VI

It was necessary in the first place firmly to apprehend the truth that

the final end of all art is the presentation of a spiritual content;

it is necessary in the next place to remove confusions by considering

the special circumstances of the several arts.

Each art has its own vehicle of presentation. What it can present and

how it must present it, depends upon the nature of this vehicle. Thus,

though architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry, meet upon

the common ground of spiritualised experience--though the works of art

produced by the architect, sculptor, painter, musician, poet, emanate

from the spiritual nature of the race, are coloured by the spiritual

nature of the men who make them, and express what is spiritual in

humanity under concrete forms invented for them by the artist--yet it

is certain that all of these arts do not deal exactly with the same

portions of this common material in the same way or with the same

results. Each has its own department. Each exhibits qualities of

strength and weakness special to itself. To define these several

departments, to explain the relation of these several vehicles

of presentation to the common subject-matter, is the next step in

criticism.

* * * * *

Of the fine arts, architecture alone subserves utility. We build for

use. But the geometrical proportions which the architect observes,

contain the element of beauty and powerfully influence the soul. Into

the language of arch and aisle and colonnade, of cupola and façade and

pediment, of spire and vault, the architect translates emotion, vague

perhaps but deep, mute but unmistakable. When we say that a building

is sublime or graceful, frivolous or stern, we mean that sublimity

or grace, frivolity or sternness, is inherent in it. The emotions

connected with these qualities are inspired in us when we contemplate

it, and are presented to us by its form. Whether the architect

deliberately aimed at the sublime or graceful--whether the dignified

serenity of the Athenian genius sought to express itself in the

Parthenon, and the mysticism of mediæval Christianity in the gloom of

Chartres Cathedral--whether it was Renaissance paganism which gave its

mundane pomp and glory to S. Peter's, and the refined selfishness of

royalty its specious splendour to the palace of Versailles--need not

be curiously questioned. The fact that we are impelled to raise these

points, that architecture more almost than any art connects itself

indissolubly with the life, the character, the moral being of a nation

and an epoch, proves that we are justified in bringing it beneath

our general definition of the arts. In a great measure because it

subserves utility, and is therefore dependent upon the necessities of

life, does architecture present to us through form the human spirit.

Comparing the palace built by Giulio Romano for the Dukes of Mantua

with the contemporary castle of a German prince, we cannot fail at

once to comprehend the difference of spiritual conditions, as these

displayed themselves in daily life, which then separated Italy from

the Teutonic nations. But this is not all. Spiritual quality in

the architect himself finds clear expression in his work. Coldness

combined with violence marks Brunelleschi's churches; a certain

suavity and well-bred taste the work of Bramante; while Michelangelo

exhibits wayward energy in his Library of S. Lorenzo, and Amadeo

self-abandonment to fancy in his Lombard chapels. I have chosen

examples from one nation and one epoch in order that the point I seek

to make, the demonstration of a spiritual quality in buildings, may be

fairly stated.

* * * * *

Sculpture and painting distinguish themselves from the other fine

arts by the imitation of concrete existences in nature. They copy the

bodies of men and animals, the aspects of the world around us, and the

handiwork of men. Yet, in so far as they are rightly arts, they do

not make imitation an object in itself. The grapes of Zeuxis at which

birds pecked, the painted dog at which a cat's hair bristles--if such

grapes or such a dog were ever put on canvas--are but evidences of the

artist's skill, not of his faculty as artist. These two plastic, or,

as I prefer to call them, figurative arts, use their imitation of

the external world for the expression, the presentation of internal,

spiritual things. The human form is for them the outward symbol of the

inner human spirit, and their power of presenting spirit is limited by

the means at their disposal.

