In an old Sanskrit book there is a verse which describes the essential
elements of a picture. The first in order is _Vrupa-bhedah_--"separateness
of forms." Forms are many, forms are different, each of them having
its limits. But if this were absolute, if all forms remained
obstinately separate, then there would be a fearful loneliness of
multitude. But the varied forms, in their very separateness, must
carry something which indicates the paradox of their ultimate unity,
otherwise there would be no creation.
So in the same verse, after the enumeration of separateness comes that
of _Pram[=a]n[=a]ni_--proportions. Proportions indicate relationship,
the principle of mutual accommodation. A leg dismembered from the body
has the fullest licence to make a caricature of itself. But, as a
member of the body, it has its responsibility to the living unity
which rules the body; it must behave properly, it must keep its
proportion. If, by some monstrous chance of physiological
profiteering, it could outgrow by yards its fellow-stalker, then we
know what a picture it would offer to the spectator and what
embarrassment to the body itself. Any attempt to overcome the law of
proportion altogether and to assert absolute separateness is
rebellion; it means either running the gauntlet of the rest, or
remaining segregated.
The same Sanskrit word _Pram[=a]n[=a]ni_, which in a book of aesthetics
means proportions, in a book of logic means the proofs by which the
truth of a proposition is ascertained. All proofs of truth are
credentials of relationship. Individual facts have to produce such
passports to show that they are not expatriated, that they are not a
break in the unity of the whole. The logical relationship present in
an intellectual proposition, and the aesthetic relationship indicated
in the proportions of a work of art, both agree in one thing. They
affirm that truth consists, not in facts, but in harmony of facts. Of
this fundamental note of reality it is that the poet has said, "Beauty
is truth, truth beauty."
Proportions, which prove relativity, form the outward language of
creative ideals. A crowd of men is desultory, but in a march of
soldiers every man keeps his proportion of time and space and relative
movement, which makes him one with the whole vast army. But this is
not all. The creation of an army has, for its inner principle, one
single idea of the General. According to the nature of that ruling
idea, a production is either a work of art or a mere construction. All
the materials and regulations of a joint-stock company have the unity
of an inner motive. But the expression of this unity itself is not the
end; it ever indicates an ulterior purpose. On the other hand, the
revelation of a work of art is a fulfilment in itself.
The consciousness of personality, which is the consciousness of unity
in ourselves, becomes prominently distinct when coloured by joy or
sorrow, or some other emotion. It is like the sky, which is visible
because it is blue, and which takes different aspect with the change
of colours. In the creation of art, therefore, the energy of an
emotional ideal is necessary; as its unity is not like that of a
crystal, passive and inert, but actively expressive. Take, for
example, the following verse:
Oh, fly not Pleasure, pleasant-hearted Pleasure,
Fold me thy wings, I prithee, yet and stay.
For my heart no measure
Knows, nor other treasure
To buy a garland for my love to-day.
And thou too, Sorrow, tender-hearted Sorrow,
Thou grey-eyed mourner, fly not yet away.
For I fain would borrow
Thy sad weeds to-morrow,
To make a mourning for love's yesterday.
The words in this quotation, merely showing the metre, would have no
appeal to us; with all its perfection and its proportion, rhyme and
cadence, it would only be a construction. But when it is the outer
body of an inner idea it assumes a personality. The idea flows through
the rhythm, permeates the words and throbs in their rise and fall. On
the other hand, the mere idea of the above-quoted poem, stated in
unrhythmic prose, would represent only a fact, inertly static, which
would not bear repetition. But the emotional idea, incarnated in a
rhythmic form, acquires the dynamic quality needed for those things
which take part in the world's eternal pageantry.
Take the following doggerel:
Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November.
The metre is there, and it simulates the movement of life. But it
finds no synchronous response in the metre of our heart-beats; it has
not in its centre the living idea which creates for itself an
indivisible unity. It is like a bag which is convenient, and not like
a body which is inevitable.
This truth, implicit in our own works of art, gives us the clue to the
mystery of creation. We find that the endless rhythms of the world are
not merely constructive; they strike our own heart-strings and produce
music.
Therefore it is we feel that this world is a creation; that in its
centre there is a living idea which reveals itself in an eternal
symphony, played on innumerable instruments, all keeping perfect time.
We know that this great world-verse, that runs from sky to sky, is not
made for the mere enumeration of facts--it is not "Thirty days hath
September"--it has its direct revelation in our delight. That delight
gives us the key to the truth of existence; it is personality acting
upon personalities through incessant manifestations. The solicitor
does not sing to his client, but the bridegroom sings to his bride.
And when our soul is stirred by the song, we know it claims no fees
from us; but it brings the tribute of love and a call from the
bridegroom.
It may be said that in pictorial and other arts there are some designs
that are purely decorative and apparently have no living and inner
ideal to express. But this cannot be true. These decorations carry the
emotional motive of the artist, which says: "I find joy in my
creation; it is good." All the language of joy is beauty. It is
necessary to note, however, that joy is not pleasure, and beauty not
mere prettiness. Joy is the outcome of detachment from self and lives
in freedom of spirit. Beauty is that profound expression of reality
which satisfies our hearts without any other allurements but its own
ultimate value. When in some pure moments of ecstasy we realise this
in the world around us, we see the world, not as merely existing, but
as decorated in its forms, sounds, colours and lines; we feel in our
hearts that there is One who through all things proclaims: "I have joy
in my creation."
