OF VISION IN ART.
There are many who will admit, without hesitation, that in Philosophy
what I have called the Principle of Vision holds an important rank,
because the mind must necessarily err in its speculations unless it
clearly sees facts and relations; but there are some who will hesitate
before admitting the principle to a similar rank in Art, because, as
they conceive, Art is independent of the truth of facts, and is swayed
by the autocratic power of Imagination.
It is on this power that our attention should first be arrested; the
more so because it is usually spoken of in vague rhapsodical language,
with intimations of its being something peculiarly mysterious. There
are few words more abused. The artist is called a creator, which in one
sense he is; and his creations are said to be produced by processes
wholly unallied to the creations of Philosophy, which they are not.
Hence it is a paradox to speak of the "Principia," as a creation
demanding severe and continuous exercise of the imagination; but it is
only a paradox to those who have never analysed the processes of
artistic and philosophic creation.
I am far from desiring to innovate in language, or to raise
interminable discussions respecting the terms in general use.
Nevertheless we have here to deal with questions that lie deeper than
mere names. We have to examine processes, and trace, if possible, the
methods of intellectual activity pursued in all branches of Literature;
and we must not suffer our course to be obstructed by any confusion in
terms that can be cleared up. We may respect the demarcations
established by usage, but we must ascertain, if possible, the
fundamental affinities. There is, for instance, a broad distinction
between Science and Art, which, so far from requiring to be effaced,
requires to be emphasised: it is that in Science the paramount appeal
is to the Intellect---its purpose being instruction; in Art, the
paramount appeal is to the Emotions--its purpose being pleasure. A work
of Art must of course indirectly appeal to the Intellect, and a work of
Science will also indirectly appeal to the Feelings; nevertheless a
poem on the stars and a treatise on astronomy have distinct aims and
distinct methods. But having recognised the broadly-marked differences,
we are called upon to ascertain the underlying resemblances. Logic and
Imagination belong equally to both. It is only because men have been
attracted by the differences that they have overlooked the not less
important affinities. Imagination is an intellectual process common to
Philosophy and Art; but in each it is allied with different processes,
and directed to different ends; and hence, although the "Principia"
demanded an imagination of not less vivid and sustained power than was
demanded by "Othello," it would be very false psychology to infer that
the mind of Newton was competent to the creation of "Othello," or the
mind of Shakspeare capable of producing the "Principia." They were
specifically different minds; their works were specifically different.
But in both the imagination was intensely active. Newton had a mind
predominantly ratiocinative: its movement was spontaneously towards the
abstract relations of things. Shakspeare had a mind predominantly
emotive, the intellect always moving in alliance with the feelings, and
spontaneously fastening upon the concrete facts in preference to their
abstract relations. Their mental Vision was turned towards images of
different orders, and it moved in alliance with different faculties;
but this Vision was the cardinal quality of both. Dr. Johnson was
guilty of a surprising fallacy in saying that a great mathematician
might also be a great poet: "Sir, a man can walk east as far as he can
walk west." True, but mathematics and poetry do not differ as east and
west; and he would hardly assert that a man who could walk twenty miles
could therefore swim that distance.
The real state of the case is somewhat obscured by our observing that
many men of science, and some even eminent as teachers and reporters,
display but slender claims to any unusual vigour of imagination. It
must be owned that they are often slightly dull; and in matters of Art
are not unfrequently blockheads. Nay, they would themselves repel it as
a slight if the epithet "imaginative" were applied to them; it would
seem to impugn their gravity, to cast doubts upon their accuracy. But
such men are the cisterns, not the fountains, of Science. They rely
upon the knowledge already organised; they do not bring accessions to
the common stock. They are not investigators, but imitators; they are
not discoverers--inventors. No man ever made a discovery (he may have
stumbled on one) without the exercise of as much imagination as,
employed in another direction and in alliance with other faculties,
would have gone to the creation of a poem. Every one who has seriously
investigated a novel question, who has really interrogated Nature with
a view to a distinct answer, will bear me out in saying that it
requires intense and sustained effort of imagination. The relations of
sequence among the phenomena must be seen; they are hidden; they can
only be seen mentally; a thousand suggestions rise before the mind, but
they are recognised as old suggestions, or as inadequate to reveal what
is sought; the experiments by which the problem may be solved have to
be imagined; and to imagine a good experiment is as difficult as to
invent a good fable, for we must have distinctly PRESENT--clear mental
vision--the known qualities and relations of all the objects, and must
see what will be the effect of introducing some new qualifying agent.
If any one thinks this is easy, let him try it: the trial will teach
him a lesson respecting the methods of intellectual activity not
without its use. Easy enough, indeed, is the ordinary practice of
experiment, which is either a mere repetition or variation of
experiments already devised (as ordinary story-tellers re-tell the
stories of others), or else a haphazard, blundering way of bringing
phenomena together, to see what will happen. To invent is another
process. The discoverer and the poet are inventors; and they are so
because their mental vision detects the unapparent, unsuspected facts,
almost as vividly as ocular vision rests on the apparent and familiar.
