Chapter II: The Primitive Sources of Art

“The secret, mysterious relations of the human heart to the strange nature around it, have not yet come to an end. In its eloquent silence, this latter still speaks to the heart just as it did a thousand years ago; and what was told in the very gray of antiquity is understood to-day as easily as then. For this reason it is that the legend of nature ever remains the inexhaustible resource of the poet in his intercourse with his people.”

--Wagner, in “Der Freischütz in Paris,” _Art Life and Theories_, p. 99.

=Evolution of the arts.=--The primitive hymns sung in honor of a God and accompanied by interpretative dancing. How the various fine arts are differentiated from this historic basis. The same law of evolution applying to all expressions of life evident in the arts. A generic unity in the primitive basis, sometimes wanting in the later differentiated forms.

=The original inspiration of art.=--Significance in the fact that all art springs first from religion. Profound seriousness of early art. This religious earnestness persisting in all great art. Thus deep meaning in the primitive sources from which art springs.

=The character of early art.=--Antecedent to written literature a great storehouse of popular thought, feeling and imagination which we call mythology. The process by which this is developed, accumulated and handed down from generation to generation. Value of the product as a condensed and refined result of long ages of human life. Compare in value with great literary masterpieces produced by individual geniuses.

Vitality of mythology, due to the closeness of primitive man to Nature and the simple things of human life. Evidence in the spontaneous metaphorical character of all early language: Illustrations.

The truth in mythology, due to a sound reaction on the world. Contrast the truth of incident with the truth of character. Aristotle’s view of poetry as truer than history. The true and the false fairy-tale: a mere jumble of adventure contrasted with a portrayal of character naturally unfolding in relation to circumstance and law.

Universality of mythology. The few, great, simple elements that make up human life in all times and places. Tendency to hark back to these from the conventions and artificialities of civilization. Constant expression of these in primitive art: compare the Brunhild story. Thus ethical depth in all the gathered-up result of early life. Simple but clear recognition of the great laws of life.

Natural but inevitable art in the great expressions of early life. Characteristics of that art in comparison with the form of later masterpieces.

=The ethical value of mythology.=--The moral plane of primitive life in comparison with later civilization. Thus elements in mythology below the level of our ethical standards of to-day. Yet moral development proceeding not only from the lower to the higher, but from the simple to the complex. Compare the complication of ethical situations and standards in our life. Difficulty in distinguishing good and evil. Expression of this in Ibsen and Goethe. Contrasting simplicity of primitive mythology: its simple and clear opposition of good and evil. Usual representation of good as conquering. Illustrations in both Greek and northern legends. Thus mythology presenting the basal moral principles that should be clearly recognized before the literature is studied that portrays the ethical subtleties and complications of modern life.

A further ethical element in primitive mythology: good not always conquering; but when defeated, going down with colors flying, thus making of defeat the noblest of moral victories. Compare in the Prometheus legend; the story of Beowulf.

=The relation of mythology to later art.=--The need of the late artist to saturate himself in the springs of the race life: compare in Tennyson and Wagner. The use of mythology and religion in Greek sculpture; Renaissance painting; poetry; music.

=Important types of primitive material.=--The three sources of early material drawn from most largely by European art: (1) Hebraic stories; (2) Greek and Latin mythology; (3) Norse legends. The complementary character of these three bodies of material. The Hebraic stories as presenting the deepest recognition of moral law and purpose. Greek mythology as beautiful and artistic. Norse stories as most deeply human and at the same time the ethnic background from which our art springs.

Thus the value of primitive mythology and religion: (1) as sources of later art; (2) as inspiration of art to-day; (3) as valuable permanently in education.

ILLUSTRATIONS

“Art rests upon a kind of religious sense: it is deeply and ineradicably in earnest. Thus it is that Art so willingly goes hand in hand with Religion.”

--Goethe, _Maxims and Reflections_, p. 174.

“The essence of the Scandinavian, as indeed of all pagan mythologies, we found to be recognition of the divineness of nature; sincere communion of man with the mysterious invisible powers visibly seen at work in the world round him. This, I should say, is more sincerely done in the Scandinavian than in any mythology I know. Sincerity is the great character of it. Superior sincerity (far superior) consoles us for the total want of old Grecian grace. Sincerity, I think, is better than grace. I feel that these old northmen were looking into nature with open eye and soul most earnest, honest; childlike, and yet manlike; with a great-hearted simplicity and depth and freshness, in a true, loving, admiring, unfearing way.”

--Carlyle, _Heroes and Hero-Worship_, p. 30.

“When imagination incessantly escapes from reality, and does not abandon the simplicity of nature in its wanderings: then and then only the mind and the senses, the receptive force and the plastic force, are developed in that happy equilibrium which is the soul of the beautiful and the condition of humanity.”

--Schiller, _Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical_, p. 106.

