Mode

“ If after an enjoyment of this kind we find ourselves specially impelled to a particular mode of feeling or action, and unfit for other modes, this serves as an infallible proof that we have not experienced any pure aesthetic effect, whether this is owing to the object, to our own mode of feeling—as generally happens—or to both together. ”

“ This original thinking-power of the Universe proceeds and developes itself in all possible modes of which it is capable, as the other original forces of Nature go forth and assume all possible forms. I, like the plant, am a particular mode or manifestation of the formative-power; like the animal, a particular mode or manifestation of the power of motion; and besides these I am also a particular mode or manifestation of the thinking-power; ”

“ so, we shall find that the ideal form for a poem, essay, or fiction, is that which the ideal writer would evolve spontaneously. One in whom the powers of expression fully responded to the state of feeling, would unconsciously use that variety in the mode of presenting his thoughts, which Art demands. ”

“ A second mode under which the externally present comes before the conscious subject is, as contrasted with the single sensuous perception and active desire, the purely theoretical relation to the intelligence. ”

“ The Beautiful is revealed, always, so far as I know, in the forms of Order, in the modes of Harmony, of Balance, or of Rhythm. While there are many instances of Harmony, Balance, and Rhythm which are not particularly beautiful, there is, I believe, nothing really beautiful which is not orderly in one or the other, in two, or in all three of these modes. In seeking the Beautiful, therefore, we look for it in instances of Order, in instances of Harmony, Balance, and Rhythm. ”

“ In this progress from birth in the imitation of natural forms and colors to death in the rigidity of a hard and lifeless convention there is a maturity wherein lines and contours and colors play with perfect freedom, original forms and models being absorbed in the finer creations of the imagination. ”

“ All of them have at least the merit of being, in the main, pictures of life, however overwrought with the fantastic or supernatural element, not ideal embodiments of the perfect motives by which people ought to be actuated, but genre pictures of the modes in which they commonly do act. ”

“ Know, then, that you must pause well before you take up any model of style. On your style often depends your own character,—almost always the character given you by the world. If you adopt the lofty style,—if you string together noble phrases and swelling Sonora,—you have expressed, avowed, a frame of mind which you will insensibly desire to act up to; the desire gradually begets the capacity. ”

“ How these mosaics of aesthetic feelings correspond psychologically with the similar mosaics of other feelings in combination with which they are woven; how they vary in men of different temperaments, and how they change within ourselves with varying moods and from occasion to occasion; what is their present process of individual make-up, and what their biological origin in general, — all these things, I hope, will now appear somewhat more comprehensible to the student of modern science. ”

“ Modes of sounds. The like variety have we in sounds. Every articulate word is a different modification of sound ; by which we see that, from the sense of hearing, by such modifications, the mind may be furnished with distinct ideas, to almost an infinite number. ”

“ His emotional preferences among the visible facts of nature, his feeling for the relative importance and charm of line, colour, light and shade, used whether for the interpretation and heightening of natural fact or for producing a pattern in itself harmonious and suggestive to the eye, his sense of the special modes of handling most effective for communicating the impression he desires, all these together inevitably appear in, and constitute, his style and technique. ”

“ Our pupil knows as yet only a single tone,—the tone of do, which we designate by the name of model tone;—but all musicians are aware that to know well one tone, is to know them all, since they are all calculated on the model tone with which we began. ”

“ The modern forms, on the other hand, consisting of consecutive and proportional sections, imply the necessity of contrast, development, and climax—an arrangement that is not necessitated by any corresponding system in the text. ”

“ A very intimate sense of the expressiveness of outward things, which ponders, listens, penetrates, where the earlier, less developed consciousness passed lightly by, is an important element in the general temper of our modern poetry. ”

“ Many styles, and many beautiful yet diverse objects, may be made to harmonize by tasteful arrangement; and this freer latitude is well adapted to our varied moods and our many-sided lives. Few people of moderate means can carry out one style in its entirety. ”

