Ninth Meeting
Ruth was unable to come.
Not a single paper this week! When all but Florence and Marian had arrived without papers, I began to be disappointed; but when they came in, I said:
“I am going to give up the club.”
You should have seen Marian’s serious face. “Why?” she exclaimed.
“Because you haven’t brought me any paper.”
They all were too busy. But Florence had given Henry a good little talk on the meeting he had missed.
I asked them whether they had enjoyed these meetings on art as much as the first meetings. They all said yes, quite as much. I spoke again of the relation of our idea to art. It seemed to them all that art was the expression of the religious ideal. Virginia said: “It relates us with others and gives us sympathy.” Henry said it was the action of religious feeling.
“Just as,” he added, “it is said one knows a man by his actions.”
“You know what I mean,” said I; “it might be well expressed in a single phrase that would stay in your minds. Art is the symbol of completeness. It must be in itself a tiny world, a miniature universe. Do you remember the delight you used to get when you were little, from a tiny doll’s house, from a little thing that seemed real, that seemed a small, perfect world in itself? This joy you get from every work of art, the joy of a complete world.”
“As in the novel,” said Marian, “which is not like real life, with its incompleteness and distraction, but has within itself all the people and all the things necessary to itself.”
I spoke again of the way in which I meant to discuss questions of conduct according to the rules of art. I said: “Life can be made beautiful and complete in the same way, and by learning these large laws we may avoid the pettiness of moral discussion. You, being a self, are the symbol of the whole Self.
“Now,” I continued, “we will speak of poetry, of painting, of all the arts, and you will see that the laws of all are the same laws. What is the difference between prose and poetry?”
They mentioned various differences, such as subject-matter, form, manner of treatment.
“The chief difference between prose and poetry,” I said, “is that poetry is written in poetry.”
That seemed an evident difference.
“Metre, rhyme, musical measure of the words are qualities of poetry alone.”
“But all poetry doesn’t rhyme,” said Virginia.
“No,” I answered, “but all poetry has metre. Tell me another difference. In what way does poetry affect you differently from prose?”
“I know what you mean,” said Florence. “You mean because it has metaphor and simile.”
“That, too, but something else.”
Marian answered, with some hesitation: “Poetry is emotional. It stirs your feelings more than prose.”
“That is what I meant,” I said; “it resembles music because it stirs you as much by the sound as by the sense. And just because it is more unreal and distant, it seems more real and close and complete in its grip. A thing must be far off to give us the sense of completeness and beauty. Music is to me the art of arts, because it expresses everything and defines nothing; because it is like life itself, rather than a description of life.” Henry assented enthusiastically. I went on: “You spoke of metaphor and simile. We find it not only in all poetry, but in all prose. And what is it but the relationing of things to one another, the likeness and the bond between things unlike? And so keen is it, so natural, so close to us, that we use it every day, we are poets every moment in this respect, for we hardly ever speak without using metaphor. We say a sharp look, a piercing look, and so use metaphor. Do you see?”
Marian said: “When we say in school, for instance, that our teacher looked daggers, we are using metaphor.”
“Yes,” I answered, “and even slang is often good metaphor.”
Alfred asked: “If you call a person a lemon, is that metaphorical?”
“Surely,” I said; “but I think it would hardly do in poetry, because it is too unsympathetic.”
“How about 23 skidoo?” asked Virginia. “Is that simile or metaphor?”
“That,” said I, “is less metaphor than nonsense.”
I said that in the modern play, which could not use the figurative language of poetry, the metaphor and simile were replaced by the symbol. I could not go into this, however, as none of them, except Florence, had read any modern plays. So I spoke of the fairy story, and how it often stood for something which was not itself. “Yes, like Brandt,” said Florence. I did not dwell on this point, but went on to the subject of taking sides in poetry. I said that good poetry could not possibly take sides; that all didactic and party poetry was poor.
“I don’t see that,” answered Henry.
“No,” said Florence, “he wouldn’t let me convince him of it the other day.”
Henry went on: “Take Whittier’s war-time poems; they were written with a purpose and taking sides.”
I said: “I don’t consider Whittier a great poet. But that’s not the point. His war-time poems are some of them good, perhaps, but the best are not partisan. A man may sing of freedom, and still not be partisan, as a man may sing of his native land, and need not therefore say mean things of his neighbor.”
“It seems to me,” said Henry, “that every work of art should have a purpose.”
