CHAPTER VII.LITERATURE AND ART.
Romance.
All prosaic and all bitter, disenchanted people talk as if poets and novelistsmaderomances. They do, just as much as craters make volcanoes, no more. What is romance? Whence comes it? Plato spoke to the subject wisely, in his quaint way, some two thousand years ago, when he said, “Man’s soul, in a former state, was winged and soared among the gods: and so it comes to pass that, in this life, when the soul, by the power of music or poetry, or the sight of beauty, hath her remembrance quickened, forthwith there is a struggling and a pricking pain, as of wings trying to come forth, even as children in teething.” And if an old heathen, two thousand years ago, discoursed thus gravely of the romantic part of our nature, whence comes it that in Christian lands we think in so pagan a way of it, and turn the whole care of it to ballad-makers, romancers, and opera-singers?
Let us look up in fear and reverence, and say, “God is the great maker of romance; He, from whose hand came man and woman,—He, whostrung the great harp of existence,—He is the great poet of life.” Every impulse of beauty, of heroism, and every craving for purer love, fairer perfection, nobler type and style of being, than that which closes like a prison-house around us, in the dim, daily walk of life, is God’s breath, God’s impulse, God’s reminder to the soul that there is something higher, sweeter, purer, yet to be attained....
The dullest street of the most prosaic town has matter in it for more smiles, more tears, more intense excitement, than ever were written in story or sung in poem; the reality is there, of which the romance is the second-hand recorder.
Hebrew literature.
But it is a most remarkable property of this old Hebrew literature that it seems to be enchanted with a divine and living power, which strikes the nerve of individual consciousness in every desolate and suffering soul. It may have been Judah or Jerusalem ages ago to whom these words first came, but as they have traveled on for thousands of years, they have seemed to tens of thousands of sinking and desolate souls the voice of God to them individually. They have raised the burden from thousands of crushed spirits; they have been as the day-spring to thousands of perplexed wanderers. Oh! let us treasure these old words, for as of old Jehovah choseto dwell in a tabernacle in the wilderness, and between the cherubim in the temple, so now He dwells in them; and to the simple soul that seeks for Him here, He will look forth as of old from the pillar of cloud and fire.
Influence of the Bible.
For my part, I am impatient of the theory of those who think that nothing that is not understood makes any valuable impression on the mind of a child. I am certain that the constant contact of the Bible with my childish mind was a very great mental stimulant, as it certainly was a cause of a singular and vague pleasure. The wild, poetic parts of the prophecies, with their bold figures, vivid exclamations, and strange Oriental names and images, filled me with a quaint and solemn delight. Just as a child brought up under the shadow of the great cathedrals of the Old World, wandering into them daily, at morning, or at eventide, beholding the many-colored windows, flamboyant with strange legends of saints and angels, and neither understanding the legends, nor comprehending the architecture, is yet stilled and impressed, till the old minster grows into his growth and fashions his nature, so this wonderful old cathedral book insensibly wrought a sort of mystical poetry into the otherwise hard and sterile life of New England. Its passionate Oriental phrases, its quaint, pathetic stories, its wild transcendent bursts of imagery, fixed an indelible mark in my imagination.... I think no NewEnglander, brought up under therégimeestablished by the Puritans, could really estimate how much of himself had actually been formed by this constant, face-to-face intimacy with Hebrew literature.
The study of a new language.
I recommend everybody who wishes to try the waters of Lethe to study a new language, and learn to think in new forms; it is like going out of one sphere of existence into another.
Greek.
Greek is the morning land of languages, and has the freshness of early dew in it which will never exhale.
The Bible.
“This ’ere old Bible,—why it’s jest like yer mother—ye rove and ramble and cut up round the world without her a spell, and mebbe think the old woman ain’t so fashionable as some; but when sickness and sorrow comes, why there ain’t nothin’ else to go back to. Is there, now?”
Reading only for amusement.
“But don’t you think,” said Marianne, “that there is danger in too much fiction?”
