured genius and an outsider artist plagued by the evils of bourgeois society. Baudelaire argued that Poe’s work was unappreciated by his American contemporaries because of their utilitarianism and focus on monetary success and material progress.52 According to Baudelaire, the American is too practical for metaphysical inquiry and “he is so proud of his youthful greatness, he has such simple trust in the omnipotence of industry and is so sure that it will eventually destroy the

52 Baudelaire, “Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and His Works,” 90-93.

Devil, that he has a certain indulgence for all these pipe dreams.”53 The biting criticism of America in this essay reflected Baudelaire’s philosophy on bourgeois society in general. Redon’s representations of Satan paralleled both Baudelaire’s poetic representations of Satan and his elaboration of the bourgeoisie in his introduction to Poe’s Tales. On the one hand, the figure of Satan is portrayed as great and powerful and, on the other hand, he is childish, too prideful, and bound for self-destruction. Baudelaire’s elaboration of the evils of bourgeoisie culture in this essay paralleled his thematic treatment of evil in his poetry. Evil appears as harmful moral contagion from the outside that is often erroneously mythologized as the good in cultural institutions and practices. Baudelaire even describes the threat of mythologized and institutionalized evil as the Devil in his preface: Will the nightmare of darkness always swallow up these rare [creative] spirits? In vain they defend themselves, they take every precaution, they are perfect in prudence. Let us seal every opening, let us double-lock the door, let us bar the windows. But we have forgotten the keyhole; the Devil has already entered.54 For Redon and Baudelaire, the devil represented the contagion of bourgeois culture masquerading as the good and enforcing a morality of production, reducing everything to a means to an economic end and negating the value of artistic production and spiritual fulfillment. Baudelaire championed Poe’s work largely because the two shared a concept of bourgeois culture as evil. This conceptualization of evil came to be identified with the problems of industrialization and urbanization in modern society. Redon read Baudelaire’s translation of Poe and published a print interpretation of that text in 1882.55 Redon shared the values Baudelaire elaborated in his Introduction to Poe’s Tales.56 But, as in Baudelaire’s poetry, Redon’s interpretation retains a more metaphysical dimension than Baudelaire’s critical writings. Redon’s depictions are in dialogue with his other works in the Flowers of Evil album and his larger body of work in the Noirs, representing evil as a duality. His ambiguous settings and his play with

53 Ibid., 14.

54 Ibid., 38.

55 Werner, xv.

56 Leeman, “Odilon Redon,” 182.

light and shadow in these prints allude to heaven and hell, with the individual poised between the two and capable of teetering either way.

2.2 Redon’s Lucifer: Baudelaire’s Satan The image Glory and Praise to You, Satan… was taken from an 1871 drawing titled Lucifer and issued as plate number eight in the Flowers of Evil portfolio (Fig. 1).57 The poor quality of the Evely print process does not undermine the powerful impact of this particular image. In fact, the blurriness in certain areas accentuates the interplay of light and dark and the idea of ambiguous boundaries between good and evil. Redon’s title indicates that he considered this image to be in dialogue with Baudelaire’s poem “Litanies of Satan,” which portrays Satan as a proud and tragic figure, perhaps wrongly exiled by a vengeful God.58 In the print, the figure of Lucifer is a dark and powerful personification of decadence and the tragedy of evil in human experience. Like Baudelaire, Redon depicts Satan as a figure capable of inspiring both terror and sympathy. The mythic figure of Satan is known as a great equivocator. Redon’s depiction of him plays with equivocation, suggesting and leading the viewer to multiple possible interpretations. The crouching figure dominates the ambiguous composition, which could refer to a cave or the dark clouds of some spiritual realm. But the figure’s pose suggests both power and alienation. He crouches in a manner that can suggest hunkering down, preparing to lunge, or to leap into flight. The ultimate decadent, Lucifer’s pose evokes the Christian mythology of his fall from Heaven, his exile on earth, and his role in the fall of Adam and Eve and the expulsion of humanity from the idyllic garden.59 The idea of decadence in Western culture has both Christian and Greek roots but is largely based on Judeo-Christian narrative envisioning history as moving toward and end. For the devout, this movement was ultimately seen to be degeneration toward a Satanic Apocalypse prior to a mythic renewal of heaven on earth.60 For the Symbolists, the figure of

57 Ibid., 193.

58 Werner, xxvii.

59 John Milton, Paradise Lost, and Other Poems (New York: W.J. Black, 1943). This Christian mythology is derived from John Milton’s Paradise Lost and some interpretations of Old and New Testament and apocryphal texts.

60 Calinescu, 152, 162. 27

Satan (or Lucifer) was a double signifier, referring to both cultural degeneration disguised as progress and the defiant stance of the lone artist opposing religious and societal norms. Redon rendered Satan as an enigmatic figure engulfed in a shadowy, indeterminate background. The dark and hazy effects of the charcoal used in the original drawing were well suited to rendering this moral ambiguity that was not lost in the printed reproductions. In the print, Satan appears in dark silhouette with just a suggestion of light outlining the contours of his wings and the powerful musculature of his right arm. Heavy shadow emphasizes his form and the brooding expression on his face. His eye sockets are filled with shadow and appear dark, distant, and sad. The crouching figure could be lurking in, or emerging from, the shadows; cut off from the light of day but not the sight of God. Indeed, the light hitting the wings and arm suggests both the idea of the mythic figure’s power and the pettiness of that power compared with the illuminating light of heaven. Redon’s use of dynamic lines and chiaroscuro emphasize the dramatic effect and the illusion of an ambiguous setting situated somewhere between matter and spirit, heaven and hell. Fred Leeman examines Redon’s use of satanic imagery, as important to understanding Redon’s peripheral involvement in esoteric circles. But Leeman’s emphasis on that side of satanic imagery, which appealed to fin-de-siècle mystic enthusiasts as transgressive and liberating amounts to an overly escapist interpretation of Redon’s work.61 Similarly, Douglas Druick and Peter Lort Zegers discuss Redon’s use of satanic imagery to represent the evils of war and hopes for an improved future society. Their analysis stresses Redon’s desire to escape the problems of material existence.62 Vojtěch Jirat-Wasiutyński discusses Redon’s images of Satan as a fallen angel, like his balloons, eyes, and floating heads, as representing a scientifically attuned spirituality. But Jirat-Wasiutyński does not adequately consider Redon’s consistent thematic depictions of evil or how those depictions relate to contemporaneous Symbolist discourses. These scholars do no adequately consider how Redon’s representations of evil drew on theories of evolution and degeneration and explored the problem of evil in modern society.

61 Leeman, “Redon’s Spiritism and the Rise of Mysticism,” 218-219.

62 Druick, 75-78.

Although Redon conceived this original drawing years before he proposed his print album dedicated to Baudelaire, the original drawing was inspired by Baudelaire’s poetry in the Flowers of Evil. Redon titled the print version of the image to approximate lines from the closing ‘prayer’ of Baudelaire’s poem “Litanies of Satan”: Glory and praise to you, O Satan, in the heights Of Heaven where you reigned and in the depths Of Hell where vanquished you dream in silence! Grant that my soul may someday repose near to you Under the Tree of Knowledge, when, over your brow, Its branches will spread like a new Temple!63 Like Redon’s drawing and print, the poem alludes to the figure of Satan as a tragic yet powerful figure and connects to several ideas important to the theme of evil. It alludes to the conflict between good and evil. It signifies the nineteenth-century view of evil as containing its own duality between evil in the form of a decadent society and evil as an individual response to feelings of alienation within that society, ideas expressed in Baudelaire’s writing in general. In this way, evil is glorified as liberation from dogma and oppressive norms on the one hand and feared as a path leading to exile and alienation on the other. The idea of unfair but necessary exile also alludes to Baudelaire’s elaboration of genius and the avant-garde artist as an outsider who is superior to the masses and so shunned by them. In the poem, the tree of knowledge is a Biblical reference to the forbidden fruit of Genesis which, when eaten, gave Adam and Eve knowledge of good and evil. The reference alludes to evil as sin and self-betrayal. It paradoxically also alludes to the idea that in modern society spiritual, rather than merely material, progress must often be forged by the individual in opposition to established norms. The reference to the tree of knowledge as a new temple also alludes to the potential for art to serve as a new religion capable of liberating the consciousness from false and dogmatically adhered to bourgeois narratives of progress. The poem reads like a prayer to Satan, as the closing stanza suggests. The form of the poem reinforces this idea but in

63 Baudelaire, “Litanies of Satan,” in The Flowers of Evil, (1866), trans. William Aggeler, http://fleursdumal.org.

an equivocal way, alternating between two line stanzas proclaiming the glory of Satan and a single line asking for his sympathy.64 Redon’s play with light and shadow, and its symbolic meaning in his drawing and prints, parallels the form of Baudelaire’s poem. Redon’s writings make it clear that he did not subscribe to contemporary satanic cult practices. Although the names Lucifer and Satan are used interchangeably, Redon’s titling the original drawing Lucifer, rather than Satan, signifies a conceptualization of the figure as the ‘star of the morning’ of nineteenth-century French Luciferianism rather than the embodiment of pure evil. Luciferianism, in turn, was more in alignment with transcendental esoteric ideals than with contemporary satanic cult practices.65 Nevertheless, Redon’s rendering of Lucifer was clearly in dialogue with Baudelaire’s poetic representation of Satan. And both works were in dialogue with contemporary idealist discourses on evil as a personal and a social problem. In Baudelaire’s poem, as in Redon’s print, Satan is symbolized as a figure analogous to the artists as a tortured outsider in decadent culture. Bataille’s examination of Baudelaire’s rebellious posturing in his life and his poetry is relevant in analyzing evil in both Baudelaire’s and Redon’s work. According to Bataille, “poetic vision” and mystical reflection were both conceived in nineteenth-century thought as the vision of the outsider.66 And in Symbolist thought the artist had to be an outsider working against the grain of decadent society. Bataille examines decadence as experiencing the value of the present (or the sacred), rather than merely planning for the future in a bourgeois morality of production. Bataille postulates this idea as important to both the poetic vision and the mystical encounter in the nineteenth century. Bataille argues that Baudelaire’s work drew attention to the paradox of evil in bourgeois culture and its reduction of human experience to utilitarianism.67 Both Baudelaire and Redon considered the bourgeois concept of human life as a means to materialistic ends evil. Baudelaire elaborated his views on the evils of utilitarianism in his essay “Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Works” introducing his

64 Ibid., http://fleursdumal.org.

65 Arthur Edward Waite, Devil Worship in France or The Question of Lucifer, 1896 (Sioux Falls, SD: NuVision Publications, 2007), 15.

66 Bataille, 40-43.

67 Ibid., 43.

translation of Poe’s Tales in 1852 and 1857. In this essay Baudelaire wrote of utilitarianism as a heresy and democratic utilitarianism as a “tyranny far more cruel and inexorable than that of a monarch.”68 Redon wrote that “positivists cannot love beauty.”69 Like Baudelaire, Redon viewed this situation as a result of a bourgeois lifestyle and a culture preoccupied with “egotism, lust, despotism, sensuality, and complete forgetfulness of the general welfare,” which he considered a trait of his decadent epoch.70 Although Bataille considers this stance on evil from a historical perspective, this perspective reformulates the mythic structure of evil in Judeo-Christian cultures elaborated by Paul Ricoeur. This view of evil signifies the idea that conflict can be perceived as inner conflict, conflict between the individual and outside forces, or as a product of outside forces altogether. According to Bataille, these concepts of evil were generally confused as a result of the emerging morality of production within nineteenth-century French culture.71 Bataille writes: “To do Evil for the sake of Evil is to do the exact opposite of what we continue to affirm is good. It is to want what we do not want – since we continue to abhor the powers of Evil – and not to want what we want, for Good is always defined as the object and end of the deepest will.”72 This formulation paradoxically renders the liberty to sin as a kind of enslavement to desire and to the established order. Bataille views Baudelaire’s stance as that of a rebellious and sulking child within this context of the irreconcilability of evil in mass culture. Baudelaire identified with the figure of Satan as a fallen angel and a sulking child, representing Satan as the ultimate decadent artist in exile.73 Redon’s depiction of Satan as both an exalted and alienated exile connected with discourses on evil in Western religion, in Western idealism, and in modern society, all of which

68 Baudelaire, “Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and His Works,” 13-14, 24.

69 Redon, “Journal Entry 1870,” in To Myself, 35.

70 Ibid., 32-33.

71 Bataille, 43.

72 Ibid., 35. Bataille reiterates Sartre’s conceptualization of evil in his consideration of its thematic treatment in Baudelaire’s nineteenth-century literature.

