Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

“That may be,” I answered, “but the tendency is there to make of life a complete expression.”

“That isn’t all I mean,” said Marian. “I want to know what is meant by the artistic temperament.”

“It is in great part,” I said, “a fiction and a false generalization. Many experts have not the artistic temperament, and many not-artists have it. As for artists going astray more often than others, if that be true—which I doubt—there’s a good reason for it. Artists are always very sensitive—naturally—and so, unless they are very strong-willed, too, they will be more easily swayed by outside events and their impressions.”

“I don’t believe every one has genius,” Virginia said. “I know some people who are perfectly stupid, and don’t understand anything.”

“That is scarcely possible,” I answered, “if they are human beings.”

“Do you mean to say,” asked Henry, “that you know any utterly selfish person?”

“Yes,” she answered; “or, at least, people who are not interested in anything worth while outside themselves; people who can walk through an art gallery and not look at the pictures; who love nothing beautiful.”

“I may be one of those,” said Ruth, “for I do not care for pictures.”

“One’s genius might not be developed in that particular direction,” I said; “none of us are developed in all directions. But grant, at least, Virginia, that your most stupid people have undeveloped genius which might be awakened.”

“All right,” she said.

“Because if you don’t,” I answered, “I shall think your understanding of those people is very limited. Genius does not necessarily show itself in relation to art, to the sense of beauty. Genius is in the understanding a man must have to be a man. How could he have any relations with his fellows, any intercourse without some understanding?

“But there is one essential difference between the genius of the looker-on and the genius of the artist; it is that the artist creates, that he must have talent. No matter how much genius a man may have, if he does not or cannot express his genius, he is not an artist.”

“Do you think,” asked Marian, “that an artist knows himself to be a great genius?”

“I think,” I answered her, “that no man ever does a great thing unless he first believes he can do it.

“You remember, I once said that to understand life well one must be creative, one must do things, because life is forever creating. And so the genius who is an artist, who has talent, who creates, by that very creation understands better than other men. He who can draw a thing sees it better than he who cannot.”

“Yes,” said Virginia, “the fact that he can draw it proves that he sees it better.”

“And in learning to draw it,” I went on, “he came to see it better.”

“The great artist,” said Henry, “is one who expresses his idea perfectly.”

“Then,” Virginia said, “I wonder if I will ever get to be a great artist. For the thing I draw is never the thing that was in my mind.”

“Now,” said I, “you see the distinction between genius and talent. Genius is the power of understanding. Talent is the power of expression. A man may have very little to say, and yet say it wonderfully well. And another man may have much to say, and marvellous understanding of life, but not nearly so great power of expression. That is what Florence meant the other day, when she spoke of ‘Jenny Kissed Me,’ and of ‘Faust.’ But the man who expresses even the smallest thing well understands, at least, that thing. The power of expression itself implies understanding and a sense of unity and harmony. For no matter how well a man may be able to draw lines and objects, unless he understands composition—which is the knowledge of harmony and completeness—he cannot paint a good picture. And no matter how well a man may write English, however perfect his style may be, unless he understands something of life, of symmetry and structure, he cannot write a good book.”

Henry said: “Poe expressed himself very well. Was he a genius?”

“Now, stop,” I answered. “Don’t ask, ‘Was he a genius?’ Of course, he was that. We all have genius. The question is, how much?”

“It seems to me,” said Henry, “that in some way Poe was as great as Shakespeare.”

“Yes,” I said, “in some ways; and that is a very good example. Poe’s power of expression may have been as great in some ways as Shakespeare’s. But just think how immeasurably greater was Shakespeare’s genius, his understanding, and grasp of life!”

“Poe, for instance,” said Henry, “was a great mathematician, and used his deductions in his stories.”

The others told Henry this had nothing to do with his genius. They had a long talk on the relative genius—that is, understanding of life—of Poe and Hawthorne, and brought up many instances.

Marian said: “Was Milton a great genius?”

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I suppose he was,” she said, “but I don’t think he had a great understanding of human life.”

“Have you read ‘Paradise Lost’?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she answered.

“Then you must have noticed his wonderful sympathy with, and understanding of, the devil himself. He saw the tremendous contrasts of life, and understood them.”

“I must read that,” said Virginia, “if he wrote with understanding sympathy of the devil. Don’t you think,” she asked, “that those who write books for children generally understand life very well, and have true genius?”

“Perhaps,” I said. “What do you think? How about those artists who write for children in the Sunday comic papers?”

Now I spoke of the artist in us all, who sees things ever as distinct wholes, who picks out, as he goes through life, complete visions of beauty to reproduce in his mind. These visions have to be distant, separate from himself. For life is so distracting and full of contradictory passions, so vast, and, as we know it in our limited lives, so incomplete, that we must get rid of it, we must separate ourselves, with our universal and unfinished relations, from the perfect and whole beauty which we wish to see in the artistic vision.

“You must have noticed,” I said, “and you have often heard, that far-off things are most beautiful. It is because our life, interwoven with endless distracting circumstances, does not seem to touch those far-off things.”