It is the special aim of Philosophy to discover and systematise the
abstract relations of things; and for this purpose it is forced to
allow the things themselves to drop out of sight, fixing attention
solely on the quality immediately investigated, to the neglect of all
other qualities. Thus the philosopher, having to appreciate the mass,
density, refracting power, or chemical constitution of some object,
finds he can best appreciate this by isolating it from every other
detail. He abstracts this one quality from the complex bundle of
qualities which constitute the object, and he makes this one stand for
the whole. This is a necessary simplification. If all the qualities
were equally present to his mind, his vision would be perplexed by
their multiple suggestions. He may follow out the relations of each in
turn, but he cannot follow them out together.
The aim of the poet is very different. He wishes to kindle the emotions
by the suggestion of objects themselves; and for this purpose he must
present images of the objects rather than of any single quality. It is
true that he also must exercise a power of abstraction and selection,
tie cannot without confusion present all the details. And it is here
that the fine selective instinct of the true artist shows itself, in
knowing what details to present and what to omit. Observe this: the
abstraction of the philosopher is meant to keep the object itself, with
its perturbing suggestions, out of sight, allowing only one quality to
fill the field of vision; whereas the abstraction of the poet is meant
to bring the object itself into more vivid relief, to make it visible
by means of the selected qualities. In other words, the one aims at
abstract symbols, the other at picturesque effects. The one can carry
on his deductions by the aid of colourless signs, X or Y. The other
appeals to the emotions through the symbols which will most vividly
express the real objects in their relations to our sensibilities.
Imagination is obviously active in both. From known facts the
philosopher infers the facts that are unapparent. He does so by an
effort of imagination (hypothesis) which has to be subjected to
verification: he makes a mental picture of the unapparent fact, and
then sets about to prove that his picture does in some way correspond
with the reality. The correctness of his hypothesis and verification
must depend on the clearness of his vision. Were all the qualities of
things apparent to Sense, there would be no longer any mystery. A
glance would be Science. But only some of the facts are visible; and it
is because we see little, that we have to imagine much. We see a
feather rising in the air, and a quill, from the same bird, sinking to
the ground: these contradictory reports of sense lead the mind astray;
or perhaps excite a desire to know the reason. We cannot see,--we must
imagine,--the unapparent facts. Many mental pictures may be formed, but
to form the one which corresponds with the reality requires great
sagacity and a very clear vision of known facts. In trying to form this
mental picture we remember that when the air is removed the feather
fails as rapidly as the quill, and thus we see that the air is the
cause of the feather's rising; we mentally see the air pushing under
the feather, and see it almost as plainly as if the air were a visible
mass thrusting the feather upwards.
From a mistaken appreciation of the real process this would by few be
called an effort of Imagination. On the contrary some "wild hypothesis"
would be lauded as imaginative in proportion as it departed from all
suggestion of experience, i.e. real mental vision. To have imagined
that the feather rose owing to its "specific lightness," and that the
quill fell owing to its "heaviness," would to many appear a more
decided effort of the imaginative faculty. Whereas it is no effort of
that faculty at all; it is simply naming differently the facts it
pretends to explain. To imagine---to form an image--we must have the
numerous relations of things present to the mind, and see the objects
in their actual order. In this we are of course greatly aided by the
mass of organised experience, which allows us rapidly to estimate the
relations of gravity or affinity just as we remember that fire burns
and that heated bodies expand. But be the aid great or small, and the
result victorious or disastrous, the imaginative process is always the
same.
There is a slighter strain on the imagination of the poet, because of
his greater freedom. He is not, like the philosopher, limited to the
things which are, or were. His vision includes things which might be,
and things which never were. The philosopher is not entitled to assume
that Nature sympathises with man; he must prove the fact to be so if he
intend making any use of it ;--we admit no deductions from unproved
assumptions. But the poet is at perfect liberty to assume this; and
having done so, he paints what would be the manifestations of this
sympathy. The naturalist who should describe a hippogriff would incur
the laughing scorn of Europe; but the poet feigns its existence, and
all Europe is delighted when it rises with Astolfo in the air. We never
pause to ask the poet whether such an animal exists. He has seen it,
and we see it with his eyes. Talking trees do not startle us in Virgil
and Tennyson. Puck and Titania, Hamlet and Falstaff, are as true for us
as Luther and Napoleon so long as we are in the realm of Art. We grant
the poet a free privilege because he will use it only for our pleasure.
In Science pleasure is not an object, and we give no licence.
Philosophy and Art both render the invisible visible by imagination.
Where Sense observes two isolated objects, Imagination discloses two
related objects. This relation is the nexus visible. We had not seen it
before; it is apparent now. Where we should only see a calamity the
poet makes us see a tragedy. Where we could only see a sunrise he
enables us to see
"Day like a mighty river flowing in."
Imagination is not the exclusive appanage of artists, but belongs in
varying degrees to all men. It is simply the power of forming images.
