Death of Samson
Gustave Doré, 1866 · Judges 16:30
The passage
And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.
Judges 16:30
About this plate
An enormous hall in the Egyptian manner — carved columns thick as towers, a coffered ceiling, painted walls. Two of the columns have broken off their bases and are toppling inward, drum by drum, and between them, small, at the centre of the picture, is Samson with his arms braced apart.
He is tiny. Doré has scaled him against the architecture so precisely that you have to look for him, and once you find him the plate becomes vertiginous — because everything above him is coming down and he is the reason.
Below and in front, the crowd is going down the steps in a landslide of bodies. Some are falling from the galleries. One figure is already flat on the lowest stair with everything still to come.
The verse counts. The dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life. That is a piece of arithmetic, and it is the last thing the King James says about him. Doré draws the arithmetic — not a hero, but a number of people, and one man at the pivot, holding for another second.
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