73 Ibid.

influenced Symbolist art and theory. Redon’s rendering aligned with several other representations of winged and chained Satan in his Noirs (Fig.12). These images paralleled Redon’s treatment of the theme of liberty and servitude in his depictions of the chained Pegasus, which also signified engagement with evil and free will in Western culture (Fig. 13). Redon’s winged and chained horses also connected nineteenth-century discourses on evil with the Judeo- Christian notion of the fall and with similar themes in Greek mythology. Redon’s prints refer to Greek mythology in history painting in three ways. First, Pegasus carried Bellerophon to victory against the Chimera, a monster with lion, goat, and serpent parts, which was an important nineteenth-century emblem of illusion and the multiplicity and ambiguity of evil. Second, the character Bellerophon became too prideful after his victory and was cursed by the gods. He subsequently lost Pegasus and lived in self-imposed exile. This story parallels both the narrative of Satan’s fall (a symbol for man’s fall from grace and the problem of decadent society) and the nineteenth-century myth of the artist as an exiled outsider. Third, the myth of Bellerophon and Pegasus parallels the myth of Icarus, who attempted escape from Minos’s prison using wings his father had fashioned from feathers and wax.74 Despite his father’s warning, the exhilarated and prideful Icarus flew too close to the sun and fell to his death in the sea below when the wings melted. In both of these ancient Greek myths the central character has to make a choice between serving only himself and serving the gods. In both myths he chooses free will and individualism and achieves greatness followed by a tragic fall.75 According to Aristotle, tragedy, as a form of drama, must elicit the emotions of pity and fear and should depict a reversal of fortune of “persons renowned and of superior attainments.”76 The narrative of the fall of Satan is surely a tragedy that aligns with the decadent view of evil in modern culture. Redon’s composition, in which Satan is nearly engulfed in shadow, suggests this sense of tragedy. It suggests both liberation and its price – alienation and exile.

74 http://www.greekmyth.org/ (accessed: Feb. 24, 2009).

75 Druick, 75, 82. Druick and Zegers discuss Redon’s use of winged figures as personifications of the idea of the fall. But Druick and Zegers focus on the figures’ discursive connections to the Franco- Prussian War rather than to discourses on evil.

76 Aristotle, “Poetics,” in A Guide to the Study of Literature: A Companion Text for Core Studies 6, Landmarks of Literature, Brooklyn College English Department, http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/tragedy.html (accessed: Feb. 24, 2009).

Like Redon’s use of chained and winged horses, his chained and winged Satan (Fig. 12), representing tensions between evil and free will, reflect the Judeo-Christian tradition, which informed his Catholic upbringing. In these images the idea of evil is paradoxically formulated as achievement, sin, and the potential fall from grace. In this sense, the figure of Satan in the Flowers of Evil album represents both the liberation promised by free will and the tragedy of falling from greatness due to hubris. The mythic characters Bellerophon and Satan are both canonical myths that encourage historical discourses on evil. These characters exemplify nineteenth-century notions of the artist as a tortured outsider, working in an imagined space above declining society. The tales simultaneously warn not to subscribe to the myth of one’s own greatness. In appropriating this symbolism, Redon mythologized his artistic persona in accordance with nineteenth-century Baudelairian standards while also examining the dangers of that socio-cultural mythology. Redon’s Satanic imagery, like his Pegasus motifs, signified engagement with both the mythic posturing of the modern artist and the history of reflection on evil experienced in human consciousness. In his dialogue with Baudelaire, Redon’s prints critiqued bourgeois morality, its utilitarianism, and its economy. For the Symbolists, decadence was an equivocal term, referring to degenerate society on the one hand and to self-indulgent eschewing of that society on the other hand. Redon depiction of Satan represented this duality of evil in nineteenth-century thought, suggesting both the appeal of rebellion from unfulfilling culture and the futility of completely rejecting that culture. Redon’s depiction of Satan in the Flowers of Evil Album situated his inquiry into evil as a metaphysical and a social exploration. Compositionally, the representation of Satan as poised between heaven and hell signifies this fact. The composition also connected to Redon’s print And Man Appeared, from his 1883 album titled Origins (Fig. 14), which explored the origins of life and featured imagery drawn from evolutionary theory, fantasy, and religion. The figure in And Man Appeared emerges from a swirling vortex of light, particles, and shadow. He is poised between two worlds like Redon’s Satan. He is also muscular and potentially powerful, yet in a vulnerable state of transition. Like Redon’s Glory and Praise to You, Satan…, And Man Appeared suggests humanity’s potential for greatness or evil, depending on choices about the will, society, and spirituality. In this way, Redon brings metaphysics and the examination of free will and evil into dialogue with scientific theories of evolution. The vortex symbol reinforces this

connection and represents a Symbolist approach, which promotes consideration of ideas through ambiguity, suggestion, and eclecticism. 2.3 Evil in Myth, Evil in Society As stated in the Introduction, Paul Ricoeur writes that the history of evil is the history of metaphysics, transitions, and spirituality. Since these concepts are not directly accessible, they are necessarily mediated, symbolic, and speculative.77 Ricoeur’s ideas parallel Baudelaire’s writing and nineteenth-century idealism, in which the world was viewed as a “dictionary of symbols.”78 One of the main functions of the symbolism of evil is to represent it as a duality. The concepts of free will, and the “servile will” are important to understanding this duality and its representation.79 The idea of evil as a dialectical struggle between the will of the individual and the will of God was an important aspect of nineteenth-century spirituality and philosophy elaborated by Schopenhauer.80 The idea of free will was also integral to Nietzsche’s later writing. Like Baudelaire, however, Nietzsche railed against society and the oppressive norms of bourgeois morality. Baudelaire’s poetry depended on this duality and inner conflict. The dialectic between free will (freedom) and the servile will (duty to the sacred) was also equated with the seduction of evil. In this dialectic the seduction of the freedom to sin is transformed into enslavement to desire, and therefore becomes the opposite of freedom.81 This “freedom that enslaves itself” is a central theme of both damnation and salvation narratives.82 It is likewise a central theme in Schopenhaur’s philosophy. In his book The World as Will and Representation of 1819, Schopenhaur argued that all willing is the result of desire for the illusory representations of objects in the material world. He asserted the need for people to recognize

77 Ricoeur, 4.

78 Baudelaire, “The Life and Work of Eugene Delacroix,” in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays (London; Phaidon Press, 1964), 39.

79 Ricoeur, 151.

80 Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, trans. E.F.J. Payne (NewYork: Dover Publications, 1969), 182.

81 Ricoeur, 152-153.

82 Ibid., 13, 152.

something greater, something beyond their experiences of materiality and individuality.83 Schopenhaur wrote that “so long as our consciousness is filled by our will, so long as we are given up to the throng of desires with its constant hopes and fears, so long as we are the subject of willing, we never obtain lasting happiness or peace.”84 Thus, according to Schopenhaur, will is linked to desire for the illusory and transient pleasures of the material world and breeds only discontent and internal conflict. Redon’s concept of the artist’s relationship to the will and the ideal parallels Schopenhaur’s philosophy in that it aligns with the myth of the artist as a kind of visionary sage. But whereas Schopenhaur subordinates the will to the service of the Ideal, Redon views the will as important to his artistic interpretation of the Ideal. According to Schopenhaur, the artist taps into the ideal and translates that experience to the viewer, causing the latter to forget the will and lose himself in the aesthetic experience. He does so by using a repertoire of symbols, such as light for goodness and darkness for evil.85 Redon symbolized the ideal to submerge the viewer in contemplation just as Baudelaire had drawn from idealism and its vocabulary of symbols in his poetry. Redon subscribed to the ideal of artistic detachment that Schopenhaur espoused and that Baudelaire elaborated. This stance cultivated the myth of Redon’s persona as a visionary artist- sage. But Redon did not represent Schopenhaur’s more negative view of the will. In fact, Redon wrote that it was through an effort of will that he transformed renderings of objects in the natural world into representations of the imagination, conceived as connected with the sacred.86 Thus, for Redon the will became a path, rather than a hindrance, to the ideal. The dilemmas between the appeal and futility of rebellion, between the individual and society, between free and servile will, and desires to both engage and escape modern society relate to Redon’s overall interest in spirituality. This spirituality was viewed in Symbolist circles as personal rather than as primarily religious. However, Schopenhaur’s philosophy built upon the religious tenets of Brahmanism, Buddhism and Christianity, as well as Neo-platonic idealism.

83 Schopenhaur, 182.

84 Ibid., 174.

85 Schopenhaur, 173, 176-177.

86 Redon, “Confessions of an Artist,” in To Myself, 24.

Schopenhaur’s work influenced later nineteenth-century thinkers and spiritualists in establishing an eclectic view of spirituality to which Redon subscribed. Redon had friends and associates in many contemporary esoteric movements including the Rosicrucian Order and the Theosophical Society. Although he was not an official member of these associations, Redon did subscribe to many of their spiritual and philosophical views. He wrote of enjoying Hindu poems and wrote about and depicted the Buddha.87 Redon wrote of a kind of “logic of the spirit” as well as metaphor and the play of representation in his work.88 He often wrote in his journal about the evils of society and the tensions between his desire to escape from, and engage in, the social milieu.89 For Redon, one solution to the problem of inner conflict was to materialize it or to embody it in his art. This idea aligns with the aim of Symbolism expressed by Gustave Kahn as “externalization of the idea” or objectification of the subjective.90 In keeping with Symbolist goals, Redon’s prints played with the ambiguity of representation, depicting the tensions between good and evil, between the individual and society, and between individual consciousness and spiritual attunement.91

2.4 Redon’s Flowers of Evil Prints in Visual Dialogue Redon’s complex engagement in, and treatment of, the problem of evil differentiates his work from other contemporary prints of this subject. His mentor Bresdin examined themes of evil and vanity in Biblical and Danse Macabre scenes, but his work did not feature the psychological tension between personal and societal evil symbolized in Redon’s prints (Fig. 9). Bresdin’s romantic figures did not teeter on the brink of the abyss as Redon’s Satan appears to do. Conversely, as evinced in the frontispiece for the 1866 Belgian publication of Baudelaire’s

87 Redon, “Confessions of an Artist,” in To Myself, 15.

88 Ibid., 22-23.

89 Redon, “Journal Entries 1869-1870,” 30-35; “Journal Entry 1888,” 78; “Journal Entry 1897,” 81, “Journal Entry 1902,” in To Myself, 85.

90 Kahn, 1016-1017.

91 Redon, “Journal Entries 1869-1870,” 30-33; “Journal Entry 1872,” 38; “Journal Entry 1888,” 78; “Journal Entry 1892,” 80, “Journal Entry 1902,” in To Myself, 85.

The Wreckage, Rops’s prints celebrated evil as liberating (Fig. 11). Rops’s depiction of a skeleton with upraised arms morphing into tree branches harboring demonic putti celebrated evil and decadence in ways that Redon’s prints did not. Redon chose instead to equivocate; to suggest the possibility of either soaring to great heights or falling into a self-created abyss of exile and despair in response to the perceived evils of society. In a journal entry of 1888, Redon wrote of the poet/artist as poised between “the extremes of evil and good” in order to transmit “the supreme element of life, the evocative sediments of joy, the work of art, in short, the divine fruit.”92 Redon wrote in his “Confessions of an Artist” of 1909 of the role of suggestive art in moral reflection. Redon wrote of “the evolution of art for the supreme flight of our own life, its expansion, its highest point of support or moral maintenance by necessary exaltation.”93 Redon’s renderings of figures poised between good and evil thus represent the moral engagement of the artist. Combined with Redon’s writings on the role of suggestive art, these images signify Redon’s conceived ethical stake in his artistic production. Redon elaborated his views on the evils of decadent culture, and contrasted them with “a spirit of morality,” throughout his journal.94 In an entry of 1870, Redon wrote: I resent all those who, under the arches of our temples, make heard injurious outcries against good; those who martyrize genius; those, finally, who, in the field of awareness, falsify and pervert the natural meaning of truth. These are the truly guilty. Here lies the evil which must be exorcised.95 In the same journal entry, Redon wrote that “positivists cannot love modern beauty.96 He argued that real evil is false authority grounded in the dogma of both religion and positivism. His writings and images of evil connected to nineteenth-century discourses on evil as a product of false morality and unreflective adherence to convention. They likewise connected to the long history of conceptualizing evil as the ultimate self-betrayal. Redon is widely known for

92 Redon, “Journal Entry 1888,” in To Myself, 78.

93 Ibid., “Confessions of an Artist,” in To Myself, 21-22.

94 Ibid., “Journal Entry 1869,” in To Myself, 30.

95 Ibid., “Journal Entry 1870,” in To Myself, 34.

96 Ibid., 35.

constructing his artistic persona in accordance with nineteenth-century expectations that he produce outsider art as a kind of sage. Yet, his ambiguous depictions of evil also worked in conjunction with his writing, and with Symbolist literature, to disrupt dogmatically adhered to socio-cultural myths. Redon’s prints thus represented more than merely fashionable imagery or the mythic posturing of the artist as a tortured outsider. They represented more than merely a particular intentionality with a specific social meaning or religious viewpoint. Redon’s renderings of evil exceeded the individual introspection on which he prided himself and signified instead a culturally constructed fear and fascination with the problem of evil. Redon’s symbolism of evil is therefore an integral aspect, and an ethical component, of his artistic engagement with late nineteenth-century metaphysical and spiritual discourses.

