| ONE’S
first impulse is to say of the contemporary spirit:
There is the infallible guide, the exemplar of conduct
and achievement! It seems to us that one thing needful
is to live and work in accord with the spirit of the
times. This, indeed, is largely true. To be out of joint
with our own time is to be in bad humour with ourselves.
Whereas the secret of efficiency is to be well attuned
with ourselves and our surroundings.
One easily remarks the great
men who have been hands and voice to the time spirit,
and one sees how irresistibly they have gone forward
in their cause, toiling and resounding through the earth.
They have been so evidently moved by a power whose whole
limits they did not themselves comprehend; possessed
[Page 54] by a glorious idea; inspired
by a splendid thought; carried out of any petty conception
of life, or any selfish, self-seeking aim, and borne
on the great universal current of progress. The mind
feeds upon the events and aspirations of its time as
a plant feeds upon the soil and air of its own valley.
And it is a mark of greatness and robustness of mind
to be able to assimilate wholly and readily the material
brought into contact with it. Not to be nourished by
the sunshine of the hour is to begin to wilt and fail.
And
yet, in another way, it is quite as necessary to disregard
the contemporary spirit, and follow only the teaching
of the cosmic spirit — the spirit which takes
small heed of men and events and passing modes. It has
the trend of larger progress in its care, and disregards
the smaller ebb and flow of local currents. The contemporary,
on the other hand, it must be remembered, is ever in
danger of being diverted and absorbed in the trivial
and the unnecessary, the foolish and [Page 55]
the futile. The contemporary spirit not seldom
becomes jaded and debauched and ineffectual from a multiplicity
of detail and a diversity of interest. The contemporary
spirit is very human, very like our lesser selves; it
is by no means always up to its better self; it often
fails of its ideal; is hasty and short-sighted and frivolous.
It is, really, nothing but the force of average humanity
at any one time, realizing itself in its own creations.
The
uncontemporary spirit, on the other hand, is the power
of humanity’s better self accomplishing large
purposes, fostering lofty aims, keeping in sight pure
ideals, and pondering on the past and the future while
it still must toil in the present day. It cares little
for reward, save that of its own approbation; does not
hesitate nor falter nor compromise; but is frank and
insistent and of large endurance.
It
is the uncontemporary spirit that is the genius of discovery
and art and invention. It is the devoted imaginers who
have been the [Page 56] benefactors
of their race. The contemporary spirit is self-seeking,
self-satisfied, self-sufficient; the great upholder
of things as they are; it sits stolid and somnolent
in the pew corner. It scoffs at liberty, praises antiquity,
and prophesies ruin.
The
contemporary spirit always has an eye to the main chance;
it feathers the nest, provides the dower, lays by for
a rainy day, lives in the passing hour, and dies eternally,
for all we know to the contrary. Of what service, then,
are the contemporary and the uncontemporary spirit to
be to the artist? They must serve him, I fancy, very
much as he is served by his dual self, with the wisdom
of the serpent and the wisdom of the dove. There will
always be active within him the conflicting, yet parallel,
desires — the inclination to adapt vague, unrealizable
dreams to the comprehension and utility of his time,
and the stubborn disinclination to alter his ideal for
any use whatever.
Yet
we must remember that all art, [Page 57] like
life itself, is a compromise — a compromise between
what we would and what we can. On the one hand is the
artist’s mind, to which come fancies, thoughts,
pictures, ideas, half-comprehended by himself, never
yet articulated or declared by others, and unimagined
by the great world of his fellows to whom he would address
himself; on the other hand is that stubborn world of
media, the rough material of sounds and colours, which
is to be made plastic by the artist’s hands, which
is to be made to convey his meaning. How is he to express
to others the new thing, which as yet he can hardly
define to himself? Evidently he must compromise between
perfect faithfulness to the vision and intelligibility
to his auditors. He must be content to convey only a
part of his own impression in order that his expression
of it may pass on to others. And here is always the
artist’s dilemma, and his need for self-surrender.
Not what he would say, but what he can say, must still
suffice him. So to lay the colour that it may [Page
58] enshrine his new dream of beauty, yet retain
so much of its old disposition that men beholding will
recognize and comprehend it still; so to dispose and
array these old words as to make them embody a shade
of meaning, an influence, an infusion, unguessed before,
yet at the same time not to wrench or distort them from
their common acceptation — to use them with great
freedom and novelty, yet not to startle their timorous
inheritors.
To
be fresh, to be original, to be conclusive, to be untrite
and compelling, yet to be alluring and convincing and
seductive also; to astonish and overcome and carry wholly
away, yet never to antagonize nor offend — there
is a task for a summer’s day. And always while
the contemporary wisdom of the serpent is teaching the
artist patience and tolerance, and to be contented with
little, the uncontemporary wisdom of the dove is bidding
him contend for the manifestation of his best self,
for the uncompromising realization of the prophecy and
the dream. [Page
59]
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