“The law of simplicity and naïvety holds good of all fine art; for it is quite possible to be at once simple and sublime.”

--Schopenhauer, _The Art of Literature_, p. 31.

“To speak out once for all, man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and _he is only completely a man when he plays_.”

--Schiller, _Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical_, p. 71.

“Ah!--if you would and could but hear and see our _true_ Freischütz,--you might feel the anxiety that now oppresses me, in the form of a friendly appreciation on your own part of the peculiarity of that spiritual life, which belongs to the German nation as a birthright; you would look kindly upon the silent attraction that draws the German away from the life of his large cities,--wretched and clumsily imitative of foreign influences, as it is,--and takes him back to nature; attracts him to the solitude of the forests, that he may there re-awaken those emotions for which your language has not even a word,--but which those mystic, clear tones of our Weber explain to us as thoroughly as your exquisite decorations and enervating music must make them lifeless and irrecognizable for you.”

--Wagner, in “Der Freischütz in Paris,” _Art Life and Theories_, pp. 106, 107.

“You remember the fancy of Plato’s, of a man who had grown to maturity in some dark distance, and was brought on a sudden into the upper air to see the sun rise. What would his wonder be, his rapt astonishment at the sight we daily witness with indifference! With the free open sense of a child, yet with the ripe faculty of a man, his whole heart would be kindled by that sight, he would discern it well to be godlike, his soul would fall down in worship before it. Now, just such a childlike greatness was in the primitive nations. The first pagan thinker among rude men, the first man that began to think, was precisely this child-man of Plato’s. Simple, open as a child, yet with the depth and strength of a man. Nature had as yet no name to him; he had not yet united under a name the infinite variety of sights, sounds, shapes and motions, which we now collectively name universe, nature, or the like,--and so with a name dismiss it from us. To the wild deep-hearted man all was yet new, not veiled under names or formulas; it stood naked, flashing-in on him there, beautiful, awful, unspeakable. Nature was to this man, what to the thinker and prophet it forever is, _preter_-natural. This green flowery rock-built earth, the trees, the mountains, rivers, many-sounding seas;--that great deep sea of azure that swims overhead; the wind sweeping through it; the black cloud fashioning itself together, now pouring out fire, now hail and rain; what _is_ it? Ay, what? At bottom we do not yet know; we can never know at all. It is not by our superior insight that we escape the difficulty; it is by our superior levity, our inattention, our _want_ of insight. It is by _not_ thinking that we cease to wonder at it. Hardened round us, encasing wholly every notion we form, is a wrappage of traditions, hearsays; mere _words_. We call that fire of the black thunder cloud “electricity,” and lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out of glass and silk; but _what_ is it? What made it? Whence comes it? Whither goes it? Science has done much for us; but it is a poor science that would hide from us the great deep sacred infinitude of Nescience, whither we can never penetrate, on which all science swims as a mere superficial film. This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, _magical_ and more, to whosoever will _think_ of it.”

--Carlyle, _Heroes and Hero-Worship_, pp. 7, 8.

TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION

1. Compare, in ethical vitality and artistic beauty, primitive mythology and later masterpieces.

2. To what extent do the different arts depend upon primitive mythology and religion as sources for their material?

3. What is the relative value, for the understanding of European art, of Greek and Norse mythology?

4. Compare, in ethical vitality and artistic beauty, Tennyson’s _Passing of Arthur_ and the concluding portion of _Beowulf_.

5. Why is the late artist led so frequently to saturate himself with the expressions of early life?

6. What is the relative ethical value of Hebrew stories and Norse myths?

7. From what early sources does Renaissance painting chiefly draw?

8. Compare the ethical plane in Greek and Norse mythology with that achieved in later civilization.

9. From what historic sources does English poetry chiefly draw?

10. What is the value of primitive mythology for the education of children?

REFERENCES

Anderson, _Norse Mythology_; _The Younger Edda_. Brown, _The Fine Arts_. Bulfinch, _The Age of Chivalry_; _The Age of Fable_. Carlyle, _The Hero as Divinity_. Cox, _Introduction to the Science of Comparative Mythology_; _The Mythology of the Aryan Nations_. Donaldson, _Theatre of the Greeks_. Fairbanks, _The Mythology of Greece and Rome_. Gayley, _Classic Myths in English Literature_. Goldziher, _Mythology among the Hebrews_. Grosse, _The Beginnings of Art_. Guerber, _Myths of Greece and Rome_; _Myths of Northern Lands_. Gummere, _The Beginnings of Poetry_; _Handbook of Poetics_. Mabie, _Short Studies in Literature_. Malory, _Le Morte Darthur_. Parry, _The Evolution of the Art of Music_. Posnett, _Comparative Literature_. Shairp, _Poetic Interpretation of Nature_. Wagner, _Art Life and Theories of_.