Human Traits and their Social Significance Part 31

"He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat; Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!

Our G.o.d is marching on."

EXPRESSION. The objects of art, as we have seen, are interesting and attractive in themselves, for the material of which they are formed, and for the form which the artist has given them. But they are interesting in another and possibly as important a way: they are instruments of expression.

That is, a painting is something more than an intrinsically interesting disposition of line and color, a statue something more than an exquisite or sublime chiseling of marble, a poem more than a rhythmic combination of the music of words.

All of these are expressive. Something in their form is a.s.sociated with something in our past experience. Thus, as James somewhere suggests, "a bare figure by Michelangelo, with unduly flexed joints, may come somehow to suggest the moral tragedy of life." Something in the face of an old man painted by Rembrandt may recall to us a similar outward evidence of inner seriousness, wistfulness, and resignation which we have ourselves beheld in living people. And we clearly value the poems of a Wordsworth, a Milton, a Matthew Arnold, not solely for the magnificent form and music of their words, but also for the sober beauty of their meaning.

We may come to appreciate even the highly immediate sensuous and formal pleasure of music for the reverie or rapture into which by suggestion it throws us. "Expression may, therefore, make beautiful by suggestion, things in themselves indifferent, or it may come to heighten the beauty which they already possess."

The objects of art may be appreciated chiefly either for their material and form, or for the values which they express.

In some cases the actual object may be beautiful; sometimes the beauty may lie almost wholly in the image, emotion, or idea evoked. "Home, Sweet Home," for example, may be plausibly held to win admiration rather for the sentimental a.s.sociations which it evokes in the singer or hearer than for its verbal or melodic beauty. The enjoyment which people without any musical gifts, out on a camping or canoeing trip, experience from singing a rather cheap and frayed repertory is obviously for sentimental rather than for aesthetic satisfaction.

Similarly, we may cherish the mementos of a lost friend or child, not for their intrinsic worth, but for the tenderness of the memories they arouse. The situation is delicately described in Eugene Field's "Little Boy Blue":

"The little toy dog is covered with dust, But st.u.r.dy and staunch he stands, And the little toy soldier is red with rust, And his musket moulds in his hands.

Time was when the little toy dog was new, And the soldier was pa.s.sing fair, And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue Kissed them and put them there."

Some objects of art may indeed become beautiful almost completely through their expressiveness. There are certain poets whose music is raucous and who make little appeal through clarity of form. These survive almost completely by virtue of the persistent strength and enduring sublimity of the ideas which they express. Much of Whitman may be put in this cla.s.s, and also much of Browning. Similarly a sculptor may not captivate us by the fluent beauty of his marble, but by the power and pa.s.sion which his crude mighty figures express.

In such cases we may even come to regard what, from a purely formal point of view, is unlovely, as a thing of the most extreme beauty. Even the roughness in such direct revelations of strength, may come to be regarded as elements of the beautiful. And where ma.s.siveness of effect does not suffice to retrieve a work of art from its essential crudities, we may still come to accept it as beautiful, as it were, in intention, and for what comes to be regarded as its essence, namely, the idea or emotion it expresses. We forgive the imperfections of form as we forgive the stammerings and stutterings of persons whose broken sayings are yet full of wisdom.

Usually even where the object, emotion, or idea expressed is beautiful, we demand certain formal and material elements of beauty. A telegram may convey the very apex of felicity, yet be not at all felicitous in its form or in the music of its words. If in such cases, we speak of beauty, the term is altogether metaphorical and imputed; we are using it in the same a.n.a.logical sense as when we speak of a "beautiful operation"

or a "beautiful deed"; it is a moral rather than an aesthetic term. We may find the letter of a friend expressive of the gentleness, fidelity, and charm that have endeared him to us, but unless these have attained sufficiently clear and explicit form and determinate unmistakable music, the letter will have a meaningful beauty only in the light of the peculiar relation existing between us and the writer. From an impartial aesthetic point of view, the epistle can only by affectionate exaggeration be called beautiful.

But the arts, through their beauty of form, may present pleasingly objects, emotions, ideas, not in themselves beautiful or pleasing. The clearest case of this kind is tragedy, where we may enjoy at arm's length and through the medium of art, experiences which would in the near actualities of life be only unmitigated horror. Refracted through the medium of poetry and drama, they may appear beautiful pervasively and long.

