Jules Bastien-Lepage: Diogenes 1877
Over the centuries, only anecdotes have been kept on Diogenes’ odd life. The cynical ancient Greek philosopher was a contemporary of Plato, Socrates, and Alexander the Great. But Diogenes gave people shit, sometimes literally by defecating in public and urinating on whomever quipped him. He did it because he detested the citizens of Athens, the hypocrite society altogether.
Bastien-Lepage depicted him in the dirty place he really lived; like an outcast beggar, naked and possessing nothing but a lantern. He roamed Athenian streets with this little lamp, lighting people’s eyes up very close and asking for an honest man. He never found one.
In the painting, his body is slim but still sturdy despite eating almost nothing. His toes on his right foot look as though they were bitten off by a beast. I believe Bastien painted Diogenes’ body like this because the toned muscles symbolize his toughness against the society, his sturdy conviction in what he believed. He is unbreakable. If he were hurt a thousand times, he would still insist. His figure’s shapeliness and the balanced composition give harmony to the scene. His head rests on his hand and knee, right in the center of the picture. He is an exhausted fool.
Diogenes chose to be a fool who told the truth because people could accept the truth only from a fool. They ridiculed him and he gave them his honest, witty philosophical thoughts in return. People stopped by him and asked him about everything just to hear his sharp answers. He was invited to dinners to entertain the guests with honest, cynical quirks.
Aesop, an outcast himself, wrote in his 580th fable that when a bald man insulted Diogenes, he said, “Far be it from me to make insults! But I do want to compliment your hair for having abandoned such a worthless head.” Haha.
After Diogenes was captured by pirates and was sold as a slave in Crete, word of his honest personality spread quickly. Even Alexander the Great visited him, and once, when Diogenes was lying on the cobblestones, Alexander the Great offered Diogenes to ask of him whatever boon he wanted and the cynical philosopher said, “Stand out of my light.”
When Diogenes begged a pedestrian for some alms, the man said, “Yes, if you could persuade me,” then Diogenes answered, “If I could persuade you I would persuade you to hang yourself.”
The painter gave Diogenes eyes of deep, gaping hollows. The shocking, raven-gouged out, black hollows look disturbingly inside our minds. “You,” he would think, “people without virtue, you did this to me. Get a bone stuck in your throats.” Bastion-Lepage painted a brutally honest painting.
Diogenes has been depicted by many artists, but Bastien’s painting caught his individual, antisocial, and disappointed soul the best. Bastien did not put other figure into the scene, no street background, no laughing pedestrians, no dogs, nor even the tub he lived in: only his person, his naked body and soul, his dark, cynical view of life, and his judgment of all people. As he once said, “love is nothing more than scratch became caress.” He did not get any caresses only scratches. His last wish was to give his corps to the wild animals to feast on. And people did so.