“Yes,” said I. “But the chief danger of all that class of reading is itseasiness, and the indolent, careless mental habit it induces. A great deal of the reading of young people on all days is really reading to no purpose, its object being merely present amusement. It is a listless yielding of the mind to be washed over by a stream which leaves no fertilizing properties, and carries away by constant wear the good soil of thought. I should try to establish a barrier against this kind of reading, not only on Sunday, but on Monday, on Tuesday, and on all days. Instead, therefore, of objecting to any particular class of books for Sunday reading, I should say in general that reading merely for pastime, without any moral aim, is the thing to be guarded against. That which inspires no thought, no purpose, which steals away all our strength and energy, and makes the Sabbath a day of dreams, is the reading I would object to.”
Sacred music.
“So of music. I do not see the propriety of confining one’s self to technical sacred music. Any grave, solemn, thoughtful, or pathetic music has a proper relation to our higher spiritual nature, whether it be printed in a church service-book or on secular sheets. On me, for example, Beethoven’s Sonatas have a far more deeply religious influence than much that has religious names and words. Music is to be judged of by its effects.”
A good picture.
For a picture, painted by a real artist, who studies Nature minutely and conscientiously, has something of the charm of the good Mother herself,—something of her faculty of putting on different aspects under different lights.
Letters.
Those long letters in which thoughtful people who live in retired situations delight; letters, not of outward events, but of sentiments and opinions, the phases of the inner life.
The artist’s mission.
What higher honor or grace can befall a creature than to be called upon to make visible to men that beauty of invisible things which is divine and eternal?
Hymns.
“A hymn is a singing angel, and goes walking through the earth, scattering the devils before it. Therefore he who creates hymns imitates the most excellent and lovely works of our Lord God, who made the angels. These hymns watch our chamber-door, they sit upon our pillow, they sing to us when we awake; and therefore our master was resolved to sow the minds of his young people with them, as ourlovely Italy is sown with the seeds of all-colored flowers.”
Music the language of Italy.
There is no phase of the Italian mind that has not found expression in its music.
The universal book.
As the mind, looking on the great volume of nature, sees there a reflection of its own internal passions, and seizes on that in it which sympathizes with itself,—as the fierce and savage soul delights in the roar of torrents, the thunder of avalanches, and the whirl of ocean-storms,—so is it in the great answering volume of revelation. There is something there for every phase of man’s nature, and hence its endless vitality and stimulating force.
Prophecy and Revelation.
It is remarkable that in all ages, communities and individuals who have suffered under oppression have always fled for refuge to the Old Testament and to the book of Revelation in the New. Even if not definitely understood, these magnificent compositions have a wild, inspiring power, like a wordless, yet impassioned symphony, played by a sublime orchestra, in which deep and awful sub-bass instruments mingle with those of ethereal softness, and wild minors twine and interlace with marches of battles and bursts of victorious harmony.
They are much mistaken who say that nothing is efficient as a motive that is not definitely understood. Who ever thought of understanding the mingled wail and roar of the Marseillaise? Just this kind of indefinite stimulating power has the Bible to the souls of the oppressed. There is also a disposition, which has manifested itself since the primitive times, by which the human soul, bowed down beneath the weight of mighty oppressions, and despairing in its own weakness, seizes with avidity the intimations of a coming judgment, in which the Son of Man, appearing in His glory, and all His holy angels with Him, shall right earth’s mighty wrongs.
The artist as prophet.
But, I take it, every true painter, poet, and artist is in some sense so far a prophet that his utterances convey more to other minds than he himself knows; so that, doubtless, should all the old masters rise from the dead, they might be edified by what posterity has found in their books.
Difficulty of criticism.
Certainly no emotions so rigidly reject critical restraint and disdain to be bound by rule as those excited by the fine arts. A man unimpressible and incapable of moods and tenses is for that reason an incompetent critic; and the sensitive, excitable man, how can heknow that he does not impose his peculiar mood as a general rule?
Rembrandt and Hawthorne.