Supplying the energy of Sense where Sense cannot reach, it brings into
distinctness the facts, obscure or occult, which are grouped round an
object or an idea, but which are not actually present to Sense. Thus,
at the aspect of a windmill, the mind forms images of many
characteristic facts relating to it; and the kind of images will depend
very much on the general disposition, or particular mood, of the mind
affected by the object: the painter, the poet, and the moralist will
have different images suggested by the presence of the windmill or its
symbol. There are indeed sluggish minds so incapable of self-evolved
activity, and so dependent on the immediate suggestions of Sense, as to
be almost destitute of the power of forming distinct images beyond the
immediate circle of sensuous associations; and these are rightly named
unimaginative minds; but in all minds of energetic activity, groups and
clusters of images, many of them representing remote relations,
spontaneously present themselves in conjunction with objects or their
symbols. It should, however, be borne in mind that Imagination can only
recall what Sense has previously impressed. No man imagines any detail
of which he has not previously had direct or indirect experience.
Objects as fictitious as mermaids and hippogriffs are made up from the
gatherings of Sense.
"Made up from the gatherings of Sense" is a phrase which may seem to
imply some peculiar plastic power such as is claimed exclusively for
artists: a power not of simple recollection, but of recollection and
recombination. Yet this power belongs also to philosophers. To combine
the half of a woman with the half of a fish,--to imagine the union as
an existing organism,--is not really a different process from that of
combining the experience of a chemical action with an electric action,
and seeing that the two are one existing fact. When the poet hears the
storm-cloud muttering, and sees the moonlight sleeping on the bank, he
transfers his experience of human phenomena to the cloud and the
moonlight: he personifies, draws Nature within the circle of emotion,
and is called a poet. When the philosopher sees electricity in the
storm-cloud, and sees the sunlight stimulating vegetable growth, he
transfers his experience of physical phenomena to these objects, and
draws within the circle of Law phenomena which hitherto have been
unclassified. Obviously the imagination has been as active in the one
case as in the other; the DIFFERENTIA lying in the purposes of the two,
and in the general constltution of the two minds.
It has been noted that there is less strain on the imagination of the
poet; but even his greater freedom is not altogether disengaged from
the necessity of verification; his images must have at least subjective
truth; if they do not accurately correspond with objective realities,
they must correspond with our sense of congruity. No poet is allowed
the licence of creating images inconsistent with our conceptions. If he
said the moonlight burnt the bank, we should reject the image as
untrue, inconsistent with our conceptions of moonlight; whereas the
gentle repose of the moonlight on the bank readily associates itself
with images of sleep.
The often mooted question, What is Imagination? thus receives a very
clear and definite answer. It is the power of forming images; it
reinstates, in a visible group, those objects which are invisible,
either from absence or from imperfection of our senses. That is its
generic character. Its specific character, which marks it off from
Memory, and which is derived from the powers of selection and
recombination, will be expounded further on. Here I only touch upon its
chief characteristic, in order to disengage the term from that
mysteriousness which writers have usually assigned to it, thereby
rendering philosophic criticism impossible. Thus disengaged it may be
used with more certainty in an attempt to estimate the imaginative
power of various works.
Hitherto the amount of that power has been too frequently estimated
according to the extent of DEPARTURE from ordinary experience in the
images selected. Nineteen out of twenty would unhesitatingly declare
that a hippogriff was a greater effort of imagination than a
well-conceived human character; a Peri than a woman; Puck or Titania
than Falstaff or Imogen. A description of Paradise extremely unlike any
known garden must, it is thought, necessarily be more imaginative than
the description of a quiet rural nook. It may be more imaginative; it
may be less so. All depends upon the mind of the poet. To suppose that
it must, because of its departure from ordinary experience, is a
serious error. The muscular effort required to draw a cheque for a
thousand pounds might as reasonably be thought greater than that
required for a cheque of five pounds; and much as the one cheque seems
to surpass the other in value, the result of presenting both to the
bankers may show that the more modest cheque is worth its full five
pounds, whereas the other is only so much waste paper. The description
of Paradise may be a glittering farrago; the description of the
landscape may be full of sweet rural images: the one having a glare of
gaslight and Vauxhall splendour; the other having the scent of new-mown
hay.
A work is imaginative in virtue of the power of its images over our
emotions; not in virtue of any rarity or surprisingness in the images
themselves. A Madonna and Child by Fra Angelico is more powerful over
our emotions than a Crucifixion by a vulgar artist; a beggar-boy by
Murillo is more imaginative than an Assumption by the same painter; but
the Assumption by Titian displays far greater imagination than elther.
We must guard against the natural tendency to attribute to the artist
what is entirely due to accidental conditions. A tropical scene,
luxuriant with tangled overgrowth and impressive in the grandeur of its
phenomena, may more decisively arrest our attention than an English
landscape with its green corn lands and plenteous homesteads. But this
superiority of interest is no proof of the artist's superior
imagination; and by a spectator familiar with the tropics, greater
interest may be felt in the English landscape, because its images may
more forcibly arrest his attentlon by their novelty. And were this not
so, were the inalienable impressiveness of tropical scenery always to
give the poet who described it a superiority in effect, this would not
prove the superiority of his imagination. For either he has been
familiar with such scenes, and imagines them just as the other poet
imagines his English landscape---by an effort of mental vision, calling
up the absent objects; or he has merely read the descriptions of
others, and from these makes up his picture. It is the same with his
rival, who also recalls and recombines. Foolish critics often betray
their ignorance by saying that a painter or a writer "only copies what
he has seen, or puts down what he has known." They forget that no man
imagines what he has not seen or known, and that it is in the SELECTION
OF THE CHARACTERISTIC DETAILS that the artistic power is manifested.
