Destiny have done to him?" asks Maeterlinck. Fate we suppose would
have had no power over him, if he had calmly reasoned over the
terrible circumstances in which he found himself involved, and if he
preserved his equanimity to the end, as M. Aurelius would have done.
Does this prove more than that the two men may have had very different
temperaments? But, individuality cannot be made to agree with theory,
and can be tabulated in no _science_ book of humanity. When
Maeterlinck says, "Hamlet's ignorance puts the seal on his
unhappiness," we may well ask ignorance of what? Was it ignorance of
the power of will? Certainly his intellect was greater than his will.
"He would have been greater had he been less great." The
"concentration of all the interests that belong to humanity" was in
Hamlet. Except the gifts of serenity and calmness, what did he lack?
And because he was not inwardly serene, Maeterlinck considers him
blind and ignorant. It is strange to connect blindness and ignorance
with a wit of intellectual keenness, an imagination of a poet, and the
unflinching questioning of the philosopher. Maeterlinck says: "Hamlet
thinks much but is by no means wise." How does Hamlet show he had not
the wisdom of life? Maeterlinck, no doubt, would dwell on his varying
moods, his subtle melancholy, his nature baffled by a supernatural
command. If he was not wise how strange he should have said so many
words of truest wisdom both of Life and Death, "If it be now, 'tis not
to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet
it will come; the readiness is all." We feel that Hamlet was "a being
with springs of thought and feeling and action deeper than we can
search." But the elements in his nature could not resolve themselves
into an inner life of calm. Therefore, according to Maeterlinck, he
was not wise, for he could not conquer his inner fatality--destiny in
himself. Maeterlinck's ideas are very beautiful, and he writes
delightfully, but his test of wisdom is questionable, for Hamlet's
thoughts have captured and invaded and influenced the best minds and
experiences of thinkers for centuries, How many a Shakespearean reader
has _felt_ that Hamlet is one of the very wisest of men as well as one
of the most lovable and attractive! Not his ignorance, but his wisdom
has borne the test of study and time. He did not bear the tragedy of
life when the supernatural entered it, with an unshaken soul, but
ourselves and the realities of life become clearer to us, the more we
read his thoughts. If "it is _we_ who are Hamlet," as Hazlitt said, it
is a great tribute to his universality--but a greater one to
ourselves. Indeed, we learn wisdom, not only from the lucubrations of
the serene and calm, or from Hamlet, magnificent in thought, acute and
playful, but also from Hamlet in his mortal struggles, in his deep
questionings, and his melancholy.
For wisdom "dwells not in the light alone
But in the darkness and the cloud."
IV.
AN IMPOSSIBLE PHILOSOPHY.
Philosophers talk of a philosophy of art, ancient and modern. But this
is unnecessary. Art is always art, or never art, as the case may be;
whether it is art in the days of Pheidias and Praxitiles, of Rafael,
or of Turner, or whether it is not art as in the days of its
degeneration in Greece and Italy. The outward expression of course,
changes, but it changes through individual and national aptitudes, not
from Chronology. That indispensable and indescribable thing which is
of the essence of art, is the same in all times and countries; for art
is ever young, there is no old, no new, and here is its essential
difference from science. In its essence, art is neither ancient or
modern, because it is incapable of progress, it is the expression of
an illimitable idea. We find before the Christian Era more beautiful
sculpture than after it. "Ah!" Victor Hugo says in his "William
Shakespeare," "You call yourself Dante, well! But that one calls
himself Homer. The beauty of art consists in not being susceptible of
improvement. A _chef d'oeuvre_ exists once and for ever. The first
Poet who arrives, arrives at the summit. From Pheidias to Rembrandt
there is no onward movement. A Savant may out-lustre a Savant, a Poet
never throws a Poet into the shade. Hippocrates is outrun, Archimides,
Paracelsus, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, La Place, Pindar not;
Pheidias not. Pascal, the Savant, is out-run, Pascal, the Writer, not.
There is movement in art, but not progress. The Frescoes of the
Sistine Chapel are absolutely nothing to the Metopes of the Parthenon.