That is why the Sanskrit verse has given us for the essential elements
of a picture, not only the manifoldness of forms and the unity of
their proportions, but also _bhavah_, the emotional idea.
It is needless to say that upon a mere expression of emotion--even the
best expression of it--no criterion of art can rest. The following
poem is described by the poet as "An earnest Suit to his unkind
Mistress":
And wilt thou leave me thus?
Say nay, say nay, for shame!
To save thee from the blame
Of all my grief and grame.
And wilt thou leave me thus?
Say nay! say nay!
I am sure the poet would not be offended if I expressed my doubts
about the earnestness of his appeal, or the truth of his avowed
necessity. He is responsible for the lyric and not for the sentiment,
which is mere material. The fire assumes different colours according
to the fuel used; but we do not discuss the fuel, only the flames. A
lyric is indefinably more than the sentiment expressed in it, as a
rose is more than its substance. Let us take a poem in which the
earnestness of sentiment is truer and deeper than the one I have
quoted above:
The sun,
Closing his benediction,
Sinks, and the darkening air
Thrills with the sense of the triumphing night,--
Night with her train of stars
And her great gift of sleep.
So be my passing!
My task accomplished and the long day done,
My wages taken, and in my heart
Some late lark singing,
Let me be gathered to the quiet West,
The sundown splendid and serene,
Death.
The sentiment expressed in this poem is a subject for a psychologist.
But for a poem the subject is completely merged in its poetry, like
carbon in a living plant which the lover of plants ignores, leaving it
for a charcoal-burner to seek.
This is why, when some storm of feeling sweeps across the country, art
is under a disadvantage. In such an atmosphere the boisterous passion
breaks through the cordon of harmony and thrusts itself forward as the
subject, which with its bulk and pressure dethrones the unity of
creation. For a similar reason most of the hymns used in churches
suffer from lack of poetry. For in them the deliberate subject,
assuming the first importance, benumbs or kills the poem. Most
patriotic poems have the same deficiency. They are like hill streams
born of sudden showers, which are more proud of their rocky beds than
of their water currents; in them the athletic and arrogant subject
takes it for granted that the poem is there to give it occasion to
display its powers. The subject is the material wealth for the sake of
which poetry should never be tempted to barter her soul, even though
the temptation should come in the name and shape of public good or
some usefulness. Between the artist and his art must be that perfect
detachment which is the pure medium of love. He must never make use of
this love except for its own perfect expression.
In everyday life our personality moves in a narrow circle of immediate
self-interest. And therefore our feelings and events, within that
short range, become prominent subjects for ourselves. In their
vehement self-assertion they ignore their unity with the All. They
rise up like obstructions and obscure their own background. But art
gives our personality the disinterested freedom of the eternal, there
to find it in its true perspective. To see our own home in flames is
not to see fire in its verity. But the fire in the stars is the fire
in the heart of the Infinite; there, it is the script of creation.
Matthew Arnold, in his poem addressed to a nightingale, sings:
Hark! ah, the nightingale--
The tawny-throated!
Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst!
What triumph! hark!--what pain!
But pain, when met within the boundaries of limited reality, repels
and hurts; it is discordant with the narrow scope of life. But the
pain of some great martyrdom has the detachment of eternity. It
appears in all its majesty, harmonious in the context of everlasting
life; like the thunder-flash in the stormy sky, not on the laboratory
wire. Pain on that scale has its harmony in great love; for by hurting
love it reveals the infinity of love in all its truth and beauty. On
the other hand, the pain involved in business insolvency is
discordant; it kills and consumes till nothing remains but ashes.
The poet sings again:
How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves!
Eternal Passion!
Eternal Pain!
And the truth of pain in eternity has been sung by those Vedic poets
who had said, "From joy has come forth all creation." They say:
Sa tapas tapatva sarvam asrajata Yadidam kincha.
(God from the heat of his pain created all that there is.)
The sacrifice, which is in the heart of creation, is both joy and pain
at the same moment. Of this sings a village mystic in Bengal:
My eyes drown in the darkness of joy,
My heart, like a lotus, closes its petals in the rapture of the
dark night.
That song speaks of a joy which is deep like the blue sea, endless
like the blue sky; which has the magnificence of the night, and in its
limitless darkness enfolds the radiant worlds in the awfulness of
peace; it is the unfathomed joy in which all sufferings are made one.
A poet of mediaeval India tells us about his source of inspiration in a
poem containing a question and an answer:
Where were your songs, my bird, when you spent your nights in the nest?
Was not all your pleasure stored therein?
What makes you lose your heart to the sky, the sky that is limitless?
The bird answers:
I had my pleasure while I rested within bounds.
When I soared into the limitless, I found my songs!
To detach the individual idea from its confinement of everyday facts
and to give its soaring wings the freedom of the universal: this is
the function of poetry. The ambition of Macbeth, the jealousy of
Othello, would be at best sensational in police court proceedings; but
in Shakespeare's dramas they are carried among the flaming
constellations where creation throbs with Eternal Passion, Eternal
Pain.