Mesmerism

“ It was to penetrate into the inmost shrines of Imagination, where human passion and action are reflected in dim and fitful, but deeply significant resemblances, and to copy these with the guileless, humble graces which alone can become them. ”

“ Bound on all sides to matter by inflexible laws, working upon inanimate stone, upon uncertain and fugitive sounds, upon words of limited and finite signification, art communicates to them, with the precise form that is addressed to such or such a sense, a mysterious character that is addressed to the imagination and the soul, takes them away from reality, and bears them sweetly or violently into unknown regions. ”

“ We are every where entertained with pleasing Shows and Apparitions, we discover Imaginary Glories in the Heavens, and in the Earth, and see some of this Visionary Beauty poured out upon the whole Creation; but what a rough unsightly Sketch of Nature should we be entertained with, did all her Colouring disappear, and the several Distinctions of Light and Shade vanish? In short, our Souls are at present delightfully lost and bewildered in a pleasing Delusion, and we walk about like the enchanted Hero of a Romance, who sees beautiful Castles, Woods and Meadows ”

“ Thus do the spirits of the remote past sit at our firesides still, and kindle the imagination of our little folks: and in the rich tapestry of story and picture which 239 each age weaves around it, elements from many different sources are continually and almost inextricably interwoven, as if the warp of human wonder and imagination was crossed with many coloured threads of mythological lore, history and allegory, symbolism and romance. ”

“ Shall we draw with the pencil of nature, or of art? Do we indeed paint life as it is, or as it is not? Cast thine eyes, reader, over the ephemeral circle of passing and fortuitous events; view the change of contingencies; mark well the varied and shifting scenery in the great drama of time;—seriously contemplate nature in her operations; minutely examine the entrance, the action, and the exit of characters on the stage of existence—then say, if disappointment, distress, misery and calamitous woe, are not the inalienable portion of the susceptible bosom. ”

“ No such soliloquies in written poetry as these of ours—the act of composition is fatal as frost to their flow; yet composition there is at such solitary times going on among the moods of the mind, as among the clouds on a still but not airless sky, perpetual but imperceptible transformations of the beautiful, obedient to the bidding of the spirit of beauty. ”

“ He placed nature, as it were, in a dungeon, while, through one solitary loophole, the beam of heaven seems, with ten-fold force, to penetrate to the object of the artist's immediate contemplation. This, spreading a dazzling, yet solemn light over all, invests the commonest forms with an unknown interest, and gives to the grossest and most unclassical imitation an elevated and romantic character,—just as the uncertain gloom of twilight mantles in the shadowy terrors and strange shapes, objects, the most familiar in ordinary day. ”

“ It gave us a new sensation, a new and a higher notion of what the mind of man can put into, and bring out of, landscape painting; how its representative and suggestive truthfulness may be perfect, forming the material elements,—the body, as it were, of the picture,—while, at the same time, there may be superadded that fine sense of the indefinable relation of the visible world to mental emotion, which is its essence and vivifying soul. ”

“ My imagination presents to me anything but a vivid image of this glorious structure, and when art presents an imitation of it, to my eye it awakens in me no sensation and I am unable to judge of the merits of the picture. ”

“ All this was so richly revealed, so mistily hidden, that with a full knowledge of all which the shadows kept from view, the imagination would take flight, and you felt as if the gates of Paradise must have been flung open, before even a glimpse of so much beauty could be given to mortal eyes. ”

“ These, in so far as contemplation can seize them, are the ultimate types, the Platonic ideas, of things, all endlessly exemplified in space and time by individual objects, but, as types, eternal, time-transcending, immortal. They are the ultimate embodiments of passion, the eternal forms of longing that exist in our world. Art grasps these types and exhibits them. Architecture, for instance, portrays the blind nature-forces, or longings, of weight and resistance. ”

“ The imagination shuns to reveal its workings, unless it can clothe them in some lovely and palpable shape, and create into existence the high romance, the mournful song, the animated canvass, or the carved marble ”

“ Which of us have not had such moments of despondency in the face of a great task? In such moments I have often called to mind one of those parables of Nature which are everywhere around us, unseen and unheeded, like those exquisite fresco angels of the old masters, in dim corners of ancient churches, blowing silent trumpets of praise and adoration and touching mute viols into mystic melodies which are lost to us. ”

“ What if the finished landscape that lay beyond the doom-door was but developed from the faint sketch traced by the strivings of our spirit—to each man his own picture, but filled in, perfected, vivified a thousandfold, for terror or for joy perfect and inconceivable? ”

“ As her imagination roved through those portals of a brighter world, which seemed thus, through far-reaching vistas of glory, to be opened to her, she peopled the sun-lit expanse with the creations of her own fancy, and often wept in uncontrollable emotion through the influence of these gathering thoughts. ”

“ The chambers of imagery in her own mind were evidently peopled with the varied creations that spring from and bear the impress of life's vicissitudes—of fiery trial, or wearying endurance—of the heart's deep emotions, with the soul's lofty aspirings and immortal hopes. ”

“ Often before, when standing alone among ruins, have I felt this spirit of supplication, and seen this strange, beseechful look, in the silent, patient stones: never before had it appealed to my heart with such eloquence and such pathos. Truly nature passes through all the experience and all the moods of man, even as man passes through all the experience and all the moods of nature. ”

“ Is it only imagination that makes the Polyeucte and the Misanthrope, two incomparable marvels? Is there not, also, in the profound simplicity of plan, in the measured development of action, in the sustained truth of characters, a superior reason, different from imagination which furnishes the superior colors, and from sensibility that gives the passion? ”