Those who suppose that familiarity with scenes or characters enables a
painter or a novelist to "copy" them with artistic effect, forget the
well-known fact that the vast majority of men are painfully incompetent
to avail themselves of this familiarity, and cannot form vivid pictures
even to themselves of scenes in which they pass their daily lives; and
if they could imagine these, they would need the delicate selective
instinct to guide them in the admission and omission of details, as
well as in the grouping of the images. Let any one try to "copy" the
wife or brother he knows so well,--to make a human image which shall
speak and act so as to impress strangers with a belief in its
truth,--and he will then see that the much-despised reliance on actual
experience is not the mechanical procedure it is believed to be. When
Scott drew Saladin and Ceaur de Lion he did not really display more
imaginative power than when he drew the Mucklebackits, although the
majority of readers would suppose that the one demanded a great effort
of imagination, whereas the other formed part of his familiar
experiences of Scottish life. The mistake here lies in confounding the
sources from which the materials were derived with the plastic power of
forming these materials into images. More conscious effort may have
been devoted to the collection of the materials in the one case than in
the other, but that this has nothing to do with the imaginative power
employed may readily be proved by an analysis of the intellectual
processes of composition. Scott had often been in fishermen's cottages
and heard them talk; from the registered experience of a thousand
details relating to the life of the poor, their feelings and their
thoughts, he gained that material upon which his imagination could
work; in the case of Saladin and Ceaur de Lion he had to gain these
principally through books and his general experience of life; and the
images he formed--the vision he had of Mucklebackit and Saladin--must
be set down to his artistic faculty, not to his experience or erudition.
It has been well said by a very imaginative writer, that "when a poet
floats in the empyrean, and only takes a bird's-eye view of the earth,
some people accept the mere fact of his soaring for sublimity, and
mistake his dim vision of earth for proximity to heaven." And in like
manner, when a thinker frees himself from all the trammels of fact, and
propounds a "bold hypothesis," people mistake the vagabond erratic
flights of guessing for a higher range of philosophic power. In truth,
the imagination is most tasked when it has to paint pictures which
shall withstand the silent criticism of general experience, and to
frame hypotheses which shall withstand the confrontation with facts. I
cannot here enter into the interesting question of Realism and Idealism
in Art, which must be debated in a future chapter; but I wish to call
special attention to the psychological fact, that fairies and demons,
remote as they are from experience, are not created by a more vigorous
effort of imagination than milk maids and poachers. The intensity of
vision in the artist and of vividness in his creations are the sole
tests of his imaginative power.
II.
If this brief exposition has carried the reader's assent, he will
readily apply the principle, and recognise that an artist produces an
effect in virtue of the distinctness with which he sees the objects he
represents, seeing them not vaguely as in vanishing apparitions, but
steadily, and in their most characteristic relations. To this Vision he
adds artistic skill with which to make us see. He may have clear
conceptions, yet fail to make them clear to us: in this case he has
imagination, but is not an artist. Without clear Vision no skill can
avail. Imperfect Vision necessitates imperfect representation; words
take the place of ideas.
In Young's "Night Thoughts" there are many examples of the
PSEUDO-imaginative, betraying an utter want of steady Vision. Here is
one:--
"His hand the good man fixes on the skies,
And bids earth roll, nor feels the idle whirl."
"Pause for a moment," remarks a critic, "to realise the image, and the
monstrous absurdity of a man's grasping the skies and hanging
habitually suspended there, while he contemptuously bids earth roll,
warns you that no genuine feeling could have suggested so unnatural a
conception." [WESTMINSTER REVIEW, No. cxxxi., p. 27]. It is obvious
that if Young had imagined the position he assigned to the good man he
would have seen its absurdity; instead of imagining, he allowed the
vague transient suggestion of half-nascent images to shape themselves
in verse.
Now compare with this a passage in which imagination is really active.
Wordsworth recalls how--
" In November days
When vapours rolling down the valleys made
A lonely scene more lonesome; among the woods
At noon; and mid the calm of summer nights,
When by the margin of the trembling lake
Beneath the gloomy hills homeward I went
In solitude, such intercourse was mine."
There is nothing very grand or impressive in this passage, and
therefore it is a better illustration for my purpose. Note how happily
the one image, out of a thousand possible images by which November
might be characterised, is chosen to call up in us the feeling of the
lonely scene; and with what delicate selection the calm of summer
nights, the "trembling lake" (an image in an epithet), and the gloomy
hills, are brought before us. His boyhood might have furnished him with
a hundred different pictures, each as distinct as this; the power is
shown in selecting this one--painting it so vividly. He continues:--
"'Twas mine among the fields both day and night
And by the waters, all the summer long.
