Modern Painters Volume II Part 20

We have, in the two preceding chapters, arrived at definite conclusions respecting the power and essence of the imaginative faculty. In these two acts of penetration and combination, its separating and characteristic attributes are entirely developed; it remains for us only to observe a certain habit or mode of operation in which it frequently delights, and by which it addresses itself to our perceptions more forcibly, and a.s.serts its presence more distinctly than in those mighty but more secret workings wherein its life consists.

In our examination of the combining imagination, we chose to a.s.sume the first or simple conception to be as clear in the absence as in the presence of the object of it. This, I suppose, is in point of fact never the case, nor is an approximation to such distinctness of conception always a characteristic of the imaginative mind. Many persons have thorough and felicitous power of drawing from memory, yet never originate a thought, nor excite an emotion.

-- 2. The ambiguity of conception.

-- 3. Is not in itself capable of adding to the charm of fair things.

The form in which conception actually occurs to ordinary minds appears to derive value and preciousness from that indefiniteness which we alluded to in the second chapter, (-- 2,) for there is an unfailing charm in the memory and antic.i.p.ation of things beautiful, more sunny and spiritual than attaches to their presence; for with their presence it is possible to be sated, and even wearied, but with the imagination of them never; in so far that it needs some self-discipline to prevent the mind from falling into a morbid condition of dissatisfaction with all that it immediately possesses, and continual longing for things absent; and yet I think this charm is not justly to be attributed to the mere vagueness and uncertainty of the conception, except thus far, that of objects whose substantial presence was ugly or painful the sublimity and impressiveness, if there were any, is retained in the conception, while the sensual offensiveness is withdrawn; thus circ.u.mstances of horror may be safely touched in verbal description, and for a time dwelt upon by the mind, as often by Homer and Spenser, (by the latter frequently with too much grossness, as in the description of the combat of the Red-Cross Knight with Errour,) which could not for a moment be regarded or tolerated in their reality, or on canvas; and besides this mellowing and softening operation on those it retains, the conceptive faculty has the power of letting go many of them altogether out of its groups of ideas, and retaining only those where the meminisse juvabit will apply; and in this way the entire group of memories becomes altogether delightful; but of those parts of anything which are in themselves beautiful, I think the indistinctness no benefit, but that the brighter they are the better; and that the peculiar charm we feel in conception results from its grasp and blending of ideas rather than from their obscurity, for we do not usually recall, as we have seen, one part at a time only of a pleasant scene, one moment only of a happy day; but together with each single object we summon up a kind of crowded and involved shadowing forth of all the other glories with which it was a.s.sociated, and into every moment we concentrate an epitome of the day; and it will happen frequently that even when the visible objects or actual circ.u.mstances are not in numbers remembered; yet the feeling and joy of them is obtained we know not how or whence, and so with a kind of conceptive burning gla.s.s we bend the suns.h.i.+ne of all the day, and the fulness of all the scene upon every point that we successively seize; and this together with more vivid action of fancy, for I think that the wilful and playful seizure of the points that suit her purpose and help her springing, whereby she is distinguished from simple conception, takes place more easily and actively with the memory of things than in presence of them. But, however this be, and I confess that there is much that I cannot satisfactorily to myself unravel with respect to the nature of simple conception; it is evident that this agreeableness, whatever it be, is not by art attainable, for all art is in some sort realization; it may be the realization of obscurity or indefiniteness, but still it must differ from the mere conception of obscurity and indefiniteness; so that whatever emotions depend absolutely on imperfectness of conception, as the horror of Milton's Death, cannot be rendered by art, for art can only lay hold of things which have shape, and destroys by its touch the fearfulness or pleasurableness of those which shape have none.

-- 4. But gives to the imagination its regardant power over them.

But on this indistinctness of conception, itself comparatively valueless and unaffecting, is based the operation of the imaginative faculty with which we are at present concerned, and in which its glory is consummated: whereby, depriving the subject of material and bodily shape, and regarding such of its qualities only as it chooses for particular purpose, it forges these qualities together in such groups and forms as it desires, and gives to their abstract being consistency and reality, by striking them as it were with the die of an image belonging to other matter, which stroke having once received, they pa.s.s current at once in the peculiar conjunction and for the peculiar value desired.

