KUMAMOTO, June, 1893.
DEAR HENDRICK,--I am not quite sure that you are right about the
Oriental view of things. It is very difficult to understand at first.
It is not want of refinement or sensibility to beautiful things. It
is rather a tendency to silence and secrecy in regard to the highest
emotions. So that a cultivated Japanese never even speaks of his wife
and family, or hints of his fondness for them. Of course, our idea is
nobler and higher. But it is a question with me whether it cannot be,
and has not been, developed to excess. I think we have filled the whole
universe with an ideal of woman. Star-swarms and all cosmical glories
exist for us only in an infinity of passional pantheism. I suspect
that we see Nature especially through the beauty of woman. A splendid
tree, a fragrant bud, delicacy of petals, songs of birds, undulations
of hills, mobility of waters, sounds of foliage, murmur of breezes
and their caress, laughter of streamlets, even the gold light--do not
all these things remind us of woman? You might cite the ruggedness of
oaks and the grimness of crags as masculine. True, we have visions of
Nature as masculine--for rugged and mighty contrasts. But how enormously
preponderant is the eternal feminine! Even our language is a language of
gender,--in which I think the feminine predominates. But in our thought
the masculine at once suggests the feminine, and creates a new idea. All
precious things, too, remind us of what is not masculine, because "far
and from the uttermost coasts is the price of _her_."
Now the Oriental sees Nature in no such way. His language has no gender.
He does not think of a young girl when he sees a palm, nor of the
lines of a beautiful body when he sees the undulations of the hills.
Neither does he see Nature as masculine. He sees it as _neuter_. His
geographical nomenclature shows this. He sees things as they are. The
immediate inference would be that he finds less enjoyment in them. But
his art shows that he finds _more_. He sees in Nature much that we can't
see at all. He sees beauty in stones,--in common stones,--in clouds,
fogs, smoke, curling water, shapes of trees, shapes of insects. In
my friend's alcove is a stone. When you can learn that that stone is
more beautiful than a beautiful painting, you can begin to understand
that there is another way of seeing Nature. In my own garden there
are a number of large stones. Their value is seven hundred dollars.
No American would give five cents for them--no! he would not dream of
taking them as a gift--no! he would consider himself highly insulted by
the offer! Then why are they worth seven hundred dollars? Because they
are beautiful. You would say: "I can't see it!" You can't see it because
you see all Nature through the idea of woman. And it is just faintly
possible (I don't say certain) that our way--your way of seeing Nature
is all wrong. It is like peeping through an atmosphere which makes
everything iridescent and deflects the lines of forms.
Now, why do I suspect that our way of looking at Nature may not be the
highest,--besides the plain fact that it is not according to the Eternal
order of things? I suspect it because the evolution of the ideal has
been chiefly physical. It has not been an ideal of soul. Is the soul
of a woman more beautiful than that of a man--outside of maternal
tenderness? You have just had a divine glimpse of two souls--excuse the
personal question (for it is a highly important one): which seemed to
you the largest and deepest?--in which were the glories more profound
and radiant? And is it not essential that the woman-beauty of soul must
be the lesser; for its scope must be limited by its eternal duty. We
are in the presence, however, of the undeniable fact that we rarely get
glimpses of the higher possibilities of the man-soul. Life is too hard
and bitter. But in the twilight of every home one sees the woman-souls
glowing like fireflies. We think only of the lights we see. The circling
darknesses are opaque to us,--like burnt-out suns.
Reading over the list of things in your notebook I was impressed by
several facts. It is well to set down everything that impresses you.
But--I cannot help thinking that you do not look for the highest,--that
you miss a universe of beautiful things. The obtrusive, the eccentric,
the sharply bitter, the "Distorted Souls" as you call them, naturally
compel attention first,--just as in real life the forward, the selfish,
the aggressive, force themselves upon us. It is of the highest possible
value, as a means of self-preservation, to understand them. But I
suspect that it is of no value at all to draw them, to photograph them,
to give them artistic treatment _except in a contrast-study_. They are
not beautiful. They are not good. They are, using the word in the
Miltonic sense, obscene--like owls. On the other hand the beautiful
in life must be sought, and coaxed, and caressed to make it show its
colours. It does not appear very often spontaneously. Yet I feel
convinced it is all about us. It travels on railroads too, and lodges at
hotels. It fights for life against ugliness and wickedness and apathy
and selfishness: it is Ormuzd against Ahriman. Now what is the artist's
moral duty? (Of course he may take any subject he pleases and be great
in it.) But what is his duty in the eternal order of things, to art and
to ethics? Is it not to extract the gold from the ore,--the rubies and
emeralds from the rubble? I think it is--though many may laugh at me.
Thus newer and higher ideals are created. We advance only by new ideals.
I don't mean to say we should make statues of pure gold, or a table,
like that of some Caliph, out of a single emerald. But I think that in
modern life we should use the dross and slag only when their lightness,
worthlessness, or rudeness brings out in higher relief the light of the
pure jewel, the weight of the pure metal, the value of that which gives
the radiance or the gravity. And in the order of research I would seek
the lodes and veins first;--the rest is always easy to find and handle,
though requiring much scientific skill, of course, to use artistically.
There _is_ a world, I suppose, almost as barren as the Alkali Plains,
where convention has strangled all feeling, and where the development of
selfish capacities has choked the other growths. But either below this
world or above it there are Americas to discover--full of warmth, light,
and beauty--continents chained to each other by snow-peaks, watered by
Amazons and Mississippis.
Below, I think, more than above,--for the nearer to Nature, the nearer
to truth. And the value, artistically, of our high-pressure civilization
seems to me to be that its monstrosities and glooms and tragedies
infernal give an opportunity for the grandest contrasts ever made. What
I would pray you to do is "to put a lily in the mouth of Hell"--using
one of Carlyle's phrases. Then the petals of the lily will change into
pure light, like those of the Lotus of Amida Buddha....
Good-bye, with affectionate wishes,