Retrace your steps as much as you like from the Palace of Versailles
to the Castle of Heidelberg. From the Castle of Heidelberg to the
Notre Dame of Paris. From the Notre Dame to the Alhambra. From the
Alhambra to St. Sophia. From St. Sophia to the Coliseum. From the
Coliseum to the Propyleans. You may recede with ages, you do not
recede in art. The Pyramids and the Iliad stand on a fore plan.
Masterpieces have the same level--the Absolute. Once the Absolute is
reached, all is reached." And Schopenhauer says, "Only true works of
art have eternal youth and enduring power like nature and life
themselves. For they belong to no age, but to humanity--they cannot
grow old, but appear to us ever fresh and new, down to the latest
ages." Let us disclaim then any such word as Modern in relation to
art, particularly in relation to a philosophy which has to do with the
principle and essence of art. Is a Philosophy of Art possible? There
must be some who will think it is impossible. Have we a philosophy
that explains such an apparently simple thing as how one knows
anything--or of simple consciousness? Every philosopher that has
attempted to explain consciousness or how we know, takes refuge in
assumptions. At any Philosophical Society, if you ask for the
explanation of simple Consciousness, the avalanche of answers, each
differing from the other, will bewilder you. We know the outward
appearance of an object, of which we say that we know it, but what is
it _in itself_? Of that we are as much in the dark as we are of the
mind that knows. We say, each of us--I know, but in philosophy we are
not clear whether there is a thing that knows. We know we are
conscious, but we know nothing but that bare fact. We do not know how
an object swims into our consciousness. We do not know in the
scientific meaning of knowledge, how we come to know any object. Our
abysmal ignorance is this, that, of the thing known, and of that which
knows, and of the process of knowing, we know nothing. Who can tell us
how the movement of matter in the brain causes what we call thought.
Is it a cause, or merely a concurrence? When we can know this much,
then art may have a philosophy in which we can all agree. But, what
signs are there of even the beginnings of agreement? Certainly art is
not known as we know a science--perhaps we do not wish it ever to be
so. And the process of art is as indescribable as the process of
knowing. The advance we have made in philosophy seems to be this, that
whereas one philosopher after another according to his temperament has
thought he knew and has supplied us with hypotheses, and with
successive clues to the mystery of Being, and with many systems of
thought, we know now that none of them were adequate to supply even
initial steps, and so, for the most part, we fall back on the
knowledge that comes to us from living, from being, from knowing
appearances, from action, and from feeling; on that position in short
which Schopenhauer thought so despicable in a human being, _i.e._,
Refuge in the common sense attitude, and practically the giving up of
philosophy. The outcome of all the brain work on philosophy, since the
time of the Greeks, is that despair has entered into our minds of ever
achieving any knowledge of the _Real_, beneath and beyond Phenomena,
of a knowledge which _commands_ assent. Can even a Hegel write a
convincing Philosophy of Art--which implies a philosophy of complex
knowing and feeling; the feeling or emotion, or sensation, which
vibrates in music and colour and poetry. Could Hegel himself answer
this objection: that poetry eludes all tests--that that which you can
thoroughly explain in any way is not poetry, as Swinburne has said? It
is the inexplicable, then, which lies at the essence of art and it is
this, which if there is to be a Philosophy of Art must be its object.
The Inexplicable must be the object for the thinker with his orderly
sequences, his logical search for causes and results. It is not that
artistic feeling is too subtle as a subject; it is that we cannot get
hold of it at all. It is where? Here, in our emotion, our feeling, our
imagination; it flies from us and it comes again.
We do not ask for a philosophy of artistic _creations_ (whatever they
may be, in music, painting, or poetry), for a Philosophy of Art must
be a philosophy of the artistic _faculty_ that creates, and that
admires and understands and is absorbed in the creations. Philosophy
of Art is the philosophy of the creative--receptive qualities. We feel
these qualities, but we are not able to explain them, we cannot even
help another to feel them. The capacity comes from within. In
ourselves is a nameless response to Beauty. All art is an expression
of the artist thrown out towards a reproduction of some intuitive Idea
within, and what artist has ever satisfied his inward aspiration? Why
tell us that harmonies of art may be traced down to the simplest
lines, and, that at the root, lies an aim of edification? Simplify the
lines, as we will, let the basis of edification lie at the root of all
beauty, still the initial question remains unanswered. Why do certain
lines in a poem, curves of beauty in a statue, colour in a picture,
produce in us the feelings of beauty and delight? Why does
edification, if it is such, produce in me, the sense of a nameless
beauty?