We are enabled through the arts to survey sympathetically universal emotions, those by which our own lives have been touched, or to which they are liable; we are enabled to survey bitterness and frustration calmly because they are set in a perspective, a beautiful perspective, in which they shine out clear and persuasive, purified of that bitter personal tang which makes sorrow in real life so different in tone from the beauty with which in tragedy it is halved. Any sensation, as Max Eastman justly remarks in his "Enjoyment of Poetry," may, if sufficiently mild, become pleasing. And there is hardly any human action or experience, however terrible, which cannot in the hands of a master be made appealing and sublime in its emotional effect.

The beauty of Tragedy does but make visible a quality which, in more or less obvious shapes, is present always and everywhere in life. In the spectacle of death, in the endurance of intolerable pain, and in the irrevocableness of a vanished past, there is a sacredness, an overpowering awe, a feeling of the vastness, the depth, the inexhaustible mystery of existence, in which, as by some strange marriage of pain, the sufferer is bound to the world by bonds of sorrow. In these moments of insight we lose all eagerness of temporary desire, all struggling and striving for petty ends, all care for the little trivial things that, to a superficial view, make up the common life of day by day; we see, surrounding the narrow raft, illumined by the flickering light of human comradeship, the dark ocean on whose rolling waves we toss for a brief hour.[1]

[Footnote 1: Bertrand Russell: _Philosophical Essays_, pp. 67-68.]

But emotions and experiences that in real life are displeasing can be made pleasing in art chiefly by virtue of the qualities of material and form already discussed. The disappointment, disillusion, or terror which tragedy so vividly reveals is made tolerable chiefly through the intrinsic beauty of the vehicle in which it is set forth. The high and breathless beauty of rhythm, the verve, the mystery, and music with which evils are set forth, may make them not only tolerable but tender and appealing. What would be as immediate experience altogether heartrending, for example the torturing remorse of a Macbeth, is made splendid and moving in the incisive majesty and penetration of his monologues. At the end of Hamlet, the utter wreck, unreason, and confusion is made bearable and beautiful by the tender finality of Hamlet's dying words to Horatio:

"Absent thee from felicity awhile And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story."

Greek tragedy had the additional accouterments of a chorus, of music, of production in a vast amphitheater to give an atmosphere of outward grandeur to the glory of its intent.

Tragedy often relieves the net horror which is its burden by the pomp and circ.u.mstance of the a.s.sociations it suggests:

We have palaces for our scene, rank, beauty, and virtues in our heroes, n.o.bility in their pa.s.sions and in their fate, and altogether a sort of glorification of life without which tragedy would lose both in depth of pathos--since things so precious are destroyed--and in subtlety of charm, since things so precious are manifested.[1]

[Footnote 1: Santayana: _Sense of Beauty_, p. 228.]

Tragedy still more subtly attains the beauty of expressiveness by making the very evils and confusions and terrors it presents somehow the exemplifications of a serene eternal order. The function of the chorus in Greek tragedy was indeed chiefly to indicate in solemn strophe and antistrophe the ordered and harmonious verities of which these particular follies and frustrations were so tender and terrible an ill.u.s.tration. They catch up the present and particular evil into the calm and splendid interplay of cosmic forces. Thus at the end of Euripides's play _Medea_, when the heroine has slain the children she has borne to Jason and in her fury refuses to let him gather up their dead bodies, when Jason in utter inconsolable despair, casts himself upon the earth, out of all this wrack and torture the chorus raises the audience into a contemplation of the ordered eternity by which these things come to be. It sings:

"Great treasure halls hath Zeus in Heaven, From whence to man strange dooms be given, Past hope or fear; And the end men looked for cometh not, And a path is there where no man thought: So hath it fallen here."[1]

[Footnote 1: Euripides: _Medea_ (Gilbert Murray translation).]

ART AS VICARIOUS EXPERIENCE. The drama, art, and painting are, in general, ways by which we can vicariously experience the emotions of others. All of the expressive arts are made possible by the fundamental psychological fact that human beings give certain instinctive and habitual signs of emotion and instinctively respond to them. In consequence, through art experience may be immeasurably broadened, deepened, and mellowed. Through the medium of art, modes of life long past away can leave their imperishable and living mementos.