Sculpture employs stone, wood, clay, the precious metals, to model

forms, detached and independent, or raised upon a flat surface

in relief. Its domain is the whole range of human character and

consciousness, in so far as these can be indicated by fixed facial

expression, by physical type, and by attitude. If we dwell for an

instant on the greatest historical epoch of sculpture, we shall

understand the domain of this art in its range and limitation. At a

certain point of Greek development the Hellenic Pantheon began to be

translated by the sculptors into statues; and when the genius of the

Greeks expired in Rome, the cycle of their psychological conceptions

had been exhaustively presented through this medium. During that long

period of time, the most delicate gradations of human personality,

divinised, idealised, were presented to the contemplation of the

consciousness which gave them being, in appropriate types. Strength

and swiftness, massive force and airy lightness, contemplative repose

and active energy, voluptuous softness and refined grace, intellectual

sublimity and lascivious seductiveness--the whole rhythm of qualities

which can be typified by bodily form--were analysed, selected,

combined in various degrees, to incarnate the religious conceptions of

Zeus, Aphrodite, Herakles, Dionysus, Pallas, Fauns and Satyrs, Nymphs

of woods and waves, Tritons, the genius of Death, heroes and hunters,

lawgivers and poets, presiding deities of minor functions, man's

lustful appetites and sensual needs. All that men think, or do, or

are, or wish for, or imagine in this world, had found exact corporeal

equivalents. Not physiognomy alone, but all the portions of the body

upon which the habits of the animating soul are wont to stamp

themselves, were studied and employed as symbolism. Uranian Aphrodite

was distinguished from her Pandemic sister by chastened lust-repelling

loveliness. The muscles of Herakles were more ponderous than the tense

sinews of Achilles. The Hermes of the palæstra bore a torso of

majestic depth; the Hermes, who carried messages from heaven, had

limbs alert for movement. The brows of Zeus inspired awe; the breasts

of Dionysus breathed delight.

A race accustomed, as the Greeks were, to read this symbolism,

accustomed, as the Greeks were, to note the individuality of naked

form, had no difficulty in interpreting the language of sculpture.

Nor is there now much difficulty in the task. Our surest guide to

the subject of a basrelief or statue is study of the physical type

considered as symbolical of spiritual quality. From the fragment of

a torso the true critic can say whether it belongs to the athletic or

the erotic species. A limb of Bacchus differs from a limb of Poseidon.

The whole psychological conception of Aphrodite Pandemos enters into

every muscle, every joint, no less than into her physiognomy, her

hair, her attitude.

There is, however, a limit to the domain of sculpture. This art deals

most successfully with personified generalities. It is also strong in

the presentation of incarnate character. But when it attempts to tell

a story, we often seek in vain its meaning. Battles of Amazons or

Centaurs upon basreliefs, indeed, are unmistakable. The subject is

indicated here by some external sign. The group of Laocoon appeals

at once to a reader of Virgil, and the divine vengeance of Leto's

children upon Niobe is manifest in the Uffizzi marbles. But who are

the several heroes of the Æginetan pediment, and what was the subject

of the Pheidian statues on the Parthenon? Do the three graceful

figures of a basrelief which exists at Naples and in the Villa Albani,

represent Orpheus, Hermes, and Eurydice, or Antiope and her two sons?

Was the winged and sworded genius upon the Ephesus column meant for a

genius of Death or a genius of Love?

This dimness of significance indicates the limitation of sculpture,

and inclines some of those who feel its charm to assert that the

sculptor seeks to convey no intellectual meaning, that he is satisfied

with the creation of beautiful form. There is sense in this revolt

against the faith which holds that art is nothing but a mode of

spiritual presentation. Truly the artist aims at producing beauty, is

satisfied if he conveys delight. But it is impossible to escape from

the certainty that, while he is creating forms of beauty, he means

something; and that something, that theme for which he finds the form,

is part of the world's spiritual heritage. Only the crudest works of

plastic art, capricci and arabesques, have no intellectual content;

and even these are good in so far as they convey the playfulness of

fancy.