There is that in us which we call the sense or Idea of beauty, and we
recognise it in works of art. What causes it in us? It is a sentiment,
but it is more than a sentiment. It is indissolubly connected with
expression, but it is more than expression. It raises all kinds of
associations, but it is more than associations. It thrills the nerves,
it stimulates the intellect, but it is more than a thrill, and other
than the intellect; it is treatment, but who can give laws for it? The
answer which explained the sense of beauty that we feel in works of
art would go straight to the revelation of the essence of beauty. All
that æsthetic teachers tell us is, that certain lines and colours and
arrangements are harmonious, and the philosopher fails in telling us
why they are harmonious. Does Hegel? Even if we are told there is an
Idea in us which is also an Idea in Nature, and, therefore, we can
understand the Idea, because We are It, does that throw light on what
the Idea really is? We are the human side of nature, and have the same
human difficulty as before in interpreting the Idea. Yet there is one
philosopher, as many readers must have felt, who has brought us nearer
to the interpretation of the artistic attitude, than any other, and
this is Schopenhauer on what we may call his mystical side in his book
of "Will and Idea." Perhaps most philosophers have erred in too rigid
an exclusion of feeling and imagination. It is impossible to help
feeling that his philosophy is largely moulded and created by his
feeling for art--and by his oriental mysticism. He can be curiously
prosaic at the same time, and this is another proof of the infinite
complexity of the mind:--he can be inartistic and unpoetic so that he
almost staggers us, as in his unillumining remarks on Landscape Art.
Vegetation, according to Schopenhauer's theory, is on a lower grade of
Will Objectification or Manifestation, than men and animals are, and
landscape painting is, therefore, altogether on a different plane.
Through his theories he loses the power of seeing that art is
concerned with treatment, with conception and expression, that beauty
depends not on the object, but on the treatment of the object.
But if we turn to his mystical theory of the Unconscious, we do get a
beautiful description of the absorption, that is, of the essence of
the artistic nature. He shows how the artist loses his own personality
in the object of contemplation, so completely that he identifies
himself mentally with it. Schopenhauer describes the artistic mind
when it is affected by the beautiful and the sublime. By losing all
sense of individuality and personality the artist is so possessed by
his object of thought and vision that he is absorbed in it and feels
the Idea, which it represents. This theory put into ordinary language,
is that the artist has in him the sense of a great Idea, such as
Beauty, and in his power of vision into objects of beauty he lives in
the sense of Beauty, which they represent. They represent to him the
Idea of Beauty itself. He lives in the Idea, is isolated in it,
absorbed in it, and by the privilege of genius can keep the sense of
the inner world of beauty and can produce beautiful works of art.
With joy and innocence, his whole soul absorbed in the beautiful forms
which he creates, he represents the ideas within him, and he loses the
sense of life and consciousness and Will, which, according to
Schopenhauer, is to be freed from constant demands, and strivings. He
is no longer bound to the wheel of desire--he has no personal
interests--no subjectivity.
He is a "pure will-less, time-less subject of knowledge" of "pure
knowing," which means complete absorption. He excites and suggests in
others the knowledge of the Ideas, which, beautiful objects represent.
