Part 77

I. ART IN POETRY:

a. Difference between Poetry and Prose:

1. Poetry is “set to music,” and the rhythm carries part of the message.

2. This unreality or distance from life makes it more complete and beautiful in itself.

3. The emotions and imagination picture completeness more easily than the intellect:

α. Because the desire for completeness is a feeling.

b. Completeness and understanding in Poetry:

1. Metaphor and simile a relationing of far-off things.

2. Symbol in Play replaces them:

α. The Fairy-story.

3. Taking sides destroys poetry.

4. Exaggerated and conventional phrases are weak because they are insincere.

II. ART IN MUSIC:

a. Music is itself harmony and completeness:

1. The most intangible and removed, it is yet the most satisfying symbol of completeness and harmony.

III. THE OPERA:

a. Its attempt to combine all the Arts in one harmonious expression.

IV. ART IN PAINTING:

a. Unity or completeness in painting:

1. Point of interest; with radiating lines, balance, and other means of making it prominent.

2. The cycle of colors, complete color, and the contrast of light and darkness.

3. A story, not embodied in the picture itself, but needing words of explanation, spoils unity.

4. Unnecessary detail, detracting from central interest and motive, also spoils unity.

b. Truth in painting:

1. Falseness of photographic truth, because of its lack of unity and purpose.

α. The “out-of-focus” and imaginatively planned photograph sometimes artistic.

2. Perspective, the painter’s vision of the single complete experience.

3. To see beauty in things is to see the truth.