“ The mixture of thoroughly modern delight in Nature [8] with ascetic dogma in this letter, gives us a glimpse into the divided feelings of one who stood upon the threshold between two eras, mediæval and modern, into the reaction of the mediæval mind against the budding modern feeling. ”

“ I had a son, crooked spawn of a Christian!—a son, not like you, cankered, gnarled stump of life that you are,—but a youth tall and fair and noble in aspect, as became a child of one whose lineage makes Pharaoh modern,—a youth whose foot in the dance was as swift and beautiful to look at as the golden sandals of the sun when he dances upon the sea in summer. ”

“ Here, here is the point where the aspect called pattern is most closely in touch with its material; here is our starting point. It springs mainly from the plot, accompanies it like a light in the clouds, and remains visible after it has departed. Beauty is sometimes the shape of the book, the book as a whole, the unity, and our examination would be easier if it was always this. But sometimes it is not. When it is not I shall call it rhythm. For the moment we are concerned with pattern only. ”

“ As in living creatures, the blood, nourishing the body, determines its very contour and external aspect, just so, to his mind, the matter, the basis, in a work of art, imposed, necessarily, the unique, the just expression, the measure, the rhythm—the form in all its characteristics.
If the style be the man, in all the colour and intensity of a veritable apprehension, it will be in a real sense "impersonal." ”

“ It cannot very well be done by reasoning. It must be done by visual feeling. The principle of Balance being clearly understood, finding the center of any tone-contrasts is a matter of experimental practice in which those persons succeed best who are most sensitive to differences of tone, and who make the greatest effort to feel the centers and to indicate them accurately. Experience and practice are necessary in all cases.
Fig. 228
Here, within this circle, are the attractions to be balanced. ”

“ We have declared in our manifesto that what must be rendered is the dynamic sensation, that is to say, the particular rhythm of each object, its inclination, its movement, or, to put it more exactly, its interior force.
“It is usual to consider the human being in its different aspects of motion or stillness, of joyous excitement or grave melancholy. ”

“ Such empathic, attributed, movements of lines are therefore intrinsic qualities of the shapes whose active perception has called them forth in our imagination and feeling; and being qualities of the shapes, they inevitably change with every alteration which a shape undergoes, every shape, actively perceived, having its own special movement of lines; and every movement of lines, or combination of movements of lines existing in proportion as we go over and over again the particular shape of which it is a quality. ”

“ In literature, as to structure, it is the relation of parts: as to form, it is the succession of events, the movement, combination and resolution of separate ideas and emotions, which give us aesthetic pleasure or the reverse. As action must follow excitement, or despair satiety, so the relation of parts, the order of presentation, must be adapted to mutual reinforcement. ”

“ Thus the contrasting phases of human nature meet and blend, like the forces at the opposite extremes of the spectrum, which, presenting the unlike characteristics of heat and actinism, unite in the visible middle ground, and speak in the beautiful language of color. ”

“ It is true, the alterations of scenes, so it be quietly and without noise, are things of great beauty and pleasure; for they feed and relieve the eye, before it be full of the same object. Let the scenes abound with light, specially colored and varied; and let the masquers, or any other, that are to come down from the scene, have some motions upon the scene itself, before their coming down; for it draws the eye strangely, and makes it, with great pleasure, to desire to see, that it cannot perfectly discern. ”

“ Throughout this discussion of the elements of the experience of art, I have used the terms emotion and feeling with an inclusive meaning, to cover impulses as well as feelings in the narrower sense. For in the aesthetic experience, there are impulses—impulses to move when action is represented in picture and statue, impulses to act, as when, in watching a play, we put ourselves in the place of the persons. ”

“ But as air, melody, is what strikes me most of all in music and design in painting, so design, pattern, or what I am in the habit of calling inscape is what I above all aim at in poetry. Now it is the virtue of design, pattern, or inscape to be distinctive and it is the vice of distinctiveness to become queer. ”

