with a fragment of Greek or Gothic ornament, with the mere look of the
walls of some good old building. How the pleasure and the emotions of
those who made them have been built into them, and are reflected back to
us, like the smile from a human face. I know that I have told you often
how the fragment of a Gothic window from old English Boston set into the
cloister of Trinity of the new Boston always seemed to me to outweigh
the entire building in which it rests. And yet it is only a poor
fragment of no great period. But then the makers thought and felt in the
materials that they worked in, even if their drawings were rude and
incomplete and often incorrect. And no architect seems to realize to-day
that his walls could give us the same emotions that we receive from a
Rembrandt, or a Van Eyck, or a Veronese, and for the same reasons, and
through a similar use of a real technique.
You draw well; you can make a sketch, I am sure, which, like many
others, would have spots of light on a black surface, or a pretty wash
of sky above it, or little patches of shadow, like clever lichens,
spread over it, and that would be correct in artificial perspective, and
recall something of older design, and have no great blemishes to take
hold of. How far would it help you to have made a million such if you
seriously wished to do a thing for itself, not for its effects upon a
client, nor for a claim upon the public, nor for a salve to your own
vanity?
And now do you see how, as we architects and designers gradually work
more and more on paper and not in the real, our energies are worked out
in accomplishing before we get to our real work,--that of _building_ a
_work of art_,--and the result of our drawings grows feebler and feebler
and tamer as it presses to its end. Then, for this weak frame of
conception, the men who have come in to help (and that only because the
director's time would not admit of his doing all himself, otherwise he
would, in his jealous weakness, adorn as poorly as he imagines)--then, I
say, if the painter, the sculptor, the decorator, shows any strength or
power, there is another danger. There is danger that the sculptor's
relief will be more powerful than the weak projections of solid
masonry,--that the lines of the painter will be grander and more ample
than those which were meant to guide and confine them--that the paint of
the decorator will appear more massive and more supporting than the
walls of the architect. Whence all will be tamed, all annulled and made
worthless and paltry, so as not to disturb the weak efforts of the
master directing. And for the first time in the history of art we shall
have buildings which the Greek or the Roman, the Medieval or the
Oriental, would have been unable to adorn, while in their times the
masters who were architects, great and small, found no trouble in
placing within their buildings, made famous to all time by this choice,
the sculptures of the Parthenon or of Olympia, the glass or the statues
of Christian cathedrals, or the carvings of India or of Japan.
So that when the greatest painter of the century left instructions for
his tomb, he asked that it should be copied from some former one of
antiquity or renaissance, so that it might have--to typify his love and
his dislikes--masculine moldings and a manly character, contrary, as he
said, "to all that is done to-day in architecture."
You may say that through all this wandering of thought I am telling you
little about Japanese art. Wait; perhaps I may be merely preparing your
mind and mine for what I shall have to say later. Or, rather, let us
think that I am carried away by the spirit, and that I am certainly
talking of what I do not find here; and if there is no novelty in what I
say, and that you know it, and have always known it, we shall come back
to what you also know, that art is the same everywhere and always, and
that I need not come this distance to learn its principles. If there is
anything good here, it must resemble some of the good that we have with
us. But here at least I am freer, delivered from a world of canting
phrases, of perverted thought, which I am obliged to breathe in at home
so as to be stained by them. Whatever pedantry may be here, I have not
had to live with it, and I bear no responsibility in its existence. And
then again, art here seems to be a common possession, has not been
apparently separated from the masses, from the original feeling of
mankind.
To-day at dinner, Kato, who was waiting upon us, could give his opinion
upon the authenticity of some old master's work, at the request of our
host, himself a great authority; so that I could continue my dreaming
through the conversation and the semi-European courses, marked by my
first acquaintance with the taste of bamboo shoots--a little delicacy
sent in by A-chin, the children's nurse.
Much was talked of the Tokugawa race, and some cruelty was shown to
their memory as a family of parvenus who had usurped the power
theoretically invested in the mikados--an usurpation practised over and
over again by every successful shogun, as by Yoritomo, Taikosama.
