Society and solitude: Twelve chapters
that the merely conventional part of the performance contributes much
to its effect?
One consideration more exhausts, I believe, all the deductions from
the genius of the artist in any given work. This is the adventitious.
Thus the pleasure that a noble temple gives us is only in part owing to
the temple. It is exalted by the beauty of sunlight, the play of the
clouds, the landscape around it, its grouping with the houses, trees,
and towers in its vicinity. The pleasure of eloquence is in greatest
part owing often to the stimulus of the occasion which produces it,--to
the magic of sympathy, which exalts the feeling of each by radiating on
him the feeling of all.
The effect of music belongs how much to the place,--as the church, or
the moonlight walk; or to the company; or, if on the stage, to what
went before in the play, or to the expectation of what shall come after.
In poetry, “It is tradition more than invention that helps the poet to
a good fable.” The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the
greater delight which a verse gives in happy quotation than in the poem.
It is a curious proof of our conviction that the artist does not feel
himself to be the parent of his work, and is as much surprised at the
effect as we, that we are so unwilling to impute our best sense of
any work of art to the author. The highest praise we can attribute to
any writer, painter, sculptor, builder, is, that he actually possessed
the thought or feeling with which he has inspired us. We hesitate at
doing Spenser so great an honor as to think that he intended by his
allegory the sense we affix to it. We grudge to Homer the wide human
circumspection his commentators ascribe to him. Even Shakspeare,
of whom we can believe everything, we think indebted to Goethe and
to Coleridge for the wisdom they detect in his Hamlet and Antony.
Especially have we this infirmity of faith in contemporary genius. We
fear that Allston and Greenough did not foresee and design all the
effect they produce on us.
Our arts are happy hits. We are like the musician on the lake, whose
melody is sweeter than he knows, or like a traveller, surprised by a
mountain echo, whose trivial word returns to him in romantic thunders.
In view of these facts, I say that the power of Nature predominates
over the human will in all works of even the fine arts, in all that
respects their material and external circumstances. Nature paints the
best part of the picture; carves the best part of the statue; builds
the best part of the house; and speaks the best part of the oration.
For all the advantages to which I have adverted are such as the artist
did not consciously produce. He relied on their aid, he put himself in
the way to receive aid from some of them; but he saw that his planting
and his watering waited for the sunlight of Nature, or were vain.
Let us proceed to the consideration of the law stated in the beginning
of this essay, as it affects the purely spiritual part of a work of art.
As, in useful art, so far as it is useful, the work must be strictly
subordinated to the laws of Nature, so as to become a sort of
continuation, and in nowise a contradiction of Nature; so, in art that
aims at beauty, must the parts be subordinated to Ideal Nature, and
everything individual abstracted, so that it shall be the production of
the universal soul.
The artist who is to produce a work which is to be admired, not by his
friends or his townspeople or his contemporaries, but by all men, and
which is to be more beautiful to the eye in proportion to its culture,
must disindividualize himself, and be a man of no party, and no manner,
and no age, but one through whom the soul of all men circulates, as the
common air through his lungs. He must work in the spirit in which we
conceive a prophet to speak, or an angel of the Lord to act; that is,
he is not to speak his own words, or do his own works, or think his own
thoughts, but he is to be an organ through which the universal mind
acts.
In speaking of the useful arts, I pointed to the fact that we do not
dig, or grind, or hew, by our muscular strength, but by bringing the
weight of the planet to bear on the spade, axe, or bar. Precisely
analogous to this, in the fine arts, is the manner of our intellectual
work. We aim to hinder our individuality from acting. So much as we
can shove aside our egotism, our prejudice, and will, and bring the
omniscience of reason upon the subject before us, so perfect is the
work. The wonders of Shakspeare are things which he saw whilst he stood
aside, and then returned to record them. The poet aims at getting
observations without aim; to subject to thought things seen without
(voluntary) thought.
In eloquence, the great triumphs of the art are, when the orator is
lifted above himself; when consciously he makes himself the mere tongue
of the occasion and the hour, and says what cannot but be said. Hence
the term _abandonment_, to describe the self-surrender of the orator.
Not his will, but the principle on which he is horsed, the great
connection and crisis of events, thunder in the ear of the crowd.
In poetry, where every word is free, every word is necessary. Good
poetry could not have been otherwise written than it is. The first time
you hear it, it sounds rather as if copied out of some invisible tablet
in the Eternal mind, than as if arbitrarily composed by the poet. The
feeling of all great poets has accorded with this. They found the
verse, not made it. The muse brought it to them.
In sculpture, did ever anybody call the Apollo a fancy piece? Or say of
the Laocoön how it might be made different? A masterpiece of art has in
the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a
crystal.
