Chapter 11

This essential disparity between idea and representation is the weak side of Art, plastic and pictorial; but because it is essential it is not felt by the artist as defect. His genius urges him to all advance that is possible within the limits of his Art, but not to transcend it. It will be in vain to exhort him to unite the ancient piety to the modern knowledge. If he listen to the exhortation, he may be a good critic, but he is no painter. He must be absorbed in what he sees to the exclusion of everything else; impartiality is a virtue to all the world except him. There will always be a onesidedness; either the conception or the embodying of it halts, is only partially realized; some incompleteness, some mystery, some apparent want of coincidence between form and meaning is a necessity to the artist, and if he does not find it, he will invent it. Hence the embarrassment of some of the English Pre-Raphaelitists, particularly in dealing with the human form. They have no hesitation in pursuing into still further minuteness the literal delineation of inanimate objects, draperies, etc.; but they shrink from giving full life to their figures, not from a slavish adherence to their exemplars, but from a dread lest it should seem that what is shown is all that is meant. The early painters were thus _naïve_ and distinct because of their limitations; they knew very well what they meant,--as, that the event took place out-of-doors, with the sun shining, the grass under-foot, an oak-tree here, a strawberry-vine there,--mere adjunct and by-play, not to be questioned as to the import of the piece: _that_ the Church took care of. But who can say what a modern landscape means? The significance that in the older picture was as it were outside of it, presupposed, assured elsewhere, has now to be incorporated, verily present in every atom of soil and film of vapor. The realism of the modern picture must be infinitely more extended, for the meaning of it is that _nothing_ is superfluous or insignificant. But with the reality that it lends to every particle of matter, it must introduce, at the same time, the protest that spirit makes against matter,--most distinct, indeed, in the human form and countenance, but nowhere absent. In its utmost explication there must be felt that there is yet more behind; its utmost distinctness must be everywhere indefinable, evanescent,--must proclaim that this parade of surface-appearance is not there for its own sake. This is what Mr. Ruskin calls "the pathetic fallacy": but there is nothing fallacious in it; it is solid truth, only under the guise of mystery. Turner said that Mr. Ruskin had put all sorts of meanings into his pictures that he knew nothing about. Of course, else they would never have got into the pictures. But this does not affect their validity, but means only that it is the imagination, not the intellect, that must apprehend them.

It is not an outward, arbitrary incompleteness that is demanded, but a visible dependence of each part, by its partiality declaring the completeness of the whole. It is often said that the picture must "leave room for the imagination." Yes, and for nothing else; but this does not imply that it should be unfinished, but that, when the painter has set down what the imagination grasped in one view, he shall stop, no matter where, and not attempt to eke out the deficiency by formula or by knack of fingers. Wherever the inspiration leaves him, there is an end of the picture. Beyond that we get only his personalities; no skill, no earnestness of intention, etc., can avail him; he is only mystifying himself or us. At these points we sooner or later come up with him, are as good as he, and the work forthwith begins to tire. What is tiresome is to have thrust upon us the dead surface of matter: this is the prose of the world, which we come to Art to escape. It is prosaic, because it is seen as the understanding sees it, as an aggregate only, apart from its vital connection; it matters little whose the understanding is. The artist must be alive only to the totality of the impression, blind and deaf to all outside of that. He must believe that the idyl he sees in the landscape is there because he sees it, and will appear in the picture without the help of demonstration. The danger is, that from weakness of faith he will fancy or pretend that he sees something else, which may be there, but formed no part of the impression. It is simply a question of natural attraction, magnetism, how much he can take up and carry; all beyond that is hindrance, and any conscious endeavor of his cannot help, but can only thwart.

The picturesque has its root in the mind's craving for totality. It is Nature seen as a whole; all the characteristics and prerequisites of it come back to this,--such as roughness, wildness, ruin, obscurity, the gloom of night or of storm; whatever the outward discrepancy, wherever the effect is produced, it is because in some way there is a gain in completeness. On this condition everything is welcome,--without it, nothing. Thus, a broken, weedy bank is more picturesque than the velvet slope,--the decayed oak than the symmetry of the sapling,--the squalid shanty by the railroad, with its base of dirt, its windows stuffed with old hats, and the red shirts dependent from its eaves, than the neatest brick cottage. They strike a richer accord, while the others drone on a single note. Moonlight is always picturesque, because it substitutes mass and breadth for the obtrusiveness of petty particulars. It is not the pettiness, but the particularity, that makes them unpicturesque. No impressiveness in the object can atone for exclusiveness. Niagara cannot be painted, not because it is too difficult, but because it is no landscape, but like a vast illuminated capital letter filling the whole page, or the sublime monotony of the mosque-inscriptions, declaring in thousandfold repetition that God is great. The soaring sublimity of the Moslem monotheism comes partly from its narrowness and abstractness. Is it because we are a little hard of hearing that it takes such reiteration to move us?

