Part 27

“I never thought of that,” said Virginia. “The too precise details in a picture attract a person’s attention, and want to be looked at for their own sake, and so break in on the harmony and wholeness of the picture.”

“Yes, just so,” I answered. I spoke again of the sublime lie of art—the untruth which is most true. I said: “I once had an English teacher who used to tell us that in art one was not to give the truth, but the impression of truth. Truths often break in and destroy the impression of that whole truth.

“Now,” I asked, “what is the one, the only object, of art in the world?”

We decided, all of us, that it was complete understanding and sympathy. Art is a symbol of that completeness for which our whole life longs. One of them—I think it was Henry—said its aim was progress. I said it was rather the picturing and prophecy of the end and aim of progress itself.

They had probably heard, I said, of “art for art’s sake,” the cant of those who believed mere form and expression to be the whole of art, and left out of account the thing expressed. Virginia misunderstood me to say: “Art for its own sake,” quite a different thing. So, thinking I would agree with her, she quoted, with disapproval, an article by Kenyon Cox, saying: “He who worked for gold sold himself, and he who worked for fame was utterly lost.” I said I quite agreed with him; that unless one worked first of all for the sake of expression, and the joy of it, he was no artist.

“And, meanwhile, his wife and children might be starving,” she answered.

“It is praiseworthy,” I said, “to support one’s wife and children, but it has nothing to do with art.”

I said a man might well use his expression to earn himself bread; that it was necessary and natural, and had often even spurred a man on to work, but that it could not be his first aim if he were an artist. We spoke of Shakespeare, and of Goldsmith, and of their writing under the stress of poverty. I pointed out how, nevertheless, these men wrote of the things they loved and understood, and how the joy of work must have been their first aim.

I spoke of play, and of art being like play; of the old saying: “Work first, then play.”

Henry said that was meant for little children.

I told them how scientists tried to explain play by calling it a preparation for work. Virginia liked that idea. I said that I thought work a preparation for play, that play, interplay, the joy of creation, was life itself. The children easily understood play in this sense of the beloved work. Virginia said her work was all play. I reminded her that she might have to work hard, but she would do it gladly for the sake of that play. Marian said her school-work was almost always play. Ruth said: “I think play and work are the same thing, and that we human beings have made the distinction of words.”

Art cannot rightly have any object but whole representation, but expression of the understanding of life. I said that whenever art tried to be moral—which was rather the business of philosophy—it lost thereby; that whenever one took sides for a thing, one took sides against something else, and had lost the completeness and symmetry of art.

Henry said he thought art ought to teach a lesson.

I answered: “Art ought to show us the whole of life, which is beautiful.”

Virginia spoke of Dickens’ novels, and said she thought those were best in which he wrote with an object, and against an abuse.

I answered her that they were best and also worst. They were best because he described in them the life which he knew and loved. But the parts of these very good novels which were directed against any people or institutions were always bad, inartistic, incongruous. As an example I quoted the dreary dissertations on Chancery in “Bleak House,” and those who had read it immediately agreed with me.

Henry and Virginia questioned me several times concerning ugly pictures which were considered “good art.” I told them that a subject not usually thought beautiful, an old, old woman, for instance, might be made beautiful by the artist’s insight. I did not go into details, however, to-day. A great many ugly pictures, such as the work of Teniers, Steen, and others, seem to me very bad art. But now I spoke to them of Wiertz, the Belgian, who seems to me no artist at all, and concerning whom they had both questioned me. I took as an example of bad partisan art his picture of Napoleon in hell, with crowds of poor people making faces at him, and pelting him with brimstone. Such a subject in itself is impossible to art. What could be more unintelligent, petty, scattered and ugly!

Ruth said she did not see why an artist need understand human nature especially well unless he was one who treated of human nature; that a musician, for instance, need not do so. I began my answer, but gave way to a burst of enthusiasm from Henry.

How, said he, could a musician not understand human nature, he who knew how to rouse us to the depths with his notes, who could move us to tears? Surely he knew what he was doing, and the heart which he stirred.

Ruth said she did not see why Shakespeare showed greater understanding or completeness in his work than Emerson, for instance. Henry thought the same. I tried to show them that Emerson in his essays was not an artist—or, at least, not nearly so much of an artist as a philosopher—that he strove to reach the good, the complete harmony of the universe, but that he did not give us the vision of a present, finished, concrete beauty. They both maintained that he did. Henry spoke of the essays on “Friendship” and “Manners.”

“Have you read the essay on ‘Manners’?” he asked.

“Yes, several times,” I said.

“And doesn’t it give you a picture?” he asked. Ruth added: “And the one on friendship. I seem to see that friend.”

I owned I did not feel so. I said it gave me an inspiration, an ideal of conduct, not a picture. “Mind you,” I said, “when I call Emerson more philosopher than artist, I am not saying philosophy is less than art.”

“No, I understand that,” said Ruth, “but I, for one, when I read Shakespeare, get not any especial feeling of the completeness or whole understanding of what I read. Emerson uplifts me much more, and gives me power to do things.”

“That may be,” I said. “You may rate either as high or as low as you please, but their genius is different.”

I pointed out, too, how in Emerson’s poetry, with its rare, beautiful couplets, and its many lapses, the genius and philosopher far outshone the man of artistic talent. We had not time to go into detail, or to quote largely, and I did not wish to speak much of literary criticism and methods at this meeting, for I had planned to do so at the next, so I think Henry and Ruth went home unconvinced of the artistic superiority of Shakespeare over Emerson. One might almost as profitably argue who was a greater man, Beethoven or Napoleon!

Marian asked me whether George Eliot was an artist or a philosopher. I told her I thought she was both, but that I believed she would have been more of an artist had she been less a philosopher.