I always did admire the gorgeous and solemn mysteries of his coloring. Rembrandt is like Hawthorne. He chooses simple and every-day objects, and so arranges light and shadow as to give them a sombre richness and mysterious gloom. “The House of the Seven Gables” is a succession of Rembrandt pictures, done in words instead of oils. Now, this pleases us, because our life really is a haunted one, the simplest thing in itisa mystery, the invisible world always lies around us like a shadow, and therefore this dreamy, golden gleam of Rembrandt meets somewhat in our inner consciousness to which it corresponds....
Rubens and Shakespeare.
I should compare Rubens to Shakespeare, for the wonderful variety and vital force of his artistic power. I know no other mind he so nearly resembles. Like Shakespeare, he forces you to accept and to forgive a thousand excesses, and uses his own faults as musicians use discords, only to enhance the perfection of harmony. There certainly is some use, even in defects. A faultless style sends you to sleep. Defects rouse and excite the sensibility to seek and appreciate excellence. Some of Shakespeare’s finest passages explode all grammar and rhetoric like sky-rockets—the thought blows the language to shivers.
Language of the Bible.
I rejoice every hour that I am among these scenes in my familiarity with the language of the Bible. In it alone can I find vocabulary and images to express what this world of wonder excites.
The effect of Christianity.
As to Christianity not making men happier, methinks M. Belloc forgets that the old Greek tragedies are filled with despair and gloom, as their prevailing characteristic, and that nearly all the music of the world before Christ was in the minor scale, as since Christ it has come to be in the major. The whole creation has, indeed, groaned and travailed in pain together until now, but the mighty anthem has modulated since the Cross, and the requiem of Jesus has been the world’s birth-song of approaching jubilee.
Music is a far better test, moreover, on such a point, than painting, for just where painting is weakest, namely, in the expression of the highest moral and spiritual ideas, there music is most sublimely strong.
Real music.
To me, all music is sacred. Is it not so? Allrealmusic, in its passionate earnest, its blendings, its wild, heart-searching tones, is the language of aspiration. So it may not be meant; yet, when we know God, so we translate it.
Power of inward emotion.
What is done from a genuine, strong, inward emotion, whether in writing or painting, always mesmerizes the paper or the canvas, and gives it a power which everybody must feel, though few know why. The reason why the Bible has been omnipotent, in all ages, has been because there were the emotions of God in it.
Puritan music.
As there is a place for all things in this great world of ours, so there was in its time and day a place and a style for Puritan music. If there were pathos and power and solemn splendor in the rhythmic movement of the churchly chants, there was a grand, wild freedom and energy of motion in the old “fuguing tunes” of that day that well expressed the heart of a people courageous in combat and unshaken in endurance. The church chant is like the measured motion of the mighty sea in calm weather, but those old fuguing tunes were like that same ocean aroused by stormy winds, when deep calleth unto deep in tempestuous confusion, out of which, at last, is evolved union and harmony. It was a music suggestive of the strife, the commotion, the battle-cries of a transition period of society, struggling onward toward dimly seen ideals of peace and order.
Books.
No ornament of a house can compare with books; they are constant company in a room, even when you are not reading them.
Our thoughts in others’ words.
The only drawback when one reads poems that exactly express what one would like to say is that it makes us envious; one thinks, why couldn’t I have said it thus?
Books of meditation.
St. John was seated in his study, with a book of meditations before him, on which he was endeavoring to fix his mind. In the hot, dusty, vulgar atmosphere of modern life, it was his daily effort to bring around himself the shady coolness, the calm, conventual stillness, that breathes through such writers as St. Francis de Sales and Thomas à Kempis, men with a genius for devotion, who have left to mankind records of the milestones and road-marks by which they traveled towards the highest things. Nor should the most stringent Protestant fail to honor that rich and grand treasury of the experience of devout spirits of which the RomishChurch has been the custodian. The hymns and prayers and pious meditations which come to us through this channel are particularly worthy of a cherishing remembrance in this dusty, materialistic age.
Hymns.
Words of piety, allied to a catching tune, are like seeds with wings—they float out in the air, and drop in the odd corners of the heart, to spring up in good purposes.