GNAPHISTHASIA.
The day following our arrival in Calnogor his majesty the king had
projected for us a journey to the palace of art at Gnaphisthasia,
which stood on the slope of a mountain in a rich valley lying one
hundred miles southwest of Calnogor. The palace itself was surrounded
by high walls of massive porcelain, beautifully adorned with sculpture
mouldings, and midway on each side massive gateways, each formed of
rounded cones, rising to a great height and covered with sculptured
forms, between which the porcelain wall was pierced with fretted
arabesque, running high above the arched opening beneath. Once within
the gorgeous gateway, the porcelain walls of Gnaphisthasia stood
before the enraptured eyes more than a mile in length and half a mile
in depth, a many-colored dream of imposing magnificence covered with
the work of sculptors. The principal part of the wall was of a
greenish-white vitrification, finely diversified by horizontal
friezes, with arabesques in red and green, purple and yellow,
lavender, sea-green, blue and silver and pale rose and deep gray, all
separated by wide bands of greenish-white stone.
In the centre of the buildings stood a semi-circle of massive conical
towers, gleaming like enormous jewels and connected by sculptured
walls. The four corners of the palace were also groups of towers, all
the various groups being connected with the rectangular walls that
were decorated with arcades and balconies.
Here in this splendid abode were poets and painters, musicians,
sculptors and architects, dancers, weavers of fabrics, ceramists,
jewellers, engravers, enamellers, artists in lacquer, carvers,
designers and workers in glass and metal, pearl and ivory and the
precious stones.
[Illustration: A PROCESSION OF PRIESTS AND PRIESTESSES PASSED DOWN THE
LIVING AISLES, BEARING TROPHIES OF ART.]
In an immense chamber of the palace a _fete_ was being held. On either
side a double range of massive porcelain pillars supported the roof,
which covered this grand sanctuary of art like an immense vitrified
jewel. The floor of the court was formed of polished wood of a deep
rose color that emitted a rich, heavy perfume. Wood of a brilliant
green, with interlacing arabesques of red, formed the border of the
floor. At the further end of the court stood three thrones, being
composed, respectively, of terrelium, aquelium, and plutulium, the
three most precious metals. On the threefold throne sat Yermoul, lord
of art, his majesty the king, and myself. In ample recesses amid the
pillars stood the devotees of art, while the centre of the court was
filled with the musicians. A procession of priests and priestesses
passed down the living aisles, clad in the most gorgeous fabrics of
silk spun by gigantic spiders, and they bore singly trophies of art,
or moved in groups, supporting golden litters carrying piled-up
treasures of dazzling splendor.
First came a band of priestesses bearing fan-like ensigns of carved
wood and fretwork, and panels filled with silks, rare brocades and
embroideries. Then came priests bearing heavy vases and urns of gold,
terrelium, aquelium, plutulium, silver, and alloys of precious bronze.
Then followed others bearing litters piled with vases and figures
carved from solid pearl, or fashioned in precious metals. Cups,
plates, vases in endless shapes, designs and colors went past, piled
high on golden litters, looking like gardens of tropic flowers. Rare
laces made of threads spun from the precious metals of Atvatabar,
mosaics, ivories, art forgings, costly enamels, decorative
bas-reliefs, implements of war, agriculture and commerce, magnic
spears and daggers, with shaft and handle encrusted with grotesque
carvings in metallic alloys. These alloys took the forms of figures,
animals and emblems, having the strangest colorings, like the hilts
and scabbards of Japanese swords carved in shakudo and shibuichi.
There were exhibited vases of cinnabar, vases wondrously carved from
tea-rose, coral-red, pearl-gray, ashes-of-roses, mustard-yellow,
apple-green, pistache and crushed-strawberry colored metals. There
were also splendid crowns, flowers, animals, birds, and fishes, carved
from precious kragon, an imperial stone harder than the diamond and of
a pale rose-pink color. Every object was as perfect as though modelled
in wax.
Through all this decorative movement there was something more than
decoration understood as mere ornamentation--there was the keenest
evidence of soul movement on the part of the artist. The music
gloriously celebrated the passions of love, ambition and triumph that
had filled the souls of the artists when engaged in their incomparable
labors, and pealed forth that serene life of the spirit as symbolized
in the perfect works of art exhibited, wherein were sealed in eternal
magnificence fragments of the souls that had created them.
Between the pauses of the music an organ-megaphone shouted forth in
musically-stentorian tones the words that had been impressed on its
cylinders in praise of art. The five thousand priests and priestesses
of art had simultaneously shouted their art ritual down five thousand
tubes, which were all focussed into a single tube of large calibre.
The multitudinous sound of their voices had been indelibly impressed
on this phonograph-megaphone that now yielded up the sentiments
impressed upon it, its tones being that of a vast multitude,
re-enforced by the vibrating music of an organ, which was a part of
the megaphone. These were the passages repeated by the instrument with
a startling splendor of sound:
THE MESSAGE OF THE MEGAPHONE.
I.
To define art is to define life.
II.
Art is a language that describes the souls of things.
III.
Art in nature is the expression of life; in art it is life
itself.
IV.
Art is too subtle a quality to be defined by the formula of
the critic. It is greater than all of the definitions that
have tried to grasp it.
V.
Art is the glowing focus from which radiate thought,
imagination and feeling, gifted with the power of utterance.
VI.
True art is generous, passionate, earnest, vivid,
enthusiastic. So also is the true artist.
VII.
To satisfy the far-reaching longing of the spirit, art makes
things more glorious than they are. It is the perfect
expression of a perfect environment.