“Surely,” I answered. “I never said it should not have a purpose. I said it should not take sides. Every work of art has the purpose of being beautiful, complete and true. So I suppose you might say that art is against ugliness. But ugliness is only a discord, a false vision which art overcomes with its beauty.”
“I understand,” said Henry. “You mean one might be for something without being against anything.”
“Yes,” I said, “one can be for completeness, for unity, for beauty, which includes all things. An artist pictures life; in telling a story he may see that some things lead to ruin and some to happiness, but he will not say he is for some and against others. He will stand far above them and see them all as they are, he will love them all, he will create a complete and individual world.”
Virginia said: “I suppose you don’t consider Burns a great poet.”
“Yes, I do,” I answered, “except in his didactic poems.”
“Well,” she said, “‘Scots wha’ ha’ wi’ Wallace bled’ is partisan.”
“No,” I answered, “it is martial, but it gives the foe his due. ‘Break proud Edward’s power.’ That, it seems to me, is a tribute to Edward.”
At first they dissented, but finally agreed with me that most martial poems—all great ones—give the enemy his due. Marian spoke, in this relation, of Homer.
We considered high-falutin style and books that are all climax, without rhythm and reservations of strength, unlike life, which is all heartbeats and pulsations. Florence told of a book which had “six climaxes on every page.” I spoke of the conventional phrases which mar style, because we feel them to be imitated.
“They are not original,” said Henry.
“No,” I answered; “and originality simply means truth in the writer.”
“We feel,” said Virginia, “that he didn’t take the trouble to think for himself.” Then she spoke of having been made, in school, to compare the like thoughts of different authors, and asked whether their being alike made them less original.
“No,” I answered, “for two might see life in the same way, each for himself.”
I went on to speak of music. “To me,” I said, “it seems the most perfect of arts, because it is in itself harmony, the very word we associate with this idea of completeness. I don’t know much of the laws of musical composition, but I know they are the laws of rhythm and harmony, the laws of all motion. Of course, it is figurative to speak of the music of the stars, and yet in a sense their motion is music, because it follows the laws of music. Music is the least definite of all arts, yet the most real and near. It arouses our emotions as nothing else can do.”
Most of them felt as I, that music was most gripping in its effects. Marian, however, did not, since she is not at all musical. I spoke of words and intellectual ideas in relation to music. Virginia said it made her feel glad to hear music, that she had to beat time. The others all enjoy music most when it has a literary annotation, either in opera, or in concerts with verbal explanations. At least they want to know the name of every melody. In this I said I agreed with them, because knowing the name immediately put me into the mood the composer wished, and saved me those first five minutes of uncertainty which every strange music awakens.
Henry said: “When I learn a new piece on the piano my teacher and I always talk it over. I have a piece called ‘Spring in the Wood.’ We say, ‘Now we are in the border of the wood, now we hear the water rippling far off, now there are the ferns at the edge.’”
We spoke of painting.
I explained to them the point of interest, the point around which all other lines, colors and interests must centre, to which all are made subordinate. Virginia said: “But it need not be in the centre of the picture.”
“No,” I answered, “it had better not, since that would be monotonous and stiff. But wherever it is, it makes itself a centre, and makes the picture a complete whole.”
Virginia told of the plan of completing the central figure in a sketch, and leaving the rest unfinished—as a substitute, as I showed her, for the effectiveness of color. All eyes should be directed to the central figure.
I went into technical details of lines, angles and motion, with help from Virginia, to show how color might express mood and action, as well as did the figures, and so would make the whole harmonious. Virginia spoke of “curly clouds” in a picture of a burial, made at the art school, where the lines of the clouds were too gay, and spoiled the solemn effect of vertical lines.
From balance of line we went on to balance of light and shade and color. First I explained to them—what most of them knew—the complementary colors, and the cycle of color; that a picture containing blue and orange, or green and red, has within itself all the color there is. Think of the hideousness of a blue and yellow or red and blue picture! “It would have to be toned down with the third color,” said Virginia.
I spoke of the literary intrusion into painting, of the necessity of a complete idea in the picture itself; the difference between illustration and art. A picture may have an illustrative name, but if it be complete, beautiful and satisfying without any name, it is not illustration.
What is excellent craftsmanship might be bad art.
Virginia and Marian spoke of some pictures in the Metropolitan Museum, which they had been told to admire, and could not; some of them pictures by Meissonnier, in which satins, silks and velvets were done to perfection. Henry spoke, too, of certain pictures of German monasteries which were painted for the purpose of picturing the life, with precise detail, and were not beautiful. I told them of the difference between art and craft. Art is a complete expression of life by one man. Craft is part of a big completeness, the work of one man which has a purpose in relation to the work of others; as a craftsman may make the cornice in a palace which an artist designed. The craftsman does a part, the artist plans the whole.