“Autumn leaves,” said Marian, “far off look so beautiful, and near by are full of imperfections.”

Virginia said: “And perfection of detail in a picture, as if the things were very near and real, does not make it better. It does not seem good. You know Millet’s ‘Sower,’ at the Metropolitan Museum: when you go close, it is all streaks.”

“This dimness of detail is for two reasons, in most great pictures,” I said. “First, the artist often paints a picture with the intention of having it looked upon from a distance. Second, in the perfect whole, detail is merged. All must blend and harmonize.”

“I never thought of that,” said Virginia. “The too precise details in a picture attract a person’s attention, and want to be looked at for their own sake, and so break in on the harmony and wholeness of the picture.”

“Yes, just so,” I answered. I spoke again of the sublime lie of art—the untruth which is most true. I said: “I once had an English teacher who used to tell us that in art one was not to give the truth, but the impression of truth. Truths often break in and destroy the impression of that whole truth.

“Now,” I asked, “what is the one, the only object, of art in the world?”

We decided, all of us, that it was complete understanding and sympathy. Art is a symbol of that completeness for which our whole life longs. One of them—I think it was Henry—said its aim was progress. I said it was rather the picturing and prophecy of the end and aim of progress itself.

They had probably heard, I said, of “art for art’s sake,” the cant of those who believed mere form and expression to be the whole of art, and left out of account the thing expressed. Virginia misunderstood me to say: “Art for its own sake,” quite a different thing. So, thinking I would agree with her, she quoted, with disapproval, an article by Kenyon Cox, saying: “He who worked for gold sold himself, and he who worked for fame was utterly lost.” I said I quite agreed with him; that unless one worked first of all for the sake of expression, and the joy of it, he was no artist.

“And, meanwhile, his wife and children might be starving,” she answered.

“It is praiseworthy,” I said, “to support one’s wife and children, but it has nothing to do with art.”

I said a man might well use his expression to earn himself bread; that it was necessary and natural, and had often even spurred a man on to work, but that it could not be his first aim if he were an artist. We spoke of Shakespeare, and of Goldsmith, and of their writing under the stress of poverty. I pointed out how, nevertheless, these men wrote of the things they loved and understood, and how the joy of work must have been their first aim.

I spoke of play, and of art being like play; of the old saying: “Work first, then play.”

Henry said that was meant for little children.

I told them how scientists tried to explain play by calling it a preparation for work. Virginia liked that idea. I said that I thought work a preparation for play, that play, interplay, the joy of creation, was life itself. The children easily understood play in this sense of the beloved work. Virginia said her work was all play. I reminded her that she might have to work hard, but she would do it gladly for the sake of that play. Marian said her school-work was almost always play. Ruth said: “I think play and work are the same thing, and that we human beings have made the distinction of words.”

Art cannot rightly have any object but whole representation, but expression of the understanding of life. I said that whenever art tried to be moral—which was rather the business of philosophy—it lost thereby; that whenever one took sides for a thing, one took sides against something else, and had lost the completeness and symmetry of art.

Henry said he thought art ought to teach a lesson.

I answered: “Art ought to show us the whole of life, which is beautiful.”

Virginia spoke of Dickens’ novels, and said she thought those were best in which he wrote with an object, and against an abuse.

I answered her that they were best and also worst. They were best because he described in them the life which he knew and loved. But the parts of these very good novels which were directed against any people or institutions were always bad, inartistic, incongruous. As an example I quoted the dreary dissertations on Chancery in “Bleak House,” and those who had read it immediately agreed with me.

Henry and Virginia questioned me several times concerning ugly pictures which were considered “good art.” I told them that a subject not usually thought beautiful, an old, old woman, for instance, might be made beautiful by the artist’s insight. I did not go into details, however, to-day. A great many ugly pictures, such as the work of Teniers, Steen, and others, seem to me very bad art. But now I spoke to them of Wiertz, the Belgian, who seems to me no artist at all, and concerning whom they had both questioned me. I took as an example of bad partisan art his picture of Napoleon in hell, with crowds of poor people making faces at him, and pelting him with brimstone. Such a subject in itself is impossible to art. What could be more unintelligent, petty, scattered and ugly!

Ruth said she did not see why an artist need understand human nature especially well unless he was one who treated of human nature; that a musician, for instance, need not do so. I began my answer, but gave way to a burst of enthusiasm from Henry.

How, said he, could a musician not understand human nature, he who knew how to rouse us to the depths with his notes, who could move us to tears? Surely he knew what he was doing, and the heart which he stirred.

Ruth said she did not see why Shakespeare showed greater understanding or completeness in his work than Emerson, for instance. Henry thought the same. I tried to show them that Emerson in his essays was not an artist—or, at least, not nearly so much of an artist as a philosopher—that he strove to reach the good, the complete harmony of the universe, but that he did not give us the vision of a present, finished, concrete beauty. They both maintained that he did. Henry spoke of the essays on “Friendship” and “Manners.”

“Have you read the essay on ‘Manners’?” he asked.