VIII.
To mould his symbols with the same life that fills his
conception of the idea is the supreme effort of the artist.
IX.
As nature from the coarse soil produces flowers, so also the
artist from every-day life produces the subtle sweets of
art.
X.
Art that is simply utility is not sufficiently decorative to
delight every nerve of feeling in the soul. To feed these,
many flavors of form and color are necessary, and hence the
necessity of art.
XI.
Where do emotion and imagination begin in art? Where do
spirit and flesh unite in a living creature?
XII.
The artist is a creator. He breathes into dull matter the
breath of art, and it thenceforth contains a living soul.
XIII.
Poetry and art make life splendid without science, which is
the cold investigation of that which was once thrilled with
the passion of life. Invention makes life splendid without
poetry and art. By whom will the glorious union of art and
science be consummated?
XIV.
What is the world we live in? It is for the most part a
collection of souls hidebound with treachery and
selfishness; of souls covered with a slag from which have
departed the fires of love and passion and delight. Such
incinerated _aliases_ of their former selves are your
judges, oh, artists!
XV.
Art is a green oasis in an arid and mechanical civilization.
It creates an earthly home for the soul, for those wounded
by the riot of trade, the weariness of labor, the fierce
struggle for gold, and the deadly environment of rushing
travel, blasted pavements and the withering disappointments
of life.
XVI.
Where is that artist that can sway imagination, create
emotion, lift the banner of a high ideal, give the soul a
keener appreciation of beauty, add to the mind, strength and
grace, cause the brain to develop new nerves of feeling and
newer cells of thought, that we may salute him as genius?
XVII.
Art is the emotion within made splendid by imagination that
clothes everything with perfection. Like color it dwells
only in the soul, but the cause of the sensation is without.
In all art, the artist seeks to reproduce the cause of his
ecstasy, that he may communicate to others a similar
delight. He is like a god, he always gives but never
receives, for fame, not money, is his recompense.
XVIII.
Given a soul that can feel sublimely, that can respond to
beauty and feel thrilled with the joy of existence, that can
feel the burden of anguish, that can appreciate the humors
and absurdities of life, and given the power to adequately
represent the knowledge, truth, understanding and conviction
of these impressions in fitting symbols, vitalized by
imagination and emotion, then have we both poet and artist.
XIX.
The soul in such inspired moments takes the form of
sculptured arabesques, or flowers, or resembles the refluent
sea, full of incredible shapes and symbols. It accompanies
the march of thought, the profusive swell of emotion, is
capable of pain and ecstasy, and seeks to be fed with those
delightful symbols of its life which we call art, the most
priceless of earthly possessions.
XX.
Four things are necessary for art, viz.: idea, sentiment,
imagination and manipulative skill. After these comes
prestige, or the applause of the world, to crown the work.
XXI.
The art decorator is a type of all art workmen. See him
about to manipulate a plastic ornament on the wall. The
plaster resembles his idea; its plastic qualities his
sentiment, or emotion; the style of ornament into which it
is to be moulded resembles his imagination, and the power of
the artist to successfully and triumphantly embody in the
finished ornament the living, breathing idea that fills him
is his manipulative skill. Any work of art, if perfect in
itself, still remains unfinished until the world comes along
and applauds.
XXII.
The age wants the artist. It wants imagination, originality,
inspiration, ideality. It requires fertile, dreaming souls,
to create ideal breadth.
It requires an earthly Nirvana wherein one may escape a
selfish, barbarous, pitiless world. There is a great dearth
of the coinage of the soul. We want artists to explain the
souls of things, not their mechanical construction, but the
unseen secret of their purposes, their unspeakable
existence. We want heart-expanding triumphs to counteract
the withering influences of life. If a soul is entranced
with man or nature, we also want to feel his fascination, to
be penetrated with his rapture.
* * * * *
The megaphone ceased its musical vociferation, which formed a
spiritual exercise for the souls assembled before us. I felt entranced
and lifted up to a plane of splendid life hitherto unknown in my
experience. I began to understand that art, after all, is the one
thing in our terrestrial life worth striving for, in fact our only
possession. For is it not the transmission of the soul to outer
matter, whose savagery may be thus charmed and subdued to become a
satisfactory spiritual environment?
Following the procession of artists came beautiful, wondrously-arrayed
dancers, whose evolutions made the brain dizzy with delight. Fair
priests and priestesses of art formed upon the floor of the palace
decorative arabesques of scrolls and interlacements of living bodies,
the color of their garments mingling in perfectly harmonious hues,
beautiful beyond comparison. Their ceaseless evolutions were made to
the measure of perfect music. Panels and bands of living decorations
were framed and transformed like the magical changes of the
kaleidoscope. At last Yermoul, the Lord of Art, waved his wand, and
the dancers stood transfixed, a garden of ecstatic color like a
Persian carpet, wonderfully designed and vividly emblazoned. It was a
scene of royal magnificence. These priests and priestesses were the
art workers of Gnaphisthasia, who had so finely exhibited their
treasures.
Following the rhythmic movements of the art workers came poets,
painters, sculptors, whose works lifted the soul to higher planes of
being. These in their trophies of art recited or exhibited gave the
soul imagination and sentiment, lifting it almost to the enraptured
height of worship, adoration and love.
At the close of the ceremonies we were entertained by Yermoul, Lord of
Art, at a banquet, at which music and song and the dancing of
voluptuous priestesses made hearts thrill with delight. Bidding
farewell at last to the Lord of Art and his priests and priestesses,
his majesty, myself and our company returned by the sacred locomotive
to Calnogor.