Indeed, the Ashikaga move through Japanese history against a background
of mikados. And when O---- comes in later he talks of Masashige, and of
others, who during centuries, at long intervals, attempted to realize
what has now been accomplished--the restoration of the mikado to his
ancient powers and rulership of twenty centuries ago.
Yes, the Tokugawa splendor was that of parvenus. Their half-divine
masters lie in no gilded shrines nor under monumental bronze, but buried
beneath the elements, their graves marked only by mounds or trees, as it
might have been with their earliest ancestors, the peaceful chieftains
of a primitive family: a simplicity recalled to-day by the little
fragment of dried fish that accompanies presents, in memory of the
original humility of the fishing tribes, the ancestors of this almost
over-cultivated race.
These Tokugawa, then, were parvenus, and naturally asked of art, which
lasts and has lasted and is to last, an affirmation of their new
departure. This splendor was made for them, and its delicious refinement
has not quite escaped that something which troubled me at Shiba--an
anxiety that all should be splendid and perfect, an unwillingness to
take anything for granted. And yet, by comparison, this looks like a
fairyland of refinement. What should we do when called to help a new man
to assist or to sweeten his acquired position? What vulgarity of
vulgarities should we produce? Think of the preposterous dwellings, the
vulgar adornments given to the rich; the second-hand clothing in which
newly acquired power is wrapped. The English cad, and the Frenchman not
good enough for home, put the finishing touch upon the proofs of culture
which are to represent them to their children.
I need not refer to what is seen in San Francisco as an example. At home
in New York we have more than are pleasant to think of. I know that some
may say that we have only what we deserve for thinking that we can
escape, in the laws that govern art, the rules that we have found to
hold in everything else.
Some years ago I told you how once a purveyor of decorations for the
millionaire, a great man in his line, explained to me how and why he had
met his clients half-way. "You despise my work," he said, "though you
are too polite to say so,"--for we were friendly in a manner,--"and yet
I can say that I am more thoroughly in the right than those who would
seek to give these men an artistic clothing fit for princes. Is there
anything more certain than that the artist represents his age, and is
all the greater for embodying it. Now that is what I do. You will say
that my work is not deeply considered, though it is extremely careful in
execution; that its aims are not high; that it is not sober; that it is
showy, perhaps even more; that it is loud occasionally--when it is not
tame; that it shows for all it is worth, and is never better than it
looks. And who, pray, are the people that live surrounded by what I
make? Are they not represented by what I do? Do they not want show of
such a kind as can be easily understood, refinement that shall not
remind others of a refinement greater than theirs, money spent largely,
but showing for every dollar? They want everything quick, because they
have always been in a hurry; they want it on time, whatever happens,
because they are accustomed to time bargains; they want it advertisable,
because they live by advertising; and they gradually believe in the
value of the pretenses they have made to others. They are not troubled
by what they feel is transient, because their experience has been to
pass on to others the things they preferred not to keep. They feel
suspicious of anything that claims or seems to be better than it looks;
is not their business to sell dearer than they buy? They must not be
singular, because they must fit into some place already occupied.
"I claim to have fully expressed all this of them in what I do, and I
care little for the envious contempt of the architects who have to
employ me and who would like to have my place and wield my influence.
And so I reflect my clients, and my art will have given what they are."
Thus the great German rolled out his mind with the Teutonic delight at
giving an appearance of pure intellect to the interested working of his
will--incidentally sneering at the peacock feathers, the sad-eyed dados,
the poverty-stricken sentimentality, half esthetic, half shopkeeper, of
his English rivals, or at the blunders in art which Mr. Stanford White
once called our "native Hottentot style."
Of course my German was merely using a current sophistry that is only
worth quoting to emphasize the truth.
Augustus, the greatest of all parvenus, did not ask of Virgil to recall
in verse the cruelties of civil war. No true artist has ever sought to
be degraded; no worker of the Middle Ages has reflected the brutality of
the world around him. On the contrary, he has appealed to its chivalry
and its religion. No treacherous adventurer of the Renaissance is
pictured in the sunny, refined architecture that was made for him. You
and I know that art is not the attempt at reflecting others, at taking
possession of others, who belong to themselves; but that it is an
attempt at keeping possession of one's self. It is often a protest at
what is displeasing and mean about us; it is an appeal to what is
better. That is its most real value. It is an appeal to peace in time of
brutal war, an appeal to courageous war in time of ignoble peace; it is
an appeal to the permanent reality in presence of the transient; it is
an attempt to rest for a moment in the true way.