CHAPTER 3 THE DIALECTIC OF EVIL IN REDON’S SAINT ANTHONY PRINTS

As discussed in the preceding chapters, Redon developed the prints in his Flowers of Evil portfolio in accordance with artistic expectations that emerged from Baudelaire’s idea of correspondences between the real and ideal. Redon’s prints also built on Baudelaire’s literary representations of evil as a double signifier that symbolized the problems with bourgeois culture on the one hand and signified liberation from an oppressive morality of production on the other. Baudelaire’s ideas on evil and correspondences resonated with the Symbolists and aligned with their views of decadent society elaborated by Paul Bourget. Likewise, Baudelaire’s correspondences fostered the mythic persona of the visionary artist who could tap into the ideal through imaginative processes and translate that experience to the viewers. Redon’s adoption of his artistic persona encouraged his symbolic exploration of the theme of evil within Symbolist discourses on evolution and degeneration as discussed in the Chapters One and Two. Redon’s persona as an artist in decadent culture, grounded in the writing of Baudelaire and Bourget, also fostered the idea of art as a surrogate for religion in an increasingly secular society. Redon’s symbols of evil diverged from Symbolist discourses, and the literary texts with which they were in dialogue, by signifying a more positive outlook attuned to his personal spiritual beliefs. Although Redon symbolized evil in his prints, he did so as part of a larger program in his oeuvre, in which evil participated in a dialectical process of spiritual growth. Baudelaire was not the only Romantic literary figure to influence Redon and the other Symbolists. Although Gustave Flaubert is known primarily for his realism, his vivid symbolic imagery and ambiguously disjunctive organization in The Temptation of Saint Anthony of 1874 appealed to Symbolist writers and visual artists like Redon. Symbolist critic Emile Hennequin gave Redon a copy of Flaubert’s Temptation of Saint Anthony in 1881. According to Fred Leeman, Flaubert’s text had become “obligatory reading” for the Symbolists by that time.97 Redon praised the book as rich with material for his visual art, writing in a letter to Hennequin in

97 Leeman, “Odilon Redon,” 218.

1882 that Flaubert’s text was “a literary marvel and a goldmine.”98 Over the next ten years, Redon composed three lithographic albums dedicated to Flaubert’s text.99 These prints aligned with Symbolist discourses on the visionary artist through their identification with the legendary Saint Anthony, who experienced visions while living a monastic life. The prints embodied Redon’s interest in the relationship between the artist and the problem of evil in modern society and emphasize evil as part a dialectic of spiritual enlightenment. Redon’s symbolism of evil in dialogue with Flaubert’s text represented neither pure escapism nor overt cultural critique. Rather, these images symbolized a rethinking of metaphysics and morality in response to the positivism and alienation of modern bourgeois society. In this chapter, I examine three of Redon’s prints, one from each of his lithographic albums dedicated to Flaubert’s Temptation of Saint Anthony. First, I analyze It is the Devil (Fig. 3), from his first interpretation of Flaubert’s text in 1888. Second, I consider Death: “My irony surpasses all others!” from Redon’s second suite on Flaubert’s text in 1889 (Fig. 4). Third, I explore Death: “It is I who make you serious; let us embrace each other,” from Redon’s third portfolio in 1896 (Fig. 5). As with the images considered in Chapter Two, these prints relied heavily on light and dark to symbolize good and evil and on shades of gray to symbolize the ambiguous boundaries between the two. These hazy areas also symbolized the idea of correspondences between the material and spiritual worlds. Darkness is the pervading element in Redon’s print It is the Devil (Fig. 3). Unlike Redon’s ambiguous rendering of Lucifer discussed in Chapter Two (Fig. 2), this image renders the personification of evil in utter darkness. The image of the Devil, shrouded in darkness, paralleled Flaubert’s text and is consistent with darkness and the Devil as traditional symbols of evil. Nevertheless, in alignment with Flaubert’s

98 Redon to Andre Mellerio, 31 March 1882, in Davenport, “Between Carnival and Dream: St. Anthony, Gustave Flaubert, and the Arts in Fin de siècle Europe.” Religion and the Arts 6 (2002): 326.

99 Leeman, “Odilon Redon,” 191; Davenport, 328; Werner, xvii-xi. Redon proposed to publisher Edmond Deman in 1887 a set of lithographs inspired by his reading of Flaubert. The three albums subsequently published were: the Tentation de Saint-Antoine (Temptation of Saint Anthony) of 1888, A Gustave Flaubert (To Gustave Flaubert) of 1889, and La Tentation de Saint-Antoine (The Temptation of Saint Anthony) of 1896. The first series consisted of ten plates and a frontispiece and was issued in sixty sets. The second series consisted of six plates and a frontispiece and was also issued in sixty sets. The third series consisted of twenty-three plates and a frontispiece and was issued in an edition of fifty sets.

text, Redon symbolized evil in the figure of Satan in a nontraditional way. Redon conflated traditional male and female characteristics in the figure, portraying the traditionally masculine figure in the form of an apparently female bat suckling its young. The combination of these elements created a perplexing, rather than a didactic, symbolism of evil. In Death: “My irony surpasses all others!” Redon again used light and dark to symbolize good and evil. In this image, however, there are many tenebrous regions that suggest blurred boundaries between the two. Redon rendered Death as a composite of a female figure and a snake. The female is easily associated with the image of the femme fatale prevalent in nineteenth-century French culture. The snake is dual signifier. It is a traditional symbol of evil and the loss of innocence in Judeo-Christian culture and, conversely, a symbol of healing and rejuvenation in the classical Western tradition. The snake is also a symbol of lust, which is appropriate in relation to Flaubert’s text, in which this composite figure emerges from the spiral dance of the personifications of Lust and Death. In this way, the figure’s coiled, serpentine tail also represents a vortex or center of energy that can be associated with evil on the one hand and with a rejuvenating spiritual dialectic on the other. As a whole, the image represents a dreamlike environment in which good and evil, spirit and matter, life and death collide and blend. Redon’s Death: “It is I who make you serious; let us embrace each other, (Fig. 5) depicts the scene in Flaubert’s text just as the figures of Lust and Death prepare to merge in their spiral dance. As in Flaubert’s text, Redon symbolized Death using a traditional skeletal figure but complicated it by alluding to female gender. Also according to the text, Redon symbolized Lust – or lust for life – as a voluptuous woman. Redon placed the skeletal figure of Death against a pitch night sky. The figure of Lust, held aloft by Death, hovers above a spiral area of bright light representing life. All three of these prints use a symbolism of evil within dreamlike environments in which good and evil, spirit and matter, life and death ebb and flow. Redon was not alone in his interest in representing Saint Anthony. The legendary late third-century Christian ascetic was a familiar subject in the visual and the literary arts. In fact, Flaubert wrote that he was inspired to write his book upon viewing Pieter Brueghel’s sixteenth- century painting The Temptation of Saint Anthony at the Balbi Palace in Genoa in 1845.100

100 Kitty Mrosovsky, introduction to The Temptation of Saint Anthony, trans. Kitty Morsovsky (London: Penguin Books, 1980), 7.

Flaubert is also known to have purchased a seventeenth-century engraving of the subject by Callot in 1846, three years before his first draft of the novel (Fig.15).101 Flaubert’s characterization of Saint Anthony, which conflated negative character traits with a persona traditionally associated with moral strength, appealed to Symbolists such as Redon. Further, Flaubert’s disconcerting combination of the forms of the novel and the play, and his mixture of elements from medieval morality plays, mystery plays, and farces, embodied Symbolist literary ideals.102 Finally, Flaubert’s satire of institutional religion, in favor of a pantheistic spirituality, aligned with Symbolist views on the politics of religion and Redon’s spiritualism. Flaubert’s text received harsh criticism for its disorganized form and seeming lack of realism even among friendly critics such as writer and photographer Maxime Du Camp and poet and playwright Louis Bouilhet.103 But Flaubert’s book also received harsh criticism due to its unsaintly portrayal of Saint Anthony and satire of the Catholic Church and its claim to absolute spiritual truth.104 Not surprisingly, Baudelaire praised Flaubert’s first version of Saint Anthony, which he read in 1846, for these very reasons.105 In his “Symbolist Manifesto of 1886,” Jean Moréas praised Flaubert’s text as a model of Symbolist “subjective deformation,” which presented the subjective reality of the artist and disoriented the reader in thought provoking ways.106 Gustave Moreau had set a precedence of painting multiple ideas and events, rather than narrating, in his Symbolist depictions of Salome in works such as The Apparition of 1874-1876 (Fig. 16). Belgian artist Félicien Rops’s painting the Temptation of Saint Anthony of 1878 paralleled Flaubert’s text and combined symbols to form one disorienting but suggestive image (Fig. 17). Rops aligned with Symbolists such as Huysmans and embodied irreverence and parody of Catholic morality in his

101 Mrosovsky, 14.

102 Alan Raitt, “The Theater in the Work of Flaubert,” in The Cambridge Companion to Flaubert, ed. Timothy Unwin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 197- 200; Laurence M. Porter, ed. A Gustave Flaubert Encyclopedia (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001), 324.

103 Frederick Brown, Flaubert (New York: Little, Brown, and Co., 2006), 250, 281.

104 Brown, 481. A review by Catholic royalist Barbey d’Aurevilly in Le Constitutionnel derided Flaubert’s unsaintly portrayal of Saint Antony.

105 Ibid., 474.

106 Moréas, 1015-1016.

painting. Redon’s prints embodied some of these same non-traditional values. But Redon’s prints also embodied the elements in Flaubert’s text that emphasized a dialectic between good and evil that built on theories of evolution and degeneration and aligned with a pantheistic spirituality. Representations of evil in the three print interpretations of Flaubert’s Temptation of Saint Anthony embodied Redon’s conceptualization of evil as part of a dialectical process through which the individual and society could evolve. I analyze Redon’s prints by introducing the historical figure of Saint Anthony and Flaubert’s nineteenth-century characterization of him. Then, I consider Redon’s prints in relation to Flaubert’s text. Both the images and the text emphasize introspection and allude to the idea of the artist as an outsider and a sage. Finally, I consider Redon’s symbolism of evil as a key element in a dialectical process of spiritual growth within the context of Symbolist painting. Redon’s representations of evil in the Temptation of Saint Anthony albums thematically connected with his Flowers of Evil prints, discussed in Chapter Two, and his Apocalypse of Saint John, to be discussed in Chapter Four. The images in these albums worked in conjunction with the literature with which they were in dialogue, Redon’s writing, and the rest of his oeuvre to suggest even evil endings as new beginnings. Saint Anthony was a late third-century Christian ascetic who lived a solitary life of reflection in the Egyptian desert. Saint Anthony is known as the father of Catholic monasticism and many legends have developed about his life. The legend that Anthony battled demons while living in secluded tombs is especially important in Flaubert’s novel and Redon’s prints. The figure of Anthony traditionally signified moral fortitude. But, in his publication of 1874, Flaubert emphasized Anthony’s moments of weakness as he battled demons and his temptation for earthly pleasures.107 The ideas of tensions between matter and spirit were common in nineteenth- century idealist discourses, especially in the philosophy of Hegel and Schopenhauer.108 This idealism informed the work and complemented the spiritual beliefs of Symbolist artists such as Redon. Flaubert’s writing played with the tensions between desires for the pleasures of the flesh and desires for spiritual development. Further, Flaubert’s representation of the legendary

107 Mrosovsky, 4.

108 Schopenhauer, 182.

hermit’s quest for isolation and spiritual fulfillment aligned with the myth of the artist as an outsider and a sage eschewing decadent society in pursuit of his art. In Flaubert’s book, Anthony wants to be alone to concentrate on his spiritual development. But he also desires connection with others in the material world and the pleasures of the flesh that can only be experienced on earth – pleasures that Anthony considered to be evil. Flaubert’s novel reads like a twisted morality play. The book is structured in seven chapters that allude to, but do not specifically address, each of the Seven Deadly Sins. As in a play, each of the chapters is structured in the form of an act comprised of several scenes. These scenes represent Anthony’s encounters, visions or hallucinations. In each of these scenes, Anthony appears to encounter different personifications of evil and vice. These scenes allude to tensions between spirit and matter, good and evil, and inner and exterior demons. The scenes represent Anthony’s internal struggle with evil, but apparently fluctuate between his conscious and unconscious states. The personifications initially appear as enlightened spiritual beings but gradually reveal themselves to be evil. The setting and timing of the events are unclear, disrupting the spatial and temporal dimensions associated with didactic narrative and disorienting the reader. Unlike a morality play, Flaubert’s novel represents Anthony’s encounters as complicating, rather than simplifying or solidifying, his spiritual resolve. Flaubert wrote that he based these visionary states in part on disorienting hallucinations he suffered when he was ill as a child. He initially titled the work The Spiral because of its disorienting structure in the form of visionary interludes suggesting an “infinite spiral of images.”109 Flaubert’s text so effectively suggested shifting psychological states that Sigmund Freud praised it in a correspondence of 1883.110 Symbolists such as Redon embraced Flaubert’s disorienting strategies, believing that art should shock the viewer to promote subjective reflection. In his 1886 “Symbolist Manifesto,” Moréas praised Flaubert as exemplifying this Symbolist ideal, which he described as follows: The concept of Symbolist prose is polymorphous: at times a single character struggles in an environment deformed by his own hallucinations and his