And in the frosty season, when the sun
Was set, and, visible for many a mile
The cottage windows through the twilight blazed,
I heeded not the summons: happy time
It was indeed for all of us; for me
It was a time of rapture! Clear and loud
The village clock tolled six--I wheeled about,
Proud and exulting like an untired horse
That cares not for his home. All shod with steel
We hissed along the polished ice, in games
Confederate, imitative of the chase
And woodland pleasures--the resounding horn,
The pack loud-chiming and the hunted hare."
There is nothing very felicitous in these lines; yet even here the
poet, if languid, is never false. As he proceeds the vision brightens,
and the verse becomes instinct with life:--
"So through the darkness and the cold we flew
And not a voice was idle: with the din
Smitten, the precipices rang aloud;
THE LEAFLESS TREES AND EVERY ICY CRAG
TINKLED LIKE IRON; WHILE THE DISTANT HILLS
INTO THE TUMULT SENT AN ALIEN SOUND
OF MELANCHOLY, not unnoticed while the stars
Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the west
The orange sky of evening died away.
"Not seldom from the uproar I retired
Into a silent bay, or sportively
Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng,
TO CUT ACROSS THE REFLEX OF A STAR;
IMAGE THAT FLYING STILL BEFORE ME gleamed
Upon the glassy plain: and oftentime
When we had given our bodies to the wind
AND ALL THE SHADOWY BANKS ON EITHER SIDE
CAME CREEPING THROUGH THE DARKNESS, spinning still
The rapid line of motion, then at once
Have I reclining back upon my heels
Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs
Wheeled by me--even as if the earth had rolled
With visible motion her diurnal round!
Behind me did they stretch in solemn train,
Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched
Till all was tranquil as a summer sea."
Every poetical reader will feel delight in the accuracy with which the
details are painted, and the marvellous clearness with which the whole
scene is imagined, both in its objective and subjective relations,
i.e., both in the objects seen and the emotions they suggest.
What the majority of modern verse writers call "imagery," is not the
product of imagination, but a restless pursuit of comparison, and a lax
use of language. Instead of presenting us with an image of the object,
they present us with something which they tell us is like the
object---which it rarely is. The thing itself has no clear significance
to them, it is only a text for the display of their ingenuity. If,
however, we turn from poetasters to poets, we see great accuracy in
depicting the things themselves or their suggestions, so that we may be
certain the things presented themselves in the field of the poet's
vision, and were painted because seen. The images arose with sudden
vivacity, or were detained long enough to enable their characters to be
seized. It is this power of detention to which I would call particular
notice, because a valuable practical lesson may be learned through a
proper estimate of it. If clear Vision be indispensable to success in
Art, all means of securing that clearness should be sought. Now one
means is that of detaining an image long enough before the mind to
allow of its being seen in all its characteristics. The explanation
Newton gave of his discovery of the great law, points in this
direction; it was by always thinking of the subject, by keeping it
constantly before his mind, that he finally saw the truth. Artists
brood over the chaos of their suggestions, and thus shape them into
creations. Try and form a picture in your own mind of your early
skating experience. It may be that the scene only comes back upon you
in shifting outlines, you recall the general facts, and some few
particulars are vivid, but the greater part of the details vanish again
before they can assume decisive shape; they are but half nascent, or
die as soon as born: a wave of recollection washes over the mind, but
it quickly retires, leaving no trace behind. This is the common
experience. Or it may be that the whole scene flashes upon you with
peculiar vividness, so that you see, almost as in actual presence, all
the leading characteristics of the picture. Wordsworth may have seen
his early days in a succession of vivid flashes, or he may have
attained to his distinctness of vision by a steadfast continuity of
effort, in which what at first was vague became slowly definite as he
gazed. It is certain that only a very imaginative mind could have seen
such details as he has gathered together in the lines describing how he
"Cut across the reflex of a star;
Image that flying still before me gleamed
Upon the glassy plain."
The whole description may have been written with great rapidity, or
with anxious and tentative labour: the memories of boyish days may have
been kindled with a sudden illumination, or they may have grown slowly
into the requisite distinctness, detail after detail emerging from the
general obscurity, like the appearing stars at night. But whether the
poet felt his way to images and epithets, rapidly or slowly, is
unimportant; we have to do only with the result; and the result
implies, as an absolute condition, that the images were distinct. Only
thus could they serve the purposes of poetry, which must arouse in us
memories of similar scenes, and kindle emotions of pleasurable
experience.
III.
Having cited an example of bad writing consequent on imperfect Vision,
and an example of good writing consequent on accurate Vision, I might
consider that enough had been done for the immediate purpose of the
present chapter; the many other illustrations which the Principle of
Vision would require before it could be considered as adequately
expounded, I must defer till I come to treat of the application of
principles. But before closing this chapter it may be needful to
examine some arguments which have a contrary tendency, and imply, or
seem to imply, that distinctness of Vision is very far from necessary.