We are augurs conversing together, and we can afford to laugh at any
respected absurdity. We know that cleverness is not _the way_ to the
reality; cleverness is only man's weak substitute for integrity, which
is from God.
All these words--miscalled ideas--poured out by my German friend and
his congeners are merely records of merchants' ways of looking at the
use of a thing, not at the thing itself. Such people are persuaded that
they must surely know about the thing they sell or furnish. If not they,
then who? For none can be so impartial, as none are so disinterested, in
the use of the thing sold.
It is too far back for you to remember the charming Blanco, the great
slave-dealer, but you may have heard of his saying, which covers the
side of the dealer. He had been asked why he felt so secure in his
judgment of his fellow-creatures, and especially of women. "Because,"
said he, "I have traded in so many"--_J'en ai tant vendu._ I have
sometimes quoted this saying to dealers in works of art, to dealers in
knowledge about art, without, however, any success in pleasing them. In
fact, one has no judgment of one's own in regard to anything sold that
is not a matter of utility until one feels quite thoroughly, as if it
were one's own, the sense of Talleyrand's treatment of the persuasive
dealer. I am sure that you do not know the story. Two friends of his,
ladies of rank, had chosen his study as a place of meeting. They wished
to select some ring, some bracelet, for a gift, and the great jeweler of
Paris was to send one of his salesmen with sufficient to choose from. Of
course the choice was soon limited to two, and there paused, until
Talleyrand, sitting at the farther end of the long library, called out,
"Let me undertake to help you to make your decision. Young man, of these
two trinkets tell me which you prefer." "This one, certainly, your
Excellency." "Then," ended the experienced cynic, "please accept it for
your sweetheart; and I think, ladies, that you had better take the
other." I tell you anecdotes; are they not as good as reasons?
Listen to what my Chinese writer says: "Of language put into other
people's mouths, nine-tenths will succeed. Of language based upon
weighty authority, seven-tenths. But language which flows constantly
over, as from a full goblet, is in accord with God. When language is put
into other people's mouths, outside support is sought. Just as a father
does not negotiate his son's marriage, for any praise he could bestow
would not have the same value as praise by an outsider. Thus the fault
is not mine, but that of others, who would not believe me as the
original speaker." Again, a story of China comes back to me, told by the
same writer, who lived before our purer era, and who was, as a Japanese
friend remarks, a strategist in thought, fond of side attacks, of
presenting some point apparently anecdotic and unimportant, which, once
listened to, turns the truthful mind into channels of fresh inquiry. The
anecdote is old, told by the old writer many centuries before Christ,
and before any reflections about art troubled our barbarian minds.
It is about a court architect who flourished in celebrity some
twenty-seven centuries ago, and who answered admiring queries as to how
he did such wonderful things. "There is nothing supernatural about it,"
he said. "I first free my mind and preserve my vitality--my dependence
upon God. Then, after a few days, the question of how much money I shall
make disappears; a few more days, and I forget fame and the court whose
architect I am; another day or so, and I think only of THE THING ITSELF.
Then I am ready to go into the forest"--the architect and the carpenter
were one then--"whose wood must contain the form I shall seek. As you
see, there is nothing supernatural about it."
Twenty-seven centuries ago the formula of all good work was the same as
it has been since. This looking for "the thing itself," not for the
formula to control it, enabled men who were great and men who were
little, far down toward us, far down into the times of the Renaissance
(until pedantry and night covered human freedom and integrity), to be
painters or poets, sculptors or architects, as the occasion required, to
the astonishment of our narrowed, specialized vision of the last two
hundred years.