109 Mrosovsky, 8, 12.

110 Brown, 481-482.

temperament: in this deformation lies the sole reality. Beings with mechanical gestures and silhouettes in shadow bustle around the single character: they are but pretexts for his sensations and conjectures. He himself is a tragic or comic mask of a humanity which is nevertheless perfect, although rational … Occasionally individual wills manifest themselves; they attract one another, become amalgamated and generalized towards the achievement of a goal which, whether it is reached or missed, scatters them back into their original elements.111 As in Flaubert’s text, Redon used the spiral motif to disorient the viewer and promote reflection. But in Redon’s prints the spiral also alluded to the vortex of creation and the Hegelian dialectic. Redon’s use of these visual symbols paralleled Flaubert’s literary symbolism in many ways. Flaubert drew from Hegel’s philosophy, which he filtered through Victor Cousin’s “eclectic idealism.”112 Like Redon, Flaubert aligned the idea of the dialectic with his spiritual beliefs and with emerging theories of evolution and degeneration. Like Redon, Flaubert viewed bourgeois material progress as spiritual degeneration but viewed that degeneration as part of a dialectic whereby degenerate society paved the way for new cultural forms.113 Like Redon, Flaubert fused a pantheistic view of nature and an eclectic spirituality with theories of evolution and degeneration in which decay and death cleared a way for new forms of religious and societal expression. Flaubert wrote in 1857: So the quest for the best religion or the best form of government strikes me as foolishness. In my view the best one is the one that’s moribund, because in dying it makes way for another . . . It is because I believe in the perpetual evolution of humanity and its incessant forms that I hate all the frames into which people want to stuff it.114 Redon’s use of the spiral motif in representing Anthony’s visions or visitations reveals his artistic engagement with the complexities of evil in modern society. Nevertheless, Redon took a

111 Moréas, 1015-1016.

112 Porter,163.

113 Brown, 84, 476.

114 Ibid., 476.

more favorable view of Anthony’s attempts to reconcile tensions between material and spiritual desires than did Flaubert. Redon wrote in 1870 that “repentance is a new innocence.”115 In accordance with his own artistic and spiritual ideals, Redon took a more positive approach in his prints than Flaubert did in his text. In a lecture given in 1913, Redon elaborated his view of the artist’s struggle to represent the ideal in terms of cyclical processes of development: The artist who creates with a concern for perfection, I mean, the concern to offer with candor a work autonomously gratifying, a work in which will be revealed his unique personality; this one will always put his name on his work with reluctance, or with some constraint. And it is this strife, this uneasiness of conscience which is the fatal element of the next new beginning, the ferment of the next work, with the aim to do it better.116 Redon’s prints signified a more positive outlook than Flaubert’s novel. In Flaubert text, Anthony’s images spiraled out of control, releasing visionary hallucinations and subconscious desires that contrasted with his dogmatic morality. Redon’s prints also played with tensions between differing notions of good and evil, using spiral imagery as signifiers of both. In Redon’s prints, however, spiral imagery alluded primarily to the dialectic, conceived as an ascending and evolutionary spiral. In his book The Temptation of Saint Redon, Stephen Eisenman argues that Saint Anthony represented a “satanic negation” in late nineteenth-century Symbolist responses to modern society and the void left by the collapse of traditional religion.117 Eisenman asserts that this negation of modern culture was ultimately grounded in tensions between the artists’ conflicting desires to both escape from and engage in bourgeois culture and its markets.118 Similarly, Barbara Larson argues that tensions in Redon’s work represented the desire to escape a less

115 Redon, “January 1913 – For a lecture given in Holland,” in To Myself, 106.

116 Ibid., 102-110.

117 Eisenman, 179-179.

118 Ibid., 201.

humanistic worldview and the angst of the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War.119 The emphasis of both of these scholars on escapism undervalues the ethical stance evinced in Redon’s prints, in which Saint Anthony’s experience of evil is ultimately part of his positive spiritual growth. Nancy Davenport discusses Redon’s prints in her analysis of Flaubert’s dialogue with fin- de-siècle artists in her essay “Between Carnival and Dream: St. Anthony, Gustave Flaubert, and the Arts in Fin-de-siècle Europe.”120 Davenport views Redon’s prints of Saint Anthony as indicative of the significance of Flaubert’s texts to the Symbolists. Davenport’s research on the connections between Flaubert’s text, Redon’s images, and nineteenth-century theatrical productions of Saint Anthony is important to understanding the significance of the character in nineteenth-century culture. But her focus on theatricality and the carnivalesque does not address the ethical seriousness Redon brought to his interpretations of the subject. The print It is the Devil, from Redon’s first album of the Temptation of Saint Anthony of 1888 (Fig. 3), is an example of the seriousness with which Redon treated depictions of evil from Flaubert’s text. Just as Redon used Baudelaire’s text to title the prints in his Flowers of Evil album discussed in Chapter Two, he used Flaubert’s text to title the prints in his Saint Anthony portfolios. Redon’s prints were not intended to illustrate Flaubert’s text, however, and instead provided a visual interpretation of the literary text. Redon’s print refers to Flaubert’s text at the opening of Chapter II, which reads: And now goes a great shadow, subtler than any natural shadow, festooned along its borders with further shadows, etches itself on the ground. It is the Devil, propped against the roof of the cabin, and folding under his wings – not unlike a giant bat suckling its young – the Seven Deadly Sins, whose grimacing heads can be dimly discerned.121

119 Larson, “The Franco-Prussian War,” 127.

120 Nancy Davenport, “Between Carnival and Dream: St. Anthony, Gustave Flaubert, and the Arts in Fin-de-siècle Europe.” Religion and the arts 6 (2002): 291-357.

121 Gustave Flaubert, The Temptation of Saint Anthony, trans. Kitty Mrosovsky, (London: Penguin Books, 1980), 73.

Redon’s print paralleled Flaubert’s description of evil personified. Redon rendered the devil as a terrifying monster with a long pointed face and sharp teeth. As in Flaubert’s description, Redon emphasized deep shadow that is so dark it renders the figure’s features barely discernable in the print. One can just make out a dark wing at the right of the picture plane. A bat-like ear frames the hideous face, which appears to receive a hint of light from a hidden source at the upper left. The dim light hits the devil’s folded arms, in which the distorted faces of some of the Seven Deadly Sins can be seen. In a favorable review praising Redon’s use of the monstrous and the mysterious, a critic for the journal L’Art Moderne described the figure as resembling a monster holding aborted babies of stone or wood.122 Redon used dense line, with hatching and cross- hatching in multiple directions, to describe the shadowy background. He even suggested Flaubert’s poetic use of the word “etching” by scratching through the surface of the lithographic crayon to produce a network of fine white lines over the black background. The dark figure in this print refers to evil as an outside force in the form of Satan. Yet the personification of Satan also refers to evil as an internal problem. In Flaubert’s text, Anthony is portrayed as receiving mystical visions of different personifications of evil and sin. Redon’s print, like Flaubert’s portrayal, suggests that the personification of evil as Satan can be either a vision from an outside source or a hallucination. The fact that both Redon’s print and Flaubert’s text emphasized subjective experience blurs the boundaries between interior and exterior reality and the experience of evil, representing Symbolist artistic ideals. As in Flaubert’s text, Redon also used gender to allude to the ambiguous boundaries between interior and exterior evil. Both artists did this by conflating male and female characteristics in the form of the Devil. In Flaubert’s text, the devil is described as a male figure that holds the Seven Deadly Sins like a bat suckling its young. In Redon’s print, the gender of the figure is equally unclear. The monstrous form could be male or female, but its pose holding the distorted figures of sin in its folded arms is a gesture typically associated with a woman suckling an infant. In its reference to Flaubert’s text, Redon’s print referred to the dilemma Anthony faces between the pleasures of the flesh and spiritual enlightenment. Each of Flaubert’s chapters alludes to one of the Seven Deadly Sins. This image introduces Chapter II, which refers to the second sin – envy. Anthony envies the comfortable lives of others and the earthly pleasures he

122 L’Art Moderne, 21 Octobre, 1888.

believes he must forego in order to achieve spiritual growth. Anthony’s visions in this chapter also reinforce the idea that, while he eschews the company of others in his monasticism, he nevertheless desires it. The Devil tempts Anthony with visions of the pleasures he could have if he renounced his monastic life, creating tensions between Anthony’s conflicting desires.123 In the context of Symbolism, Anthony’s negation of desire aligned with the self-sacrifice of martyrdom associated with the modern artist-sage. Thus, Redon’s references to Anthony’s ambiguous situation, and his dilemma between spirit and matter, self and society, aligned with notions of the artist as a visionary working toward the ideal in his art. Further, in depicting the characters that Anthony encounters, Redon allowed the viewer to identity with Anthony and imaginatively participate in his spiritual quest. At the end of Flaubert’s book, in Chapter VII, Anthony meets Satan in two forms that were even more important for Redon. After a vision in which he is taken by the Devil up into the ethers to discuss the nature of reality as representation, Anthony awakens to find the Devil in the dual guise of Lust and Death.124 These figures are especially appropriate for Chapter VII, since lust is the seventh deadly sin. Lust is personified as a voluptuous young woman and Death is personified as a haggard and emaciated old woman. Lust tempts Anthony to carnal pleasures and Death tempts Anthony to commit suicide, which he desires as a result of the self-loathing he associates with his lust. The figure of Death initially resembles Anthony’s mother and attempts to lure him into the sleep of death. In the text both the lust for life and desire for death are illusory and dangerous to Anthony’s belief in the immortality of the soul.125 As Anthony’s visions progress, Lust and Death embrace in a spiral Dance of Death and merge into one satanic figure.126 Redon represented both of these scenes in his prints. Redon symbolized the ambiguity of evil and its modern dialectical form in his print Death: "My irony surpasses all others!" in his second interpretation of Flaubert’s text in 1889 (Fig. 4). The print is one of Redon’s most interesting, and most reproduced, images. Although

123 Flaubert, 73.

124 Ibid., 205-212.

125 Porter, 203.

126 Flaubert, 220; Leeman, “Odilon Redon,” 192-193.

critics such as Huysmans and Destrée derided Redon’s series for too closely paralleling Flaubert’s novel, Mallarmé praised this image for evoking Death’s perplexing irony.127 Redon rendered Anthony’s encounter with the devil in the “double guise: the spirit of fornication and the spirit of destruction.”128 The print represents Anthony’s dialogue with the satanic figure that emerges from the dialectical dance of Lust and Death. This dual face of evil evokes the tensions between the pleasures of the flesh and bodily and spiritual annihilation. Redon used dark, dense lines to produce the effect of deep shadow around the figure, from which she appears to emerge. This shadow provides stark contrast to light in the print and suggests the tensions between spirit and matter, good and evil. In Redon’s print, Death is a shadowy, indistinct form. As in Flaubert’s text, Redon represented Death as a female personification. Redon deviated from Flaubert’s text when he combined evil and eroticism in his figure of death, which features a pale, arched torso, milky white breasts, and a mysterious face hidden in shadow. The shadow accentuates the bony cheeks of the figure’s face. Redon’s death head is gaunt but not the traditional skull of Death depicted by Flaubert. The pale, taut flesh of the face of Death in Redon’s print emphasizes the high feminine cheek bones and maintains the symbolic link between femininity and evil that Redon signified in his Ceaselessly Beside Me… discussed in Chapter Two (Fig.1). Redon both aligned with and deviated from Flaubert’s text in his depiction of a coiling shroud beneath the figure’s hips. In keeping with Flaubert’s text, Redon’s Death wears a coiling shroud below her hips that appears to lift her upward into space. In contrast to Flaubert’s worm-like shroud, however, Redon’s shroud is snake-like, suggesting a serpentine ascending spiral. The snake symbol is multicultural and multivalent. It can signify the Devil as well as the origins of life. A coiled snake symbolizes cycles of life and resurrection.129 The coiled snake in Redon’s print likewise alludes to cycles of life and the dialectic between good and evil by referencing the vortex and the spiral. In Cartesian physics, familiar in nineteenth-century French culture, a vortex is “a rapid rotatory movement of cosmic matter about a center, regarded as accounting for the origin or

