“The Natural in Art”

357 On the discussions of art there is no greater obstacle to the setting forth principles, than the unsettled terms nature and natural. They are indeed the limits of art, beyond which there can be no legitimate exercise; but the boundaries remove themselves out of sight, or contract themselves within the smallest space, according to the fancy, perhaps we should say the genius, of the disputants. To those of the contracting system, the art is considered as nearly entirely imitative of external visible nature, with a power (scarcely of creating) of combining, of putting together things that are, exactly and no other way than as they may be, and have been, though not so seen, perhaps, at the moment of any incident to be represented. Others, again, by nature, admit whatever the mind, in its most sane, healthy, imaginative, comprehensive state, can conceive. As we believe the latter is the highest and best sense in which nature, as applied to art, is to be understood, so do we believe it is the truest. It is the highest, because it is the most creative; it is the truest, because, with regard to its general reception, it carries with it a spell not to be denied, enforcing a general credence, if not conviction. In the best and healthiest state of the most discursive imagination, there is an intuitive knowledge, instantly forming a judgment aud decision, as to that particle of the natural, in even the least imaginative minds, which will unite itself, as by a chemical affinity and attraction, to the natural portion in the created and fanciful, and by that amalgamation make all be, or at least appear, as natural. The true creator never loses sight of this—the judgment is ever with him; he decides by it, and this judgment, presiding over creative power, constitutes genius. Genius, then, or art— for consummate art is genius—not only has the power of creating a world for itself, but of creating in the minds of spectators and hearers a belief in its existence. It is very strange that this should be so generally felt; and it can scarcely be unacknowledged with regard to poetry, particularly the drama, and yet be denied in reference to the art of painting. Because painting is the visible art, it must, with some, be merely the imitation of things seen? whereas poetry and music are, in the same sense, imitative as painting, and in no other—unless, indeed, we speak of the lowest kind of painting, that deadweight fastened to art by an indissoluble chain, but which was never intended to keep it from rising. It should rather be the ballast, to keep steady the aeronaut in his upward course. Let us exemplify this power of genius by its effects in poetry, and then let the fair inference be drawn, Ut poesis pictura,” as well as “ Ut pictura poesis.” Let there be to both arts the “ Quidlibet audendi eequa potestas.” Try the power by Shakspeare’s most imaginative plays—the “ Tempest” and “ Midsummer Night’s Dream.” In both these plays we have a new creation—new beings such as none ever saw, and such as none ever believed to exist until they saw these plays acted, or read them. We say such as none ever believed to exist, because we must not deceive ourselves, and take advantage of the wonderful power of that belief created in us by the poet, to fancy we have imagined such beings. We never did—the exact creations of Shakspeare, hisCaliban and his fairies, had no prototypes in our belief; but we have naturally a vague particle of belief, which instantly seizes upon and appropriates the creation. There is nothing more natural than the fear and feeling of the preternatural. Shakspeare worked upon this nature, and spun and wove from the tangled, unformed materials in the human bosom, the fairest and most hideous creatures-— not simply the two, the fairest and foulest, but many and infinitely varied in their characters. Caliban and Puck are not less distinct than Ariel, and Oberon, and Titania. And how different are their provinces I—how unlike their powers over the elements, the air, the earth, and the sea I Now where, in external nature do we get for this? It is purely creation, and shows the illimitable province of art. The world, then, from which art is to make its pictures, is not only the external visible world of nature, but the world of imaginative nature, a portion pf which is inherent in all mankind, and which makes them love and fear, in cases of their own predilection or terrpr, a little beyond reason, but not 358a little beyond truth, for the very nature is truth. If it bo in the nature of our minds that thought should travel and shift its ground, with instant and wonderful rapidity, from east to west, and yet then not be bounded by the limits of the world, may not art in this imitate nature, or rather take advantage of this ubiquity of fancy’s nature, and, with nice arrangement and rapid delusion, hurry us over space and time, and place us when and where it pleases, without violence, as tho drama does in its shifting scenes, and as Shakspeare has done in his “ Winter’s Tale?” J3e it well or ill done, is the only question. If with a judgment and power, it is the work of genius; lacking that judgment, we make a mock of and deride the attempt, and point to it as a palpable cheat. In the theatre we hiss the poor actor—we should condemn the author. Is not Burns’s “Tam O’Shanter” a pure creation? Here, too, we have fairy creatures of another kith and kin; ” and do not let any one fancy that, before reading Burns, he has had any knowledge of them. The poet spun them out of that common material which was in his and every one’s mind; and as the thread is drawn out in the poet’s mind, so, by his electric power, is it drawn out in all, and the same forms created, and being created thus within every mind, it is felt and acknowledged to be natural. And in this of Burns, there is another natural instinct called into play—the humorous; so that, however dressed or undressed in its vagaries, the phantasma is still natural, still in itself a truth. The forms “ of things unknown”—unknown till called into existence from the dormant materials of general nature, by the head of genius—thereby acquire henceforth a local habitation and a name. And thus it is that genius confers an everlasting benefit upon mankind, present and to come, continually enriching it, creating treasures for every one’s enjoyment-doing that out of the mind which cannot be done out of the material world, adding to that which was; for, if with matter, there is not since the creation of world one atom more than there was at first, it is the very contrary with the world of thought, of intellectual invention, of mind, which is continually enlarging, multiplying itself, becoming more. Nay, the painting it takes possession of matter, gives to it thought, and juake, a new thing of it. That it may not appear we are arguing without an adversary, it may be as well here to give some account of a discussion we had with a professed lover of the natural, and which originated in a conversation on ” schools of design.” We will put it in the form of a dialogue, if not according to the exact words, correct as to the substance of what was said. We will designate our opponent Naturalist, ourselves Idealist :—