“Yes, several times,” I said.

“And doesn’t it give you a picture?” he asked. Ruth added: “And the one on friendship. I seem to see that friend.”

I owned I did not feel so. I said it gave me an inspiration, an ideal of conduct, not a picture. “Mind you,” I said, “when I call Emerson more philosopher than artist, I am not saying philosophy is less than art.”

“No, I understand that,” said Ruth, “but I, for one, when I read Shakespeare, get not any especial feeling of the completeness or whole understanding of what I read. Emerson uplifts me much more, and gives me power to do things.”

“That may be,” I said. “You may rate either as high or as low as you please, but their genius is different.”

I pointed out, too, how in Emerson’s poetry, with its rare, beautiful couplets, and its many lapses, the genius and philosopher far outshone the man of artistic talent. We had not time to go into detail, or to quote largely, and I did not wish to speak much of literary criticism and methods at this meeting, for I had planned to do so at the next, so I think Henry and Ruth went home unconvinced of the artistic superiority of Shakespeare over Emerson. One might almost as profitably argue who was a greater man, Beethoven or Napoleon!

Marian asked me whether George Eliot was an artist or a philosopher. I told her I thought she was both, but that I believed she would have been more of an artist had she been less a philosopher.

I asked Alfred why he had kept so silent. Did he agree with us?

“Yes,” he said, “I do. It is very interesting. But I don’t talk unless I disagree.”

EIGHTH MEETING

Henry came several days ago to tell me he would be unable to attend this meeting, as he was going to Washington. “I will think of the subject we were going to discuss,” he said.

I opened the meeting with Marian’s paper:

“At a meeting of the Seekers, held on November 22d, we discussed the relation which our previous discussions had to Art. We set up a standard for judging Art, and agreed that a good piece of Art is one that makes us feel that unity and completeness for which we are striving. Two things are necessary, a good thought and good workmanship. We also said that details in Art, particularly in painting, are bad because they distract us, and we don’t see the picture as a whole. I was very glad to have a standard by which to judge Art.”

I said to her that I hardly thought she could already have that standard.

“No,” she said, “but I am going to get it.”

Then I read Virginia’s paper:

“Art as it is connected with our previous discussions:

“When an artist dies he leaves behind him all the beautiful ideas he has put on his canvas, or in his books. To be a true artist one must possess an idea of the beautiful, and also be sympathetic with all his fellow beings. Not only humans, but flowers and beasts also. A person who possesses these qualities is a genius. But to be an artist one must also have talent. Either he must have a talent for writing, music or painting, or he cannot express the genius within himself.

“This sympathy, this love, is something we cannot explain. And so we call it the soul, because it is a puzzle, and we do not know what it is. Everybody possesses some of it, even the most heartless. It may be the love of a plant or dumb animal, but still it is love for a fellow creature. So all of us possess genius, though few of us are artists.”

Next I read Alfred’s paper:

“On Sunday, the 22d, we discussed the subject of art. We said that for a thing to be high art it must be pleasing to the eye or ear, and complete in itself; that is, the artist or composer must so construct his work that it will fully express some idea. In painting a picture an artist may choose to convey some gruesome idea, and do so perfectly, but that will not be high art, because it will be displeasing to the eye.

“It may also be applied to books; if the author tells something so well that it gives the reader a perfect picture of the thought, the writing may be considered a good one.”

I said I could tell by Alfred’s paper that he had not grasped just what was the object of art. The children repeated that it symbolized the unity for which we longed. I asked, did they see why we took up this subject of art at all, what it had to do with religion? Marian had said, before the others came, that it was the expression of our religion. Virginia now used almost the same words, and Alfred, speaking after her, said it in such a way as to make me believe he understood.

I replied, this was true; art was the service of religion, the expression of that sense of oneness with the world which can speak only in creations, because life is an endless creation. Beauty, I said, seemed to me the perfect symbol of truth, of completeness and symmetry. I quoted the lines from Keats:

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

“The subject of beauty always puzzles me,” said Ruth, “because beautiful things so often are not good. Take the ocean, for instance. It is so beautiful; it gives us above all things the sense of immensity and harmony. And yet, think how cruel it is! Think of the shipwrecks and the suffering!”

“It is not the ocean’s fault,” said Virginia. “That is because we are adventurous and go out in ships.”

“Yes,” I answered, “and we are willing to take the chance and pay the price. But surely you do not think of the ocean as cruel, as either good or bad. Beauty is not in anything, but is in the vision of him who beholds it. It is a momentary vision of the completeness of life.”

“Beauty is always a thing of moments. Don’t you think so?” asked Marian. “It depends upon you. At one time you may see a thing as beautiful, and at another time not.”

“Surely,” I said.

“Why is it,” she asked, “that some people cannot appreciate beauty in one special form, either in music, or painting, or poetry?”

I said: “Our senses are channels through which we get the feeling of beauty. But no matter whence the feeling comes, it is that same joy. One man finds it in a picture, and another in a symphony, and another in the woods. Do you know those two lines by William Blake:

‘Who knows but every bird that cleaves the air
Is an immense world of delight closed by our senses five.’

