Gohdes, Clarence

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A GOSSIP OX EMERSON'S TREATMENTOF BEAUTYUY CLARENCE GOHDESISAYE that beawtie cnmmeth of God, and is like a circle, the goodnesscwherof is the Centre. And therefore, as there can be no circle without acentre, no more can beawtie be without goodnesse" (Hoby's Transla-tion of The Courtier of Castiglione).Any attempt to determine the canons of esthetics underlyingEmerson's "expositions in poetry" is bound to result in failurebecause of his unmitigated eclecticism, as well as his mystical at-titude toward the "things of the spirit." So many inconsistenciesare in evidence in all his writings that in basing conclusions uponthem one is apt to stumble into a quagmire, or, at least, to cross overin a gingerly fashion on the stepping-stone of a cautious 'perhaps'.In his essay on Thoreau, Lowell aptly remarks that the artisticrange of Emerson is "narrow." This, however true, does not sig-nify that his Icve of bcarty was bounded by the limits of a narrowimagination, or even of a moderately developed artistic sensibility.To accuse him of being a mere dilettante, masking an uncultivatedtaste beneath a spurious interest in art is to fail utterly in an ap-preciation of his character. Few men have ever had a greater capa-city for appreciation than he. The frequent occurrence of the termhcmity and its significant bearing upon all that went to make upcharacter and morality for him are sufficient indication of the im-portant place that beauty held in his thoughts, as recorded in hisjournals.Emerson's use of the term beauty indicates not onlv that, for him,at least, beauty has a place in the field of ethics as well as esthetics,but that it has various significations even within that latter field.316 THE OPEN COURT"Strange," he writes, "that w.hat I have not is always more ex-cellent than what I have, and that Beauty, no, not Beauty, but abeauty instantly deserts possession, and flies to an object in the hori-zon" (Journals, Vol. VI, p. 202). The word with the capital let-ter, no doubt, meant to his mind that spiritual exaltation which hechose to identify with truth and goodness—the refinement of Pla-tonic idealism that filled the imagination, and at times passedthrough the pens of such delicate emotionalists as Shellev andSpenser. I wonder if the Sage of Concord would have been ableto recognize his chaste love of abstract beauty in that which re-vealed itself to Rossetti in the eyes of one of the mystical hourrisimmortalized in his sonnets. Intrinsically, the beauty that Emersonsought to find in an autumn sunset or a wooded hill is the sameas that which Rossetti glimpsed in the perfection of a woman'sthroat or the spontaneous gesture of her arm. The word in thepassage quoted, written with a small letter, on the other hand,meant a mere phase of this all-embracing Beauty, a specializedmanifestation of a lower order, and, as such, akin to "a naturepassed throvigh the alembic of man"—namely. Art. It is in regardto this latter that Lowell's remark applies.Setting aside his understanding and appreciation of literature,Emerson's journals reveal the fact that their author was little in-terested in the various types of creative artistic genius. Music, forexample, appears to have meant surprisingly little to him. Despitethe fact that he glorified the eye as the most perfect member, heshows very little appreciation for plastic art. One has merely toread the accounts of his impressions gained abroad to see that hisgenius did not admit of a full, or even proper, interest in the hostof glories shut up in the galleries of Europe. Two reasons for thisappear to suggest themselves : first, his eye was of that inner kind,"which is the bliss of solitude" ; and second, his New England back-ground was rather barren, if not altogether bleak, so far as anycultivation of the fine arts, other than letters, is concerned. Thereis something wistful, if not whimsically pathetic, in Emerson'scomparison of the tasteless churches of Massachusetts with theA GOSSIP ON Emerson's treatment of i'.eauty 317hoary cathedrals of France and Italy, crystallizing in their pon-derous towers and stained windows the artistic aspirations of ages.Much has heen made of Emerson's lack of knowledge and trueappreciation of plastic art—in fact, too much. When aroused, hisbroad sympathies and profound insight into essentials enabled himto do the fullest justice even to painting. "The head of Washing-ton," he writes in the eighth volume of his Journals (p. 300),"hangs in my dining room for a few days past, and I cannot keepmy eyes ofif of it. It has a certain Appalachian strength, as if itwere truly the first-fruits of America, and expressed the