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FRIEND of mine, a man of far more than ordinary culture
and depth of thought, said to me recently that he didn’t
believe the healthy normal man would write poetry; that
in health the strong rational human being is so happy
that he does not need to find expression in any of the
fine arts; to be alive and to do some useful necessary
work is enough for him. And Stevenson, somewhere, I
think in one of his letters, throws out the hint that
possibly art, after all, may be the result of a diseased
condition.
Naturally every follower of
the fine arts will be up in arms at such a suggestion.
He will repudiate the idea of anything abnormal or less
than manly in the occupation he loves so well. The imputation
of insanity attaching to genius is one that has gained
some [Page 130] credence through Lombroso
and Nordau, and has ranged the world of thinking people
into two camps. Probably the truth lies somewhere between
them.
For,
in the first place, it would seem that both Lombroso
and Nordau are extremists, and very often the simplest
aspects of a case are contorted in support of their
own view. They themselves are not quite balanced; their
single idea has run away with them. But let us ask what
are the aims of writing and the fine arts, and what
are the conditions under which they are produced.
Roughly
speaking, the aim and business of the fine arts is to
represent life. Not merely to reproduce the most exact
image or picture of life, but to reproduce it with something
added. That something is the personal quality of the
artist himself, his thoughts and feelings about life.
If, then, we consider the whole body of art, all the
product of the literatures and fine arts of all peoples,
we may say that it is a very fair representation of
life, [Page 131] and in every case
a fair representation or revelation of the different
races as well. Not only will each nation record the
life of the world as it existed then and there; it will
also reveal its own bias of judgement and emotion about
that life. Also the art of a nation will fail here and
there, just as life fails; but in the long run it will
not fail; it will form a faithful counterpart and picture,
so far as it goes, of the life of that nation.
Now
the question arises, How can anything so trustworthy
be the product of insanity? Sanity surely implies a
capacity for seeing things as they are, and if art is
born of insane conditions, it must in the long run represent
things as they are not. If the fine arts are the product
of insanity, then truly is man following a vain shadow.
For
the fine arts have always embodied for men, not only
reflections about life, but aspirations and ideals.
Art has held the mirror up to nature; but it has always
been a magic mirror, a mirror of the artist’s
own make, [Page 132] in which we might
behold the world truly and accurately, but with a certain
glamour or bloom added. It has shown us very truly what
life is, but it has also shown us what life might become.
There has ever been a prophetic quality in art. It has
always been able to foreshadow standards of conduct
and culture; and civilizations have always tended to
make themselves over, to grow and develop, on the lines
of progress laid down by their poets, seers, and artists.
How, then, can we possibly admit that art is sprung
from insanity? Would it not be nearer the truth to say
that art is one of the most sane and normal things in
the world?
This
being so, if it be so, what excuse have we for saying
that genius is touched with insanity; that the artists
is never quite a normal being; or that art is the product
of disease, and the healthy man would, after all, never
wish to write or paint or make music? Can there be the
least foundation for such a conclusion? [Page
133]
I
believe there is art which is born of unwholesome conditions;
and I believe there is writing which is certainly not
the product of perfect sanity; but I do not believe
that the best writing and the best art are so produced.
Any of the arts requires in those who profess it an
amount of technical skill which is very exacting. Naturally,
therefore, all art, or at least every fine art, very
easily tends to specialization.
In
primitive and simple times the fine arts would not be
so far divorced from common life as they are now. Being
in the first place merely means of expressing universal
sorrow or joy, love or hate, hope or fear, they would
be used by every one. But gradually, as one or another
individual in a community gained facility and power
and unusual excellence as a poet or a musician, he would
devote himself exclusively to that fascinating pursuit.
And so well was he esteemed, that, like our friend Ung
in the ballad, he need do nothing but make songs and
music. He need share no [Page 134] longer
in the most ordinary and necessary work of the world.
Now there is, of course, in such specialization an element
of danger. The man highly specialized is a variant,
not a normal type. We should logically conclude, then,
that the artist or the writer who is too exclusively
engrossed in his art is not the person from whom the
best work is to be expected. His art may be so overladen
with technique that the great human emotions may be
lost. The man has been swallowed up in the artist.
I
believe a critical consideration of art and letters,
with this point in view, would bear out the conclusion.
We should find that the great works of art and literature,
the works which the world has cared to preserve with
loving gratitude, have been produced by men whose interest
in life was greater than their interest in their art.
They were men first and artists afterward. Technically
speaking, there have been many English poets far superior
to Shakespeare. [Page 135]
The
truth is, therefore, that art is not the product of
a diseased condition in the individual, but rather the
product of great sanity and normal health; at the same
time the overzealous and ill-regulated devotee of art
may very easily run himself into an abnormal state bordering
on disease.
There
is in all this, if I am not mistaken, a wholesome case
of instruction for the artist, and a very palpable warning
against over-exclusive devotion to a single line of
development. It is so easy in an enthusiasm for art
to be careless about all else; so easy to neglect a
due culture of all our powers; so easy to push our development
in a single direction until we lose poise and become
warped and distorted through specialization. A great
care for art, yes; but an exclusive and slavish devotion
to it, by no means! The man must be greater than the
artist; and when this is not so, only a second-rate
art can be the result. So that if you are a writer or
a painter or make music your mistress, it is of the
utmost [Page 136] importance that you
should be something of an athlete and a philosopher
as well. For the art of a people must provide the moral
aims and æsthetic ideals for that people; it must,
therefore, be the product of the very best spirits and
minds of the race.
Upon
no other class in a community, then, does the obligation
of noble living rest with so unremitting a strain as
on its artists, its writers and painters, its architects
and musicmakers. Only great sanity can give birth to
great art. Sanity of mind, sweetness of temper, strength
of physique; an insatiable curiosity for the truth at
all costs; an unswerving loyalty to manly goodness in
the face of all difficulties; and an unashamed love
of beauty in every guise; these are some of the prime
qualities which go to make an artist.
It
almost seems that to be an artist one must first attain
a perfect personality. That is difficult. But then art
is a difficult matter; it is nothing less than the embodiment
of perfection. [Page 137]
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