“There may be other senses than ours which bring the same message. Helen Keller hears and sees it with her fingers in her world of darkness.

“Throughout the centuries,” I went on, “in all beginnings and primitive times, art was the expression of religion. The first rude drawings were religious symbols; drama and the dance and music were religious; and all the oldest literature in the world, the Vedas, the Bible, and the old Scandinavian myths were religious books: the Greek drama, and—can you think of others?”

They brought forth many instances; Marian mentioned the English miracle plays, and Virginia spoke of American Indian drawings, saying, however, that they were more often used for communication. I showed her how the first rude figures of animals, the totems, for instance, were also used as religious symbols.

I spoke, too, of the way in which art related us with great minds in ages past. “Ruskin mentions that,” said Ruth and Marian.

“But it is a one-sided relation,” I said, “for we cannot speak to them.”

“I wish we could,” answered Marian. “I so often wish I could ask them questions.”

We said again how hard it was, when asked, to explain to outsiders the purpose of our club. Ruth said: “When I try to tell people, they answer: ‘Oh, yes, I suppose you just talk nonsense, and have a good time.’”

Marian said people wondered that she was willing to stay in-doors on Sunday afternoons.

Virginia said: “I don’t tell any one of it.”

I suggested to them that if one got a perfect standard of beauty in art, it might be all one would need as a moral standard to make one’s life beautiful in the same way.

Now we spoke of the novel. I said I had noticed that last week when I told them of completeness in novels and plays, they seemed not to know just what I meant. Florence said she knew. “It means,” she said, “that every word and every person and every incident must count. It must not be like life, where distracting and unimportant things are always happening.”

“Just so,” I answered. She had learned all that from brother Arthur.

I went over it more explicitly, citing instances, and then told them that we were all of us story-tellers, in the sense that we tried to make every story complete.

“In telling anything that has happened,” I said, “we naturally leave out anything that has no effect on the story.”

“And,” added Florence, “we unconsciously make up little details that help to fill out the story.”

“Now,” said Marian, “I think I must forgive some one I know, who is always exaggerating.”

“I know some one who does it all the time,” said Florence.

“I don’t think that makes it right, though,” Ruth protested.

“No,” I answered, “not right, but not wrong, either. When we realize the artist’s tendency in us all to turn everything into a story, first, we will not judge people harshly for doing it, and, second, we will be careful when we are trying to tell the truth, not to allow ourselves to be cheated by the artist in us.”

“I think,” said Virginia, “people often miss-tell an event, and get it all twisted, because they really forget what was said.”

“Of course,” answered Ruth, “one is not to blame for forgetting.”

I said: “I think that most of us, unconsciously, are story-tellers in both senses. Many of us are constantly telling ourselves stories about ourselves.”

“Oh, yes,” said Ruth, Marian and Florence. They gave me a hint of those wonderful romancings. Marian is always beautiful in her stories, “as in a real novel,” she said. Florence said she was always as homely “as a mud fence,” but I could see by her expression that none the less she was always triumphant. Virginia in her stories was accomplished and a great artist.

I forgot to be one of them for a moment. I said: “Until very lately I, too, used to tell myself stories about myself.”

“I still do it,” said Ruth.

On the subject of unimportant details and characters, we had a long talk. We spoke of Dickens’ many characters and interwoven stories, and Virginia maintained that many had nothing to do with the plot, that they were soon forgotten, and there seemed to be no special reason for them. Marian saw, however, that at times six or seven plots might be woven into a single story. Instead of fitting the standard to Dickens, they fitted Dickens to the standard, and found, indeed, that “The Tale of Two Cities,” which had least characters and distracting stories, was most interesting, and well constructed. Virginia spoke of “Lorna Doone,” and we all agreed with her that the long descriptions of how things were done—fishing, for instance—which the author gave because he was interested in the country, and which had nothing whatever to do with characters and story, made it monotonous and almost spoiled an otherwise delightful book.

Virginia said: “He even tells what pattern of suit he wore when he went fishing.”

They found the same fault with Scott. Indeed, none of them likes Scott. The criticisms were amusing. His blonde heroines were always weak, his dark ones strong, but none of them interesting. Ivanhoe was a flabby nobody.

We spoke of Shakespeare, of the part his clowns played in the story.

Marian said: “I see in what sense his plays are complete, and I feel in him wonderful understanding of men and great sympathy. But he doesn’t uplift me.”

“Do you want to be uplifted into the lofty nothing?” I asked. “Is not humanity good enough for you?”

We spoke, too, of “Little Women,” a much beloved book. We noticed how Louisa Alcott had changed the story to make it a story.