Dante opens to the citizen of the twentieth century the mind and imagination of the Middle Ages. A Grecian urn can arouse, at least to a Keats, the whole stilled magic of the Greek spirit. And not only can we live through the life and emotion of times long dead, but the fiction and drama and poetry of our own day permit us to enter into realms of experience which in extent and variety would not be possible to one man. Indeed, the possibility of vicariously enlarging experience is one of the chief appeals of art. We cannot all be rovers, but we can have in reading Masefield a pungent sense of romantic open s.p.a.ces, the salt winds, the perilous motion or the broad calm of the sea. We feel something of the same urgency as that of the author when we read:

"I must go down to the seas again, the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking, And a gray mist on the sea's face and a gray dawn breaking."[2]

[Footnote 2: Masefield: _Sea-Fever_.]

Art opens up wide avenues of possibility; it releases us from the limitations to which a particular mode of life, an accidental niche in a business or profession has committed us. It enables us vividly to experience and sympathetically to appreciate the lives which are led by other men, and in which something in our own personalities could have found fulfillment.

While the objects of art thus broaden our experience by their precise and contagious communication of emotion, they may also express ideas. Thus a play may have a message, a poem a vision, a painting an allegory. Art is both at an advantage and at a disadvantage in the communication of ideas. Ideas, if they are to be accurately conveyed, should be devoid of emotional flourish, and presented with telegraphic directness and precision. They should have the clarity of formulas, rather than the distracting array and atmosphere of form. But ideas presented in the persuasive garb of beauty, gain in their hold over men what they lose in precision. Thus an eloquent orator, a touching letter, a vivid poem, may do more than volumes of the most definitive and convincing logic to insinuate an idea into men's minds. Compare in effectiveness the most thoroughgoing treatise on the status of the agricultural laborer with the stirring momentum of Edwin Markham's" The Man With the Hoe":

"Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, The emptiness of ages in his face, And on his back the burden of the world.

Who made him dead to rapture and despair, A thing that grieves not, and that never hopes, Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?

Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?

Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?

Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?

"Is this the Thing the Lord G.o.d made and gave To have dominion over sea and land; To trace the stars and search the heavens for power, To feel the pa.s.sion of Eternity?

Is this the Dream he dreamed who shaped the suns, And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?

Down all the stretch of h.e.l.l to its last gulf There is no shape more terrible than this-- More tongued with censure of the world's blind greed-- More filled with signs and portents for the soul-- More fraught with menace to the universe."

An idea clothed with such music and pa.s.sion is an incomparably effective means of arousing a response. It is this which makes art so valuable an instrument of propaganda.

People will respond actively to ideas set forth with fervor by a Tolstoy or an Ibsen who would be left cold by the flat and erudite accuracy of a volume on economics. And the confirmed Platonist is made so perhaps less by the convincingness of Plato's logic, than by the inevitable and irrefutable grace of his dramatic art.

There is, for certain persons educated in the arts, a satisfaction that is neither sensuous nor emotional, but intellectual.

These come to discriminate form with the abstract though warm interest of the expert. The well-informed concert-goer begins to appreciate beauties hidden to the uninitiate.

He notes with eager antic.i.p.ation the technical genius of a composition as it unfolds, admiring the craft and skill as well as the vision of the artist. In extreme cases this may, of course, degenerate into mere pedantry. But at its best, it is the satisfaction of the man who, having a keen eye for beauty, is all the more solicitous for its accurate realization.

The satisfactions of the connoisseur are merely a refinement of less sophisticated forms of appreciation. To appreciate the bare sounds of music, or the vividness of color in a painting is the prelude to more discriminating tastes. It is impossible for most men to have in all the arts expert judgment, but the ability to be able to discriminate with authority the technical achievements of a work of genius, while it does not supplant the emotional and sense satisfaction derived from the arts, nevertheless enhances them.

ART AND aeSTHETIC EXPERIENCE IN THE SOCIAL ORDER. The creative activity which is, to a peculiar extent, the artist's, is sought and practiced to some degree by all men. Genius is rare, but talent of a minor sort is frequent. In the playing of a musical instrument, in the practice of a handicraft, in the cultivation of a garden, ordinary men in modern society find an outlet for invention, craftsmanship, and imagination.

