Vocal Expression Part 5

Now, who shall arbitrate?

Ten men love what I hate, Shun what I follow, slight what I receive; Ten, who in ears and eyes Match me: we all surmise, They, this thing, and I, that: whom shall my soul believe?

Not on the vulgar ma.s.s Called "work," must sentence pa.s.s, Things done, that took the eye and had the price; O'er which, from level stand, The low world laid its hand, Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:

But all, the world's coa.r.s.e thumb And finger failed to plumb, So pa.s.sed in making up the main account: All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:

Thoughts hardly to be packed Into a narrow act, Fancies that broke through language and escaped; All I could never be, All, men ignored in me, This, I was worth to G.o.d, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

--BROWNING.

FORBEARANCE

Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?

Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk?

At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse?

Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust?

And loved so well a high behavior, In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained, n.o.bility more n.o.bly to repay?

O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine!

EACH AND ALL

Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown Of thee from the hill-top looking down; The heifer that lows in the upland farm, Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm; The s.e.xton, tolling his bell at noon, Deems not that great Napoleon Stops his horse and lists with delight, Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height; Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.

All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone.

I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, Singing at dawn on the alder bough; I brought him home, in his nest, at even; He sings the song, but it cheers not now, For I did not bring home the river and sky;-- He sang to my ear,--they sang to my eye.

The delicate sh.e.l.ls lay on the sh.o.r.e; The bubbles of the latest wave Fresh pearls to their enamel gave, And the bellowing of the savage sea Greeted their safe escape to me.

I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the sh.o.r.e With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.

The lover watched his graceful maid, As 'mid the virgin train she strayed, Nor knew her beauty's best attire Was woven still by the snow-white choir.

At last she came to his hermitage, Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage;-- The gay enchantment was undone, A gentle wife, but fairy none.

Then I said, "I covet truth; Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; I leave it behind with the games of youth":-- As I spoke, beneath my feet The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath, Running over the club-moss burrs; I inhaled the violet's breath; Around me stood the oaks and firs; Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground; Over me soared the eternal sky, Full of light and of deity; Again I saw, again I heard, The rolling river, the morning bird;-- Beauty through my senses stole; I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

--EMERSON.

As a final step in this study which has for its aim an increase in your power to _think vitally_ you are to choose from the "great heap of your knowledge" a subject about which you have sufficient understanding and enthusiasm to justify your discussion of it, and with this as a topic you are "to unmuzzle your wisdom" in the form of _exposition_ or _argumentation_.

SECOND STUDY

TO ESTABLISH INTELLIGENCE IN FEELING

Art is in bondage in this country: its internal polity to the temperamental ideal; its external polity to the commercial ideal.

Business and social life are in the same bondage. In music, in drama, in letters, in society, and in trade we permit personality to exploit itself for commercial purposes. The result is either chaotic or calculated expression on every side. When temperament seeks restraint in technique, and policy, whether business or social, seeks freedom in service, then shall we have that balanced expression in art, in society, and in trade which should proceed from the American personality and distinguish American life.

It may seem a far cry from a comment upon American life to the subject of this second study--_intelligence in feeling_. Carry the idea of balanced expression from the introduction to the body of this exposition and the transition is not difficult to make.

"Wonderful technique, but no heart in her singing!" "Tremendous temperament, but no technique!" "She moves me profoundly, but oh, what a method!" "Her instrument is flawless, but she leaves me absolutely unmoved." Have you ever heard such comment, or made such comment, or been the subject of like comment? Diagnosis of the case, whether it be yours or another's, should be the same--lack of poise in expression, producing the undesirable effect upon the auditor of no emotion at all, or of unintelligent emotion. To determine just what we mean by intelligent emotion is our first problem for this study.

An experience I had in visiting a cla.s.s in interpretation in a well-known school of oratory some years ago will ill.u.s.trate the point.

The selection for interpretation was the prelude to the first part of _The Vision of Sir Launfal_.

"And what is so rare as a day in June?

Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays; ..."

The work was well under way when I entered the cla.s.s-room. My entrance did not disturb the expression on the face of the student who was "up before" the cla.s.s. A Malvolio smile was never more deliciously indelible. I thought at first my request to see some work in interpretation had been mistaken and I had been ushered into a cla.s.s in facial gymnastics. Then I concluded that Mr. Lowell's poem was being employed as text for an exercise in smiling. Finally the awful truth came upon me that this teacher of interpretation was seriously attempting to secure from her pupils an expression which should suggest the spirit of the June day by asking them to a.s.sume the outward sign of joy known as smiling. The result was a ghastly series of facial contortions, which left at least one auditor's day as bleak as the bleakest December. No intelligent feeling can be induced in interpreter or auditor by a.s.suming the outward sign of an inward emotion. Some of you are recalling Mr. James's _talk to students_, on the reflex theory of emotion, and are being confused at this point. Let us stop and straighten out the confusion. Mr. James says:

"Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.

"Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can. So to feel brave, act as if we _were_ brave, use all our will to that end, and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear."

The application of this principle to the reading of these lines would seem to justify the method the teacher was pursuing. A smile is acceptedly the indication of happy emotion, the outward symbol of inward rejoicing or joy. The June day is full of joyful emotion,--the joy of awakening life. Applying Mr. James's theory, a legitimate way to induce the inward emotion would seem to be to a.s.sume the outward sign. But wait a moment. Let us look to our premises. Mr. Lanier, who sings of Nature with joyful understanding, cries in _Sunrise_:

"Tell me, sweet burly-bark'd, man-bodied Tree That mine arms in the dark are embracing, dost know From what fount are these tears at thy feet which flow?

They rise not from reason, but deeper inconsequent deeps.

Reason's not one that weeps.

What logic of greeting lies Betwixt dear over-beautiful trees and the rain of the eyes?"

Here is a great master of verbal expression whose inward joy finds its outward symbol not in a smile but in a tear. So you and I may respond to Mr. Lowell's "high tide of the year" with smiles or with tears, with bowed head and closed eyes, or with eyes wide and head raised to meet the returning flood of life.

The effect upon me of the beauty of this day as Mr. Lowell has painted it, my personal emotional response is interesting psychology, but is not my concern as an interpreter. My own emotion and its personal response belong to my preparatory interpretative efforts in the study; but when the interpretation is ready for the audience-room, the emotion must be a.s.similated into the interpretative act and appear only as part of the illumination of the bit of life I am presenting.

The object of all great art, whether creative or interpretative, is not to exploit the personality of the artist, but to disclose at some point the personality of the very G.o.d himself, which is life. The revelation not of personal emotion but of universal life is the legitimate aim of all artistic effort.

Emotional response will accompany every vital mental conception.

Abandonment to that response is a legitimate and necessary part of full comprehension. But such abandonment, as I have said, belongs to our preparation for expression. Such abandonment must not be taken out of the study on to the stage. No temperamental expression along any line is fit for the public until it is controlled by technique, the technique which has been worked out by the masters of every art, not excluding the art of living.

It is not the effect of June upon you I want from your interpretation, it is the spirit of June itself. You must let me have my own emotion.

Your emotional response was the result of your mental concept; mine, to be intelligent, must find the same impulse. If you impose your own emotion upon me mine will be merely an unintelligent reflection of yours. Taking as our ideal of the interpreter, the absolutely pure medium, bars out every manifestation which calls attention to the interpreter, and so interferes with the direct message.

"The natural form of expression which literature takes when it pa.s.ses beyond the normal powers of prose, is lyric poetry. When your feelings rise beyond a certain degree of stress you need the stronger beat and vibration of verse; to express the highest joy or the deepest grief poetry is your natural instrument." Again corroborated in our choice of direction in study by Mr. Gardiner, let us turn for "material" in the establishment of _intelligence in emotion_, to the most intensive type of the literature of feeling,--lyric poetry.

"Every now and then a man will come who will reduce to words--as Mr.

Ruskin has done--some impression of vivid pleasure which has never been reduced to words before. It is only the great master who makes these advances; by studying his works you may perhaps come somewhere near the mark that he has set." This further word from the same paragraph should influence us to pause with Mr. Ruskin's poetry in prose form for a brief study on our way to the lyrics of Wordsworth and Sh.e.l.ley and Keats, a song from Shakespeare, and some few from the rare, more modern lyricists. I shall trust you to this by-path under the guidance of _The Forms of Prose Literature_, where you will find pa.s.sages from such masters of prose as Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Stevenson--pa.s.sages of surpa.s.sing lyric beauty which shall furnish models for your correlated study in Description.

SUGGESTIVE a.n.a.lYSIS

I have chosen for suggestive a.n.a.lysis of the lyric, Sh.e.l.ley's ode _To a Skylark_. I shall a.n.a.lyze in detail only the first five stanzas:

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!

Bird thou never wert, That from heaven, or near it Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.