I pointed out to them what it was that made melodrama; namely, the intrusion of events coming from without, not springing from the reaction of characters upon one another, or the intrinsic situation—such as robbers, marvellous rescues, or fortunes left by distant relatives. We had a long talk on this subject, and the children told many stories. But I doubt whether all finally quite understood the distinction, which is often hard to make. Is the coming and going of the ships in “The Merchant of Venice” melodramatic? I told them I should not call it so, since it was bound up with the whole story, almost like the persons. I said that the melodramatic was more like life than the purely dramatic, because in life, with its thousand relations, outside events made changes constantly. But the story was more true if it contained within itself its own complete world, like a miniature universe. Each work of art must represent the whole. “And this is why,” I said, “in a really well-built play or novel, a trained person usually can foretell the outcome. Suppose that we knew everything in the universe, and all the relations of all things to each other, we should be able to foretell every event.”

“Perhaps that is why novels grow tiresome,” said Ruth, “for we get to know just how they will end.”

I spoke of the author leaving out his one-sided moral verdict of his own story. After representing life, the artist should not judge; first, because his judgment is usually partial and incomplete, and breaks the unity; second, because he thereby shows lack of understanding and respect for his reader, who might be trusted to draw his own conclusions. Hawthorne’s stories are often spoiled by his moral comment at the end. At this point I spoke of missing Henry. I am certain he would not have agreed as readily as the others.

I said moral discussions were in place in books on moral subjects, not in artistic works. I mentioned especially the worth, ability and good influence of the writers of so-called “muckraking” articles in the magazines. Virginia waxed enthusiastic. She asked why should Dickens not write of abuses in his novels, when by so doing he actually brought about social reforms? I said that for the social reformer they were right, but not for the artist. I warned her not to confuse the two.

Here Marian spoke of Milton, and of his giving up his artistic work for years to serve his country in politics.

One could not wish he had done otherwise. A man’s life comes before art, before any other expression. I said many of the “muckrakers” were men who might have been artists, but who felt called to work in this more direct way for the beauty of life, because they could not tolerate its ugliness. But they were not artists; they were something different.

“That may be so,” answered Virginia, “but just the same I admire those brave, muckraking men more than artists.”

“They are often more admirable,” I said, “but that does not make them artists. If you admire a soldier more than a poet, that does not make him a poet.”

They spoke of the reformers working for the present, the artist for all time.

“But,” said Virginia, “the result of the reformer’s work will last for all time, too.”

I spoke again of “for” and “against” in books, of how we felt that writer to be the greatest who understood and loved the villains as well as the heroes, and saw the strength and weakness of both alike. They all agreed to this, and quoted plenteous incidents; among others, the outcast in “Bob, Son of Battle,” which they had all read and loved. “How I cried over him!” said Marian; and Ruth and Virginia had cried, too. Here Alfred came in with his enthusiasm.

“Didn’t you cry over it?” asked Marian.

“No,” he answered, “but I almost did.”

“Oh, of course not,” she said. “I forgot you are a boy.”

“He wouldn’t dare admit it, even if he did,” I said.

Virginia said she usually loved the bad characters more than the good ones.

We saw how the false simplicity of villains and heroes—as represented in the poor novel—of all good and all bad, and their appropriate punishment and reward, was untrue to life and human nature. Surely, they said, all men had in them both good and bad. Scott, they insisted, made this mistake.

I spoke of the psychological and the dramatic methods in novels. I said to Marian:

“George Eliot, of whom you spoke the other day, is an example of the psychological method.” I explained the two methods to them, the one going into minute details of motive and thought, the other suggesting to us the motive and thought through the action itself.

Marian does not like George Eliot. She greatly prefers Dickens and Thackeray.

I said I liked George Eliot, but still I preferred the dramatic method for several reasons. I thought that the passions, moods and changes of the soul were too complicated ever to be put down by any author so as to give the impression of truth.

Ruth agreed with me, and said: “Perhaps that is why I like plays better.”

To put down how a man would act under any particular circumstances is much more convincing than to tell how he would feel; for life always expresses itself in creative action. I said: “A reader likes to be trusted and understood by the author. He would rather imagine the minute details of feeling as part of the whole swing of action, to fill out the picture for himself, to be recognized by the author as a fellow genius.”

Ruth said novels tired her, because most novelists had only three or four characters which they used over and over again. I answered her that this was because they wrote out of their own lives, and their characters were usually but different sides of themselves. I said many great painters used only few models. Virginia said she had remarked that many painters always painted faces that resembled themselves.

At this point, just as I was beginning to speak of wit and humor, Virginia’s brother came into the room—in this case, for many reasons, an unavoidable interruption. I had so far always kept these two hours closed against all visitors. Although he sat down in the adjoining room, and was warned to listen and not to talk, his presence made them at once self-conscious and superficial. I asked them whether they knew any distinction between wit and humor.

Virginia answered: “I always think of a witty person as one who has good thoughts and expresses them cleverly, and of a humorous person as a boor and booby, like that one in the next room.”

After the laugh had passed, I said: “Virginia, I can think of only one expression that will fit you just now, and that is slang. I think you are talking——”

“Through my hat?”

“Yes, exactly. This to me seems the difference between wit and humor: The witty man is he who says or writes clever, funny things, just to show how clever and keen he is. Conceits are witty, because wit is essentially conceited. It may be very interesting and entertaining, but it always makes you think of the author rather than of his characters. It is always superficial, the trick of words, and it doesn’t keep well through the ages. A pun, for instance, is always witty.”