At the outset we must come to an understanding as to this word "image,"
and endeavour to free the word "vision" from all equivoque. If these
words were understood literally there would be an obvious absurdity in
speaking of an image of a sound, or of seeing an emotion. Yet if by
means of symbols the effect of a sound is produced in us, or the
psychological state of any human being is rendered intelligible to us,
we are said to have images of these things, which the poet has
imagined. It is because the eye is the most valued and intellectual of
our senses that the majority of metaphors are borrowed from its
sensations. Language, after all, is only the use of symbols, and Art
also can only affect us through symbols. If a phrase can summon a
terror resembling that summoned by the danger which it indicates, a man
is said to see the danger. Sometimes a phrase will awaken more vivid
images of danger than would be called up by the actual presence of the
dangerous object; because the mind will more readily apprehend the
symbols of the phrase than interpret the indications of unassisted
sense.
Burke in his "Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful," lays down the
proposition that distinctness of imagery is often injurious to the
effect of art. "It is one thing," he says, "to make an idea clear,
another to make it AFFECTING to the imagination. If I make a drawing of
a palace or a temple or a landscape, I present a very clear idea of
those objects; but then (allowing for the effect of imitation, which is
something) my picture can at most affect only as the palace, temple, or
landscape would have affected in reality. On the other hand the most
lively and spirited verbal description I can give raises a very obscure
and imperfect IDEA of such objects; but then it is in my power to raise
a stronger EMOTION by the description than I can do by the best
painting. This experience constantly evinces. The proper manner of
conveying the AFFECTIONS of the mind from one to the other is by words;
there is great insufficiency in all other method of communication; and
so far is a clearness of imagery, from being absolutely necessary to an
influence upon the passions, that they may be considerably operated
upon without presenting any image at all, by certain sounds adapted to
that purpose." If by image is meant only what the eye can see, Burke is
undoubtedly right. But this is obviously not our restricted meaning of
the word when we speak of poetic imagery; and Burke's error becomes
apparent when he proceeds to show that there "are reasons in nature why
an obscure idea, when properly conveyed, should be more affecting than
the clear." He does not seem to have considered that the idea of an
indefinite object can only be properly conveyed by indefinite images;
any image of Eternity or Death that pretended to visual distinctness
would be false. Having overlooked this, he says, "We do not anywhere
meet a more sublime description than this justly celebrated one of
Milton, wherein he gives the portrait of Satan with a dignity so
suitable to the subject.
"He above the rest
In shape and gesture proudly eminent
Stood like a tower; his form had not yet lost
All her original brightness, nor appeared
Less than archangel ruined and the excess
Of glory obscured: as when the sun new risen
Looks through the horizontal misty air
Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon
In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations; and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs."
"Here is a very noble picture," adds Burke, "and in what does this
poetical picture consist? In images of a tower, an archangel, the sun
rising through mists, or an eclipse, the ruin of monarchs, and the
revolution of kingdoms." Instead of recognising the imagery here as the
source of the power, he says, "The mind is hurried out of itself,
[rather a strange result!], by a crowd of great and confused images;
which affect because they are crowded and confused For, separate them,
and you lose much of the greatness; and join them, and you infallibly
lose the clearness." This is altogether a mistake. The images are vivid
enough to make us feel the hovering presence of an awe-inspiring figure
having the height and firmness of a tower, and the dusky splendour of a
ruined archangel. The poet indicates only that amount of concreteness
which is necessary for the clearness of the picture,---only the height
and firmness of the tower and the brightness of the sun in eclipse.
More concretness would disturb the clearness by calling attention to
irrelevant details. To suppose that these images produce the effect
because they are crowded and confused (they are crowded and not
confused) is to imply that any other images would do equally well, if
they were equally crowded. "Separate them, and you lose much of the
greatness." Quite true: the image of the tower would want the splendour
of the sun. But this much may be said of all descriptions which proceed
upon details. And so far from the impressive clearness of the picture
vanishing in the crowd of images, it is by these images that the
clearness is produced: the details make it impressive, and affect our
imagination.
It should be added that Burke came very near a true explanation in the
following passage:--"It is difficult to conceive how words can move the
passions which belong to real objects without representing these
objects clearly. This is difficult to us because we do not sufficiently
distinguish between a clear expression and a strong expression. The
former regards the understanding; the latter belongs to the passions.