The wholeness which the imagination demands is not quantitative, but qualitative; it has nothing to do with size or with number, except so far as, by confusing the sense, they obscurely intimate infinity, with which all quantities are incommensurable. Mr. Ruskin's encyclopedic anatomizing of the landscape, to the end of showing the closeness of Turner's perception, has great interest, but not the interest merely of a longer list, for it is to be remembered that the longest list would be no nearer to an exhaustive analysis than the shortest. It is not a specious completeness, but a sense of infinity that can never be completed,--greater intensity, not greater extension,--that distinguishes modern landscape-art. Hence there is no incongruity in the seeming license that it takes with the firm order of Nature. It is in no spirit of levity or profanity that the substantial distinctions of things are thus disregarded,--that all absolute rank is denied, and the value of each made contingent and floating. It is only that the mind is somewhat nearer apprehending the sense, and dwells less on the characters.

If Art suffers in its relative rank among human interests by this democratic levelling, it is to the gain of what Art intends. It is true, no picture can henceforth move us as men were once moved by pictures. No Borgo Allegro will ever turn out again in triumph for a Madonna of Cimabue or of any one else; whatever feeling Turner or another may excite comes far short of that. But the splendor that clothed the poor, pale, formal image belonged very little to it, but expressed rather the previous need of utterance, and could reach that pitch only when the age had not yet learned to think and to write, but must put up with these hieroglyphics. Art has no more grown un-religious than Religion has, but only less idolatrous. As fast as religion passes into life,--as the spiritual nature of man begins to be recognized as the ground of legislation and society, and not merely in the miracle of sainthood,--the apparatus and imagery of the Church, its dogmas and ceremonies, grow superfluous, as what they stand for is itself present. It is the dawn that makes these stars grow pale. So in Art, as fast as the dream of the imagination becomes the common sense of mankind, and only so fast, the awe that surrounded the earlier glimpses is lost. Its influence is not lessened, but diffused and domesticated as Culture.

Art is the truly popular philosophy. Our picture-gazing and view-hunting only express the feeling that our science is too abstract, that it does not attach us, but isolates us in the universe. What we are thus inwardly drawn to explore is not the chaff and _exuviæ_ of things, not their differences only, but their central connection, in spite of apparent diversity. This, stated, is the Ideal, the abrupt contradiction of the actual, and the creation of a world extraordinary, in which all defect is removed. But the defect cannot be cured by correction, for that admits its right to exist; it is not by exclusion that limitation is overcome,--this is only to establish a new limitation,--but by inclusion, by reaching the point where the superficial antagonism vanishes. Then the ideal is seen no longer in opposition, but everywhere and alone existent. As this point is approached, the impulse to reconstruct the actual--as if the triumph of truth were staked on that venture--dies out. The elaborate contradiction loses interest, earliest where it is most elaborate and circumstantial, and latest where the image has least materiality and fixity, where it is only a reminder of what the actual is securely felt to be, in spite of its stubborn exterior.

The modern mind is therefore less demonstrative; our civilization seeks less to declare and typify itself outwardly in works of Art, manners, dress, etc. Hence it is, perhaps, that the beauty of the race has not kept pace with its culture. It is less beautiful, because it cares less for beauty, since this is no longer the only reconcilement of the actual with the inward demands. The vice of the imagination is its inevitable exaggeration. It is our own weakness and dulness that we try to hide from ourselves by this partiality. Therefore it was said that the images were the Bible of the laity. Bishop Durandus already in the thirteenth century declared that it is only where the truth is not yet revealed that this "Judaizing" is permissible.

The highest of all arts is the art of life. In this the superficial antagonisms of use and beauty, of fact and reality, disappear. A little gain here, or the hint of it, richly repays all the lost magnificence. We need not concern ourselves lest these latter ages should be left bankrupt of the sense of beauty, for that is but a phase of a force that is never absent; nothing can supersede it but itself in a higher power. What we lament as decay only shows its demands fulfilled, and the arts it has left behind are but the landmarks of its accomplished purpose.

OUR CLASSMATE.

F. W. C.

Fast as the rolling seasons bring The hour of fate to those we love, Each pearl that leaves the broken string Is set in Friendship's crown above. As narrower grows the earthly chain, The circle widens in the sky; These are our treasures that remain, But those are stars that beam on high.

We miss--oh, how we miss!--_his_ face,-- With trembling accents speak his name. Earth cannot fill his shadowed place From all her rolls of pride and fame. Our song has lost the silvery thread That carolled through his jocund lips; Our laugh is mute, our smile is fled, And all our sunshine in eclipse.