“Ough!” said Virginia, “not always!”

“Bernard Shaw,” I said, “is a good example of wit. Humor is the understanding of the petty foibles, humors and lovable weaknesses of men. Remember that the word humor really means mood or state of the blood, that it is a word very like the word ‘human.’ Humor is always human. It is the large, genial way of looking at life of him who sees how little men are, and how great they are at the same time. It is a sense of absurd contradictions, of the unity of utterly unlike things, almost a parody of completeness. All humor, all wit, everything funny is an incongruous bringing together of things that do not seem to belong together.”

“I suppose,” Marian said, “that is why we laugh when we see some one fall in the street?”

“Yes,” said Virginia, “for their heads and the sidewalk don’t belong together.”

“Now, seriously,” asked Marian, “what makes me want to laugh when I see any one fall, especially a grown person? And I must laugh, especially if it is a fat person, no matter how hard I may try to be polite.”

“That’s because you expect a grown person and a fat person to be dignified, and to fall is very undignified. Imagine his high hat flying one way, his gold-headed cane another, and his heels in the air. But if a little boy falls you don’t laugh, because little boys are meant to fall.”

“When my mother falls,” Ruth said, “I can’t keep from laughing, though I hate to see her fall.”

“But everything funny grows stale very soon,” said Marian.

“That is,” I answered, “because when we get used to a combination it no longer seems incongruous.”

“Well,” asked Marian, “when you laugh at people because they are boors and funny, why is that?”

“That is,” I said, “because you feel yourself to be so vastly superior.”

“Is it?” she asked. “I suppose so.”

“And next time you want to laugh at any one,” I said mock-seriously, “just think of it first, that you are considering how superior you are.”

She seemed greatly impressed and quite cast down by this remark.

I said: “Perhaps a good distinction to make between wit and humor is that wit laughs at people and humor laughs with them.”

“Isn’t satire wit?” asked Marian.

I thought a moment. “Yes, surely,” I answered.

As I spoke again of the relation of beauty to our subject, Ruth said:

“What has all this about wit and humor to do with our subject?”

“Not much,” I said, “except that it shows how the spirit of fun has a part in harmony; and that it shows humor to be understanding and a human thing. But it is interesting for itself, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she answered, “it is very interesting.”

NINTH MEETING

Ruth was unable to come.

Not a single paper this week! When all but Florence and Marian had arrived without papers, I began to be disappointed; but when they came in, I said:

“I am going to give up the club.”

You should have seen Marian’s serious face. “Why?” she exclaimed.

“Because you haven’t brought me any paper.”

They all were too busy. But Florence had given Henry a good little talk on the meeting he had missed.

I asked them whether they had enjoyed these meetings on art as much as the first meetings. They all said yes, quite as much. I spoke again of the relation of our idea to art. It seemed to them all that art was the expression of the religious ideal. Virginia said: “It relates us with others and gives us sympathy.” Henry said it was the action of religious feeling.

“Just as,” he added, “it is said one knows a man by his actions.”

“You know what I mean,” said I; “it might be well expressed in a single phrase that would stay in your minds. Art is the symbol of completeness. It must be in itself a tiny world, a miniature universe. Do you remember the delight you used to get when you were little, from a tiny doll’s house, from a little thing that seemed real, that seemed a small, perfect world in itself? This joy you get from every work of art, the joy of a complete world.”

“As in the novel,” said Marian, “which is not like real life, with its incompleteness and distraction, but has within itself all the people and all the things necessary to itself.”

I spoke again of the way in which I meant to discuss questions of conduct according to the rules of art. I said: “Life can be made beautiful and complete in the same way, and by learning these large laws we may avoid the pettiness of moral discussion. You, being a self, are the symbol of the whole Self.

“Now,” I continued, “we will speak of poetry, of painting, of all the arts, and you will see that the laws of all are the same laws. What is the difference between prose and poetry?”

They mentioned various differences, such as subject-matter, form, manner of treatment.

“The chief difference between prose and poetry,” I said, “is that poetry is written in poetry.”

That seemed an evident difference.

“Metre, rhyme, musical measure of the words are qualities of poetry alone.”

“But all poetry doesn’t rhyme,” said Virginia.

“No,” I answered, “but all poetry has metre. Tell me another difference. In what way does poetry affect you differently from prose?”

“I know what you mean,” said Florence. “You mean because it has metaphor and simile.”

“That, too, but something else.”

Marian answered, with some hesitation: “Poetry is emotional. It stirs your feelings more than prose.”

“That is what I meant,” I said; “it resembles music because it stirs you as much by the sound as by the sense. And just because it is more unreal and distant, it seems more real and close and complete in its grip. A thing must be far off to give us the sense of completeness and beauty. Music is to me the art of arts, because it expresses everything and defines nothing; because it is like life itself, rather than a description of life.” Henry assented enthusiastically. I went on: “You spoke of metaphor and simile. We find it not only in all poetry, but in all prose. And what is it but the relationing of things to one another, the likeness and the bond between things unlike? And so keen is it, so natural, so close to us, that we use it every day, we are poets every moment in this respect, for we hardly ever speak without using metaphor. We say a sharp look, a piercing look, and so use metaphor. Do you see?”