Marian said: “Sometimes some one says to me, ‘that picture is perfectly beautiful,’ and I can’t see it so. Then again I may think a picture beautiful, and another person will not. Why is that?”
“Because,” I said, “your taste, your standard, is different.”
“Is it just taste?” she asked.
“Taste with a reason,” I said, “even if you don’t know the reason.”
“I think,” said Virginia, “that when an artist expresses himself well, every one must realize it.”
“Not at all,” I said. “One has to be trained to understand pictures, as one has to be trained to see.” I told them of Turner, whose pictures look beautiful to some, and to others are mere blotches of color.
“A picture is not what it represents,” I said. “One must learn to see it. A proof of this is that babies, quite able to recognize objects, do not recognize pictures. And so some people are babies all their lives in relation to art.
“Now,” I asked, “do any of you think photographs artistic?”
I believe Henry was going to say he did, but was overwhelmed by the others. Alfred said: “In a photograph all the unimportant things are there with the important.”
Marian said that there, as in life, there was intrusion of inharmonious details.
The out-of-focus and blurred photograph sometimes is artistic, because of the lost details and the effect of distance; but, just therefore, it is untrue to fact.
Virginia said photographic art was bad art. She said: “My teacher gave a good example. If a fire-engine were tearing along the street, you would be so interested in that you would see nothing else. There might be crowds of people, but you would not notice them. But if a camera were to be snapped, they would all be in it and obscure the engine. You see only what is important, but the camera sees everything.”
“That is a good illustration,” I said. “And so you see we are story-tellers in vision as well as in narrative. We see things complete and dramatic, whether they are so or not, just as we must tell a complete story. Do you realize how all the arts are related, how they all have the same laws? And these, I believe, are the laws of life.
“Did you ever think of it, that the artist sees only with his eyes, whereas you see with your eyes, fingers, ears, with all your senses? You see a table square, high, hard, smooth, but an artist sees it only in perspective, from a certain point of view. To get completeness you must limit yourself, because you cannot see the universe. The drop of water is most complete and perfect when it is a limited, spherical drop, not when it is scattered abroad in mist.
“The artist,” I said, “is one who sees things beautiful, even when to others they do not seem so; and to see things beautiful is to see truth.”
None of the children disputed this much-disputed fact—for to youth it is obvious—so I myself had to answer the objections. I said: “One might say that in life many things are ugly, and these things are true, therefore to see these things as beautiful is not to see them truly. But we believe that the whole universe, altogether, could we know it, would be harmonious and beautiful; therefore to see things as beautiful is to see them in relation to that truth, and as symbols of that truth.”
Marian said: “We must believe that the whole universe is harmonious; anything else is unthinkable. We feel it in ourselves.”
“You mean, because we have the laws of harmony in our own nature?”
“Yes. The whole must be harmonious.”
We spoke of instances in which ugly things could be seen as beautiful. The empty lot across the street, with its boards, rubbish and shanties, is ugly; but at times, under certain conditions, and by shutting out a part with my hand, I see it as a beautiful wild landscape.
Marian said: “Near us are some poor, ugly houses, that I hate to see; but sometimes I see little children at the windows, who are so sweet and graceful they make the houses look beautiful.”
“There are a great many pictures,” said Virginia, “but I think there is not much art. Do you?”
“No,” I said. “To be a painter does not make one an artist. Do you remember hearing people make the criticism that a picture was pretty, but not beautiful? Prettiness in art is a sad fault, one that perhaps you, too, have found. But do you know just what it is?”
Virginia said she had often seen pictures that were just pretty, without character.
I said: “When a painter makes pictures to please the taste of people whose taste he does not respect, when a would-be artist works to catch applause or money from the crowd by satisfying their bad taste, and does not even believe in the love of truth and beauty which sleeps in them all, then the thing he paints is usually pretty. He will paint a little child with a kitten in her lap, because that is a pretty subject, but it will be the most affected child and the posiest kitten!”
“It is superficial,” they said.
“Yes, for he does not know the true character of those for whom he works, nor care to know his subject. The smirking advertisements one sees are a good example of prettiness. But many artists, working for money alone, fall into this cheap, easy habit of pleasing the worst taste.”
“Wouldn’t you call ‘The Vicar of Wakefield’ a pretty book?” asked Henry.