127 Leeman, “Odilon Redon,” 192-193.

128 Flaubert, 220.

129 Jack Tresidder, Dictionary of Symbols (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1997), 184-187. 50

phenomena of bodies or systems of bodies in space.”130 As in Redon’s earlier And Man Appeared discussed in Chapter Two (Fig. 14), his allusion to a vortex in this print can signify the idea of the birth of creation. The juxtaposition of the vortex with the figure of Death can also signify death as a new beginning and spiritual transcendence in the afterlife. Redon’s emphasis on the spiral tail also refers to the Hegelian dialectic, which is typically visualized as an ascending spiral. Redon’s synthesis of the spiral of life and the figure of Death represents spiritual growth and transcendence through a dialectic of good and evil. In short, Redon presents endings as new beginnings by referencing the spiral and the vortex in this print. In addition to the positive connotations of the spiral and the vortex Redon alludes to the center of the vortex as a void. As in Redon’s earlier And Man Appeared (Fig. 8), this void represents both an opening of possibility and a frightening liminal space. In the context of Flaubert’s text, the void represents Anthony’s (and Everyman’s) fear of the unknown. Redon rendered the idea of the void in this image in the darkest section of the coiled serpent’s tail. Viewed in this way, the figure appears to emerge from the depths of the void as she ascends on her serpentine shroud of Death. The void in this print suggests both the tomb of death and the womb of birth or rebirth. Redon’s use of flowing lines to represent a swirling vortex of energy in the brighter area at the top of the picture plane balances the dark void. Instead of following Flaubert’s representation of roses as encircling the figure’s head, Redon rendered them as flowing up and outward, spiraling into infinity. This light spiral reinforces the idea of transcendence in the print. The figure appears to shield her eyes in a gesture that ambiguously alludes to vision. It could suggest the value of spiritual and artistic vision arrived at subjectively or it could suggest blindness, reminding the viewer that Anthony’s visions were evil and illusory.131 Redon’s Death: "My irony surpasses all others!" evoked an imaginary space analogous to the psychological spaces Flaubert depicted in his novel. Yet Redon symbolized evil in the print in a way that exceeded Flaubert’s literary symbolism. Redon’s print challenged

130 Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1), Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/vortex (accessed: January 24, 2009).

131 Bataille, 54-57. Bataille elaborates the idea of blindness in relation to evil and alienation in nineteenth-century literature.

dogmatic and materialist views of the cosmos and embodied the ideals of natural religion, eclectic spirituality, and spiritual progression. Redon symbolized this transcendental dialectic in another print in his third interpretation of Flaubert’s text in 1896. The print, Death: “It is I who make you serious; let us embrace each other,” plate 20 of 24 (Fig. 5), represents Anthony’s dialogue with the evils of Lust and Death as two figures just prior to the point in Flaubert’s text when they morph into one satanic effigy. In keeping with Flaubert’s text, Redon represented Death as a skeletal figure and Lust as a voluptuous woman in this print. In Flaubert’s text, both figures are gendered female. In Redon’s print, however, Death is gendered more ambiguously. On the one hand, Redon’s Death is clothed in a flowing robe and wears a headdress that mimics the white hair and shroud of Flaubert’s emaciated and haggard female personification. On the other hand, Redon’s depiction of the fleshless bones makes gender identification problematic. As in Redon’s Ceaselessly Beside Me … in the Flowers of Evil album discussed in Chapter Two, the ambiguous gender in this print functions to blur boundaries. (Fig. 1). The ambiguous figure of death reinforces the ambiguity of the image in general, blurring the lines between matter and spirit and between good and evil. Redon composed the print using radiating lines. The skeletal Death serves as the focal point. Dark lines appear to radiate outward from the void of space at the top left of the picture plane just behind the figure of Death. The radiating lines describe a sphere. The lines become fainter and suggest light or energy as they flow into the area occupied by Lust. In this way, these lines symbolize lust for fleeting life. A sweeping band reinforces the image of a sphere as it flows from the bottom left of the picture plane. This sweeping band also suggests a spiral or the flowing energy of a vortex. The figure of Death, with its raised boney arm, appears to hold the female figure of Lust aloft, apparently pulling her up from the vortex of life energy. These lines suggesting life energy form a curve that also alludes to the spiral, symbolizing the dialectic of Lust and Death. The reference to the spiral or vortex in this image alludes to transcendence and blurs the boundaries between spirit and matter, life and death. Redon’s contrasting life and death imagery in the print signifies the play of tensions between desires for material and spiritual experiences. The radiating lines and spiral forms in the print suggest movement, transition, and passage. The print evokes the idea of a liminal space in which consciousness, matter, and spirit ebb and flow.

Redon divided the picture plane of this print into two. This division parallels his symbolic use of light and dark contrasts to represent life and death, good and evil. The picture plane is split along a diagonal line demarcated by Death’s upraised arm. Behind Death, at the top left, is darkness punctuated only by the occasional white speck of a star. This darkness surrounding Death is circumscribed, in turn, by some heavenly body suggested at the top left corner. This mark suggests a dark sphere surrounded by a larger sphere of light that correlates with Flaubert’s allusion to the heavenly spheres in his text.132 Small, bubble-like spheres in the lighter area at the bottom of Redon’s print and small, indistinct shapes at the bottom right of the picture plane can refer to either microorganisms or distant stars. These microcosmic and macrocosmic themes reinforce the connection between Redon’s examination of evil and metaphysical inquiry in the image. All of the visual elements in the print evoke conflicting feelings and associations rather than merely telling a story or illustrating a simplistic moral imperative. While Redon referenced metaphysical and ethical elements in the piece, he did not clearly differentiate between the two. Instead, Redon represented these elements as connected. Just as the line between life and death is blurred in the image, so the line between good and evil is also blurred. Using formal elements in the print, Redon suggested that these issues warrant reflection and meditation. This reflection, this struggle with perplexity, is part of the Symbolist conceptualization of the value of the subjective in life and in art as elaborated by Moréas, Mallarmé, and others. The duality in Redon’s print symbolizes the conundrum between the lust for life and the desire for spiritual transcendence, which can only be achieved in death. Redon’s print both challenged and reinforced the morality play assertion of the vanity of earthly pursuits. The print explored the relationships between matter and spirit and thus negated bourgeois materialism. The Symbolists challenged the positivist conceptual framework on the grounds of idealism and the individual’s right to claim existence as more than the sum of quotidian affairs. Instead they claimed one’s life and one’s art as sacred. They likewise considered the idea of normative submergence of the individual will into modern mass society evil. In this context, Redon’s depictions of Anthony’s visions stressed the perceived need to overcome evil in both its internal and external forms. The Symbolists used this trope to transcend the alienation of bourgeois culture and the packaged escapism of its petty pleasures. But such a dialectic was a Symbolist

132 Mrosovsky, 307.

ideal centered around the struggle itself rather than the attainment of a specific spiritual goal. The very engagement in the struggle was a spiritual, intellectual, and artistic achievement. Since Saint Anthony was a familiar subject in the visual and the literary arts, Redon’s prints and Flaubert’s text were in dialogue with other visual representations. Both Redon and Rops were members of Symbolist circles in Paris and Brussels. Yet the artists took very different approaches in their renderings of Saint Anthony, corresponding to different spiritual and political beliefs. Huysmans wrote that Rops “celebrated that spiritualism of Luxury that is Satanism, and painted, in pages that cannot be perfected, the supernaturalism of perversity, the otherworld of Evil.”133 Rops used the subject of Anthony to challenge dogmatic religious beliefs and tear off the mask of bourgeois perversity.134 Rops rendered Anthony’s dark desires and sadomasochistic sexual fantasies described in Flaubert’s text (Fig. 17). In keeping with his penchant for irreverence, Rops symbolized the seduction and destruction of evil, violence, and death in the crucifixion of a naked woman before Anthony’s eyes. In Rops’s work, the figure of Jesus, likely referencing the Church, falls by the wayside as a specter of death and a pig looks on. Small, skeletal demonic putti hover over the scene. Anthony leans back and holds his head as wind rifles the pages of his Bible. Vivid color intensifies the emotional force with which Rops rendered the subject. Rops’s satanic imagery negated cultural institutions, delved into evil, and connected to contemporary cult practices in ways that Redon’s prints did not. Additionally, while Rops seemingly satirized the artist’s conceived role as a sage, Redon apparently took it seriously. While Rops’s work celebrated evil and irreverence, Redon’s prints emphasized Anthony’s dilemma between the lust for life and the quest for spiritual development. Redon chose to equivocate, to play with tensions between different kinds of desires, knowledge, and approaches to spirituality. Yet Redon’s emphasis on the dialectic in his prints suggests the possibility of transcendence, in which an ending is a new beginning. Redon’s prints in the Temptation of Saint Anthony albums loosely structured his exploration of evil into moral and natural forms. The categories of moral and natural evil

133 Huysmans, J.K. Certains. Paris: Union Général d'Éditions, 1975. http://homepage.mac.com/brendanking/huysmans.org/en/biblioge/bibliog1e.htm; http://www.artmagick.com/pictures/artist.aspx?artist=felicien-rops.

134 Musée provincial Félicien Rops, http://www.ciger.be/rops/tech/ (accessed: Feb. 15, 2009).

distinguish modern discussions of the subject. The distinction between natural evil, such as disease, decay, and death, and moral evil, which is a result of human action, experiences, and phenomena, marks the beginning of the modern era in the West. As Susan Neiman argues in her book Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy, the desire for a rational, intelligible world structured by such categorization is key to modern examinations of evil.135 The distinction between moral and natural evil reflects attempts to make sense of the experience of evil in terms of emerging modern scientific understandings. Science made it possible to no longer view disease and catastrophe as necessarily punishment for sin. Yet exploration of the boundaries, cause and effect relationships, and dialectical struggle between the two are evident in Redon’s work and Flaubert’s text. Like Flaubert’s textual representation of Saint Anthony’s struggle between spirit and matter, Redon’s visual interpretations explored the relationships between human action and the experience of evil. Like the characters in Flaubert’s novel, Redon’s renderings also engaged nineteenth-century theories of evolution and degeneration that aligned with the Symbolist emphasis on idealism and subjectivity. Both artists appropriated and reconfigured the character of Saint Anthony based on these nineteenth-century discourses on the relationships between symbols, subjectivity, and perception. Through his Temptation of Saint Anthony prints, Redon explored the relationship between good and evil and between the visionary artist and society. Using word and image relations, Redon’s dialogue with Flaubert’s text symbolized relationships between artistic vision, alienation, and spirituality while alluding to these relationships as engaged in dialectical processes of development.

135 Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 322.

CHAPTER 4 THE ARTIST AND APOCALYPSE

In the nineteenth century, the mythic persona of the artist as a sage represented the idea that art was produced as a result of the artist’s engagement with the Ideal. Within the Symbolist ethos, artists such as Redon objectified their subjective experiences, translating their visions of the Ideal in evocative ways.136 Thus, the idea of the imaginative dream became integral to Symbolist thought and artistic practices. Like Redon’s Temptation of Saint Anthony portfolios, his Apocalypse de Saint-Jean (Apocalypse of Saint John) album of 1899 embodied these artistic and spiritual ideals. In this album, Redon depicted the visions beheld by the New Testament prophet John the Revelator. Like Redon’s earlier portfolios, the prints in this album propounded art and the artist as conduits of enlightenment, characterized evil as part of a dialectical process, and promoted personal spirituality. In this chapter, I examine three images from Redon’s Apocalypse of Saint John album. First, I analyze And His Name that Sat on Him was Death (Fig. 6). Second, I examine And I Saw an Angel Come Down from Heaven (Fig. 7). Third, I consider And Bound Him Up a Thousand Years (Fig. 8). In keeping with the prints considered in the previous chapters, Redon used traditional subjects and symbols in new and evocative ways in his Apocalypse of Saint John portfolio. As in the earlier prints, Redon used light and dark to symbolize good and evil in this album but he did not do so simplistically. Instead, he both contrasted good and evil and conflated them by mingling light and dark in hazy, tenebrous portions the prints. That Redon continued this shadowy symbolism in his Apocalypse of Saint John album, even though his biblical subject matter sharply contrasts good and evil, speaks of his word and image discourse with both traditional and contemporary sources. These shadowy dream-like or otherworldly regions signified the Symbolist desire to evoke a contemplative response in the viewer. Additionally, Redon wrote in “Suggestive Art” of 1909 that art should promote reflection in order to foster artistic and spiritual evolution.137 The play of meaning in Redon’s symbolism in these prints

136 Kahn, 1016-1017. Kahn proclaimed the Symbolist artistic goal of objectifying subjective experience in this essay responding to the conservative criticism of Moreas’s “Symbolist Manifesto.”