Marian said: “When we say in school, for instance, that our teacher looked daggers, we are using metaphor.”

“Yes,” I answered, “and even slang is often good metaphor.”

Alfred asked: “If you call a person a lemon, is that metaphorical?”

“Surely,” I said; “but I think it would hardly do in poetry, because it is too unsympathetic.”

“How about 23 skidoo?” asked Virginia. “Is that simile or metaphor?”

“That,” said I, “is less metaphor than nonsense.”

I said that in the modern play, which could not use the figurative language of poetry, the metaphor and simile were replaced by the symbol. I could not go into this, however, as none of them, except Florence, had read any modern plays. So I spoke of the fairy story, and how it often stood for something which was not itself. “Yes, like Brandt,” said Florence. I did not dwell on this point, but went on to the subject of taking sides in poetry. I said that good poetry could not possibly take sides; that all didactic and party poetry was poor.

“I don’t see that,” answered Henry.

“No,” said Florence, “he wouldn’t let me convince him of it the other day.”

Henry went on: “Take Whittier’s war-time poems; they were written with a purpose and taking sides.”

I said: “I don’t consider Whittier a great poet. But that’s not the point. His war-time poems are some of them good, perhaps, but the best are not partisan. A man may sing of freedom, and still not be partisan, as a man may sing of his native land, and need not therefore say mean things of his neighbor.”

“It seems to me,” said Henry, “that every work of art should have a purpose.”

“Surely,” I answered. “I never said it should not have a purpose. I said it should not take sides. Every work of art has the purpose of being beautiful, complete and true. So I suppose you might say that art is against ugliness. But ugliness is only a discord, a false vision which art overcomes with its beauty.”

“I understand,” said Henry. “You mean one might be for something without being against anything.”

“Yes,” I said, “one can be for completeness, for unity, for beauty, which includes all things. An artist pictures life; in telling a story he may see that some things lead to ruin and some to happiness, but he will not say he is for some and against others. He will stand far above them and see them all as they are, he will love them all, he will create a complete and individual world.”

Virginia said: “I suppose you don’t consider Burns a great poet.”

“Yes, I do,” I answered, “except in his didactic poems.”

“Well,” she said, “‘Scots wha’ ha’ wi’ Wallace bled’ is partisan.”

“No,” I answered, “it is martial, but it gives the foe his due. ‘Break proud Edward’s power.’ That, it seems to me, is a tribute to Edward.”

At first they dissented, but finally agreed with me that most martial poems—all great ones—give the enemy his due. Marian spoke, in this relation, of Homer.

We considered high-falutin style and books that are all climax, without rhythm and reservations of strength, unlike life, which is all heartbeats and pulsations. Florence told of a book which had “six climaxes on every page.” I spoke of the conventional phrases which mar style, because we feel them to be imitated.

“They are not original,” said Henry.

“No,” I answered; “and originality simply means truth in the writer.”

“We feel,” said Virginia, “that he didn’t take the trouble to think for himself.” Then she spoke of having been made, in school, to compare the like thoughts of different authors, and asked whether their being alike made them less original.

“No,” I answered, “for two might see life in the same way, each for himself.”

I went on to speak of music. “To me,” I said, “it seems the most perfect of arts, because it is in itself harmony, the very word we associate with this idea of completeness. I don’t know much of the laws of musical composition, but I know they are the laws of rhythm and harmony, the laws of all motion. Of course, it is figurative to speak of the music of the stars, and yet in a sense their motion is music, because it follows the laws of music. Music is the least definite of all arts, yet the most real and near. It arouses our emotions as nothing else can do.”

Most of them felt as I, that music was most gripping in its effects. Marian, however, did not, since she is not at all musical. I spoke of words and intellectual ideas in relation to music. Virginia said it made her feel glad to hear music, that she had to beat time. The others all enjoy music most when it has a literary annotation, either in opera, or in concerts with verbal explanations. At least they want to know the name of every melody. In this I said I agreed with them, because knowing the name immediately put me into the mood the composer wished, and saved me those first five minutes of uncertainty which every strange music awakens.

Henry said: “When I learn a new piece on the piano my teacher and I always talk it over. I have a piece called ‘Spring in the Wood.’ We say, ‘Now we are in the border of the wood, now we hear the water rippling far off, now there are the ferns at the edge.’”

We spoke of painting.

I explained to them the point of interest, the point around which all other lines, colors and interests must centre, to which all are made subordinate. Virginia said: “But it need not be in the centre of the picture.”

“No,” I answered, “it had better not, since that would be monotonous and stiff. But wherever it is, it makes itself a centre, and makes the picture a complete whole.”

Virginia told of the plan of completing the central figure in a sketch, and leaving the rest unfinished—as a substitute, as I showed her, for the effectiveness of color. All eyes should be directed to the central figure.