The whole language of men, especially of artists, in reference to this
subject, points at the belief that every work of art, in proportion to
its excellence, partakes of the precision of fate: no room was there
for choice, no play for fancy; for in the moment, or in the successive
moments, when that form was seen, the iron lids of Reason were
unclosed, which ordinarily are heavy with slumber. The individual mind
became for the moment the vent of the mind of humanity.
There is but one Reason. The mind that made the world is not one mind,
but _the_ mind. Every man is an inlet to the same, and to all of the
same. And every work of art is a more or less pure manifestation of
the same. Therefore we arrive at this conclusion, which I offer as a
confirmation of the whole view, that the delight which a work of art
affords, seems to arise from our recognizing in it the mind that formed
Nature, again in active operation.
It differs from the works of Nature in this, that they are organically
reproductive. This is not; but spiritually it is prolific by its
powerful action on the intellects of men.
Hence it follows that a study of admirable works of art sharpens our
perceptions of the beauty of Nature; that a certain analogy reigns
throughout the wonders of both; that the contemplation of a work of
great art draws us into a state of mind which may be called religious.
It conspires with all exalted sentiments.
Proceeding from absolute mind, whose nature is goodness as much as
truth, the great works are always attuned to moral nature. If the earth
and sea conspire with virtue more than vice,--so do the masterpieces
of art. The galleries of ancient sculpture in Naples and Rome strike
no deeper conviction into the mind than the contrast of the purity,
the severity, expressed in these fine old heads, with the frivolity
and grossness of the mob that exhibits and the mob that gazes at them.
These are the countenances of the first-born,--the face of man in the
morning of the world. No mark is on these lofty features, of sloth, or
luxury, or meanness, and they surprise you with a moral admonition,
as they speak of nothing around you, but remind you of the fragrant
thoughts and the purest resolutions of your youth.
Herein is the explanation of the analogies which exist in all the arts.
They are the reappearance of one mind, working in many materials to
many temporary ends. Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias
carves it, Shakspeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it,
Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it. Painting
was called “silent poetry”; and poetry, “speaking painting.” The laws
of each art are convertible into the laws of every other.
Herein we have an explanation of the necessity that reigns in all the
kingdom of Art.
Arising out of eternal Reason, one and perfect, whatever is beautiful
rests on the foundation of the necessary. Nothing is arbitrary, nothing
is insulated in beauty. It depends forever on the necessary and the
useful. The plumage of the bird, the mimic plumage of the insect, has a
reason for its rich colors in the constitution of the animal. Fitness
is so inseparable an accompaniment of beauty, that it has been taken
for it. The most perfect form to answer an end is so far beautiful.
We feel, in seeing a noble building, which rhymes well, as we do in
hearing a perfect song, that it is spiritually organic; that is, had a
necessity, in nature, for being, was one of the possible forms in the
Divine mind, and is now only discovered and executed by the artist, not
arbitrarily composed by him.
And so every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the
earth and the sun. The gayest charm of beauty has a root in the
constitution of things. The Iliad of Homer, the songs of David, the
odes of Pindar, the tragedies of Æschylus, the Doric temples, the
Gothic cathedrals, the plays of Shakspeare, all and each were made not
for sport, but in grave earnest, in tears and smiles of suffering and
loving men.
Viewed from this point, the history of Art becomes intelligible, and,
moreover, one of the most agreeable studies. We see how each work of
art sprang irresistibly from necessity, and, moreover, took its form
from the broad hint of Nature. Beautiful in this wise is the obvious
origin of all the known orders of architecture; namely, that they
were the idealizing of the primitive abodes of each people. There
was no wilfulness in the savages in this perpetuating of their first
rude abodes. The first form in which they built a house would be the
first form of their public and religious edifice also. This form
becomes immediately sacred in the eyes of their children, and, as more
traditions cluster round it, is imitated with more splendor in each
succeeding generation.
In like manner, it has been remarked by Goethe that the granite
breaks into parallelepipeds, which broken in two, one part would
be an obelisk; that in Upper Egypt the inhabitants would naturally
mark a memorable spot by setting up so conspicuous a stone. Again,
he suggested, we may see in any stone wall, on a fragment of rock,
the projecting veins of harder stone, which have resisted the action
of frost and water which has decomposed the rest. This appearance
certainly gave the hint of the hieroglyphics inscribed on their
obelisk. The amphitheatre of the old Romans,--any one may see its
origin who looks at the crowd running together to see any fight,
sickness, or odd appearance in the street. The first comers gather
round in a circle; those behind stand on tiptoe; and farther back they
climb on fences or window-sills, and so make a cup of which the object
of attention occupies the hollow area. The architect put benches in
this, and enclosed the cup with a wall,--and, behold a coliseum!
It would be easy to show of many fine things in the world,--in the
customs of nations, the etiquette of courts, the constitution of
governments,--the origin in quite simple local necessities. Heraldry,