Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVII, No. 1, July 1850Various
General
Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVII, No. 1, July 1850
Various
Literature -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals
In accordance with this view of Jenny Lind’s characteristics, the
enthusiasm she excited in England, is alluded to by the leading critics,
as singularly honest. No musical artist, indeed, was ever so fitted to
win Anglo-Saxon sympathies. She has the _morale_ of the North; and does
not awaken the prejudice so common in Great Britain, and so truly
described in Corinne, against the passionate temperament and tendency to
extravagance that mark the children of the South. No candidate for
public favor was ever so devoid of the ordinary means of attaining it.
There is something absurd in making such a creature the mere nucleus of
fashionable vanity, or the object of that namby-pamby criticism that
busies itself with details of personal appearance and French terms of
compliment. Jenny Lind is not beautiful; she does not take her audiences
by storm; she exercises no intoxicating physical magnetism over their
sensitive natures. She is not classic either in form or feature, or
manner, or style of singing. Her loveliness as a woman, her power as an
artist, her grace as a character, lies in expression; and that
expression owes its variety and its enchantment to unaffected truth to
nature, sentiment and the principles of art.
And now that Jenny Lind is hourly expected among us, let a word be
ventured as to what self-respect and the love of art make appropriate
for her reception. Let not so charitable a soul be mortified by a
tasteless hospitality; let not this genuine artist be seized upon by the
remorseless purveyors of meretricious Fashion; and, above all, let not
her gentle and candid nature be subjected to the vulgarism of the
lionizing mania! As a priestess of Art, in its highest and sweetest
form, as a fair ministrant to the spirit of Beauty, as a true musical
interpreter of humanity—let the people welcome her with sincere and
grateful recognition. This is the most acceptable tribute an unperverted
soul can receive or bestow. It is that intelligent sympathy due from a
free and educated society, and cheering to a discriminating recipient.
Far from Nature’s minstrel be the critical affectation of the professed
amateur, and the empty adulation of the coxcomb. Let her pure and
exquisite vocalism—the result of such discipline, faith, and rare gifts
of heaven, find a response in the American heart unprofaned by absurd
excitement, and truly indicative of a genuine and cordial appreciation
of the beautiful in art, and the excellent in character.
* * * * *
THE POET’S PRAYER.
BY MRS. EMMA C. EMBURY.
Leave me not, Love! ’twas thus a poet chanted
His heart’s fond pleadings to the midnight air—
Leave not the dwelling by thy presence haunted,
The home thou long hast filled with visions fair.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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