Thus, in the description of Satan quoted in the first chapter, "And like a comet burned," the bodily shape of the angel is destroyed, the inflaming of the formless spirit is alone regarded; and this, and his power of evil a.s.sociated in one fearful and abstract conception are stamped to give them distinctness and permanence with the image of the comet, "that fires the length of Ophiuchus huge." Yet this could not be done, but that the image of the comet itself is in a measure indistinct, capable of awful expansion, and full of threatening and fear. Again, in his fall, the imagination binds up the thunder, the resistance, the ma.s.sy prostration, separates them from the external form, and binds them together by the help of that image of the mountain half sunk; which again would be unfit but for its own indistinctness, and for that glorious addition "with all his pines," whereby a vitality and spear-like hostility are communicated to its falling form, and the fall is marked as not utter subversion, but sinking only, the pines remaining in their uprightness, and unity, and threatening of darkness upon the descended precipice: and again in that yet more n.o.ble pa.s.sage at the close of the fourth book, where almost every operation of the contemplative imagination is concentrated; the angelic squadron first gathered into one burning ma.s.s by the single expression "sharpening in mooned horns," then told out in their unity and mult.i.tude and stooped hostility, by the image of the wind upon the corn; Satan endowed with G.o.dlike strength and endurance in that mighty line, "like Teneriffe or Atlas, unremoved," with infinitude of size the next instant, and with all the vagueness and terribleness of spiritual power, by the "horror plumed," and the "_what seemed_ both spear and s.h.i.+eld."

-- 5. The third office of fancy distinguished from imagination contemplative.

The third function of fancy, already spoken of as subordinate to this of the imagination, is the highest of which she is capable; like the imagination, she beholds in the things submitted to her treatment things different from the actual; but the suggestions she follows are not in their nature essential in the object contemplated; and the images resulting, instead of ill.u.s.trating, may lead the mind away from it, and change the current of contemplative feeling; for as in her operation parallel to imagination penetrative, we saw her dwelling upon external features, while the n.o.bler sister, faculty, entered within, so now, when both, from what they see and know in their immediate object, are conjuring up images ill.u.s.trative or elevatory of it, the fancy necessarily summons those of mere external relations.h.i.+p, and therefore of unaffecting influence; while the imagination, by every ghost she raises, tells tales about the prison-house, and therefore never loses her power over the heart, nor her unity of emotion. On the other hand, the regardant or contemplative action of fancy is in this different from, and in this n.o.bler, than that mere seizing and likeness-catching operation we saw in her before; that when contemplative, she verily believes in the truth of the vision she has summoned, loses sight of actuality, and beholds the new and spiritual image faithfully and even seriously; whereas before, she summoned no spiritual image, but merely caught the vivid actuality, or the curious resemblance of the real object; not that these two operations are separate, for the fancy pa.s.ses gradually from mere vivid right of reality, and witty suggestion of likeness, to a ghostly sight of what is unreal; and through this, in proportion as she begins to feel, she rises towards and partakes of imagination itself, for imagination and fancy are continually united, and it is necessary, when they are so, carefully to distinguish the feelingless part which is fancy's, from the sentient part, which is imagination's. Let us take a few instances. Here is fancy, first, very beautiful, in her simple capacity of likeness-catching:--

"To-day we purpose--aye, this hour we mount To spur three leagues towards the Apennine.

Come down, we pray thee, ere the _hot sun count His dewy rosary_ on the eglantine."

Seizing on the outside resemblances of bead form, and on the slipping from their threading bough one by one, the fancy is content to lose the heart of the thing, the solemnity of prayer: or perhaps I do the glorious poet wrong in saying this, for the sense of a sun wors.h.i.+p and orison in beginning its race, may have been in his mind; and so far as it was so, the pa.s.sage is imaginative and not fanciful. But that which most readers would accept from it, is the mere flash of the external image, in whose truth the fancy herself does not yet believe and therefore is not yet contemplative. Here, however, is fancy believing in the images she creates:--

"It feeds the quick growth of the serpent-vine, And the dark linked ivy tangling wild And budding, blown, or odor faded blooms, Which _star the winds with points of colored light_ As they rain through them; and _bright golden globes Of fruit suspended in their own green heaven_."

It is not, observe, a mere likeness that is caught here; but the flowers and fruit are entirely deprived by the fancy of their material existence, and contemplated by her seriously and faithfully as stars and worlds; yet it is only external likeness that she catches; she forces the resemblance, and lowers the dignity of the adopted image.

Next take two delicious stanzas of fancy regardant, (believing in her creations,) followed by one of heavenly imagination, from Wordsworth's address to the daisy:--

"A Nun demure--of lowly port; Or sprightly maiden--of Love's court, In thy simplicity the sport Of all temptations.

A Queen in crown of rubies drest, A starveling in a scanty vest, Are all as seems to suit thee best,-- Thy appellations.

I see thee glittering from afar, And then thou art a pretty star,-- Not quite so fair as many are In heaven above thee.