The one describes a thing as it is, the other describes it as it is
felt. Now as there is a moving tone of voice, an impassioned
countenance, an agitated gesture, which affect independently of the
things about which they are exerted, so there are words and certain
dispositions of words which being peculiarly devoted to passionate
subjects, and always used by those who are under the influence of
passion, touch and move us more than those which far more clearly and
distinctly express the subject-matter." Burke here fails to see that
the tones, looks, and gestures are the intelligible symbols of
passion--the "images' in the true sense just as words are the
intelligible symbols of ideas. The subject-matter is as clearly
expressed by the one as by the other; for if the description of a Lion
be conveyed in the symbols of admiration or of terror, the
subject-matter is THEN a Lion passionately and not zoologically
considered. And this Burke himself was led to admit, for he adds, "We
yield to sympathy what we refuse to description. The truth is, all
verbal description, merely as naked description, though never so exact,
conveys so poor and insufficient an idea of the thing described, that
it could scarcely have the smallest eflfect if the speaker did not call
in to his aid those modes of speech that work a strong and lively
feeling in himself. Then, by the contagion of our passions, we catch a
fire already kindled in another." This is very true, and it sets
clearly forth the fact that naked description, addressed to the calm
understanding, has a different subject-matter from description
addressed to the feelings, and the symbols by which it is made
intelligible must likewise differ. But this in no way impugns the
principle of Vision. Intelligible symbols (clear images) are as
necessary in the one case as in the other.
IV.
By reducing imagination to the power of forming images, and by
insisting that no image can be formed except out of the elements
furnished by experience, I do not mean to confound imagination with
memory; indeed, the frequent occurrence of great strength of memory
with comparative feebleness of imagination, would suffice to warn us
against such a conclusion.
Its specific character, that which marks it off from simple memory, is
its tendency to selection, abstraction, and recombination. Memory, as
passive, simply recalls previous experiences of objects and emotions;
from these, imagination, as an active faculty, selects the elements
which vividly symbolise the objects or emotions, and either by a
process of abstraction allows these to do duty for the whole, or else
by a process of recombination creates new objects and new relations in
which the objects stand to us or to each other (INVENTION), and the
result is an image of great vividness, which has perhaps no
corresponding reality in the external world.
Minds differ in the vividness with which they recall the elements of
previous experience, and mentally see the absent objects; they differ
also in the aptitudes for selection, abstraction, and recombination:
the fine selective instinct of the artist, which makes him fasten upon
the details which will most powerfully affect us, without any
disturbance of the harmony of the general impression, does not depend
solely upon the vividness of his memory and the clearness with which
the objects are seen, but depends also upon very complex and peculiar
conditions of sympathy which we call genius. Hence we find one man
remembering a multitude of details, with a memory so vivid that it
almost amounts at times to hallucination, yet without any artistic
power; and we may find men--Blake was one--with an imagination of
unusual activity, who are nevertheless incapable, from deficient
sympathy, of seizing upon those symbols which will most affect us. Our
native susceptibilities and acquired tastes determine which of the many
qualities in an object shall most impress us, and be most clearly
recalled. One man remembers the combustible properties of a substance,
which to another is memorable for its polarising property; to one man a
stream is so much water-power, to another a rendezveus for lovers.
In the close of the last paragraph we came face to face with the great
difficulty which constantly arrests speculation on these matters--the
existence of special aptitudes vaguely characterised as genius. These
are obviously incommunicable. No recipe can be given for genius. No man
can be taught how to exercise the power of imagination. But he can be
taught how to aid it, and how to assure himself whether he is using it
or not. Having once laid hold of the Principle of Vision as a
fundamental principle of Art, he can always thus far apply it, that he
can assure himself whether he does or does not distinctly see the
cottage he is describing, the rivulet that is gurgling through his
verses, or the character he is painting; he can assure himself whether
he hears the voice of the speakers, and feels that what they say is
true to their natures; he can assure himself whether he sees, as in
actual experience, the emotion he is depicting; and he will know that
if he does not see these things he must wait until he can, or he will
paint them ineffectively. With distinct Vision he will be able to make
the best use of his powers of expression; and the most splendid powers
of expression will not avail him if his Vision be indistinct. This is
true of objects that never were seen by the eye, that never could be
seen. It is as true of what are called the highest flights of
imagination as of the lowest flights. The mind must SEE the angel or
the demon, the hippogriff or centaur, the pixie or the mermaid.
Ruskin notices how repeatedly Turner,--the most imaginative of
landscape painters,--introduced into his pictures, after a lapse of
many years, memories of something which, however small and unimportant,
had struck him in his earlier studies. He believes that all Turner's
"composition" was an arrangement of remembrances summoned just as they
were wanted, and each in its fittest place. His vision was primarily
composed of strong memory of the place itself, and secondarily of
memories of other places associated in a harmonious, helpful way with
the now central thought. He recalled and selected.
I am prepared to hear of many readers, especially young readers,
protesting against the doctrine of this chapter as prosaic. They have
been so long accustomed to consider imagination as peculiarly
distinguished by its disdain of reality, and Invention as only
admirable when its products are not simply new by selection and
arrangement, but new in material, that they will reject the idea of
involuntary remembrance of something originally experienced as the
basis of all Art. Ruskin says of great artists, "Imagine all that any
of these men had seen or heard in the whole course of their lives, laid
up accurately in their memories as in vast storehouses, extending with
the poets even to the slightest intonations of syllables heard in the
beginning of their lives, and with painters down to minute folds of
drapery and shapes of leaves and stones; and over all this unindexed
and immeasurable mass of treasure, the imagination brooding and
wandering, but dream-gifted, so as to summon at any moment exactly such
a group of ideas as shall justly fit each other." This is the
explanation of their genius, as far as it can be explained.