Again, if I have not put it clearly enough in this story of the far
East, let me add another, which includes the meaning of the first. You
will forgive it in honor of the _genius loci_, for these writings of the
Chinese philosophers form a staple of conversation and discussion in
social gatherings of cultivated people here. The story is of the
greatest of Chinese rulers, the "Yellow Emperor" of some forty-seven
centuries ago. He was in pursuit of that law of things, that sufficient
ideal which is called "Tao" ("the Way"), and he sought it in the wilds
beyond the world known of China, in the fabulous mountains of Chu-tzu.
He was accompanied by Ch'ang Yu and Chang Jo, and others of whom I know
nothing; and Fang Ming, of whom I know nothing also, was their
charioteer. When they had reached the outside wilderness these seven
sages lost their way. By and by they fell in with a boy who was tending
horses, and they asked him if he knew the Chu-tzu Mountains. "I do,"
said the boy. "And can you tell us," said the sages, "where Tao, the
law, abides?" "I can," replied the boy. "This is strange," said the
Yellow Emperor. "Pray tell me how would you govern the empire?"
"I should govern the empire," replied the boy, "in the same way that I
tend my horses. What else should I do? When I was a little boy and lived
within the points of the compass my eyes grew dim. An old man advised me
to visit the wilderness outside of the world. My sight is now better,
and I continue to dwell outside of the points of the compass. I should
govern the empire in the same way. What else should I do?"
Said the Yellow Emperor, "Government is not your trade, but I should be
glad to learn what you would do." The boy refused to answer, but being
urged again, said: "What difference is there between governing the
empire and looking after horses? See that no harm comes to the horses;
that is all."
Thereupon the emperor prostrated himself before the boy; and calling him
divine teacher, took his leave.
I am writing these vagaries by the sound of the waterfall in our garden;
half of the _amados_ are closed; the paper screens near me I have left
open, and the moths and insects of the night flutter around my lamp in
orbits as uncertain as the direction of my thoughts. I have given up my
drawing; it is too hot to work. And I have already tired myself with
looking over prints and designs. Among them there is a sketch by Hokusai
which reminds me of the way in which my mind bestrides stray fancies
that float past. The picture is that of Tekkai (the beggar), the Sennin
exhaling his spiritual essence in a shadowy form, which shadow itself
often rides away upon the spirit horse that Chokwaro or Tsuga evokes
occasionally from his traveling-gourd.
To-day we talked of the legends of these Rishi or Sennin, whose
pictures so often come up in the works of Japanese artists.
Rishi or Sennin are beings who enjoy rest,--that is to say, are exempt
from transmigration,--often in the solitude of mountains for thousands
of years, after which delay they again enter the circle of change. If
they are merely human, as many of them are, they have obtained this
charm of immortality, which forms an important point in the
superstitious beliefs and practices of modern Taoism. These appear to
have no hold in Japan, as they have in China, but these personages,
evolutions of Taoist thought, live here at least in legend and in art.
The original mysticism from which they sprung is full of beauty and of
power. General Tcheng-ki-tong has recently stated it well, when he says
that Lao Tzŭ, its great antique propounder, speaks with the tone of a
prophet. He neither preached nor discussed, yet those who went to him
empty departed full. He taught the doctrine which does not find
expression in words, the doctrine of Tao, or the Way--a doctrine that
becomes untrue and unprofitable when placed in set forms and bound in by
pedantry, but which allows teaching by parables and side glimpses and
innuendoes as long as they are illuminated by that light which exists in
the natural heart of man. And I, too, am pleased to let myself be guided
by this light. After many years of wilful energy, of forced battle that
I have not shunned, I like to try the freshness of the springs, to see
if new impressions come as they once did in childhood. With you I am
safe in stating what has come to me from outside. It has come; hence it
is true: I did not make it. I can say with the Shadow, personified by my
expounder of the Way,[4] that when the light of the fire or the sun
appears, then I come forth; when the night comes, I lie still: I wait
indeed, even as they wait. They come and I come, they go and I go too.
The shade waits for the body and for the light to appear, and all things
which rise and wait wait upon the Lord, who alone waits for nothing,
needs nothing, and without whom things can neither rise nor set. The
radiance of the landscape illuminates my room; the landscape does not
come within. I have become as a blank to be filled. I employ my mind as
a mirror; it grasps nothing, it refuses nothing; it receives, but does
not keep. And thus I can triumph over things without injury to myself--I
am safe in Tao.
