Magnum opus

“ And now the crowning function, the Magnum Opus of the mystery, must take place in the Sheol of Dappah; a long procession filed from the mountain temples to the charnel-house of the open plain; the night was dark, the moon had vanished in dismay, black clouds scudded across the heavens, a feverish rain fell slowly at intervals, and the ground was dimly lighted by the phosphorescence of the general putrefaction. ”

“ A man of his arrogant disposition would resent bitterly the criticism which Cervantes applied to his plans in the First Part of his magnum opus, and we can believe of him that he would stop at nothing to be revenged upon his critic. ”

“ The life of the ode is ideal, that of the epic grandiose, that of the drama real. In fine, this triple poetry springs from three grand sources—the Bible, Homer, Shakspere. Such are the diverse aspects of thought at different eras of man and society. Here are its three faces—youth, manhood, old age. Examine a single literature by itself or all literatures en masse, and you will always reach the same fact—the lyric poets before the epic, the epic before the dramatic. ”

“ Sculpture accentuates and enriches, painting adorns, works of literature are stored within it, poetry and the drama awake its echoes, while music thrills to its uttermost recesses, like the very spirit of life tingling through the body's fibres. ”

“ The finest genius of a great era always turns toward the highest sphere for exercise, and thus preserves an equilibrium between popular taste and the direction of its talent. When lyrical poetry had transmigrated into choral song, and epic history merged into a dramatic plot and dialogue, the greatest of tragedians extant was appointed to consecrate the union and preserve its worth. ”

“ This commission has been held by various kinds of author since the beginning of history, and manifold are the lessons that have been recommended to the world by their authority; now epic, now courtly and idealist lyric, romantic drama, pedantic tragedy, funeral orations, analytical novels. They are not all amusing, and not all their prices are more than the rate of an old song. But they all have a value as trophies, as monuments of what was most important in their time, of the things in which the generations, wise and foolish, have put their trust and their whole soul. ”

“ In purely literary excellence—in perfection of form—the pre-eminence of the ancients is not disputed. In every department which they attempted, and they attempted almost all, their composition, like their sculpture, has been to the greatest modern artists an example, to be looked up to with hopeless admiration, but of inappreciable value as a light on high, guiding their own endeavours. In prose and in poetry, in epic, lyric, or dramatic, as in historical, philosophical, and oratorical art, the pinnacle on which they stand is equally eminent. ”

“ This is the drama of the demigods, living in a different atmosphere from our own, however akin to ours may be their passions and purposes. For these we are no longer compelled to regard the medium of music as a forced and untruthful expression, for do they not dwell in the magic lands of the imagination? All sense of dramatic inconsistency instantly vanishes, and the conditions of artistic illusion are perfect. ”

“ But should there arise a man who combines highly-developed dramatic faculty with great lyric genius, it is quite possible that he may give us the new poetic drama for which our idealists are sighing. He will choose his themes, I take it, from legend, or from the domain of pure fantasy--themes which can be steeped from first to last in an atmosphere of poetry, as Tristan und Isolde is steeped in an atmosphere of music. ”

“ The loftiest masterpieces have something aloof and cheerless about them at our first approach, something of the cold breath of those starry spaces into which they soar, and to which they uplift our spirits. When we first open Dante or Milton, we miss the flowers and the birds and the human glow of the more sensuous and earth-dwelling poets. But after awhile, after our first rather bleak introduction to them, we grow aware that these apparently undecorated and unmusical masterpieces are radiant and resounding with a beauty and a music which "eye hath not seen nor ear heard." ”

“ Let them mingle at the pleasure of the artist's genius; let the epic and the drama catch what they can of the lyric cry; let tragedy and comedy meet and mix. Why remain in servitude to the models of Greece and Rome? Let all epochs and every clime contribute to the enrichment of art. The primitive age was above all others the age of poetry. The great Christian centuries were the centuries of miracle and marvel, of spiritual exaltation and transcendent passion. Honour, therefore, to our mediæval forefathers! It is the part of reason to trust the imagination in the imaginative sphere. ”

“ And it is this fact that proves the truth of the newer beauty we are considering. Form is thus seen to be dependent on expression, though expression, the new beauty-masters would contend, is independent of form. For the new beauty there are no such rules; it is, so to say, a prose beauty, for which there is no formulated prosody, entirely free and individual in its rhythms, and personal in its effects. Sculpture is no longer its chosen voice among the arts, but rather music with its myriad meanings, and its infinitely responsive inflections. ”

“ Naked Beauty alone may mix music with clay in Its own image and likeness. Even poetry fails save in so far as it echoes the pure natural truths of music. And all creation may flow from a flute if the player breathes a prayer. Some day we shall have the great opera of the Incarnation and Redemption. It is the ideal goal of music, and so of all art. But it demands the poet, the painter, and the sculptor, too, for its actors shall be immortal statues and a living chorus singing the passion of the race against the supreme dawn and the supreme sunset. ”

“ As the Graces round the throne of Venus, so music, painting, sculpture, wait as handmaids round the throne of Poetry. "They from her [76] golden urn draw light," as planets drink the sunbeams; and in return they array the divinity which created and inspired them, in those sounds, and hues, and forms, through which she is revealed to our mortal senses. The pleasure, the illusion, produced by music, when it is the voice of poetry, is, for the moment, by far the most complete and intoxicating, but also the most transient. ”

“ In judging of pieces adapted to music, we should be lenient on the subject of the thoughts, if the design and story have variety enough to afford a basis for a corresponding variety of musical ideas. The most common expression of any passion may be tolerated, when the music, not the poetry, is to form the embellishment. Who cares for the story—the plot—in listening to the Italian opera? Nay, more—are not the finest and most beautiful pieces of that class of music, vulgar and weak as poetical compositions? Is not the musical composer the genius of the piece? ”