I went into technical details of lines, angles and motion, with help from Virginia, to show how color might express mood and action, as well as did the figures, and so would make the whole harmonious. Virginia spoke of “curly clouds” in a picture of a burial, made at the art school, where the lines of the clouds were too gay, and spoiled the solemn effect of vertical lines.

From balance of line we went on to balance of light and shade and color. First I explained to them—what most of them knew—the complementary colors, and the cycle of color; that a picture containing blue and orange, or green and red, has within itself all the color there is. Think of the hideousness of a blue and yellow or red and blue picture! “It would have to be toned down with the third color,” said Virginia.

I spoke of the literary intrusion into painting, of the necessity of a complete idea in the picture itself; the difference between illustration and art. A picture may have an illustrative name, but if it be complete, beautiful and satisfying without any name, it is not illustration.

What is excellent craftsmanship might be bad art.

Virginia and Marian spoke of some pictures in the Metropolitan Museum, which they had been told to admire, and could not; some of them pictures by Meissonnier, in which satins, silks and velvets were done to perfection. Henry spoke, too, of certain pictures of German monasteries which were painted for the purpose of picturing the life, with precise detail, and were not beautiful. I told them of the difference between art and craft. Art is a complete expression of life by one man. Craft is part of a big completeness, the work of one man which has a purpose in relation to the work of others; as a craftsman may make the cornice in a palace which an artist designed. The craftsman does a part, the artist plans the whole.

Marian said: “Sometimes some one says to me, ‘that picture is perfectly beautiful,’ and I can’t see it so. Then again I may think a picture beautiful, and another person will not. Why is that?”

“Because,” I said, “your taste, your standard, is different.”

“Is it just taste?” she asked.

“Taste with a reason,” I said, “even if you don’t know the reason.”

“I think,” said Virginia, “that when an artist expresses himself well, every one must realize it.”

“Not at all,” I said. “One has to be trained to understand pictures, as one has to be trained to see.” I told them of Turner, whose pictures look beautiful to some, and to others are mere blotches of color.

“A picture is not what it represents,” I said. “One must learn to see it. A proof of this is that babies, quite able to recognize objects, do not recognize pictures. And so some people are babies all their lives in relation to art.

“Now,” I asked, “do any of you think photographs artistic?”

I believe Henry was going to say he did, but was overwhelmed by the others. Alfred said: “In a photograph all the unimportant things are there with the important.”

Marian said that there, as in life, there was intrusion of inharmonious details.

The out-of-focus and blurred photograph sometimes is artistic, because of the lost details and the effect of distance; but, just therefore, it is untrue to fact.

Virginia said photographic art was bad art. She said: “My teacher gave a good example. If a fire-engine were tearing along the street, you would be so interested in that you would see nothing else. There might be crowds of people, but you would not notice them. But if a camera were to be snapped, they would all be in it and obscure the engine. You see only what is important, but the camera sees everything.”

“That is a good illustration,” I said. “And so you see we are story-tellers in vision as well as in narrative. We see things complete and dramatic, whether they are so or not, just as we must tell a complete story. Do you realize how all the arts are related, how they all have the same laws? And these, I believe, are the laws of life.

“Did you ever think of it, that the artist sees only with his eyes, whereas you see with your eyes, fingers, ears, with all your senses? You see a table square, high, hard, smooth, but an artist sees it only in perspective, from a certain point of view. To get completeness you must limit yourself, because you cannot see the universe. The drop of water is most complete and perfect when it is a limited, spherical drop, not when it is scattered abroad in mist.

“The artist,” I said, “is one who sees things beautiful, even when to others they do not seem so; and to see things beautiful is to see truth.”

None of the children disputed this much-disputed fact—for to youth it is obvious—so I myself had to answer the objections. I said: “One might say that in life many things are ugly, and these things are true, therefore to see these things as beautiful is not to see them truly. But we believe that the whole universe, altogether, could we know it, would be harmonious and beautiful; therefore to see things as beautiful is to see them in relation to that truth, and as symbols of that truth.”

Marian said: “We must believe that the whole universe is harmonious; anything else is unthinkable. We feel it in ourselves.”

“You mean, because we have the laws of harmony in our own nature?”

“Yes. The whole must be harmonious.”

We spoke of instances in which ugly things could be seen as beautiful. The empty lot across the street, with its boards, rubbish and shanties, is ugly; but at times, under certain conditions, and by shutting out a part with my hand, I see it as a beautiful wild landscape.

Marian said: “Near us are some poor, ugly houses, that I hate to see; but sometimes I see little children at the windows, who are so sweet and graceful they make the houses look beautiful.”

“There are a great many pictures,” said Virginia, “but I think there is not much art. Do you?”

“No,” I said. “To be a painter does not make one an artist. Do you remember hearing people make the criticism that a picture was pretty, but not beautiful? Prettiness in art is a sad fault, one that perhaps you, too, have found. But do you know just what it is?”

Virginia said she had often seen pictures that were just pretty, without character.