Yet like a star, with glittering crest, Self-poised in air thou seem'st to rest;-- May peace come never to his nest Who shall reprove thee.

Sweet flower--for by that name at last, When all my reveries are past, I call thee, and to that cleave fast.

Sweet silent creature, That breath'st with me, in sun and air, Do thou, as thou art wont, repair My heart with gladness, and a share Of thy meek nature."

-- 6. Various instances.

Observe how spiritual, yet how wandering and playful the fancy is in the first two stanzas, and how far she flies from the matter in hand, never stopping to brood on the character of any one of the images she summons, and yet for a moment truly seeing and believing in them all; while in the last stanza the imagination returns with its deep feeling to the heart of the flower, and "_cleaves fast_" to that. Compare the operation of the imagination in Coleridge, on one of the most trifling objects that could possibly have been submitted to its action.

"The thin blue flame Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not: Only that film which fluttered on the grate Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.

Methinks its motion in this hush of nature Gives it dim sympathies with me, who live, Making it a companionable form, Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling spirit By its own moods interprets; everywhere, Echo or mirror seeking of itself, And makes a toy of thought."

Lastly, observe the sweet operation of fancy regardant, in the following well-known pa.s.sage from Scott, where both her beholding and transforming powers are seen in their simplicity.

"The rocky summits--split and rent, Formed turret, dome, or battlement.-- Or seemed fantastically set With cupola or minaret.

Nor were these earth-born castles bare, Nor lacked they many a banner fair, For from their s.h.i.+vered brows displayed, Far o'er th' unfathomable glade, All twinkling with the dew-drop sheen, The brier-rose fell, in streamers green,-- And creeping shrubs of thousand dyes Waved in the west wind's summer sighs."

Let the reader refer to this pa.s.sage, with its pretty tremulous conclusion above the pine tree, "where glistening streamers waved and danced," and then compare with it the following, where the imagination operates on a scene nearly similar.

"Gray rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemm'd The struggling brook; tall spires of windle strae Threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope, And nought but knarled roots of ancient pines, Branchless and blasted, clench'd with grasping roots Th' unwilling soil. . . .

. . . . . . A gradual change was here, Yet ghastly. For, _as fast years flow away, The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin And white; and where irradiate dewy eyes Had shone, gleam stony orbs; so from his steps Bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade Of the green groves, with all their odorous winds And musical motions._ . . . .

. . . . . Where the pa.s.s extends Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks.

And seems with its acc.u.mulated crags To overhang the world; for wide expand Beneath the wan stars, and descending moon, Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams, _Dim tracts and vast, robed in the l.u.s.trous gloom Of leaden-colored even_, and _fiery hills Mingling their flames with twilight_ on the verge Of the remote horizon. The near scene In naked, and severe simplicity Made contrast with the universe. A pine Rock-rooted, stretch'd athwart the vacancy Its swinging boughs, to each _inconstant blast Yielding one only response at each pause_, In most familiar cadence, with the howl, The thunder, and the hiss of _homeless_ streams, Mingling its solemn song."

[Ill.u.s.tration: STUDY OF STONE PINE, AT SESTRI. From a drawing by Ruskin.]

In this last pa.s.sage, the mind never departs from its solemn possession of the solitary scene, the imagination only giving weight, meaning, and strange human sympathies to all its sights and sounds.

In that from Scott,[70]--the fancy, led away by the outside resemblance of floating form and hue to the banners, loses the feeling and possession of the scene, and places herself in circ.u.mstances of character completely opposite to the quietness and grandeur of the natural objects; this would have been unjustifiable, but that the resemblance occurs to the mind of the monarch, rather than to that of the poet; and it is that, which of all others, would have been the most likely to occur at the time; in this point of view it has high imaginative propriety. Of the same fanciful character is that transformation of the tree trunks into dragons noticed before in Turner's Jason; and in the same way this becomes imaginative as it exhibits the effect of fear in disposing to morbid perception. Compare with it the real and high action of the imagination on the same matter in Wordsworth's Yew trees (which I consider the most vigorous and solemn bit of forest landscape ever painted):--

"Each particular trunk a growth Of intertwisted fibres serpentine, Up coiling and inveterately convolved, _Nor uninformed with Phantasy, and looks That threaten the profane_."

It is too long to quote, but the reader should refer to it: let him note especially, if painter, that pure touch of color, "by sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged."

In the same way, the blasted trunk on the left, in Turner's drawing of the spot where Harold fell at the battle of Hastings, takes, where its boughs first separate, the shape of the head of an arrow; this, which is mere fancy in itself, is imagination as it supposes in the spectator an excited condition of feeling dependent on the history of the spot.