country.The heavy, leaden eyes turn on you, as the eyes of an ox in apasture. And the mouth has a gravity and depth of quiet, as ifthis man had absorbed all the serenity of America, and left none forhis restless, rickety, hysterical countrymen. Noble, aristocratic head,with all kinds of elevation in it, that come out by turns. Such ma-jestical ironies, as he hears the day's politics at table. We imaginehim hearing the letter of General Cass, the letter of General Scott,the letter of Mr. Pierce, the efifronteries of Mr. Webster recited.This man listens like a god to these low conspirators." CouldGilbert Stuart say that he ever put more into a picture of his fa-mous subject than Emerson got out of this one? How well doesthis passage illustrate his critical principle, "Art requires a livingsoul" (\^ol. VII, p. 33): or, as he elsewhere expressed the idea,"—there is that in beauty which cannot be caressed, but which re-quires the utmost wealth of nature in the beholder properly to meetit" (\"ol. VI, p. 446). That "wealth of nature," so necessary to thebest criticism, was surely his to an eminent degree. His acquain-tance with Ruskin's works was close enough to admit of no doubtas to his appreciation of the problem of plastic art in elevating na-tural beauty to its place above the conventional. Again, he refersto plastic art in these words, 'T adhere to V^an Waagen's belief,that there is a pleasure from works of art which nothing else canyield" (Vol. VIII, p. 253).How, then, can one reconcile with this seeming understandingand appreciation such an eloquent tirade as the following: "Art is318 THE OPEN COURTcant and pedantry. . . A grand soul flings your gallery into coldnonsense, and no limits can be assigned to its prevalency and to itspower to adorn" (Vol. V, p. 488) ? The answer is that this mystic-moralist is not only juggling with words as mere inept symbols forultimate verities, but that he desires to indicate the subordinateplace of traditional, finite conceptions of beauty, in view of thatcosmical exaltation of the 'Reason,' vmbounded by time and space,and experienced to the full only in rare moments of ecstatic unionwith the oversoul. This is the beauty that "cannot be clutched,"that identifies itself with goodness and truth, that requires a finelydeveloped spiritual apprehension upon the part of the beholder."Imagination transfigures, so that only the cosmical relations ofthe object are seen. The persons who rise to beauty must havethis transcendency" (Vol. IX, p. 279). Accordingly, the "greatsoul," the transcendentalist, alone can be the true judge and criticof this higher beauty, this phase of the all-pervading spirit. Thaiclever half-truth, "Art requires a living soul," is, accordingly, theessence of the Emersonian esthetics, if one dare apply the term tosuch emotional egotism. Glorified individual appreciation—denialof the reality of objective beauty— is to be the criterion of truebeauty. This is the mystical aspect of Emerson's love of the beau-tiful. Eortunately, Emerson possessed a poet's appreciation ofconcrete manifestations of this spiritual force. The manly, ex-periential side of his nature saved him from being carried toofar away by the Pegasus of refined idealism.It remains now to attempt a consideration of the reasons un-derlying a poet's repudiation of art. It is not enough to say thathis moral penchant made the secular nature of most artistic cre-ations incompatible with his own. Those pages, already referredto, which record his experiences upon his first trip to Europe, in-dicate his lack of full appreciation for the purely sensuous, as doesalso his fierce assertion that "there is no greater lie than a volup-tuous book like Boccaccio" (Vol. Ill, p. 456). It is quite true thathis staunch New England ancestry with its rigorous adherence toa Puritan sense of decorum narrowed his scope of appreciation;A GOSSIP ON Emerson's treatment of beauty 319yet one must seek further for a more fundamental reason—in theman's own character, not in his surroundings. Traditional religionhe threw overboard with a gusto: yet he chose to exalt the beautyof moral perfection above art, although he was a literary artistiirst and last. Why did this champion of individual submission tomood and whim not allow the fine frenzy of creative genius tosweep him along with its current?The answer is to be found in his many attempts to describe in-effable moments when a wood, or skyline, or bird-note ushered ina torrential flood of mystical beauty so powerful in its grip uponthe imagination that time and space rolled back like a scroll and,despite the passivity of sense perception, a belief—no. a knowledge,of an all-pervasive unity thrilled the spirit of