And what and whence the wondrous charm That kept his manhood boy-like still,-- That life's hard censors could disarm And lead them captive at his will? His heart was shaped of rosier clay,-- His veins were filled with ruddier fire,-- Time could not chill him, fortune sway, Nor toil with all its burdens tire.

His speech burst throbbing from its fount And set our colder thoughts aglow, As the hot leaping geysers mount And falling melt the Iceland snow. Some word, perchance, we counted rash,-- Some phrase our calmness might disclaim; Yet 't was the sunset lightning's flash, No angry bolt, but harmless flame.

Man judges all, God knoweth each; We read the rule, He sees the law; How oft His laughing children teach The truths His prophets never saw! O friend, whose wisdom flowered in mirth! Our hearts are sad, our eyes are dim; He gave thy smiles to brighten earth,-- We trust thy joyous soul to Him!

Alas!--our weakness Heaven forgive! We murmur, even while we trust, "How long earth's breathing burdens live, Whose hearts, before they die, are dust!" But thou!--through grief's untimely tears We ask with half-reproachful sigh, "Couldst thou not watch a few brief years Till Friendship faltered, 'Thou mayst die'?"

Who loved our boyish years so well? Who knew so well their pleasant tales, And all those livelier freaks could tell Whose oft-told story never fails? In vain we turn our aching eyes,-- In vain we stretch our eager hands,-- Cold in his wintry shroud he lies Beneath the dreary drifting sands!

Ah, speak not thus! _He_ lies not there! We see him, hear him as of old! He comes! he claims his wonted chair; His beaming face we still behold! His voice rings clear in all our songs, And loud his mirthful accents rise; To us our brother's life belongs,-- Dear boys, a classmate never dies!

WHITTIER.

It was some ten years ago that we first met John Greenleaf Whittier, the poet of the moral sentiment and of the heart and faith of the people of America. It chanced that we had then been making notes, with much interest, upon the genius of the Semitic nations. That peculiar simplicity, centrality, and intensity which caused them to originate Monotheism from two independent centres, the only systems of pure Monotheism which have had power in history,--while the same characteristics made their poetry always lyrical, never epic or dramatic, and their most vigorous thought a perpetual sacrifice on the altars of the will,--this had strongly impressed us; and we seemed to find in it a striking contrast to the characteristic genius of the Aryan or Indo-Germanic nations, with their imaginative interpretations of the religious sentiment, with their epic and dramatic expansions, and their taste for breadth and variety. Somewhat warm with these notions, we came to a meeting with our poet, and the first thought, on seeing him, was, "The head of a Hebrew prophet!" It is not Hebrew,--Saracen rather; the Jewish type is heavier, more material; but it corresponded strikingly to the conceptions we had formed of the Southern Semitic crania, and the whole make of the man was of the same character. The high cranium, so lofty especially in the dome,--the slight and symmetrical backward slope of the _whole_ head,--the powerful level brows, and beneath these the dark, deep eyes, so full of shadowed fire,--the Arabian complexion,--the sharp-cut, intense lines of the face,--the light, tall, erect stature,--the quick axial poise of the movement,--all these answered with singular accuracy to the picture of those preacher-races which had been shaping itself in our imagination. Indeed, the impression was so strong as to induce some little feeling of embarrassment. It seemed slightly awkward and insipid to be meeting a prophet here in a parlor and in a spruce masquerade of modern costume, shaking hands, and saying, "Happy to meet you," after the fashion of our feeble civilities.

All this came vividly to remembrance, on taking up, the other day, Whittier's last book of poems, "In War-Time,"--a volume that has been welcomed all over the land with enthusiastic delight. Had it been no more, however, than a mere private reminiscence, it should, at present, have remained private. But have we not here a key to Whittier's genius? Is not this Semitic centrality and simplicity, this prophetic depth, reality, and vigor, without great lateral and intellectual range, its especial characteristic? He has not the liberated, light-winged Greek imagination,--imagination not involved and included in the religious sentiment, but playing in epic freedom and with various interpretation between religion and intellect; he has not the flowing, Protean, imaginative sympathy, the power of instant self-identification with all forms of character and life, which culminated in Shakspeare; but that imaginative vitality which lurks in faith and conscience, producing what we may call _ideal force of heart_, this he has eminently; and it is this central, invisible, Semitic heat which makes him a poet.

Imagination exists in him, not as a separable faculty, but as a pure vital suffusion. Hence he is an _inevitable_ poet. There is no drop of his blood, there is no fibre of his brain, which does not crave poetic expression. Mr. Carlyle desires to postpone poetry; but as Providence did not postpone Whittier, his wishes can hardly be gratified. Ours is, indeed, one of the plainest of poets. He is intelligible and acceptable to those who have little either of poetic culture or of fancy and imagination. Whoever has common sense and a sound heart has the powers by which he may be appreciated. And yet he is not only a real poet, but he is _all_ poet. The Muses have not merely sprinkled his brow; he was baptized by immersion. His notes are not many; but in them Nature herself sings. He is a sparrow that half sings, half chirps, on a bush, not a lark that floods with orient hilarity the skies of morning; but the bush burns, like that which Moses saw, and the sparrow herself is part of the divine flame.

