Part 2

“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_.

III. THE RACE, THE EPOCH AND THE INDIVIDUAL IN ART

“We live in this world only that we may go onward without ceasing, a peculiar help in this direction being that one enlightens the other by communicating his ideas; in the sciences and fine arts there is always more to learn.”

--Mozart, in Kerst, _Mozart: The Man and the Artist_, p. 89.

=Determining forces behind art.=--So far we have considered the great common sources of art; now to turn to the causes giving unique characteristics to each work of art.

=The personal element.=--In art the great common basis of human life expressed only through the medium of personality; thus the character and experience of the artist always revealed in the work, and molding it. Compare Mozart and Beethoven in music; Fra Angelico and Fra Lippo Lippi in painting.

Compare Tennyson’s _Crossing the Bar_ and Browning’s _Epilogue to Asolando_. Differences in imagery, music, type of thought and feeling, general view of life. Yet these two poems coming from the same time and race. Complete revelation of Tennyson and Browning in these fragments.

Relation of the material given in biography to the self-confession in art. Compare the revelation of Andrea del Sarto in the traditional biography and in his painting. The expression of Chopin’s personality and experience in his music. Revelation of the artist even when the work is most objective and dramatic in character. Compare how it is possible to find Shakespeare behind his dramas.

The development of the artist revealed where works come from different periods of his life. Illustrations in Goethe, Wagner, Shakespeare; in the early and late _Pietà_ of Michael Angelo.

=The epoch.=--The forces of the time always molding the spirit of the individual artist. The epoch a complex of many forces, yet out of them a true “time-spirit” created. Effect of internal changes in a land; of the reception of foreign stimulus; of the natural growth and decay of the forces of life.

Different types of epoch: in production and preparation, faith and doubt, creation and criticism. The artist inevitably influenced by the spirit of the age, whether conscious of the fact or not. The two contrasting types of relation the artist may sustain to his time. Compare Emerson in relation to America’s civilization; Fra Angelico as an expression of the Renaissance. So compare Dante as a voice of the middle ages; Leonardo da Vinci in relation to the Renaissance. The common spirit in the Elizabethan dramatists. Wagner’s operas as an embodiment of modern life. Significance of the two dominant motives in modern painting.

Possible further to trace the development of an epoch through the art in which it is expressed. The half-circle through which every productive epoch tends to pass. This due to the birth, maturing and decay of the forces influencing life. Contrasting tendencies in the artists appearing on the upward and on the downward slope. Illustrations in Elizabethan drama and Renaissance painting.

=The race.=--The epoch but a moment in the life of a people. As the time-spirit finds varying expression in the different artists in which it is clothed, so the deeper, organic life of a race as beneath all the epochs characterizing its unfolding. Evidence in the fact that each race is apt to find its highest expression in one art. Compare sculpture in Greece; painting in Italy; music in Germany; the drama in England. Similarly every expression of a race revealing its spirit. Compare the coloring in Dutch and Italian painting; nature-imagery in English and Italian poetry.

Possible also to trace the development of a race through its artistic expression. The life of a race as comparable to a great on-flowing stream with rise and fall, ever deepening and enlarging as the race develops. Compare in the development of English literature. Elements which persist under all the changes. Compare Tennyson’s _Passing of Arthur_ and the closing portion of _Beowulf_.

Thus the least fragment of art embodying the spirit of the artist, the deeper life of the epoch, the still more fundamental characteristics of the race, while beneath all are the great, universal tendencies of humanity.

ILLUSTRATIONS

“The most profound erudition is no more akin to genius than a collection of dried plants is like Nature, with its constant flow of new life, ever fresh, ever young, ever changing. There are no two things more opposed than the childish naïvety of an ancient author and the learning of his commentator.”

--Schopenhauer, _The Art of Literature_, p. 52.

“At a distance we only hear of the first artists, and then we are often contented with names only; but when we draw nearer to this starry sky, and the luminaries of the second and third magnitude also begin to twinkle, each one coming forward and occupying his proper place in the whole constellation, then the world becomes wide, and art becomes rich.”

--Goethe, _Travels in Italy_, p. 36.

“I carry my thoughts about me for a long time, often a very long time, before I write them down; meanwhile my memory is so faithful that I am sure never to forget, not even in years, a theme that has once occurred to me. I change many things, discard, and try again until I am satisfied. Then, however, there begins in my head the development in every direction, and, inasmuch as I know exactly what I want, the fundamental idea never deserts me,--it arises before me, grows,--I see and hear the picture in all its extent and dimensions stand before my mind like a cast, and there remains for me nothing but the labor of writing it down, which is quickly accomplished when I have the time, for I sometimes take up other work, but never to the confusion of one with the other. You will ask me where I get my ideas. That I can not tell you with certainty; they come unsummoned, directly, indirectly,--I could seize them with my hands,--out in the open air; in the woods; while walking; in the silence of the nights; early in the morning; incited by moods, which are translated by the poet into words, by me into tones that sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.”

