The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

But I think the noblest sea that Turner has ever painted, and, if so, the noblest certainly ever painted by man, is that of "The Slave Ship," the chief Academy5 picture of the exhibition of 1840. It is a sunset on the Atlantic after prolonged storm; but the storm is partially lulled, and the torn and streaming rain clouds are moving in scarlet lines to lose themselves in the hollow of the night. The whole surface of sea included in the picture is divided into two ridges of enormous swell, not high, nor local, but a low, broad heaving of the whole ocean, like the lifting of its bosom by deep-drawn breath after the torture of the storm. Between these two ridges the fire of the sunset falls along the trough of the sea, dyeing it with an awful but glorious light, the intense and lurid splendor which burns like gold and bathes like blood. Along this fiery path and valley the tossing waves by which the swell of the sea is restlessly divided lift themselves in dark, indefinite, fantastic forms, each casting a faint and ghastly shadow behind it along the illumined foam. They do not rise everywhere, but three or four together in wild groups, fitfully and furiously, as the under-strength of the swell compels or permits them; leaving between them treacherous spaces of level and whirling water, now lighted with green and lamplike fire, now flashing back the gold of the declining sun, now fearfully shed from above with the indistinguishable images of the burning clouds, which fall upon them in flakes of crimson and scarlet and give to the reckless waves the added motion of their own fiery being. Purple and blue, the lurid shadows of the hollow breakers are cast upon the mist of night, which gathers cold and low, advancing like the shadow of death upon the guilty ship as it labors amidst the lightning of the sea, its thin masts written upon the sky in lines of blood, girded with condemnation in that fearful hue which signs the sky with horror, and mixes its flaming flood with the sunlight, and, cast far along the desolate heave of the sepulchral waves, incarnadines the multitudinous sea.6

I believe, if I were reduced to rest Turner's immortality upon any single

4. From vol. 1, part 2, section 5, chap. 3. The Ruskin by his father as a New Year's present in painting is of a ship ill which slaves are being trans-1844 and hung in the Ruskin household for a numported. Victims who have died during the passage ber of years until Ruskin decided to sell it because are being thrown overboard at sunset; as Ruskin he found its subject "too painful to live with." The noted, "the near sea is encumbered with corpses." painting now hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in 5. The Royal Academy of Arts, founded in London Boston. in 1768. The painting, by the great British land-6. Cf. Shakespeare's Macbeth 2.2.60. "Incarnascapist J. M. W. Turner (1775�1851), was given to dines"; reddens.

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132 2 / JOHN RUSKIN

work, I should choose this. Its daring conception�ideal in the highest sense

of the word�-is based on the purest truth, and wrought out with the concen

trated knowledge of a life; its color is absolutely perfect, not one false or mor

bid hue in any part or line, and so modulated that every square inch of canvas

is a perfect composition; its drawing as accurate as fearless; the ship buoyant,

bending, and full of motion; its tones as true as they are wonderful; and the

whole picture dedicated to the most sublime of subjects and impressions�

completing thus the perfect system of all truth which we have shown to be

formed by Turner's works�the power, majesty, and deathfulness of the open,

deep, illimitable Sea.

1843

From Of the Pathetic Fallacy7

3 * 3

Now therefore, putting these tiresome and absurd words8 quite out of our

way, we may go on at our ease to examine the point in question�namely, the

difference between the ordinary, proper, and true appearances of things to us;

and the extraordinary, or false appearances, when we are under the influence

of emotion, or contemplative fancy; false appearances, I say, as being entirely

unconnected with any real power of character in the object, and only imputed

to it by us. For instance�

The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mold

Naked and shivering, with his cup of gold.9 This is very beautiful, and yet very untrue. The crocus is not a spendthrift,

but a hardy plant; its yellow is not gold, but saffron. How is it that we enjoy

so much the having it put into our heads that it is anything else than a plain

crocus?

It is an important question. For, throughout our past reasonings about art,

we have always found that nothing could be good or useful, or ultimately

pleasurable, which was untrue. But here is something pleasurable in written

poetry, which is nevertheless untrue. And what is more, if we think over our

favorite poetry, we shall find it full of this kind of fallacy, and that we like it

all the more for being so.

It will appear also, on consideration of the matter, that this fallacy is of two