the man. Why seekthrough art to obtain indirectly a mere aspect of beauty, when theglories of nature oft'er a means of direct contact with it in its en-tirety? The answer is simplicity itself. How can we live art when"we can love nothing but nature"? Since art is a mere imitation ofnature, those who pursue it as a motivating force in life are butchoosing a reflection of a reality for a reality. A beauty becomesBeauty when it detaches itself from the object and, freed from allmundane trammels, exhibits itself as a mere aspect of the cosmicentitv—the spirit. As a creator of beauty—as an artist—Emersonknew the beauty of expression with all its implications, at least sofar as literary art is concerned ; however, he chose to subordinate attimes the poet's function of creation to the mystic's function ofpassive acceptance of the beauty of the "Spirit." And beneath hisinterests in the creation and reception of beauty, one must remem-ber, there was an insistent conscience that tried to bend all thethoughts and activities of his life in the direction of "the moral sen-timent."Although Emerson did not see fit to "make rules out of beauty,"he would, in all probability, have endorsed Woodberry's principleof art for life's sake. Possibly he would have preferred to word it,"Art for character's sake." "But." he insists, "there will always be aclass of imaginative men, whom poetry, whom the love of Beauty320 THE OPEN COURTleads to the adoration of the moral sentiment" (Vol. X, p. 9).There is something eminently worthy in this belief that "cultureis for the results" (Vol. VIII, p. 539), a belief that immediatelyturns art from the small shrine of an esoteric cult to the broad,green Druid temples of humanity. Carp as one may at his incon-sistency and his emotional egotism, the fact rem.ains that he madea most noble attempt to make the love of beauty a source of com-fort and discipline to all men. His incapacity for making a proper,objective estimate of human potentialities makes the essential no-bility of his purpose no less striking. It is unfortunate that Emer-son i^attered mankind with the belief that his own mind and heartwere typical of the lot.For Leaders —^JOURNAL OF REUGIONTo read The Journal of Religion is to keepin the vanguard of those who are thinkingabout the problems of present day rehgiouslife.This non'sectarian periodical provides forits readers an unprejudiced, critical accountof modern religious thought. It attempts toreveal the inner reality of religion, ratherthan to defend a doctrinal system. It con'sistently avoids cant, dogma, technicalabstruseness; and constantly emphasi2;es theinterrelationship of religious life and socialenvironment.This scholarly journal is indispensable tothe serious reader interested in religion as aliving, spiritual reality in society, in history,and in individual experience.The Journal of Religion is edited by ShirleyJackson Case with the cooperation of theDivinity Faculty and Conference of theUniversity of Chicago. It is published quapterly at the subscription price of $3.00 a year.If you wish to examine The Journal ofReligion a sample copy will be mailed youfree upon request.THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS5750 ELLIS AVE. . . . CHICAGO, ILLINOIS-"I'THE LOGIC OF DISCOVERYByROBERT D. CARMICHAELHead of the Department of MathematicsUniversity of IllinoisThe main aspects of the process of discovery are skillfullydiscussed in a manner to interest the non'technical reader.Three of the chapters have previously been published inThe lAonist, Scientia and The Scientific Monthly.TABLE OF CONTENTSChapterI The Logic of DiscoveryII What is the Place of Postulate Systems in the Further Prog'ress of Thought?III On the Nature of Systems of PostulatesIV Concerning the Postulational Treatment of Empirical TruthV The Structure of Exact ThoughtVI The Notion of Doctrinal FunctionVII Hypothesis Growing into Veritable PrincipleVIII What is Reasoning?IX The Larger Human Worth of MathematicsIndexPp. 280, cloth. Price ^2.00By the same AuthorA DEBATE ON THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY with an intro-duction by William Lowe Bryan, Indiana University.Favoring the Theory: Robert D. Carmichael, University oflUinois, and Harold T. Davis, Indiana University.Opposing the Theory: Wihiam D. MacMillan, Universityof Chicago and Mason E. Hufford, Indiana University.(First Impression in 1925, Second Impression in 1927.)Cloth, ^2.00THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANYChicago London

A Gossip on Emerson\u27s Treatment of Beauty.

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A Gossip on Emerson\u27s Treatment of Beauty.

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