--Beethoven, in Kerst, _Beethoven: The Man and the Artist_, p. 29.

“Art has to leave reality, it has to raise itself boldly above necessity and neediness; for art is the daughter of freedom, and it requires its prescriptions and rules to be furnished by the necessity of spirits and not by that of matter. But in our day it is necessity, neediness, that prevails, and bends a degraded humanity under its iron yoke. _Utility_ is the great idol of the time, to which all powers do homage and all subjects are subservient. In this great balance of utility, the spiritual service of art has no weight, and, deprived of all encouragement, it vanishes from the noisy Vanity Fair of our time. The very spirit of philosophical inquiry itself robs the imagination of one promise after another, and the frontiers of art are narrowed, in proportion as the limits of science are enlarged.”

--Schiller, _Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical_, pp. 27, 28.

“People always fancy that we must become old to become wise; but, in truth, as years advance, it is hard to keep ourselves as wise as we were. Man becomes, indeed, in the different stages of his life, a different being; but he cannot say that he is a better one, and, in certain matters, he is as likely to be right in his twentieth, as in his sixtieth year.

“We see the world one way from a plain, another way from the heights of a promontory, another from the glacier fields of the primary mountains. We see, from one of these points, a larger piece of the world than from the other; but that is all, and we cannot say that we see more truly from any one than from the rest. When a writer leaves monuments on the different steps of his life, it is chiefly important that he should have an innate foundation and goodwill; that he should, at each step, have seen and felt clearly, and that, without any secondary aims, he should have said distinctly and truly what has passed in his mind. Then will his writings, if they were right at the step where they originated, remain always right, however the writer may develop or alter himself in after times.”

--Goethe, _Conversations with Eckermann and Soret_, p. 512.

“That which distinguishes genius, and should be the standard for judging it, is the height to which it is able to soar when it is in the proper mood and finds a fitting occasion--a height always out of the reach of ordinary talent.”

--Schopenhauer, _The Art of Literature_, p. 88.

“It seems as though purely human feeling, grown stronger by its very repression on the side of conventional civilization, had sought out a means of bringing into use some laws of language peculiar to itself, by means of which it could express itself intelligibly, freed from the trammels of logical rules of thought. The extraordinary popularity of music in our age, the ever-increasing participation (extending through all classes of society) in the production of music of the deepest character, the growing desire to make of musical culture a necessary part of every education,--all these things which are certainly obvious and undeniable, distinctly prove the justice of the assumption that a deep-rooted and earnest need of humanity finds expression in modern musical development; and that music, unintelligible as its language is when tried by the laws of logic, must bear within it a more convincing means of making itself understood, than even those laws contain.”

--Wagner, in “The Music of the Future,” _Art Life and Theories_, p. 159.

TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION

1. What different types of relationship may artists sustain to the world in which they live?

2. Show how Tennyson and Browning are revealed respectively in _Crossing the Bar_ and the _Epilogue to Asolando_.

3. Compare Michael Angelo’s two interpretations of the same theme at opposite ends of his artistic career: the _Pietà_ of St. Peter’s in Rome, and the _Pietà_ of the Cathedral in Florence.