This, then, is the general statement about Whittier. His genius is Hebrew, Biblical,--more so than that of any other poet now using the English language. In other words, he is organically a poem of the Will. He is a flower of the moral sentiment,--and of the moral sentiment, not in its flexible, feminine, vine-like dependence and play, but in its masculine rigor, climbing in direct, vertical affirmation, like a forest-pine. In this respect he affiliates with Wordsworth, and, going farther back, with Milton, whose tap-root was Hebrew, though in the vast epic flowering of his genius he passed beyond the imaginative range of Semitic mind.

In thus identifying our bard, spiritually, with a broad form of the genius of mankind, we already say with emphasis that his is indeed a Life. Yes, once more, a real Life. He is a nature. He was _born_, not manufactured. Here, once again, the old, mysterious, miraculous processes of spiritual assimilation. Here, a genuine root-clutch upon the elements of man's experience, and an inevitable, indomitable working-up of them into human shape. To look at him without discerning this vital depth and reality were as good as no looking at all.

Moreover, the man and the poet are one and the same. His verse is no literary Beau-Brummelism, but a _re_-presentation of that which is presented in his consciousness. First, there is inward vital conversion of the elements of his experience, then verse, or version,--first the soul, then the body. His voice, as such, has little range, nor is it any marvel of organic perfection; on the contrary, there is many a voice with nothing at all in it which far surpasses his in mere vocal excellence; only in this you can hear the deep refrain of Nature, and of Nature chanting her moral ideal.

We shall consider Whittier's poetry in this light,--as a vital effluence, as a product of his being; and citations will be made, not by way of culling "beauties,"--a mode of criticism to which there are grave objections,--but of illustrating total growth, quality, and power. Our endeavor will be to get at, so far as possible, the processes of vital action, of spiritual assimilation, which go on in the poet, and then to trace these in his poetry.

God gave Whittier a deep, hot, simple, strenuous, and yet ripe and spherical, nature, whose twin necessities were, first, that it _must_ lay an intense grasp upon the elements of its experience, and, secondly, that it _must_ work these up into some form of melodious completeness. History and the world gave him Quakerism, America, and Rural Solitude; and through this solitude went winding the sweet, old Merrimac stream, the river that we would not wish to forget, even by the waters of the river of life! And it is into these elements that his genius, with its peculiar vital simplicity and intensity, strikes root. Historic reality, the great _facts_ of his time, are the soil in which he grows, as they are with all natures of depth and energy. "We did not wish," said Goethe, "to learn, but to live."

Quakerism and America--America ideally true to herself--quickly became, in his mind, one and the same. Quakerism means _divine democracy_. George Fox was the first forerunner, the John Baptist, of the new time,--leather-aproned in the British wilderness. Seeing the whole world dissolving into individualism, he did not try to tie it together, after the fashion of great old Hooker, with new cords of ecclesiasticism; but he did this,--he affirmed a Mount Sinai in the heart of the individual, and gave to the word _person_ an INFINITE depth. To sound that word thus was his function in history. No wonder that England trembled with terror, and then blazed with rage. No wonder that many an ardent James Naylor was crazed with the new wine.

Puritanism meant the same thing at bottom; but, accepting the more legal and learned interpretations of Calvin, it was, to a great degree, involved in the past, and also turned its eye more to political mechanisms. For this very reason it kept up more of fellowship with the broad world, and had the benefit of this in a larger measure of social fructification. Whatever is separated dies. Quakerism uttered a word so profound that the utterance made it insular; and, left to itself, it began to be lost in itself. Nevertheless, Quakerism and Puritanism are the two richest historic soils of modern time.

Our young poet got at the heart of the matter. He learned to utter the word _Man_ so believingly that it sounded down into depths of the divine and infinite. He learned to say, with Novalis, "He touches heaven who touches a human body." And when he uttered this word, "Man," in full, _social_ breadth, lo! it changed, and became AMERICA.

There begins the genesis of the conscious poet. All the depths of his heart rang with the resonance of these imaginations,--Man, America; meaning divine depth of manhood, divine spontaneity and rectitude of social relationship.

But what! what is this? Just as he would raise his voice to chant the new destinies of man, a harsh, heartless, human bark, and therewith a low, despairing stifle of sobbing, came to his ear! It is the bark of the auctioneer, "Going! going!"--it is the sobbing of the slave on the auction-block! And _this_, too, O Poet, this, too, is America! So you are not secure of your grand believing imaginations yet, but must fight for them. The faith of your heart would perish, if it did not put on armor.