137 Redon, “Suggestive Art,” in Theories of Modern Art, 117. 56

aligns with his writings advocating the use of art to promote personal spirituality. Within this context, the shadowy, ambiguous regions of Redon’s prints played on nineteenth-century notions of evil as a duality signifying both decadent culture and the problem of the individual within it. As discussed in previous chapters, this symbolism and these discourses engaged both spiritual and material concerns and the question of the dichotomy between the two. In symbolizing visions of heavenly retribution as a corrective for decadent culture, and in representing his figures in otherworldly rather than earthy realms, Redon aligned these prints more firmly with his writings on art and spirituality than he had in previous albums. The prints evoke contemplation of the boundaries between good and evil. Yet, taken as a group, the prints emphasize good, depicting the triumph of good over evil. Redon represented evil and retribution using the skeletal figure of the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse (Revelation 6:7-8) in his And His Name that Sat on Him Was Death (Fig. 6). This is perhaps the most evil image in the album. The skeleton is an iconographic image of Death. The skeletal figure of the Fourth Horseman also represents death, and is often depicted wreaking havoc on the unrepentant. Yet Redon rendered evil at a distance, placing the rider in the sky rather than on earth unleashing destructive forces. Redon’s imagery in this print is more evocative than graphic. In Redon’s And I Saw an Angel Come Down from Heaven, Having the Key of the Bottomless Pit and a Great Chain in His Hand (Fig. 7) based on the Angel with the key to the bottomless pit (Revelation 9:1-2), light and dark symbolism plays a major role. In this print, the angel is lightly rendered against a pitch black sky. The light of the angel represents good, and the darkness of the sky represents impending doom. The angel holds a chain and the key to the pit, referring to both the annihilation of decadent culture and the good that follows in the aftermath of destruction. The print And Bound Him a Thousand Years (Fig. 8) is rendered even darker, signifying the abyss of the pit. In this print, Redon also symbolized evil in the traditional form of the serpent referred to in the biblical text (Revelation 20:1-3). The serpent has been exiled to the pit and chained by the angel. In the print, as in the biblical text, this symbolizes the idea of a future heaven on earth following the annihilation of decadent culture. Redon’s prints embodied many of the ideas about evil and salvation espoused by the Church during the Catholic Revival of the 1890s, yet promoted a personal spirituality. Competing religious and spiritual practices emerged at the end of the century in response to the

perceived emptiness of bourgeois positivism, ambivalence toward the Church, and nostalgia for traditional folk practices. Spiritualism (non-institutional religion) and spiritism (esoteric and cult practices) were the two main approaches to spirituality in a secular French culture uneasy with Catholic dogma. Despite their shared resistance to Catholic mores, however, the spiritualist and spiritist movements had more in common with Catholicism than with positivism. These movements paralleled the Catholic revival in rejecting positivism and emphasizing spirituality over materialism.138 Redon’s own approach can best be described as spiritual, since he wrote of belief in God and an afterlife but not in distorted or dogmatic religious or cult practices, which he considered evil. 139 Redon’s Apocalypse of Saint John album represented the Christian roots of his spirituality without advocating institutional religion. Rather, Redon’s representations of evil in this album drew from Christian tradition to embody nineteenth-century idealist and spiritualist views that modernity, cultural decadence, and spiritual enlightenment engaged in a process of dialectical struggle. In his Apocalypse of Saint John portfolio, Redon combined spiritual and artistic ideals in representing fin-de-siècle apocalyptic anxieties.140 At the same time, Redon symbolized endings as new beginnings in cyclical life processes, a symbolism evident in the biblical Apocalypse, which reveals a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21:1) to follow doomsday and destruction. Redon’s prints in the album mark the culmination of his thematic treatment of the problem of evil in black and white at the end of the nineteenth century. Redon continued to depict spiritual themes throughout the remainder of his career, but he did so in colorful pastels rather than black media. The ending marked by this album thus represents the idea of a dialectical moment of spiritual development at the turn of the new century. For Symbolists like Redon, artistic and spiritual development represented a way to shape a meaningful existence within modernizing and secularizing society. Many scholars connect this

138 Kselman, 125-126.

139 Redon, “Journal Entry 1870,” in To Myself, 35.

140 Albert Boime, Revelation of Modernism: Responses to Cultural Crisis in Fin-de-siècle Painting (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2008), ix-xii. Overt reverences to apocalyptic anxieties were less widely represented in the arts in France than in England at the turn of the twentieth century. According to Boime, these anxieties were largely channeled into provincial and exotic “primitivist” forms of expression. 58

artistic development with the desire to escape modern culture that led contemporaries Van Gogh and Gauguin to seek refuge in provincial and “primitive” locales. Albert Boime, in his Revelation of Modernism: Responses to Cultural Crisis in Fin-de-siècle Painting, argues that the Post-Impressionist quest for origins in provincial and primitive settings was the regenerative answer to fin-de-siècle apocalyptic anxieties.141 Boime’s theory aligns with Matei Calinescu’s analysis in Five Faces of Modernity. Calinescu postulates nineteenth-century escapism as a regenerative answer to modern notions of cultural decadence in general.142 Taken in conjunction with Ricoeur’s view of evil as an element of metaphysical inquiry discussed in the preceding chapters, these ideas are important in studying Redon’s representations of evil and annihilation.143 Redon’s representations of evil in his Apocalypse of Saint John portfolio of 1899 intersected with all of these discourses. The prints engaged nineteenth-century Symbolist notions of mystic vision and cultural decadence associated with canonical myths and contemporary theories of evolution and degeneration. The prints in the Apocalypse of Saint John portfolio were most directly in dialogue with the New Testament Apocalypse of Saint John, also known as the Book of Revelation. Because of their more direct connection with biblical texts, analysis of the prints requires a slightly different methodology than did the analyses of previous chapters. Thus, in this chapter, I examine the prints in relation to Redon’s dialogue with canonical myth and with nineteenth- century literature. The subject of the Apocalypse was not commonly rendered in late nineteenth- century literary and visual arts in France. Yet Redon’s album demonstrates that the apocalyptic themes of the text resonated with fin-de siècle Symbolist and spiritualist discourses grounded in notions of cultural decadence. Further, the tradition of apocalyptic representation in French medieval culture aligned with the Symbolists interested in the Gothic as an example of both the fantastic and the provincial primitive. As with the legend of Saint Anthony, the Apocalypse of Saint John was part of a long tradition of representing good and evil which Redon appropriated and modernized in his own unique manner of rendering.

141 Boime, xii.

142 Calinescu, 162.

143 Ricoeur, 4, 151.

In addition to its grounding in the New Testament, I consider Redon’s album as in dialogue with Baudelaire’s poetry in the Flowers of Evil. As Barbara Larson notes in her book The Dark Side of Nature: Science, Society, and the Fantastic in the Work of Odilon Redon, Baudelaire based his poem “A Fantastic Engraving” on John Hamilton Mortimer’s 1784 print Death on a Pale Horse (Fig. 18). Mortimer’s print, in turn, had been derived from the apocalyptic Fourth Horseman who is identified as Death in Revelation 6:8.144 Just as Baudelaire translated the earlier image into poetry, Redon retranslated Baudelaire’s poetry into a visual symbol of cultural decadence, transforming evil into an element of transcendence. Redon would have likely also been familiar with the Mortimer print of Baudelaire’s poem. Redon’s print engaged in a tradition of biblical illustration and modern appropriation of biblical subjects. The print embodied New Testament and medieval apocalyptic themes that resonated with the Symbolists, connecting canonical origin and annihilation myths to modern notions of cultural decadence and evil. Redon’s Apocalypse of Saint John portfolio represents the culmination of his interest in evil as part of a dialectical process through which the individual and society could evolve. In this chapter, I analyze Redon’s symbolism of evil in his Apocalypse of Saint John album in response to fin-de-siècle apocalyptic anxieties and religious tensions during the Catholic Revival in France. I begin my analysis by introducing the historical figure of Saint John. Next, I consider the mythic figure as a model of the artist as a sage in decadent culture. Then, I look at Redon’s prints in relation to Baudelaire’s poem and Symbolist notions of decadence. Finally, I consider how Redon symbolized evil as a key element in a dialectical process of spiritual growth within the context of Symbolist artistic ideals. The Apocalypse of Saint John images worked in conjunction with the rest of Redon’s oeuvre, especially his Flowers of Evil and Temptation of Saint Anthony albums, to convey both the dangers of cultural decadence and the idea that apocalyptic ending is a new beginning. The Book of Revelation is the last book of the New Testament. Traditionally it was believed to have been written by Saint John, one of Christ’s Apostles, although biblical scholars have shown that it was written by another John living in Asia Minor near the end of the first

144 Larson, The Dark Side of Nature, 125. 60

century.145 As in Flaubert’s Temptation of Saint Anthony, the visions in the biblical text can be interpreted as taking place somewhere between John’s interior, psychological regions and the exterior, even heavenly, realms. In the book, Saint John describes a sequence of symbolic visions announcing the end of days that he experiences while imprisoned on the island of Patmos for proselytizing.146 Saint John’s visions thematically and formally align with Symbolist literary and visual strategies in many ways. Important parallels are the idea of deceptive external appearances, the visionary interpretation of signs, the translation of that interpretation to an audience, and the use of symbolic images and cryptic language. The work also predicts an unhappy ending for decadent culture. Calinescu writes that the modern idea of decadence developed in part from Judeo-Christian narratives of an apocalyptic end.147 Redon drew from the Book of Revelation, the primary Christian text foretelling the end of the world, to depict modern spiritual concerns and fin-de-siècle anxieties. Redon also symbolized the text’s prediction of a thousand years of peace following the chaining of the serpent as a model for his artistic and spiritual dialectic. Redon depicted the Apocalypse of Saint John as ripe with multivalent symbolism, taking a unique approach in rendering themes that resonated with the rest of his oeuvre and aligned with Symbolist ideals. A key difference between Redon’s Apocalypse of Saint John and his Temptation of Saint Anthony portfolios is that the biblical narrative had a more easily interpreted moral message. Moreover, the biblical source of the narrative was a respected element of Western culture even as the institutional authority of the Church was being challenged. Both texts ask the reader to bear witness to the authors’ visions and to consider the relationship of the self to outside (institutional) spiritual and moral authorities, as did Redon’s prints. But Saint John was a more credible witness. Whereas Flaubert’s Temptation of Saint Anthony relativized evil and evoked thoughts and feelings that challenged the dogma and mores of corrupt society, Saint John’s text had a clear message – salvation rewarded the faithful and damnation punished the corrupt or

145 For John and the influences of his Revelation see the essays in Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn, eds., The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992); C.A. Patrides and Joseph Wittreich, eds., The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984).

146 Rev. 1:1, 1:9.

147 Calinescu, 152-153. 61

decadent. However, even in the Apocalypse of Saint John album, Redon’s prints retained an element of Symbolist ambiguity. Despite the more direct moral message, Redon’s interpretations of Saint John’s text stopped short of an overtly didactic narrative. Although he selected a Christian subject, Redon chose one that could be seen as either supporting church doctrine or challenging it. In her essay “The Transformation of the Symbolist Aesthetic,” Maryanne Stevens argues that Redon did not support didactic literature or the institutionalized religion of the Catholic Revival.148 In 1898, Redon wrote in letters to his friend and publisher André Bonger of his disappointment with Huysmans’s conversion to dogmatic Catholicism and his didactic novel La Cathédrale.149 The fact that Saint John’s text admonishes the corruption of institutionalized religion, implicating various churches in the problem of evil and decadent culture, reinforces Redon’s dialogue with the text’s spiritual, rather than primarily religious, dimensions. Although these prints depicted a Christian subject at a time when even decadents such as Huysmans were returning to the faith, they aligned with late nineteenth-century spirituality more than with organized religion. Leaning more toward spiritual than religious views in this respect, Redon’s prints marked a unique convergence. The prints did more than merely admonish the evils of decadent culture. They embodied the idea that evil participates in a dialectic leading toward the betterment of the individual and society. As with Redon’s other albums, the Apocalypse of Saint John portfolio also connected with secular and scientific, as well as spiritual, theories of evolution and degeneration. Larson notes that French scientist and science-fiction writer Camille Flammarion contributed to end-of- days speculation in his book, Le fin du monde (The End of the World) of 1894. Like Redon’s mentor Armand Clavaude, Flammarion combined spirituality with scientific theory in his book. Flammarion’s novel built on spiritual theories of evolution and on astronomical calculations, predicting the end of the world by cataclysmic astronomical events in the year 2525. While Flammarion’s novel postponed immediate end-of-the-century apocalyptic expectations, it nevertheless confirmed the idea of an apocalypse as destruction preceding salvation. In the

148 Maryanne Stevens, “The Transformation of the Symbolist Aesthetic,” in Odilon Redon: Prince of Dreams, ed. Douglas W. Druick (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1994), 209 - 210, 213.