“ This element of expression, perhaps more than any other, manifests the artistic nature of the reader; artistic, inasmuch as the atmosphere, or vocal color, shows the sensitiveness of the reader to sense stimuli; shows that he is moved by the contemplation of the beautiful, the sublime, the tender, the pathetic. This element is called by different names, but perhaps none is more significant than Atmosphere. This effect is not easy to describe, and yet it is as real as rhythm or inflection or any other of the elements discussed in this book. ”

“ With equal assurance may one appeal to the universal instinct which is gratified by the adaptation [Pg 87] of ends to means; to the innate human sense of the rightness of what is fitting; the constant pleasure in order, in appropriateness, in harmony. It is this instinct, this sense, this pleasure, which underlies the sensitiveness of the mind to what we call Elegance in composition. ”

“ But, first of all, we have to ask how the aesthetic pleasure even in formal beauty is constituted, and to what extent expression belongs to the beauty of pure form. Form is impressive, or directly beautiful, through its harmony with the conditions offered by our senses, primarily of sight and hearing, and through the harmony of its combinations of suggestions and impulses with the entire organism. ”

“ Form, which from the outside gradually approaches him, in his dwelling, his furniture, his clothing, begins at last to take possession of the man himself, to transform him, at first exteriorly, and afterwards in the interior. The disordered leaps of joy become the dance, the formless gesture is changed into an amiable and harmonious pantomime, the confused accents of feeling are developed, and begin to obey measure and adapt themselves to song. ”

“ And in this new region we gain dominion over our feelings, through the order which the form of the music imposes upon them, and also self-knowledge, because, in being externalized in the sounds, our feelings become an object for our reflection and understanding. ”

“ THE necessities of analysis and exposition have led us from the Shape to the Thing, from aesthetic contemplation to discursive and practical thinking. But, as the foregoing chapter itself suggests, the real order of precedence, both for the individual and the race, is inevitably the reverse, since without a primary and dominant interest in things no creatures would have survived to develop an interest in shapes. ”

“ We accept the convention of the moving picture, the light and darkness, the tones and half tones, because these moving stains and shadows take the shape of familiar objects and tell a coherent story, showing life in action. But we know, subconsciously, all the time that it is merely an imitation of reality, as in the case of a picture, a novel, or a stage play. ”

“ In the writing of the lines of the face, in the motion of the lips, in the indefinable tones of voice, in the air and manner, there comes out constantly in all characters an atmosphere of the truth, which the words spoken, whether intended or not intended, do not convey. ”

“ Each variety of form, color, and character has its appropriate style; but our space here is too limited to allow us to do more than drop a hint toward what each requires, to produce the most harmonious and effective combination. ”

“ To England they soon turned, and contemplated the round, many-colored globe of Shakspeare's works. As playful swallows sometimes dart round and round a lithe and wondering wingless animal, so they, admiringly and timidly, attracted, yet hesitating, delighting in his alertness, but not quite understanding it, flitted like a troubled and beautiful flock around the great magician of modern civilization. ”

“ And thus the conception of this peculiar modification of time, which we have called rhythm, like all the other views which we have taken of the subject, shows that we must, in order to form such conceptions, supply a certain idea by our own thoughts, as well as merely receive by senses, whether external or internal, the impressions of appearances and collections of appearances. ”

“ And, connected with this inquiry, is the remark, that even in the usual outward senses there lies a spark of higher spiritual perception—such, for instance, as the artistic eye for beauty of form and color, and for grace of motion, or the musical ear for lovely sounds and measures; so that even the senses are not so purely corporeal, so totally material and grossly sensuous, as at the first glance they appear. ”

“ We have seen the artistic spirit working, first in the delightful and technical sphere of language, the sphere of expression as opposed to subject, then controlling the imagination of the poet in dealing with his subject. ”