Freshness of Feeling.
The primary charm of art resides in the freshness of feeling which it
reveals and conveys. An art which discloses fatigue, weariness,
exhaustion of emotion, deadening of interest, has parted with its
magical spell; for vitality, emotion, passionate interest in the
experiences of life, devout acceptance of the facts of life, are the
prime characteristics of art in those moments when its veracity and
power are at the highest point. A great work of art may be tragic in
the view of life which it presents, but it must show no sign of the
succumbing of the spirit to the appalling facts with which it deals;
even in those cases in which, as in the tragedy of "King Lear," blind
fate seems relentlessly sovereign over human affairs, the artist must
disclose in his attitude and method a sustained energy of spirit.
Nothing shows so clearly a decline in creative force as a loss of
interest on the part of the artist in the subject or material with
which he deals.
That fresh bloom which lies on the very face of poetry, and in which
not only its obvious but its enduring charm resides, is the expression
of a feeling for nature, for life, and for the happenings which make
up the common lot, which keeps its earliest receptivity and
responsiveness. When a man ceases to care deeply for things, he ceases
to represent or interpret them with insight and power. The
preservation of feeling is, therefore, essential in all artistic work;
and when it is lost, the artist becomes an echo or an imitation of his
nobler self and work. It is the beautiful quality of the true art
instinct that it constantly sees and feels the familiar world with a
kind of childlike directness and delight. That which has become
commonplace to most men is as full of charm and novelty to the artist
as if it had just been created. He sees it with fresh eyes and feels
it with a fresh heart. To such a spirit nothing becomes stale and
hackneyed; everything remains new, fresh, and significant. It has
often been said that if it were not for the children the world would
lose the faith, the enthusiasm, the delight which constantly renew its
spirit and reinforce its courage. A world grown old in feeling would
be an exhausted world, incapable of production along spiritual or
artistic lines. Now, the artist is always a child in the eagerness of
his spirit and the freshness of his feeling; he retains the magical
power of seeing things habitually, and still seeing them freshly. Mr.
Lowell was walking with a friend along a country road when they came
upon a large building which bore the inscription, "Home for Incurable
Children." "They'll take me there some day," was the half-humorous
comment of a sensitive man, to whom life brought great sorrows, but
who retained to the very end a youthful buoyancy, courage, and faculty
of finding delight in common things.
It is a significant fact that the greatest men and women never lose
the qualities which are commonly associated with youth,--freshness of
feeling, zest for work, joy in life. Goethe at eighty-four studied the
problems of life with the same deep interest which he had felt in them
at thirty or forty; Tennyson's imagination showed some signs of waning
power in extreme old age, but the magic of feeling was still fresh in
his heart; Dr. Holmes carried his blithe spirit, his gayety and
spontaneity of wit, to the last year of his life; and Mr. Gladstone at
eighty-six was one of the most eager and aspiring men of his time.
Genius seems to be allied to immortal youth; and in this alliance
resides a large part of its power. For the man of genius does not
demonstrate his possession of that rare and elusive gift by seeing
things which have never been seen before, but by seeing with fresh
interest what men have seen so often that they have ceased to regard
it. Novelty is rarely characteristic of great works of art; on the
contrary, the facts of life which they set before us are familiar, and
the thoughts they convey by direct statement or by dramatic
illustration have always been haunting our minds. The secret of the
artist resides in the unwearied vitality which brings him to such
close quarters with life, and endows him with directness of sight and
freshness of feeling. Daisies have starred fields in Scotland since
men began to plough and reap, but Burns saw them as if they had sprung
from the ground for the first time; forgotten generations have seen
the lark rise and heard the cuckoo call in England, but to Wordsworth
the song from the upper sky and the notes from the thicket on the hill
were full of the music of the first morning. Shakespeare dealt with
old stories and constantly touched upon the most familiar things; but
with what new interest he invests both theme and illustration! One may
spend a lifetime in a country village, surrounded by people who are
apparently entirely uninteresting; but if one has the eye of a
novelist for the facts of life, the power to divine character, the
gift to catch the turn of speech, the trick of voice, the peculiarity
of manner, what resources, discoveries, and diversion are at hand! The
artist never has to search for material; it is always at hand. That it
is old, trite, stale to others, is of no consequence; it is always
fresh and significant to him.
This freshness of feeling is not in any way dependent on the character
of the materials upon which it plays; it is not an irresponsible
temperamental quality which seeks the joyful or comic facts of life
and ignores its sad and tragic aspects. The zest of spirit which one
finds in Shakespeare, for instance, is not a blind optimism
thoughtlessly escaping from the shadows into the sunshine. On the
contrary, it is drawn by a deep instinct to study the most perplexing
problems of character, and to drop its plummets into the blackest
abysses of experience. Literature deals habitually with the most
sombre side of the human lot, and finds its richest material in those
awful happenings which invest the history of every race with such
pathetic interest; and yet literature, in its great moments, overflows
with vitality, zest of spirit, freshness of spirit! There is no
contradiction in all this; for the vitality which pervades great art
is not dependent upon external conditions; it has its source in the
soul of the artist. It is the immortal quality in the human spirit
playing like sunshine on the hardest and most tragic facts of
experience. It often suggests no explanation of these facts; it is
content to present them with relentless veracity; but even when it
offers no solution of the tragic problem, the tireless interest which
it feels, the force with which it illustrates and describes, the power
of moral organisation and interpretation which it reveals, carry with
them the conviction that the spirit of man, however baffled and
beaten, is superior to all the accidents of fortune, and
indestructible even within the circle of the blackest fate. As
OEdipus, old, blind, and smitten, vanishes from our sight, we think
of him no longer as a great figure blasted by adverse fate, but as a
great soul smitten and scourged, and yet still invested with the
dignity of immortality. The dramatist, even when he throws no light on
the ultimate solution of the problem with which he is dealing, feels
so deeply and freshly, and discloses such sustained strength, that the
vitality with which the facts are exhibited and the question stated
affirms its superiority over all the adversities and catastrophes of
fortune.
This freshness of feeling, which is the gift of men and women of
genius, must be possessed in some measure by all who long to get the
most out of life and to develop their own inner resources. To retain
zest in work and delight in life we must keep freshness of feeling.
Its presence lends unfailing charm to its possessor; its loss involves
loss of the deepest personal charm. It is essential in all genuine
culture, because it sustains that interest in events, experience, and
opportunity upon which growth is largely conditioned; and there is no
more effective means of preserving and developing it than intimacy
with those who have invested all life with its charm. The great books
are reservoirs of this vitality. When our own interest begins to die
and the world turns gray and old in our sight, we have only to open
Homer, Shakespeare, Browning, and the flowers bloom again and the
skies are blue; and the experiences of life, however tragic, are
matched by a vitality which is sovereign over them all.