149 Stevens, 210, 213. 62

novel, the human race gradually gives up its materialism through spiritual progression. The apocalyptic events in the novel are not so much retribution for evil as they are a catalyst for the final transition to the spiritual existence of the species resulting from both natural and cosmic life cycles. Flammarion writes: But for the sun also the end came, and the hour sounded on the timepiece of destiny when the whole solar system was stricken from the book of life. And one after another, the stars, each one of which is a sun, a solar system, shared the same fate; yet the universe continued to exist as it does today.150 Flammarion also likened the life cycles of the universe to the life cycles of the human body: A body is alive so long as its respiration and the circulation of blood makes it possible for the various organs to perform their functions. When equilibrium and repose are reached, death follows; but after death the substances of which the body was formed are wrought into other beings. Dissolution is the prelude to recreation. Analogy leads us to believe that the same is true of the cosmos. Nothing can be destroyed.151 Flammarion’s novel confirmed the idea of an apocalypse on the one hand and fused scientific and spiritual theories of evolution that challenged biblical narrative on the other. Like Flammarion, Redon took an eclectic approach, incorporating such theories into his representations of cultural decadence and evolution rooted in Judeo-Christian tradition. Additionally, like Flammarion’s representation of the end times, Redon’s prints herald the apocalypse as an arduous road to a better future. Redon titled the prints in this album using excerpts from the literature with which he was in dialogue. In this case, he drew the titles from the biblical text in the Book of Revelation. Given Redon’s engagement with nineteenth-century literature in his Temptation of Saint Anthony and Flowers of Evil albums, however, it is not surprising that his Apocalypse of Saint John portfolio also engaged with Baudelaire’s poetry. Just as, in the fifteenth century, Albrecht Dürer

150 Camille Flammarion, Omega: The Last Days of the World (New York: Cosmopolitan Publishing, 1894), 277.

151 Ibid., 284. 63

selected and composed in order to render the apocalypse in twenty-two, rather than the traditional ninety or more images usually presented in medieval manuscripts, Redon also selected a reduced number of images for his print interpretations.152 Redon structured his album with twelve prints and a cover page. This number of prints is relevant in referring to Jesus and the twelve Apostles as well as to the apocalyptic number “12,” which occurs throughout Reveletion.153 The sequence of the prints followed the biblical visions. As in the Temptation of Saint Anthony albums, Redon produced fewer prints than there were visions recorded in the text. This structure meant that Redon had to select what he considered to be the most important elements of the text to render in his prints. In the story, John is visited by an angel sent by Jesus Christ, and his spirit ascends into heaven where he experiences a series of apocalyptic visions. John then witnesses a scroll with seven seals, which, when opened, reveal seven episodes of imminent disaster. The opening of the first four seals reveals the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who show John both the past and the terrible future awaiting decadent culture. Redon did not depict all of the Riders of the Apocalypse. Rather, he chose to depict the Fourth Horseman as the Rider of Death specifically in his And His Name that Sat on Him was Death (Fig. 6). Redon likely chose this rider because it refers to the imminent future. But this is also the very rider that Baudelaire alluded to in his poem “A Fantastic Engraving” based on Mortimer’s print Death on a Pale Horse of 1784 (Fig. 18). Baudelaire’s poem reads: A monstrous specter carries on his forehead, And at a rakish tilt, grotesquely horrid, A crown such as at carnivals parade. Without a whip or spur he rides a jade, A phantom-like apocalyptic moke,

152 For more on Dürer’s apocalyptic imagery see Michael Camille, “Visionary Perception and Images of the Apocalypse in the Later Middle Ages,” in The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 283-189; Erwin Panofsky, The life and art of Albrecht Dürer (Princeton University Press, 1945, 1971).

153For more on number symbolism see Austin Marsden Farrer, A Rebirth of Images; The Making of St. John's Apocalypse (Westminster: Dacre Press, 1949).

Whose nostrils seem with rabid froth to smoke. Across unbounded space the couple moves Spurning infinity with reckless hooves. The horseman waves a sword that lights the gloom Of nameless crowds he tramples to their doom, And, like a prince his mansion, goes inspecting The graveyard, which, no skyline intersecting, Contains, beneath a sun that's white and bleak, Peoples of history, modern and antique.154 Baudelaire’s poem refers to Mortimer’s print, the New Testament Revelation of Saint John, and nineteenth-century notions of decadence. Whereas Flammarion’s text elaborated futuristic science-fiction visions of the end of the world, Baudelaire’s poem connected with more traditional interpretations of the biblical text represented by Mortimer’s print. Redon’s print symbolized all of these themes, incorporating ideas of evolution and degeneration prevalent in late nineteenth-century French culture. Redon’s connection to Baudelaire’s writing is significant to his print interpretations of the New Testament Apocalypse of Saint John at the turn of the century. In his “Essai de psychologie contemporaine” of 1881, Paul Bourget wrote that Baudelaire was a “theoretician of decadence” with a flair for symbolizing the idea of cultural decay. 155 As Calinescu writes, Baudelaire’s symbolism of cultural decay, as interpreted and disseminated by Bourget, informed ideas of modern decadence among the Symbolists in Europe and even informed Nietzsche’s philosophy on the evils of culture.156 According to Calinescu, idealists and Symbolists viewed Western culture as declining due to its belief in bourgeois materialism that promised fulfillment through progress but that instead delivered “spiritual alienation and dehumanization.”157 Using an organic

154 Baudelaire, “A Fantastic Engraving,” in The Flowers of Evil (1866), trans. William Aggeler, http://fleursdumal.org (accessed March 22, 2009).

155 Bourget, 128-131.

156 Calinescu, 158.

157 Ibid., 162.

model, Baudelaire likened the process of cultural decay to biological cycles of life and death. Redon appropriated this analogy, inverting Baudelaire’s play with death and decomposition and emphasizing renewal in the image. Redon’s print represented retribution for the individual and collective evils of decadent society. But the print also worked with the others in the album and with the rest of Redon’s oeuvre to signify evil as part of a regenerative process in both individual and cosmic life cycles. Redon’s print And His Name that Sat on Him was Death (Fig. 6) corresponds with the biblical vision in Revelation 6:7-8. In the narrative, the Rider of Death appears upon the opening of the fourth seal. The text reads: When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!” And I saw, and behold, a pale horse, and its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed him; and they were given power over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth. The idea of death as a result of famine aligned with Redon’s, and Mortimer’s, personification of Death as a skeletal figure symbolizing cultural decline. Redon rendered his figure of Death even more skeletal than Baudelaire’s or Mortimer’s representations. Mortimer’s print is a didactic image with an overtly moralizing message – repent or reap the consequences. Mortimer’s Death is an emaciated figure with a skull, leading the charge of destruction and trampling sinners under his horse’s hooves. Redon symbolizes Death as a completely skeletal rider galloping through the heavens as a sign of imminent doom. The rider wields the sword of retribution associated with the final judgment in the Book of Revelation. Redon’s skeletal rendering recalls his personification of Death in his Death is I… print in his final Temptation of Saint Anthony album of 1896 (Fig. 5). This time the figure’s gender is not ambiguous, however. In contrast to the more passive posture of Death in the earlier image, this figure has an active pose, astride his horse and wielding his sword. Thus, Redon used cultural associations of masculinity to signify power and dynamism in the print. Although the figure is a frightening portent of doom, its position in the sky renders it less immediately threatening than the figure in Mortimer’s print. Redon’s representation of evil is more symbolic and evocative than didactic. Redon’s symbolism works with his biblical subject matter and with his own writings critiquing decadent cultural

institutions to promote thought. These elements align with Redon’s writings promoting spiritual evolution through dialectical processes between good and evil. Redon used intense chiaroscuro in the print for symbolic effect, contrasting light and dark forces. The main element is a dramatic, frenzied line radiating from a point at the lower left of the picture plane. The harsh, dramatic lines that radiate from the bottom left seem to inscribe the area of earth. Redon uses curved lines with very little shading to demarcate a lighter, cloudy area around the earth. This cloudy area can refer to the smoke accompanying the rider in the biblical text. The clouds on which the heavenly horseman rides also allude to both heaven and earth. The clouds are white, signifying good and the heavenly realm. They also resemble the rising dust clouds associated with earthly horsemen. In the biblical text Death rides a pale horse. And Redon renders the horse in the print as shadowy and indistinct as it emerges from the hazy region of sky just beyond the clouds. The tenebrous rendering of the horse emphasizes the rider – the specter of Death – wielding the exaggeratedly long sword. From his seat atop the horse in the heavens, the rider plunges the long sword down toward the earth. The sword seems to pierce through the cloud formations onto the surface of the earth itself. The idea of violent penetration of morally decadent culture by supernaturally-ordained disaster is reinforced by lines that radiate from the earth and engulf the sword. This figure of Death is designed to frighten and shock but is less menacing in its symbolism than is Mortimer’s figure, which tramples his victims underfoot. In maintaining the figure’s distance from earth and connection to heaven, and in suggesting imminent doom rather than overtly depicting it, Redon’s print evokes rather than instructs. His symbolism in the print alludes to the evils of decadent culture and its institutions. Taken in conjunction with the theme of the album and with Redon’s writing, the print also alludes to evil as an element to be contemplated and overcome in dialectical processes of spiritual growth. Redon’s print connected to contemporary religious and spiritual discourses. In depicting a Christian subject that nevertheless challenged the Church as an instrument of folly and cultural decadence, the print suggested personal spirituality over organized religion. In this way, the print engaged in the afterlife debate in late nineteenth-century French culture. According to Thomas Kselman in Death and the Afterlife in Modern France, representations of an afterlife, and emphasis on spirituality over materialism, brought diverse spiritual groups into alignment at the turn of the century. Various notions of the afterlife reached the public through religious,

spiritualist, and materialist debates in the press. Despite their challenge to Catholicism, many of these movements paralleled the Catholic revival in rejecting positivism and emphasizing spirituality over materialism. Debates about spirituality and the afterlife in the press correlated with fin-de-siècle anxieties regarding urban decadence and final judgment associated with the end of the world. 158 These areas of alignment explain Redon’s use of Christian imagery and themes in ways that advocated personal religion and not Catholicism. In the midst of the Catholic revival, in which even such decadents as Huysmans returned to the fold of the Church, Redon advocated the virtues of spirituality unfettered by institutionalized religion. Redon recorded his views on the evils of distorted religion in a journal entry of 1870: I resent all those who, under the arches of our temples, make heard injurious outcries against good; those who martyrize genius; those, finally, who, in the field of awareness, falsify and pervert the natural meaning of truth. These are the truly guilty. Here lies the evil which must be exorcised.159 Instead, Redon advocated personal religion as the road to salvation. Redon wrote that “the heart, love in its delicate gentleness, is still the best and only guide. It is perhaps only through it that the truth is revealed, it has the touch, the certainty, the affirmation.”160 Redon embodied these ideals in his prints. The prints in this album aligned with his writing, challenging dogma and embodying the desire for a new spirituality. Although he did not support Catholicism, Redon paralleled the Catholic Revival in challenging positivism and advocating spirituality in Apocalypse of Saint John portfolio. In his And His Name that Sat on Him was Death print (Fig. 6), Redon visually distanced evil, subordinating it to the good in comparison with his earlier prints discussed in previous chapters. In this manner, the print paralleled the renewed efforts of the Church to garner new parishioners. According to Kselman, Catholic sermons in France at the end of the century shifted their focus away from fire and brimstone and toward faith and forgiveness, especially in urban areas such as Paris. This transition to a softer message of forgiveness, rather than fear of Hell and afterlife

158 Kselman, 125-126, 132.

159 Redon, “Journal Entry 1870,” in To Myself, 34.

160 Ibid., 36.

retribution, was geared to bring people into the fold who sought spiritual guidance but not a strict, simplistic, or outdated morality.161 Similarly, Redon’s choice of subject and symbolism in the print, and its thematic alignment with the other prints in the album, emphasized the experience of evil as a catalyst for a new start rather than primarily punishment for sin. Redon’s writing on the need to exorcise evil and his assertion that “repentance is a new innocence” reinforces this idea.162 In its subject matter, symbolism, and connection with rest of Redon’s oeuvre, the print aligns with Redon’s writing challenging institutions and promoting personal spirituality. Redon’s print And I Saw an Angel Come Down from Heaven, Having the Key of the Bottomless Pit and a Great Chain in His Hand (Fig. 7), plate 8 of the Apocalypse of St. John portfolio, aligns with Redon’s writing elaborating evil as part of a dialectical struggle. The angel in Redon’s print is the sole figure represented and is rendered against a very dark background. The angel appears to emerge from a pitch black sky or the total darkness of a void. There is stark contrast between light and dark elements, signifying life and death, spirit and matter. The focal points are the figure’s head, wings, and the large key and chain that he holds. The angel in the print is a double signifier of both destruction and rejuvenation. The title of the print specifically references Revelation 20:1, in which an angel of the Lord comes down from heaven and binds Satan for a thousand years after the annihilation of the armies of evil. But the figure’s grim and frightening continence also corresponds to an earlier angel, symbolized as a portent of doom, in Revelation 9:11. In this earlier biblical vision, an angel of destruction descends to earth to wreak havoc. Both of the biblical figures are angels who hold the key to the bottomless pit; one to open it as punishment for moral evil and one to close it in preparation for an era of peace and enlightenment born out of destruction. In this way, the print connects with Redon’s writing, alluding to the problem of evil and its role in a dialectical process of spiritual growth. The print uses the symbols of the figure, the key, and the chain to signify both the destruction of cultural decadence and materialism and the triumph, albeit temporary, of good over evil.