“ The true sphere of their genius is painting. What appeals to the imagination through the eyes, they have expressed far better than any other modern nation. But their poetry, like their music, is deficient in tragic sublimity and in the higher qualities of imaginative creation. ”

“ At this point the question naturally arises: "Just what do we mean by classic beauty?" In a general way a book, a picture or a piece of music becomes a "classic" when it is universally accepted as a model of its kind. ”

“ Sculpture, which makes its effects by the perfection of its rhythms around an axis, and by its shadows,—effects of the most subtle and, at the same time, of the most elemental kind,—it, too, must portray; the emotion must take form and substance, and that form must be drawn from the outward, visible world.
In poetry the same limitations exist. It, too, must deal in human life with a certain definiteness. But the greatest poetry is continually struggling to slough off the garment of reality and free the soul from its trammels. ”

“ What such a painting or piece of sculpture does is to reach out and, with its overpowering beauty, encompass and æsthetically fence in the antecedent wandering and uncertain imagination of its spectator. As in the instance of drama, it does not so much awaken a dormant imagination as soothe an imagination already awake. Of all the arts, music alone remains a telegrapher of unborn dreams. ”

“ Methinks thou hast marked them, and been glad that the old notes were ringing again and the old French lyric measures tripping to thine ancient harmonies, echoing and replying to the Muses of Horace and Catullus. Returning to Nature, poets returned to thee. Thy monument has perished, but not thy music, and the Prince of Poets has returned to his own again in a glorious Restoration.
Through the dust and smoke of ages, and through the centuries of wars we strain our eyes and try to gain a glimpse of thee, Master, in thy good days, when the Muses walked with thee. ”

“ But it is only when we have realized the magnitude of its deficiencies that we comprehend the peculiarity of its greatness. Its power is in its style. A grave and firm music pervades it; it is soft, without a thought of weakness; harmonious and yet strong; impressive as few such poems are, yet covered with a bloom of beauty and a complexity of charm that few poems have either. We have perhaps light literature in itself better, that we read oftener and more easily, that lingers more in our memories ”

“ We must, however, try to prepare for a period of original vitality, which can only be done by avoiding one-sidedness and heedless originality. We shall try to suggest and to excite in our readers new thoughts. As music speaks in sounds, poetry in words, so art in forms; but music, poetry, and art are subject to certain rules, without which harmony would become dissonance, poetry an inflated prose, and art a tasteless entity, of which quaintness will be the only distinguishing attribute. What we call our sense of beauty is based on those laws which make the existence of the universe possible. ”

“ What plots, what pictures, what characters are ready for his cunning hand, what splendid matter lies unknown, useless, and indeed offensive, which, in the artist's crucible, would be transmuted into golden and exquisite perfection. Do you know that I can never penetrate into the regions where these people dwell without a thrill of wonder and a great desire that I might be called to execute the masterpieces I have hinted at? ”

“ And what is the true meaning of classic, except as it describes that which is fresh and vivid to-day, yet has the underlying force of permanence, the very tide of immortality flowing in its veins? Many of our artists acquire the classic spirit, many have it thrust upon them, some reject it utterly. ”

“ But as from the disposition of things, and the force of fashion, we cannot hope in our time to rescue the sacred lyre, and see it put into the hands of men of genius, I can only recall you to your own natural feeling of harmony and observe to you, that its emotions are not found in the laboured, fantastic, and surprising compositions that form the modern style of music: but you meet them in some few pieces that are the growth of wild unvitiated taste; you discover them in the swelling sounds that wrap us in imaginary grandeur ”

“ The power of a great conviction, the simplicity of great art, the vital spiritual message of a soul that had found itself—all this, and more, were in the chords, and yet somehow the music was what can only be described as impure—atrociously and diabolically impure. ”

“ The form of drama with music which we loosely call “opera” is such a curious mixture of many elements—some of them closely related, others nearly irreconcilable—that it is almost impossible to arrive at any definite idea of its artistic value. A great picture or piece of sculpture, a great book or a great symphony represents a perfectly clear evolution of a well-defined art. ”

“ But we can by no means fit these little fragments into any clear outline of the sublime beauty of their originals. And when we light upon a reference to them in our reading, or stand before one of the innumerable works of art which they have inspired, memory is baffled. We have no clue to the spell that they have cast upon the centuries: the spell itself has no power over us; and we grope in vain for the key which would admit us to a world of delight. ”

“ That characteristic of to-day's Art—the striving of each branch of Art to burst its own boundaries—which to many spells destruction, is surely of happy omen. The novel straining to become the play, the play the novel, both trying to paint; music striving to become story; poetry gasping to be music; painting panting to be philosophy ”

“ In the full vigour of physical and mental power, and when the spirits are bounding and elastic—in the midst of dramatic representations or the wildest creations of Italian musical genius, these stores of memory's richest treasures will suddenly flood the soul, touched perhaps by the vibration of some kindred chord. ”

“ A style of composition was aimed at, more purely ideal, less connected with nature, than is to be found in the remains of the ancient, or in the works of the early modern masters. Genius hovered on the very confines of credibility and of the impossible, deriving the elements of its creations from imaginings awful and imposing, embodied in forms of gloomy sublimity and power, overwhelming—not awakening—to the human sympathies. As characteristics of this imaginative style, the proportions are enlarged, the expressions forced, and action and energy are given, destructive of grace and reality. ”

“ That an art so noble as that of dramatic poetry, ennobled by such genius, associated with such recollections, so lofty in its purpose, so irresistible in its effects, should have fallen into comparative decline in this country in the brightest era of its literary, philosophical, and political achievements, is one of those singular and melancholy circumstances of which it seems impossible at first sight to give any explanation. ”