4. Compare English and Italian poetry in nature-imagery.

5. What relation does landscape painting sustain to the spirit of our time?

6. In what ways are the tendencies of modern civilization expressed in Wagner’s operas?

7. Through what type of movement does a creative period tend to pass, and why?

8. What relation does sculpture sustain to the other arts in Greece?

9. What makes the Elizabethan drama the best expression of Anglo-Saxon genius?

10. Show how the development of a race may be traced through its artistic expressions.

11. Show the common racial tendencies in Tennyson’s _Passing of Arthur_ and the closing portion of _Beowulf_.

REFERENCES

Bascom, _Philosophy of English Literature_. Carlyle, _The Hero as Divinity_. Carpenter, _Angels’ Wings_. Crawshaw, _Literary Interpretation of Life_. Engel, _Introduction to the Study of National Music_. Goethe, _Conversations with Eckermann_; _Travels in Italy_. Hugo, _William Shakespeare_. Kerst, _Beethoven_; _Mozart_. Lanier, _Music and Poetry_. Leighton, _Addresses_. Mabie, _Books and Culture_; _Short Studies in Literature_. Mach, _Greek Sculpture_. Morris, _Hopes and Fears for Art_. Palgrave, _Golden Treasury_. Partridge, _Art for America_. Posnett, _Comparative Literature_. Ruskin, _The Two Paths_. Schiller, _Essays_. Schopenhauer, _The Art of Literature_. Sturgis, _The Appreciation of Pictures_; _The Appreciation of Sculpture_. Taine, _Lectures on Art_. Van Dyke, _The Meaning of Pictures_. Vinci, _Leonardo da Vinci’s Note-Books_. Wagner, _Art Life and Theories of_; _Beethoven_. Warner, _The Relation of Literature to Life_. Wilde, _The Soul of Man under Socialism_. Witt, _How to Look at Pictures_.

IV. THE MEANING AND FUNCTION OF SCULPTURE AND PAINTING

“If you know how to describe and write down the appearance of the forms, the painter can make them so that they appear enlivened with lights and shadows which create the very expression of the faces; herein you cannot attain with the pen where he attains with the brush.”

--Leonardo da Vinci, _Leonardo da Vinci’s Note-Books_, arranged by Edward McCurdy, p. 159.

=Differences among the arts.=--Each fine art possessing its distinctive line of appeal. This evidenced in the fact that it is rare to find an artist, practising one, adequately appreciating others. Tendency in artist and student alike to see the one art from within and appreciate its significance, the others from without and perceive their limitations. Evil of this. Great need that the artist should saturate himself with the material of other arts than his own. Thus need to see broadly and impersonally the meaning and function of each art in relation to the spirit of man and in relation to the other arts expressing the same universal basis.

The three questions: (1) What of the whole content of the human spirit does the particular art express? (2) What is the means and method of its expression? (3) What are its limitations?

Method of answering: not by philosophic theory, but by an open study of works of art in each field. A little first-hand study of art better worth while than much reading of criticism.

The fact of the permanence of a particular art proving that it expresses or interprets some aspect of man’s spirit better or more easily than any other. Compare, otherwise the art would not persist except as novelty. Note the rise and subsidence of certain arts historically. The reasons why mosaic work has lost the place it occupied in the days when Ravenna’s churches were being adorned. Compare changes in fresco painting. Significance of the permanence of sculpture, painting, poetry and music.

=Characteristics of sculpture.=--The _Venus de Milo_ as a representative work of ancient art. What is given in this statue? Character of the conception embodied. Method by which it is expressed. Effect on the beholder of the color of the marble and of the beauty of technical execution. The deeper feelings one has in the presence of the statue. Significance that these emotions vary with different individuals; yet, the conception, if understood, entirely definite and embodied in defined, permanent form. Thus the conception given, the emotions, relatively speaking, associated.

The _Hermes_ of Praxiteles and the three _Goddesses_ of the Parthenon. What these express in idea and execution. Causes of the feelings they tend to arouse in the beholder. Difference in the ancient and modern feeling associated with such a statue as the _Amazon_ of the Villa Mattei.

Michael Angelo’s statues on the Medicean tombs. Comparison with Greek sculpture in conception, execution and associated emotions.

Modern work in the field of sculpture analyzed. The _Joan of Arc_ of Chapu; other characteristic work in the Luxembourg gallery. Max Klinger’s _Salome_.

Transition from sculpture to painting through relief-work. The _Nymph and Infant Bacchus_; the bronze doors of Ghiberti.

=Painting.=--The Pompeian frescoes as painting in its nearest approach to sculpture. These as presenting human figures, simply treated, with slight background. Less complete and realistic form than in sculpture; but vastly increased scope in both breadth and depth. Effect of the much greater use of color.

Michael Angelo’s _Creation of Adam_; his _Last Judgment_. Difference in feelings aroused by the latter work in accordance with the training and belief of the beholder.

Raphael’s _Sistine Madonna_: the conception given; method by which expressed. Direct emotional effect of the color used and of the grace and beauty of execution.

Characteristics of a Corot landscape: what we feel in the presence of it as compared with what the Greeks might have felt. The interpretation of humanity in modern art: compare in Millet, Bastien-Lepage, Cormon. Relation of conception to emotion in such work; contrast with the painting of the Italian Renaissance.

=Summary.=--What sculpture and painting are alike capable of giving definitely. Elements common to both in method. Differences between them. What neither is capable of achieving. Why sculpture was the characteristic art of the ancient Greeks, painting of the Renaissance Italians.

All art appealing immediately to the senses; danger if it stops there. The true appeal through the senses to the soul. Thus how art may degenerate and become dangerous. The problem of Faust’s vision in the mirror.

ILLUSTRATIONS