161 Kselman, 82-84.

162 Redon, “Journal Entry 1870,” in To Myself, 33-34.

Redon’s print also connects with his earlier satanic imagery in dialogue with Baudelaire’s poetry in his Flowers of Evil portfolio (Fig. 2). When the angel in Revelation 9:1-6 opens the pit, he releases locust beasts as retribution for evil. The text reads: And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose smoke.… And there came out of the smoke locusts.… And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads…. And in those days men shall seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. According to Revelation 9:11, the king of these beasts of the pit is Apollyon, who was traditionally identified as the Antichrist associated with the Devil.163 Both Redon and Baudelaire, in his poem “Litanies of Satan,” drew from the image of Lucifer as a fallen angel, and a decadent in a metaphorical pit of despair, as depicted in Revelation 12:9. But both Redon and Baudelaire also represented Lucifer as a symbol of the destructive forces of materialism and alienation in modern culture more in alignment with Revelation 9:11. The angel in Redon’s print symbolizes the destruction in Revelation 9:11 and also signifies death and destruction as a new beginning in alignment with Revelation 20:1. Thus, Redon symbolized death as the source of the afterlife – the ultimate transcendence and new beginning. Redon’s print refers to his earlier Flowers of Evil album and to lines from Baudelaire’s poem “Litanies of Satan,” which read: “You who of Death, your mistress old and strong, have begotten Hope, — a charming madcap! O Satan, take pity on my long misery!”164 In addition to its irony, Baudelaire’s poem alludes to death as a release from decadent modern culture. By emphasizing death as a transition, rather than merely an end, Redon’s print is in dialogue with his representations of death in his Flowers of Evil album. The figure of Death in this print represents both an agent of destruction and an agent of good paving the way for rejuvenation. The print thus conflates the ideas of death, destruction, and transcendence. Taken

163 Ian Boxall, The Revelation of St. John (New York: Hendrickson Publishers, 2006), 171, 279.

164 Baudelaire, “Litanies of Satan,” in The Flowers of Evil, (1866), trans. William Aggeler, http://fleursdumal.org (accessed March 22, 2009).

in conjunction with the New Testament narrative, which asserts that “men shall seek death, and shall not find it,” the print postulates death as a sought-after catharsis necessary for regeneration.165 Redon’s print And Bound Him Up a Thousand Years (Fig. 8), plate nine in the Apocalypse of Saint John album, references the outcome of the work of the angel in Revelation 20:1-2 just discussed, which Redon depicted in plate eight. Redon’s print in plate nine corresponds to the phase of the biblical text that exemplifies the idea of the apocalypse as a cleansing event and connects with nineteenth-century notions of spirituality engaged in cyclical processes. Revelation 20:1-2 reads: “And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years.166 Redon’s symbolism in the print signified the idea of the triumph of good over evil for a period of spiritual enlightenment to be followed by another apocalyptic event in the Last Judgment. Redon appropriated this Christian imagery in the print, representing the idea of decay and death as part of natural and spiritual processes of rejuvenation. His reference to the idea of a future period of a thousand years of peace on earth aligned with nineteenth-century spirituality and dialectical thought. Redon’s depiction of Satan as a serpent in Revelation 12:9 recalls Redon’s earlier satanic representation of Death in his Death my Irony… print (Fig. 6) in his second Temptation of Saint Anthony album. But this time, in keeping with the symbolism of the Book of Revelation, Redon represents the Devil as a serpent rather than a composite personification. Despite its more positive textual reference, the print is very dark, with very little suggestion of light. The darkness in this instance symbolizes the pit or the void to which evil has been temporarily banished as humanity evolves through a dialectical process. The chained serpent, barely visible, represents both evil and death, which have been temporarily overcome in reaching the next stage of enlightenment. The snake rises upward but is not coiled in the same way as the serpentine figure in Death my Irony…. Rather, it appears to bend in an unusual accordion pose. The unnatural pose implies that the serpent is straining against the chains in an effort to break free. A ghost-like suggestion of the angel binding the serpent is just visible in the

165 Rev. 9:1-6.

166 Rev.20:1-2. 71

bottom left corner of the print. The trace of the angelic figure suggests that the karmic chains will hold and that evil will remain in darkness while a new dawn is born to humanity. By implication, the print contrasts the darkness of ignorance and materialism with the light of spiritual fulfillment. Taken with the rest of Redon’s oeuvre, however, the print should not be seen to signify merely an ideology of afterlife escapism. Rather, the print signifies desire for the birth of a new era of spirituality in the material world, in which, as Redon writes, “a spirit of morality” will one day preside.167 Redon wrote that a moral code will replace dogmatic gospel as an “expression of universal consciousness.”168 The prints in his Apocalypse of Saint John series embody a personal, eclectic, and artistic view of spirituality. In depicting the Apocalypse, the prints also symbolize evil as an element in dialectical growth and, in Redon’s words, “repentance as a new innocence.”169 The prints, like the others in the album, also combine artistic and spiritual ideals. They assert the importance of the artist’s role in translating the Ideal in thought-provoking, rather than didactic, renderings in order to promote personal spirituality.170 Redon’s representations of evil in the Apocalypse of Saint John album of 1899 embodied the ideal of the artist as a conduit for enlightenment. The album both aligned with ideas of salvation espoused by the Catholic Church and challenged Catholic dogma. The album intersected with nineteenth-century mystical thought, which included idealist and spiritualist discourses on cultural decadence and evolution. The album represented fin-de-siècle apocalyptic anxieties and alluded to catastrophic events as catalysts for new beginnings. This portfolio marked the end of Redon’s thematic treatment of the problem of evil in black and white lithographic compilations. The word “apocalypse” denotes both prophetic visions and violent ends. The subject of the apocalypse suited Redon’s last black and white album treating evil and redemption at the turn of the century. Instead of emphasizing destructive ends, however, Redon emphasized new beginnings in the prints. Redon’s symbols of evil in the album represented a

167 Redon, “Journal Entry 1869,” in To Myself, 30.

168 Redon, “Journal Entry 1869,” in To Myself, 30.

169 Redon, “Journal Entry 1888,” in To Myself, 78.

170 Redon, “Journal Entry 1870,” in To Myself, 33. 72

dialectical understanding of spiritual development and the possibility of new beginnings for the individual and society.

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION

As I have demonstrated, Redon’s symbolism of evil in his black and white drawings and prints represented a convergence of diverse notions of evil in Symbolist thought in fin-de-siècle France. Redon’s images of evil were in dialogue with Symbolist literary explorations of the theme of evil in modern society. His prints incorporated theories of evolution and degeneration prevalent in fin-de-siècle culture and Symbolist discourses. The images that Redon compiled in lithographic print albums dedicated to Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil in 1890 and Flaubert’s Temptation of Saint Anthony between 1888 and 1896 embodied this correspondence, demonstrating the reciprocal relationship of the images and texts as encoded cultural signs. Similarly, Redon’s Apocalypse of Saint John album of 1899 was in dialogue with both contemporary and canonical myths of evil, representing fin-de-siècle spiritual crises and diverse approaches to solving them. The prints aligned with Redon’s writings, symbolizing the importance of introspection and personal spirituality over institutional authority. My examination of Redon’s Flowers of Evil prints, in dialogue with Baudelaire’s poetry and art criticism, revealed the importance of evil as a double signifier in Redon’s prints and in Symbolist representation in general. On the one hand, symbolic evil alluded to the problems of bourgeois materialism. Yet, on the other hand, evil also represented the possibility of liberation from the oppressive bourgeois morality of production. I showed that Redon engaged Baudelaire’s model of degeneration as physical decay, using death as a signifier of both individual and cultural decadence. Redon’s symbols alluded to two approaches to the problem of evil in modern society, building alternately on notions of evolution and degeneration. Redon’s print album of Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil of 1890 was important because it used symbols and appropriated myths to promote personal reflection and to challenge mythologized norms in contemporary culture. Redon’s symbolism in his Flowers of Evil prints emphasized the nineteenth-century notion of evil as a duality. His symbolism in the album implied his desire to synthesize the opposing poles to which it referred, the material and the spiritual, in his prints. Redon’s prints in this portfolio represented his long-term interest in the theme of evil as part of his overall absorption with spirituality and theories of evolution and degeneration. Further, I

demonstrated that Redon symbolized Satan as a figure analogous to the artists as a tortured outsider in decadent culture. My analysis of Redon’s Temptation of Saint Anthony prints produced from 1888 to 1896 demonstrated Redon’s appropriation of Flaubert’s Saint Anthony an ideal model of the artist as an outsider and a sage. This conceptualization of the artist aligned with Symbolist notions of art as a surrogate for religion in an increasingly secularizing culture. Redon’s symbolism of evil in his lithographic interpretations of Flaubert’s Temptation of Saint Anthony alluded to the nineteenth-century myth of the artist as a visionary sage who could translate his visions to his viewers. I showed that Redon appropriated this contemporary characterization and imagery for his own artistic purposes in his print interpretations. I demonstrated that Redon’s prints aligned with Symbolist discourses and with his own writing on dialectical struggle between good and evil in a process of spiritual enlightenment. Further, I concluded that Redon’s Temptation of Saint Anthony prints were not merely didactic narratives. Rather, Redon’s prints embodied the play of tensions between different notions of evil and new understandings of morality within modern culture. In my exploration of Redon’s Apocalypse of Saint John album of 1899 I demonstrated Redon’s depiction of the New Testament subject matter in alignment with Symbolist artistic ideals and his own spirituality. Redon embraced the idea of the artist as an outsider and a sage and he considered the figure of Saint John to be another ideal model of this type. I argued that this album alluded to both the nineteenth-century myth of the visionary artist as a sage and the role of the artist in translating his visions to his viewers. Rather than representing art as simply a surrogate for religion, Redon’s Apocalypse of Saint John album alluded to art and the artist as conduits of the Ideal in the material world. This portfolio aligned with the Catholic revival in France in representing heightened fin-de-siècle apocalyptic anxieties. At the same time, I showed that Redon’s representations of evil in this album intersected with nineteenth-century mystical thought, which included idealist and spiritualist discourses on cultural decadence that challenged Church dogma and promoted personal reflection. Redon’s black and white prints exemplified Symbolist ideals in their evocative use of shocking and monstrous imagery that disoriented the viewer, promoted reflection, and challenged academic and naturalist artistic conventions. Like many Symbolists, Redon represented evil as a duality. Yet Redon deviated from Symbolist ideals

in his more optimistic approach, alluding to the possibility of spiritual enlightenment through dialectical struggle. Redon’s exploration of the theme of evil and the dialectic in black and white prints culminated in his album dedicated to the New Testament Book of Revelation in 1899. Although this last album represented disillusionment with modern society, it also alluded to the possibility of a new beginning born out of the evils of the past. Redon’s prints in the Apocalypse of Saint John album marked the end of his thematic treatment of the problem of evil in black and white lithographic compilations. Redon continued to represent religious themes throughout his career, but preferred to do so in colorful pastels. Scholars typically consider Redon’s transition to color as marking a more positive outlook. However, my word and image analysis reveals Redon’s symbols of evil in his Apocalypse of Saint John prints aligning with nineteenth-century dialectical notions of cyclical life processes, representing death as a new beginning. Many scholars have evaluated Redon’s transition to color as a new beginning in his career. Yet, my analysis indicates that exploring Redon’s transition to color within the context of historically constituted notions of decadence, and informed by romantic synthesis and the dialectic, is a promising area of future scholarship. Redon’s Apocalypse of Saint John prints embody the idea of artistic and spiritual progression through dialectical struggle, promising the end as a new beginning for the individual and society at the birth of the twentieth-century.

FIGURES

Figure 1: Odilon Redon. Ceaselessly by my side the demon stirs. 1890. Photogravure made from an original drawing (Evely process), in black on ivory wove paper. 25.6 x 20.7 cm. (plate); 44.7 x 31.5 cm. (sheet). The Art Institute, Chicago.