To give this joy of creation, in smaller or larger measure, to all men is to promote social happiness. In the discussion of instinct it was pointed out that men come nearest to attaining happiness when they are doing what is their bent by original nature, when they are acting out of sheer love of the activity rather than from compulsion. And since all men possess, although in moderate degree, the creative impulse, to give this impulse a chance is a distinct social good.

The employment of the creative imagination demands both leisure and training. Leisure is needed because, in the routine activities of industry, men's actions are determined not by their imagination, but by the immediacies of practical demands.

There may be, as Helen Marot suggests, a possibility of a wide utilization of the creative impulse in industry. But a large part of industrial life must of necessity remain routine.

In consequence, during their leisure hours alone, can men find free scope for some form of aesthetic interest and activity.

The second requisite is training. Even the poor player of an instrument can derive some pleasure from his performance.

And, under the accidents of economic and social circ.u.mstance, many a flower may really be born to blush unseen through the fact that its talents receive no opportunity. The occasional "discovery" by a wealthy man of a genius in the slums, indicates how a more liberal and general provision of training in the arts might redound to the general good. And a more widespread endowment of training in the fine arts, if it did not produce many geniuses, might at least produce a number of competent painters and musicians, who, in the practice of their skill, during their leisure, would derive considerable and altogether wholesome pleasure.

While high aesthetic capacity may be lacking in most people, aesthetic appreciation is widely diffused, and the education of taste and the growth in appreciation of the arts have been marked. The museums of art in our large cities report a constantly increasing attendance, both of visitors to the galleries and attendants at lectures. And the crowds which regularly attend musical programs of a sustainedly high character in many cities, winter and summer, are evidence of how widespread and eager is appreciation of the fine arts. In the Scandinavian countries and in Germany one of the most remarkable social phenomena has been the growth of a widely supported people's theater movement, in which there has been consistent support of the highest type of operas and plays.

ART AS AN INDUSTRY. The fact that objects of art are themselves immediate satisfactions and supply human wants, makes their provision for large numbers an important social enterprise. Certain forms of art, therefore, become highly industrialized. The provision of the objects of art becomes a profitable business, as it is also made possible only by a large economic outlay. Tolstoy in his _What is Art?_ brings out strikingly the economic basis of artistic enterprises in contemporary society:

For the support of art in Russia [1898], the government grants millions of roubles in subsidies to academies, conservatories, and theatres. In France, twenty million francs are a.s.signed for art, and similar grants are made in Germany and England.

In every large town enormous buildings are erected for museums, academies, conservatories, dramatic schools, and for performances and concerts. Hundreds of thousands of workmen--carpenters, masons, painters, joiners, paperhangers, tailors, hairdressers, jewelers, molders, type-setters--spend their whole lives in hard labor to satisfy the demands of art, so that hardly any other department of human activity, except the military, consumes so much energy as this.

Not only is enormous labor spent on this activity, but in it, as in war, the very lives of men are sacrificed. Hundreds of thousands of people devote their lives from childhood to learning to twirl their legs rapidly (dancers), or to touch notes and strings very rapidly (musicians) or to turn every phrase inside out and find a rhyme for every word.[1]

[Footnote 1: Tolstoy: _What is Art?_ pp. 1-2 (written in 1898).]

Tolstoy's point in thus emphasizing the immense energies devoted to artistic enterprises is to lead us to consider what is the end of all this labor. He points out scathingly the ugliness, frivolity, and crudity of much that pa.s.ses for drama in the theater, for music in the concert hall, and for literature between covers. He pleads for a simple art that shall express with sincerity the genuine emotions of the great ma.s.s of men.

Whatever be our estimate of Tolstoy's sweeping condemnation of so much of what has come to be regarded as cla.s.sic beauty, the point he makes about the commercialization of art is incontrovertible. If art is an industry, the good is determined, as it were, by popular vote. The many must be pleased rather than the discriminating. While, as has been noted, aesthetic appreciation is fairly general, appreciation of the subtler forms of art requires training. The glaring, the conspicuous, the broad effect, is more likely to win rapid popular approval than the subtle, the quiet, and the fragile.

That taste is readily educable is true. But when immediate profits are the end, one cannot pause to educate the public.