Genius is rarely able to give any account of its own processes. But
those who have had ample opportunities of intimately knowing the growth
of works in the minds of artists, will bear me out in saying that a
vivid memory supplies the elements from a thousand different sources,
most of which are quite beyond the power of localisation, the
experience of yesterday being strangely intermingled with the dim
suggestions of early years, the tones heard in childhood sounding
through the diapason of sorrowing maturity; and all these kaleidoscopic
fragments are recomposed into images that seem to have a corresponding
reality of their own.
As all Art depends on Vision, so the different kinds of Art depend on
the different ways in which minds look at things. The painter can only
put into his pictures what he sees in Nature; and what he sees will be
different from what another sees. A poetical mind sees noble and
affecting suggestions in details which the prosaic mind will interpret
prosaically. And the true meaning of Idealism is precisely this vision
of realities in their highest and most affecting forms, not in the
vision of something removed from or opposed to realities. Titian's
grand picture of "Peter the Martyr" is, perhaps, as instructive an
example as could be chosen of successful Idealism; because in it we
have a marvellous presentation of reality as seen by a poetic mind. The
figure of the flying monk might have been equally real if it had been
an ignoble presentation of terror--the superb tree, which may almost be
called an actor in the drama, might have been painted with even greater
minuteness, though not perhaps with equal effect upon us, if it had
arrested our attention by its details--the dying martyr and the noble
assassin might have been made equally real in more vulgar types--but
the triumph achieved by Titian is that the mind is filled with a vision
of poetic beauty which is felt to be real. An equivalent reality,
without the ennobling beauty, would have made the picture a fine piece
of realistic art. It is because of this poetic way of seeing things
that one painter will give a faithful representation of a very common
scene which shall nevertheless affect all sensitive minds as ideal,
whereas another painter will represent the same with no greater
fidelity, but with a complete absence of poetry. The greater the
fidelity, the greater will be the merit of each representation; for if
a man pretends to represent an object, he pretends to represent it
accurately: the only difference is what the poetical or prosaic mind
sees in the object.
Of late years there has been a reaction against conventionalism which
called itself Idealism, in favour of DETAILISM which calls itself
Realism. As a reaction it has been of service; but it has led to much
false criticism, and not a little false art, by an obtrusiveness of
Detail and a preference for the Familiar, under the misleading notion
of adherence to Nature. If the words Nature and Natural could be
entirely banished from language about Art there would be some chance of
coming to a rational philosophy of the subject; at present the
excessive vagueness and shiftiness of these terms cover any amount of
sophism. The pots and pans of Teniers and Van Mieris are natural; the
passions and humours of Shakspeare and Moliere are natural; the angels
of Fra Angelico and Luini are natural; the Sleeping Fawn and Fates of
Phidias are natural; the cows and misty marshes of Cuyp and the
vacillations of Hamlet are equally natural. In fact the natural means
TRUTH OF KIND. Each kind of character, each kind of representation,
must be judged by itself. Whereas the vulgar error of criticism is to
judge of one kind by another, and generally to judge the higher by the
lower, to remonstrate with Hamlet for not having the speech and manner
of Mr. Jones, to wish that Fra Angelico could have seen with the eyes
of the Carracci, to wish verse had been prose, and that ideal tragedy
were acted with the easy manner acceptable in drawing-rooms.
The rage for "realism," which is healthy in as far as it insists on
truth, has become unhealthy, in as far as it confounds truth with
familiarity, and predominance of unessential details. There are other
truths besides coats and waistcoats, pots and pans, drawlng-rooms and
suburban villas. Life has other aims besides these which occupy the
conversation of "Society." And the painter who devotes years to a work
representing modern life, yet calls for even more attention to a
waistcoat than to the face of a philosopher, may exhibit truth of
detail which will delight the tailor-mind, but he is defective in
artistic truth, because he ought to be representing something higher
than waistcoats, and because our thoughts on modern life fall very
casually and without emphasis on waistcoats. In Piloty's much-admired
picture of the "Death of Wallenstein" (at Munich), the truth with which
the carpet, the velvet, and all other accessories are painted, is
certainly remarkable; but the falsehood of giving prominence to such
details in a picture representing the dead Wallenstein--as if they were
the objects which could possibly arrest our attention and excite our
sympathies in such a spectacle--is a falsehood of the realistic school.
If a man means to paint upholstery, by all means let him paint it so as
to delight and deceive an upholsterer; but if he means to paint a human
tragedy, the upholsterer must be subordinate, and velvet must not draw
our eyes away from faces.
I have digressed a little from my straight route because I wish to
guard the Principle of Vision from certain misconceptions which might
arise on a simple statement of it. The principle insists on the artist
assuring himself that he distinctly sees what he attempts to represent.
WHAT he sees, and HOW he represents it, depend on other principles. To
make even this principle of Vision thoroughly intelligible in its
application to all forms of Literature and Art, it must be considered
in connection with the two other principles--Sincerity and Beauty,
which are involved in all successful works. In the next chapter we
shall treat of Sincerity.
EDITOR.