Painting employs colours upon surfaces--walls, panels, canvas. What

has been said about sculpture will apply in a great measure to this

art. The human form, the world around us, the works of man's hands,

are represented in painting, not for their own sake merely, but with

a view to bringing thought, feeling, action, home to the consciousness

of the spectator from the artist's consciousness on which they have

been impressed. Painting can tell a story better than sculpture, can

represent more complicated feelings, can suggest thoughts of a subtler

intricacy. Through colour, it can play, like music, directly on

powerful but vague emotion. It is deficient in fulness and roundness

of concrete reality. A statue stands before us, the soul incarnate in

ideal form, fixed and frozen for eternity. The picture is a reflection

cast upon a magic glass; not less permanent, but reduced to a shadow

of reality. To follow these distinctions farther would be alien from

the present purpose. It is enough to repeat that, within their several

spheres, according to their several strengths and weaknesses, both

sculpture and painting present the spirit to us only as the spirit

shows itself immersed in things of sense. The light of a lamp enclosed

within an alabaster vase is still lamplight, though shorn of lustre

and toned to coloured softness. Even thus the spirit, immersed in

things of sense presented to us by the figurative arts, is still

spirit, though diminished in its intellectual clearness and invested

with hues not its own. To fashion that alabaster form of art with

utmost skill, to make it beautiful, to render it transparent, is the

artist's function. But he will have failed of the highest if the

light within burns dim, or if he gives the world a lamp in which no

spiritual flame is lighted.

* * * * *

Music transports us to a different region. It imitates nothing. It

uses pure sound, and sound of the most wholly artificial kind--so

artificial that the musical sounds of one race are unmusical, and

therefore unintelligible, to another. Like architecture, music relies

upon mathematical proportions. Unlike architecture, music serves no

utility. It is the purest art of pleasure--the truest paradise and

playground of the spirit. It has less power than painting, even less

power than sculpture, to tell a story or to communicate an idea. For

we must remember that when music is married to words, the words, and

not the music, reach our thinking faculty. And yet, in spite of all,

music presents man's spirit to itself through form. The domain of the

spirit over which music reigns, is emotion--not defined emotion, not

feeling even so defined as jealousy or anger--but those broad bases of

man's being out of which emotions spring, defining themselves through

action into this or that set type of feeling. Architecture, we have

noticed, is so connected with specific modes of human existence, that

from its main examples we can reconstruct the life of men who used

it. Sculpture and painting, by limiting their presentation to the

imitation of external things, have all the help which experience

and, association render. The mere artificiality of music's vehicle

separates it from life and makes its message untranslatable. Yet, as I

have already pointed out, this very disability under which it labours

is the secret of its extraordinary potency. Nothing intervenes between

the musical work of art and the fibres of the sentient being it

immediately thrills. We do not seek to say what music means. We feel

the music. And if a man should pretend that the music has not passed

beyond his ears, has communicated nothing but a musical delight, he

simply tells us that he has not felt music. The ancients on this point

were wiser than some moderns when, without pretending to assign an

intellectual significance to music, they held it for an axiom that

one type of music bred one type of character, another type another.

A change in the music of a state, wrote Plato, will be followed by

changes in its constitution. It is of the utmost importance, said

Aristotle, to provide in education for the use of the ennobling and

the fortifying moods. These philosophers knew that music creates a

spiritual world, in which the spirit cannot live and move without

contracting habits of emotion. In this vagueness of significance but

intensity of feeling lies the magic of music. A melody occurs to the

composer, which he certainly connects with no act of the reason, which

he is probably unconscious of connecting with any movement of his

feeling, but which nevertheless is the form in sound of an emotional

mood. When he reflects upon the melody secreted thus impromptu, he

is aware, as we learn from his own lips, that this work has

correspondence with emotion. Beethoven calls one symphony Heroic,

another Pastoral; of the opening of another he says, 'Fate knocks at

the door.' Mozart sets comic words to the mass-music of a friend, in

order to mark his sense of its inaptitude for religious sentiment. All

composers use phrases like Maestoso, Pomposo, Allegro, Lagrimoso, Con

Fuoco, to express the general complexion of the mood their music ought

to represent.

* * * * *

Before passing to poetry, it may be well to turn aside and consider

two subordinate arts, which deserve a place in any system of

æsthetics. These are dancing and acting. Dancing uses the living human

form, and presents feeling or action, the passions and the deeds of

men, in artificially educated movements of the body. The element of

beauty it possesses, independently of the beauty of the dancer, is

rhythm. Acting or the art of mimicry presents the same subject-matter,

no longer under the conditions of fixed rhythm but as an ideal

reproduction of reality. The actor is what he represents, and the

element of beauty in his art is perfection of realisation. It is his

duty as an artist to show us Orestes or Othello, not perhaps exactly

as Othello and Orestes were, but as the essence of their tragedies,

ideally incorporate in action, ought to be. The actor can do this

in dumb show. Some of the greatest actors of the ancient world were

mimes. But he usually interprets a poet's thought, and attempts to

present an artistic conception in a secondary form of art, which has

for its advantage his own personality in play.