Thus, through the works of Genius, others may reach an exalted frame
of mind, for, indeed, if we had not some artistic capacity for seeing
and feeling the Ideas which works of art represent, we should be
incapable of feeling or enjoying them. Perhaps, to make this abstract
thought clearer, it would be well to endeavour to find some examples
which will illustrate Schopenhauer's meaning. And Shakespeare offers
us incomparable examples. In his great tragedies--such as Othello, for
instance--we feel the knowledge or Idea of Life, in all its varied
human manifestations. Life, manifold, diverse, and abundant--and all
felt intuitively from within. Into his creations, Shakespeare pours
wide and overflowing knowledge of life; there is nothing narrow or
shut in, in his conceptions, but every character is alive in the great
sense, illustrating no narrow precept or trite morality, no cut and
dried scheme of a petty out-look on life, but the great morals of life
itself, as varied, as intangible and as inexplicable. He represents
this sense of varied life as manifested or objectified in his
creations, _i.e._, his characters. In _Othello_, for instance, we have
suggestions of love and jealousy that go down to the very depth of the
heart, through imaginative insight. And what we are brought close to,
is the vivid intense life of feeling that Shakespeare's creations
hold, and that we, ourselves, are capable of holding in our own
hearts. In this presentation, Shakespeare flashes the sense of life
with all its complexities of heart and brain into us. He does not
stand, as it were aside, as a commentator on the faults or weaknesses
of his characters, but he wafts us out of our circumscribed lives, out
of our limitation of thought, we know not how, into an atmosphere
quivering with passion, and felt by us all the keener, because we
recognise that the Poet never thought about _us_ at all. He excites
our sympathies by his own intuitions into the clashing ideas, which he
represents in the tragedy of a passionately loving and a jealous
nature. We learn truths, not of fact, but of life, focussed and
arranged as an artist arranges them, and permeated with that strange
sense of wonder which only Life can give. We feel the suggestion of an
inevitable dim something beyond, to explain the unexplainable, the
tragedy of character, and the tragedy of circumstance.
These make the great crises which break up lives. But the play goes on
with all the wild force of life itself. We feel the Idea of jealousv
forming itself in the noble nature of Othello, and bringing with it
anguish, the bitterer throes of life, those intense and hopeless
moments when struggle only makes the coil close tighter round the
victim. And after we have felt these, no nature remains quite the same
as before. There has entered into us a power of imaginative sympathy
which Art alone can inspire and only when it most inwardly reveals
Life itself. Of all things, the "Too late" and the "Might have been"
are the most sorrowful, and the divine possibility, cruelly realised
too late, gives the sharpest edge to Othello's mental agony, when the
whole truth of Desdemona's life--an "objectification" of loyalty,
love, and purity--is only revealed to him as she lies there dead
before him, killed by his own hand. All that it means rushes then like
a torrent on his soul; when Othello falls on the bed, by Desdemona's
body, the remorse and love that rend him with their talons are beyond
even Shakespeare's power of expression.
With groans scarcely uttered, Othello gives the only outlet possible
to the blinding, scathing storm of passions within him. There is one
touch, and only the intuitive artist of humanity and of life could
have known it, and given it--only one touch of consolation that could
be left him, and it comes to Othello as he is dying! "I kiss'd thee,
'ere I kill'd thee."
He fastens on this as a starving man fastens on a crumb of bread.
Why is this so true as to be almost intolerable--and yet so beautiful?
The characters have art necessities. Schiller said Art has its
categorical Imperatives--its _must_, and Shakespeare's characters
fulfil them. We feel how inevitable is their fate. They make their own
tragedy. The Poet compresses a Life Tragedy into a few pages of
manuscript. He, with the great sense and Idea of Human Life in him,
has to choose what he will portray, and the greater an artist the more
unerring is his selection. Then begins his own absorption in the
characters. Conception and expression come to him and come nobly and
spontaneously--and so spontaneous is his touch--so completely is he
absorbed in, and one with his characters--that it makes our rush of
sympathy as spontaneous as his own.
We feel the Identification of Shakespeare with Othello--with
Iago--with Desdemona He _is_ them _all_. _He_, William Shakespeare, is
"the will-less--time-less--subject of knowledge," living in "pure
knowing" and absorbed in the creations that represent his varied and
his intuitive knowledge of the great Idea of Life. And he excites and
suggests in us the same absorption in his creations--that is, if we
have the capacity to feel it.
It is a land of marvel and of mystery when all personal interests and
all consciousness of individual temperaments are lost, fall off from
us, and nothing remains, nothing exists to us but the love, the
betrayal, the agony, and the struggles of the noble nature, that "dies
upon a kiss." We are so much part of it, we become so possessed by it,
that we do not even know or feel that we are knowing or feeling.
