Part 47 (2/2)

In sculpture we have a n.o.ble art forcing itself into some service through many limitations. Its check, as far as it comes under this line of study, has been indicated in our last chapter; the degradation of the human body, the vicious standards of s.e.x-consciousness enforced under the name of modesty, the covered ugliness, which we do not recognize, all this is a deadly injury to free high work in sculpture.

With a n.o.bly equal womanhood, stalwart and athletic; with the high standards of beauty and of decorum which we can never have without free womanhood; we should show a different product in this great art.

An interesting note in pa.s.sing is this: when we seek to express socially our n.o.blest, ideas, Truth; Justice; Liberty; we use the woman's body as the highest human type. But in doing this, the artist, true to humanity and not bia.s.sed by s.e.x, gives us a strong, grand figure, beautiful indeed, but never _decorated_. Fancy Liberty in ruffles and frills, with rings in her ears--or nose.

Music is injured by a one-sided handling, partly in the excess of the one dominant masculine pa.s.sion, partly by the general presence of egoism; that tendency to self-expression instead of social expression, which so disfigures our art; and this is true also of poetry.

Miles and miles of poetry consist of the ceaseless outcry of the male for the female, which is by no means so overwhelming as a feature of human life as he imagines it; and other miles express his other feelings, with that ingenuous lack of reticence which is at its base essentially masculine. Having a pain, the poet must needs pour it forth, that his woe be shared and sympathized with.

As more and more women writers flock into the field there is room for fine historic study of the difference in s.e.x feeling, and the gradual emergence of the human note.

Literature, and in especial the art of fiction, is so large a field for this study that it will have a chapter to itself; this one but touching on these various forms; and indicating lines of observation.

That best known form of art which to my mind needs no qualifying description--painting--is also a wide field; and cannot be done full justice to within these limits. The effect upon it of too much masculinity is not so much in choice of subject as in method and spirit.

The artist sees beauty of form and color where the ordinary observer does not; and paints the old and ugly with as much enthusiasm as the young and beautiful--sometimes. If there is in some an over-emphasis of feminine attractions it is counterbalanced in others by a far broader line of work.

But the main evils of a too masculine art lie in the emphasis laid on self-expression. The artist, pa.s.sionately conscious of how he feels, strives to make other people aware of these sensations. This is now so generally accepted by critics, so seriously advanced by painters, that what is called ”the art world” accepts it as established.

If a man paints the sea, it is not to make you see and feel as a sight of that same ocean would, but to make you see and feel how he, personally, was affected by it; a matter surely of the narrowest importance. The ultra-masculine artist, extremely sensitive, necessarily, and full of the natural urge to expression of the s.e.x, uses the medium of art as ingenuously as the partridge-c.o.c.k uses his wings in drumming on the log; or the bull moose stamps and bellows; not narrowly as a mate call, but as a form of expression of his personal sensations.

The higher the artist the more human he is, the broader his vision, the more he sees for humanity, and expresses for humanity, and the less personal, the less ultra-masculine, is his expression.

COMMENT AND REVIEW

The literary output of the ancient Hebrews must have been great, since we are told by their critical philosopher, ”Of the making of many books there is no end.”

There must have been some limit, however, because their books were hand made, and not everyone could do it. Since the printing press relieved this mechanical restriction, and educational facilities made reading and writing come, if not by nature, at least with general compulsion, the making of books has increased to the present output--which would have made the ancient philosopher blush for his premature complaint.

In this, as in all social functions, we have the normal and the abnormal growth before us; but so far we have not learned to divide them. There is no harm at all in having anybody and everybody write books if they choose, any more than in having anybody and everybody talk if they choose. Literature is only preserved speech.

Freedom of speech is dear to our hearts; it is an easy privilege, and costs little--to the speaker. People are free to talk, privately and publicly, and free to write, privately and publicly.

The harm comes, in this as in other processes, by the door of economic interest. It is not the desire to write which crowds our market so disadvantageously; it is the desire to sell.

Though a fair capacity in the art of literature were even more general than to-day, if our social conditions were normal only a certain proportion of us would naturally prefer that form of expression. Our literary output is abnormally increased by two influences; the hereditary and inculcated idea of superiority in this profession, and the emoluments thereof. These last are greatly over-estimated, as, in truth, is the first also.

There is nothing essentially more worthy in the art of saying things than in the art of doing things. The basic merit in literature, as in speech, lies in the thing said. This the makers of many books have utterly forgotten. ”She's a beautiful talker!” we might say of someone.

”It's perfectly lovely! Such language! Such expression! It's a joy to hear her!”

Then an unenthusiastic person might rudely inquire, ”Yes--but what does she say?”

Talking is not fancy-work. It is not an exhibition of skill in the use of the vocal chords, in knowledge of grammar and rhetoric. Speech is developed in our race as a medium of transmission of thought and feelings. The greater or less ease and proficiency with which we elaborate the function should always be held subordinate to the real use. Literature is to be similarly judged by its initial purpose, the preservation and transmission of ideas and feelings. Even the picture-work of fiction must carry a certain content of ideas, else it cannot be read; it does not, as the children say, ”make sense.”

Now take up your current magazine--the largest medium of literary expression to-day--and consider it from this point of view.

The modern magazine is a distinctly new product. When the slow, thick stream of book-making first began to spread and filter out through the new channels of periodic publication, a magazine was a serious literary production. The word ”magazine” implies an armory, a storehouse, a collection of valuable pieces of literature. Now we need a new word for the thing. It has become a more and more fluent and varied mouthpiece of popular expression. It is a halfway-house between the newspaper and the book. The older, higher-priced, more impressive of them, keep up, or try to keep up, the standards of the past; but the world of to-day is by no means so much interested in ”beautiful letters” as in the fresh current of knowledge and feeling belonging to our times.

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