“ Out of his theme, patiently, deftly, ingeniously he extracted every atom of that beauty, sanity, inspired imagination which makes the imperfect more perfect, creates better than the materials permit, forces real life actually to assume and be what the passionate desire for sanity and beauty demands. ”

“ Thus, to her all things in nature hold their own due place, and retain for ever their own due impressions, aggrandized and beautified by mutual reaction in those visionary worlds, which by a thought she can create, and which, as they arise, are all shadowy representations of realities—new compositions in which the image of the earth we tread is reflected fairer or greater than any realities, but not therefore less, but more true to the spirit of nature. ”

“ There must also be an element of magnificence in decay, of symmetry broken but not destroyed, a touch of delicate art and workmanship, to quicken the imagination and evoke the ghost of beauty haunting her ancient habitations. ”

“ His world is a strange one—a world not of hills and fields and flowers and men of flesh and blood, but one where the people are embodied ecstasies, the colors tints from evening clouds or apocalyptic jewels, the scenery a flood of light or a background of illuminated gold. ”

“ He had wondered then that Nature could so paint the two sides of this thinnest of all canvases: the outside merely daubed over that it might resemble the dead and common and worthless things amid which the creature had to live—a masterwork of concealment; the inside designed and drawn and coloured with lavish fullness of plan, grace of curve, marvel of hue—all for the purpose of the exquisite self revelation which should come when the one great invitation of existence was sought or was given. ”

“ When imagination is awake and flinging forth her airy fictions, bodies things unseen, and clothes reality in loveliness not of earth! When a scene like this is developed, what shall adequately depict it? ”

“ On the contrary, the structures of greatness and antiquity should be marked by a character of awful sublimity, suited to the dignity of the subject; indenting on the mind a reverential and permanent impression, and giving, at once, a corresponding and unequivocal grandeur to the picture. ”

“ But the impression which we should take away from this elaborate interior would be one of sadness, perhaps of pain. The art, the life, here represented, was an art in shackles, an expiring phase of life. ”

“ The illimitable past and the illimitable future are all painted on the canvas of now by the artist of reflection. Things that have been and things to be are emblazoned on the panorama of reflectional concept. ”

“ The fresh gloss of the soul, so early lost, and without which the world's successive scenes had been but a gallery of faded pictures, again threw its enchantment over all their prospects. They felt like new-created beings, in a new-created universe. ”

“ In beholding these mighty fabrics, then, even laying aside the associations of unnumbered centuries, if neither the most refined nor agreeable emotions be experienced, the imagination is exalted to a high pitch of awe, astonishment, and admiration. ”

“ It has been said, that "common souls pay with what they do; nobler souls with that which they are." And why? Because a profound nature awakens in us by its actions and words, by its very looks and manners, the same power and beauty that a gallery of sculpture, or of pictures, addresses. ”

“ Without them, the scenes of the world would affect us no more than the shadowy pictures of a morning dream.
"Who can view the works of nature, and the productions of art, without the most sublime and rapturous emotions? Who can view the miseries of others, without being dissolved into compassion? ”

“ The human interest is intense. The problem is to give it a fitting and noble setting. Study the nature-setting which the artist has chosen for his theme—the wealth of glowing, but gently subdued colour—the sun setting, like the old ship, in mellow glory—the crescent moon that speaks of the birth of a new economic era—the cool mists stealing up, precursors of the night when work is done—how marvellously all these tone with the general sentiment. Shall it be maintained that they are arbitrary conventions, mere fanciful products of the association of ideas? ”

“ The focus of artistic feeling and expression is no longer centralized on religious ideals, mysteries, or mythologies, but is turned everywhere on the parti-coloured aspects of human life, and the changes of the face of nature. ”

“ While, in the mystic parts of his Visions, he uses a superabundance of fluid and abstract terms, that look like morning mists and float along with his thoughts, his style becomes suddenly sharp, nervous, and sinewy when he comes back to earth and moves into the world of realities. ”

“ The mystery is in the how of the process, in the wonderful little wavering borderland between nature and art, the place of the crooked seam where, if psychology had the adequate lens, the white stitches would show. ”

“ The aim of ritual is, I believe, a high poetry of which [Pg 61] the essence is symbolism and mystery. The movement of forms solemnly vested, and with a background of architecture and music, produces an emotion quite distinct from other artistic emotions. It is a method, like all other arts, through which a human being arrives at a sense of mysterious beauty, and it evokes in mystical minds a passion to express themselves in just that way and no other, and to celebrate thus their sense of the unknown. ”

“ An influence originating solely in the imagination, and in which the sensibilities of the heart have little interest, cannot long retain its power; the ordinary tone of feeling returns, and amid the unquiet and aspiring composition seeks for nature and repose. ”

“ Under their joint influence we can behold that despised habit of looking at life through the spectacles of the old Romances, the mysterious faculty of superimposing on Nature a magical colour or mood created [200] in the observer by the fictions of genius or the myths of bygone ages, expanding until it includes the contemplation of Nature impassioned by any effluence arising from within—it may be emotion or it may be the individual memory. ”

“ It was they who gave us the model for nearly every form of literature—dramatic, epic, and lyric poetry, dialogues, oratory, history—and in their well-proportioned temples, in their balanced columns and elaborate friezes, in their marble chiselings of the perfect human form, they fashioned for us forever the classical expression of art. ”

“ How wonderful is the art which can impress upon canvas and so preserve from generation to generation and from century to century, a lifelike presentment of men and women whose flesh and blood realities have long since mouldered dust with dust! ”

“ There it is art, or nature clipped and twisted and trained, so far from its original simplicity, that you cannot recognise a single feature—in fact, Nature in masquerade; in brilliant, gorgeous masquerade, it is true, but hiding the naked loveliness of Nature’s self. ”