[4] Prémare's "Notitia Linguæ Sinicæ," "4um exemplum. Sic inducit
Tchouang-tsee umbram loquentem: Ego quidem existo, sed nescio qua
ratione. Ego sum veluti cicadarum tunicæ et Serpentis spolia,"
etc. If what I have written is ever seen by H. B. M.'s consul
at Tamsui, he will perceive my present indebtedness to his most
admirable translations.
JAPANESE ARCHITECTURE
NIKKO, August 2.
I fear that of all my description the refrain of the words gold and
bronze will be all that you will retain. How can I have any confidence
in my account of anything so alien, whose analysis involves the
necessary misuse of our terms, based upon another past in art?--for
words in such cases are only explanations or easy mnemonics of a
previous sight. But soon I shall have photographs to send, and if I can
summon courage for work, in this extreme heat and moisture, I shall make
some drawings. But again, these would not give the essential reasons for
things being as they are; and whatever strange beauties would be noted,
they might appear to have happened, if I may so say, and not to have
grown of necessity. It is so difficult for our average way of accepting
things to think of what is called architecture without expecting
structures of stone--something solid and evidently time-defying.
And yet, if architecture represents the needs of living of a people,
the differences that we see here will have the same reasonableness that
other devices show elsewhere. The extreme heat, the sudden torrents of
rain, will explain the far-projecting and curved roofs, the galleries
and verandas, the arrangements for opening or closing the sides of
buildings by sliding screens, which allow an adjustment to the heat or
the damp. But weightier reasons than all these must have directed in the
construction of such great buildings as the temples, and I think that,
putting aside important race influences, these sufficient reasons will
be found in the volcanic nature of Japan and its frequent earthquakes.
Whatever was to be built must have had to meet these difficult problems:
how successfully in the past is shown by a persistence of their
buildings which to us seems extraordinary, for many of them are lasting
yet in integrity for now over a thousand years.
I speak of the influences of race, because it is evident that very many
traditions, prejudices, and symbolic meanings are built into these
forms, and that many of them must have come through the teachings of
China. Everywhere the higher architecture, embodied in shrines and
temples, is based on some ideal needs, and not essentially upon
necessities; is, in fact, a record or expression of a religious idea or
mystery. In this case I am too profoundly ignorant, as most of us are,
to work out origins; but my mind feels the suggestion of an indefinite
past, that once had meanings and teachings, just as my eye recognizes in
the shape of the massive temples the image of a sacred box, or ark, once
to be carried from place to place. There is, perhaps, in this direction
a line of study for the men to come.
Like all true art, the architecture of Japan has found in the
necessities imposed upon it the motives for realizing beauty, and has
adorned the means by which it has conquered the difficulties to be
surmounted. Hence no foundations, which would compromise the
super-imposed building by making it participate in the shock given to
its base. Hence solid pedestals, if I may so call them, or great bases,
upon which are placed only, not built in, the posts which support the
edifice, leaving a space between this base and the horizontal beams or
floors of the building. The building is thus rendered elastic, and
resumes its place after the trembling of the earthquake, and the waters
of bad weather can escape without flooding any foundations.
The great, heavy, curved roof, far overhanging, weighs down this
structure, and keeps it straight. An apparently unreasonable quantity of
adjusted timber and beams supports the ceiling and the roof.
Complicated, tremendous corbelings, brackets grooved and dovetailed,
fill the cornices as with a network; but all these play an important
practical part, and keep the whole construction elastic, as their many
small divisions spread the shock.
Still more, in such a building as the charming pagoda at Iyéyasŭ's
shrine, which is full one hundred feet high, slight-looking and lithe,
the great beam or mast which makes its center does not support from the
base, but is cut off at the foundation; and hence it acts as a sort of
pendulum, its great weight below retarding the movement above when the
earthquake comes.
I have heard the whisper of a legend saying that the architect who
devised this, to correct the errors of a rival and partner, was poisoned
in due time, in jealous return. For those were happy times when
backbiting among artists took the more manly form of poisoning.