-- 7. Morbid or nervous fancy.

I have been led perhaps into too great detail in ill.u.s.trating these points; but I think it is of no small importance to prove how in all cases the imagination is based upon, and appeals to, a deep heart feeling; and how faithful and earnest it is in contemplation of the subject matter, never losing sight of it, or disguising it, but depriving it of extraneous and material accidents, and regarding it in its disembodied essence. I have not, however, sufficiently noted in opposition to it, that diseased action of the fancy which depends more on nervous temperament than intellectual power; and which, as in dreaming, fever, insanity, and other morbid conditions of mind is frequently a source of daring and inventive conception; and so the visionary appearances resulting from various disturbances of the frame by pa.s.sion, and from the rapid tendency of the mind to invest with shape and intelligence the active influences about it, as in the various demons, spirits, and fairies of all imaginative nations; which, however, I consider are no more to be ranked as right creations of fancy or imagination than things actually seen and heard; for the action of the nerves is I suppose the same, whether externally caused, or from within, although very grand imagination may be shown by the intellectual antic.i.p.ation and realization of such impressions; as in that glorious vignette of Turner's to the voyage of Columbus. "Slowly along the evening sky they went." Note especially therein, how admirably true to the natural form, and yet how suggestive of the battlement he has rendered the level flake of evening cloud.

-- 8. The action of contemplative imagination is not to be expressed by art.

I believe that it is unnecessary for me to enter into farther detail of ill.u.s.tration respecting these points; for fuller explanation of the operations of the contemplative faculty on things verbally expressible, the reader may be referred to Wordsworth's preface to his poems; it only remains for us, here, to examine how far this imaginative or abstract conception is to be conveyed by the material art of the sculptor or the painter.

Now, it is evident that the bold action of either the fancy or the imagination, dependent on a bodiless and spiritual image of the object, is not to be by lines or colors represented. We cannot, in the painting of Satan fallen, suggest any image of pines or crags,--neither can we a.s.similate the brier and the banner, nor give human sympathy to the motion of the film, nor voice to the swinging of the pines.

-- 9. Except under narrow limits.--1st. Abstract rendering of form without color.

Yet certain powers there are, within due limits, of marking the thing represented with an ideal character; and it was to these powers that I alluded in defining the meaning of the term ideal, in the thirteenth chapter of the preceding section. For it is by this operation that the productions of high art are separated from those of the realist.

And, first, there is evidently capability of separating color and form, and considering either separately. Form we find abstractedly considered by the sculptor, how far it would be possible to advantage a statue by the addition of color, I venture not to affirm; the question is too extensive to be here discussed. High authorities and ancient practice, are in favor of color; so the sculpture of the middle ages: the two statues of Mino da Fiesole in the church of St^a. Caterina at Pisa have been colored, the irises of the eyes painted dark, and the hair gilded, as also I think the Madonna in St^a. Maria della Spina; the eyes have been painted in the sculptures of Orcagna in Or San Michele, but it looks like a remnant of barbarism, (compare the pulpit of Guida da Como, in the church of San Bartolomeo at Pistoja,) and I have never seen color on any solid forms, that did not, to my mind, neutralize all other power; the porcelains of Luca della Robbia are painful examples, and in lower art, Florentine mosaic in relief; gilding is more admissible, and tells sometimes sweetly upon figures of quaint design, as on the pulpit of St^a. Maria Novella, while it spoils the cla.s.sical ornaments of the mouldings. But the truest grandeur of sculpture I believe to be in the white form; something of this feeling may be owing to the difficulty, or rather the immediately, of obtaining truly n.o.ble color upon it, but if we could color the Elgin marbles with the flesh tint of Giorgione, I had rather not have it done.

-- 10. Of color without form.

Color, without form, is less frequently obtainable, and it may be doubted whether it be desirable: yet I think that to the full enjoyment of it, a certain abandonment of form is necessary; sometimes by reducing it to the shapeless glitter of the gem, as often Tintoret and Ba.s.sano; sometimes by loss of outline and blending of parts, as Turner; sometimes by flatness of ma.s.s, as often Giorgione and t.i.tian. How far it is possible for the painter to represent those mountains of Sh.e.l.ley as the poet sees them, "mingling _their flames_ with twilight," I cannot say; but my impression is, that there is no true abstract mode of considering color; and that all the loss of form in the works of t.i.tian or Turner, is not ideal, but the representation of the natural conditions under which bright color is seen; for form is always in a measure lost by nature herself when color is very vivid.