“No, indeed,” I answered; “it is far too genuine and lifelike to be merely pretty.”
Henry insisted it was written for money, and was merely sweet and pleasing. The others disagreed with him so strenuously, I had hardly a chance to say, as before, that one might write for money the thing needful to be said. Virginia asked whether I did not think Jessie Wilcox Smith’s drawings merely pretty? I said I thought them so now and then, but that sometimes her deep love and understanding of childhood made them shine with loveliness.
Marian said: “Some people are merely pretty and uninteresting.”
“Often,” I answered, “they want just that. They look for superficial admiration, and show only their superficial prettiness.”
“But, of course, that isn’t art,” said Marian.
“Sometimes it is,” answered Florence.
I spoke of sculpture as the Greek drama of visual art, a metaphor that appealed to those of them—Florence, Marian, Henry—who knew enough of Greek drama, with its masks and buskins, and its far-offness, to understand. The distance, the unlifelikeness of the material, is its charm. The colored German marbles lose artistic beauty in gaining lifelike color.
“In that case,” said Alfred, “I should think the process of coloring and the newness of the material would interest one so much as to draw one’s attention away from the statue.”
“I don’t think it is only that,” I answered; “for surely wax works, which are quite common, with all their lifelike color and softness, do not give us the thrill of reality and beauty that we get from a marble statue.”
“I think,” said Henry, “it is just the coldness and hardness of marble, changed by the artist into shapes of life and warmth, that make it beautiful.”
“Yes,” I said, “exactly. The sculptor expresses his idea in every curve of the human form, and makes human shapes say universal things. They express by attitude and line power, beauty, tenderness. In the ‘Mercury,’ the lines of that headlong figure, to half-shut eyes, represent the curve and angle of flight itself.”
Virginia now spoke of Michael Angelo, and his misdrawing of figures, which are none the less beautiful and powerful. I said he was so great a genius that his genius, as often happens, overshadowed his shortcomings as a craftsman.
Here we came, I know not how, on the subject of drama. I said that to me it could never seem a perfect form of art—that is, the acted drama—because the actors usually obtruded their personality, and so broke in on the unity of expression—the creation of one mind—necessary to art. But the children, better at the art of looking on than I, and not so quick to note the significance of personality, said they forgot entirely the actors themselves, and felt as though the thing were a piece of life. Virginia and Florence said they felt as if they were the author, as if by being spectators they took part, and Virginia said she always did hate the villains!
Of architecture we observed that it appealed directly to the emotions, like music; that it made us feel, we knew not why, glad or sad, or calm or overawed. Virginia spoke of the Palais de Justice in Brussels, which made her feel very tiny; and this naturally brought us to speak of the feeling of reverence and awe.
“Whenever we feel small,” I said, “and see another thing as vast, that vastness is in our minds, it is our own immense other self which overawes us.”
They said they did not know what the feeling was. Virginia said: “When I have it, if I try to think of what it is, it is already gone. But the next time I see the same thing, perhaps some beautiful picture, that feeling is there again.”
Virginia and Florence said they never had any reverence for particular people, because they were older, for instance. But, I said, at least they must have reverence for people, as such, for the self in all people. They granted that.
We spoke of the completeness of that architecture which showed outwardly its inner use, and the spirit of its land and people; of distinctly American problems, the skyscraper, the selfishness of New York builders, who did not consider the beauty of the whole city, and so wrought ugliness. The children gave examples, and did not agree with me altogether, Henry saying that a railroad station built like a Roman temple made you feel like travelling more than did the gloomy Grand Central. When he asked me how about the banks built like Greek temples, I said that might be more appropriate, since some of us did worship money!
He spoke of the library at Washington as fitting exactly to its use; its big, comfortable rooms made one feel like studying and reading all the day.
“I wonder if anything could make me feel like that!” said Virginia.
When the others had left, I took a walk with Alfred. He said: “I didn’t exactly understand what you meant by my being big when I feel little.”
“I meant,” I said, “that when you feel awe before the immensity of the universe, under the stars, or by the sea, the thought of immensity is in yourself, and it is really yourself who become immense. You realize your whole self. And before that realization your daily life and thoughts and your own small self seem very tiny. It is one part of yourself, the small part, standing in awe and wonder before that other immense self.”
He understood that.
I went on: “I only mentioned it to-day, and did not expect you to understand. I often do this, either to give a suggestion for the next week, or else to see what really interests you.”
“I think it is a good idea,” he said.