* * * * *

The last of the fine arts is literature; or, in the narrower sphere

of which it will be well to speak here only, is poetry. Poetry employs

words in fixed rhythms, which we call metres. Only a small portion of

its effect is derived from the beauty of its sound. It appeals to the

sense of hearing far less immediately than music does. It makes no

appeal to the eyesight, and takes no help from the beauty of colour.

It produces no tangible object. But language being the storehouse

of all human experience, language being the medium whereby spirit

communicates with spirit in affairs of life, the vehicle which

transmits to us the thoughts and feelings of the past, and on which we

rely for continuing our present to the future, it follows that, of all

the arts, poetry soars highest, flies widest, and is most at home in

the region of the spirit. What poetry lacks of sensuous fulness, it

more than balances by intellectual intensity. Its significance is

unmistakable, because it employs the very material men use in their

exchange of thoughts and correspondence of emotions. To the bounds of

its empire there is no end. It embraces in its own more abstract

being all the arts. By words it does the work in turn of architecture,

sculpture, painting, music. It is the metaphysic of the fine arts.

Philosophy finds place in poetry; and life itself, refined to its last

utterance, hangs trembling on this thread which joins our earth

to heaven, this bridge between experience and the realms where

unattainable and imperceptible will have no meaning.

If we are right in defining art as the manifestation of the human

spirit to man by man in beautiful form, poetry, more incontestably

than any other art, fulfils this definition and enables us to gauge

its accuracy. For words are the spirit, manifested to itself in

symbols with no sensual alloy. Poetry is therefore the presentation,

through words, of life and all that life implies. Perception, emotion,

thought, action, find in descriptive, lyrical, reflective, dramatic,

and epical poetry their immediate apocalypse. In poetry we are no

longer puzzled with problems as to whether art has or has not of

necessity a spiritual content. There cannot be any poetry whatsoever

without a spiritual meaning of some sort: good or bad, moral,

immoral, or non-moral, obscure or lucid, noble or ignoble, slight or

weighty--such distinctions do not signify. In poetry we are not met by

questions whether the poet intended to convey a meaning when he made

it. Quite meaningless poetry (as some critics would fain find melody

quite meaningless, or a statue meaningless, or a Venetian picture

meaningless) is a contradiction in terms. In poetry, life, or a

portion of life, lives again, resuscitated and presented to our mental

faculty through art. The best poetry is that which reproduces the most

of life, or its intensest moments. Therefore the extensive species of

the drama and the epic, the intensive species of the lyric, have been

ever held in highest esteem. Only a half-crazy critic flaunts the

paradox that poetry is excellent in so far as it assimilates the

vagueness of music, or estimates a poet by his power of translating

sense upon the borderland of nonsense into melodious words. Where

poetry falls short in the comparison with other arts, is in the

quality of form-giving, in the quality of sensuous concreteness.

Poetry can only present forms to the mental eye and to the

intellectual sense, stimulate the physical senses by indirect

suggestion. Therefore dramatic poetry, the most complicated kind of

poetry, relies upon the actor; and lyrical poetry, the intensest kind

of poetry, seeks the aid of music. But these comparative deficiencies

are overbalanced, for all the highest purposes of art, by the

width and depth, the intelligibility and power, the flexibility and

multitudinous associations, of language. The other arts are limited in

what they utter. There is nothing which has entered into the life of

man which poetry cannot express. Poetry says everything in man's own

language to the mind. The other arts appeal imperatively, each in its

own region, to man's senses; and the mind receives art's message

by the help of symbols from the world of sense. Poetry lacks this

immediate appeal to sense. But the elixir which it offers to the mind,

its quintessence extracted from all things of sense, reacts through

intellectual perception upon all the faculties that make men what they

are.