Shakespeare _is_ Othello--and so are we, for the time being.
Shakespeare had the insight and power of genius, and so could retain
and reproduce his vision into the inner life. We alas! often cannot;
when the play is over we become again, a link in the chain that binds
us to the ordinary world of consciousness; the veil of illusion has
fallen again between us and real vision, we are again among the
shadows, with some general impressions more or less blurred, but the
vivid vision of the Poet which made us feel in the manifestations he
created, the very Idea of Life itself--has faded from us, we are no
longer in the Ideal world which is the real world.
We will take one other example, not of a play, but of a picture. The
Ascending Christ for instance at the Pitti Palace, Florence, by Fra
Bartolomeo.
It is well enough known, with the rapt faces of the four evangelists,
two on either side, gazing at their Master, with more of love for Him
than of understanding even then, in their expression. And the two
lovely little angels beneath, oblivious of everything but the
medallion they are holding, as is the way with old Masters. It is the
Christ alone that rivets our attention. The majestic, noble form, and
the sad, grave, beautiful eyes, revealing the Victor over Life and
Death, as He leaves the earth, triumphant indeed, but with the
solitariness of triumph of the Divine Man, Who knows now the awful
sorrow of humanity. It is Life human and divine in the Artist's
Conception or Idea. How absorbed must he have been in his
representation of this idea since he could suggest, and that
spontaneously, such problems of unutterable thoughts in those divine
eyes. The whole vision of humanity, as it might be in the mind of
Christ, and as it was felt in the artist's vision, is flashed into our
own minds--it is an artistic inspiration. Art suggests, it does not
explain. A picture focusses into a few inches of space a whole drama
of life and thought. We read it there, we feel it, and with no
conscious effort, for this is the gift of Genius.
And our absorption in a work of genius is untouched even by
consideration of technique. The methods of conveying the impression
may be noted afterwards, and we may delight in form and colour, and
light and shade. But it is the _result_ of all these that the art
lover feels so spontaneously and unconsciously. Learned art critics
and dealers will study the size of ears, the length of noses, the
breadth of thumbs, the manner of curving the little finger in order to
make sure of the authenticity of the artist. It is more important to
them than the enjoyment of the work of art itself. The lover of art
has a receptive nature, so that he does not concern himself much, with
these considerations, he does not even compare pictures. All _that_
may come afterwards, if he is a student, as well as a lover. But, at
all events, at first, he will find a response simply in his own soul
to the picture, which represents to him an idea. His own personality
and individuality leave him; unconsciously he is possessed. Instead of
getting to understand it, and attacking a work of art as if it were a
mathematical problem, he discovers that the picture is possessing him,
and that is what Schopenhauer means. Art has dæmonic power, it takes
hold of us wholly, and in proportion to our faculty of receptiveness
we understand it more or less fully. Architecture can hold us in this
way, sculpture can, a great city can with its architecture and
associations combined. Rome _does_. The very essence of the artistic
quality hangs round the old walls of Rome. Rome itself can teach us,
enter into us, possess us in a way of its own. The great bond of
similarity between all the arts is their having this _possessing_
power, this revelation of ideas, in whatever form they are expressed.
Rafael in the exquisite outline of the peasant girl's face, saw
without conscious effort the vision of maternity, as the perfect
form of the Madonna della Seggiola rose before him. This is
idealism--seeing the idea in the object of contemplation. And the
spectator, gazing at the picture, also without consciousness of
effort, is moved into "a passionate tenderness, which he knows not
whether he has given to heavenly beauty or earthly charm"; he feels
motherhood, and to quote again Mr. Henry James in "The Madonna of the
Future," he is intoxicated with the fragrance of the "tenderest
blossom of maternity that ever bloomed on earth." Critics may question
its manner, method and style; but the art lover feels its "graceful
humanity," he does not "praise, or qualify, or measure or explain, or
account for"--he is one with its loveliness--one with the purity and
the truth of the ideal which it represents.