Rhythm Volume 1 Number 2 (Autumn 1911)THESTCATHERINEPRESSSTREETLONDON NORFOLK
Page Anna Vaddock's Fame. By Vincent O'Sullivan. . 1 The Guardian Demon. By Francis Coutts. . . 8 Labour. By Augustus John . . . . . . 9 The Aesthetic of Benedetto Croce. By John Middle-
ton Murry . . . . . . . . 11 Drawing. By J. D. Fergusson . . . . . 14 In the Cool of the Evening. By John Harvey . . 15 The Letters of Vincent van Gogh. By Michael T. H.
Sadler. . . . . . . . . 16 Isadora. By Jessie Dismorr. . . . . . 20 Priestcraft. By Julian Park . . . . . 21 Drawing by Anne Estelle Rice . . . . . 22 Three Eclogues. By Arthur Crossthwaite. . . 22 Place de l'Observatoire. By S. J. Peploe . . . 25 Imagination. By Rhys Carpenter . . . . 26 Nature Morte. By Herbin. . . . . . 27 The Art of Claude Debussy. By Rollo H. Myers . 29
CONTENTS VOL. I
DISMORR
I was toiling up the rue de Pigalle in a June glare, pondering what that poor creature had said and wondering what I should do—very depressed in fact—when out of a zinc, with a packet of cigarettes in his clutch, came Heller. H e hurried up to me, stood, pushed his soft hat back from his forehead, and stared fixedly with his blue northern eyes.
" A r e you a Vaddocki te?" he asked. That Heller! It was noon, the street was busy, there was a general
uproar of dogs, street vendors, rattling wheels, women's shouts, and a gramophone somewhere overhead squawking " T h e Girl of the Golden West," but he stood impavid as if he were in a bedroom. He was always possessed by his idea, that fellow, more than anybody I ever knew. I never saw him laugh. The most he conceded to an amuser was a transient distracted smile. At a theatre with you he would watch an act, perhaps take it in (though I doubt that too), but when the curtain fell he struck at once into his own obsession, remote
2 RHYTHM
as possible from the play. Arguello, the Franco-Argentine poet, had a story, that one day he was knocked down by a motor and nearly run over, and as he picked himself up and stood muddy and dazed amid a vociferating crowd, up came Heller and seized him by the arm. "You've been run over?" he asked carelessly, as he might have asked if the poet had dropped a match. ' ' Listen! I have become con­ vinced that in writing a tale you must deposit literature. The naked idea. Telegraph language. There's art! Style?—that's the poison, my chap."
I now said to him gropingly: " Vaddockite?" I was Atlantics away. Up a little further, a wide house-door gaped. He made for it, and
under the arch he looked at me interrogatively, anxiously, while he tortured his tan beard with the nervous nicotine-stained fingers of his dead-white hand.
" Vaddock—Anna Vaddock, the Englishwoman. What a genius! A revolutionary. Crisp ? Ah, my God! All the back-wash of Renoir will go down the sewer with their smudges. Have you seen her litho­ graphs? Pastels? But, my chap," he exclaimed querulously, "you are so odd, so mysterious! You hide yourself away. You get out of step, out of rhythm. Gome," he said, moving off, "you must see the great Anna's things. Only two streets to her studio."
I made a show of resistance. It was noon; I was on my way to the restaurant
Pity came into his eyes, a shade of contempt. "Do you eat regular meals? Is your stomach a slave to clocks? All these people"—he waved his arm to comprise the street—"are now going to eat. They don't want to eat really; each one goes because the other goes. Ants! Have you ever watched ants ? My chap, you don't want to eat: you are the victim of habit and the town clock and gregariousness. Art would perish so domesticated. As well have a wife and six children. Come and see Anna Vaddock. You will forget the manger."
II. I did. I was flabbergasted. The big tall woman, with the pale, sen­
sual, treacherous face under flaming-red hair, her well-moulded form clad in a blue print gown and white apron, who moved about grace­ fully on high laced boots in the clear matted studio, was no more English than the Teutonic Heller himself. She was American, though
A N N A V A D D O C K ' S F A M E 3
she had purged all trace of accent; but I spotted her by her persistence in alluding to her ancestors. But she was an astonishing artist, not waterlogged at all by the waves of Heller's enthusiasm. The thick black lines in her drawings were as brutal as a porter's oath, as adroit as a prizefighter's punch. These people of hers, stripped to the buff, had no souls, but every ounce of their bodies was valued. Here was ale, the strong ale of art. Two or three of the paintings seemed to knock you down when you approached them with their gorgeous and harmonious colour. When the artist gave me her cool firm hand at parting, I took it with a certain thrill, a certain awe, and also with a feeling of thankfulness that the operations of that hand happened to be in art.
" I s she known?" I said in the street. " H a s she been published, written about?"
" N o more than you. Let us go and eat. It is a quarter-to-three. The commercials whom you imitate will have finished their digestion. In the empty restaurant, untroubled by the snouts of statesmen and millionaires, we shall organize the fame of Anna Vaddock."
" W e ? W h o ? " " D o you know Lever ly? H e is an Englishman, an English corre­
spondent. He has great influence in London, they tell me. I have an appointment with him at the restaurant at three."
The hill crested, I was for turning into the Rat Mort, but Heller steered me across the street and we tabled in the cafe on the opposite corner, which I have made up my mind was the one where the two damsels of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's story had their dignified scene.
" Y o u noticed how I dragged you from the Rat Mort, my chap." said Heller. " I never put my foot into that place before twelve at night. Other places have their ghosts in the dark, but the ghosts gather there in the daytime. Here's Leverly."
And there came up a short man with a fatigued, capacious, hair- sown head, who wore glasses upon his astonished and haggard eyes which squinted. H e gave us a flaccid hand, sat down negligently, and glancing about the room emitted some opinions mostly without interest. There was question of music and literature, of sculpture and of psychology, of feminism, of occultism, and of various other things. With the coffee Heller docked him at Anna Vaddock.
4 R H Y T H M
"Boom is what she needs. The loud timbrel. Noise, my chaps, that will crack old Public's ear drums. Let us form ourselves into a brass band."
But Leverly shook his head. " Y o u are up the wrong street. We believe in Anna, don't we? Really and truly? Well, we don't want her to be accepted as a success, but as a genius. We don't want to make her popular, but notorious. With the examples of Whistler and Beardsley before his mind, every artist who knows his business would pledge his soul to be unpopular. Then, you see, the real duffers can come in too. They ' re among the neglected. It's consoling."
He took off his glasses and wiped them with the table napkin. " T h e excessive disdains of which people are victims make them
interesting. What we want to do about Anna is to get her abused. Real abuse, you know, not a little sneer in a corner. All the big thun­ der—obscurity, vulgarity, immorality, and the rest of it."
"Something l ike:—'Her work is tainted by a suggestion of morbid sensuality very difficult to locate, '" offered Heller.
Leverly grinned admiration. "Tha t ' s the music. And sounds true —a great advantage. It must be bellowed. After all, when a book or a play or a symphony or a picture is hooted, there is only one person really interesting, and that is the author of it. So Vaddock's pedestal will be built of the missiles hurled at her. I'll manage the British Press."
"Vienna and Munich and Dresden can be left to me," said Heller, "safely. As for you, my chap,"—he turned to my side—"you can do the praise in the little obscure papers that appear for two numbers and then collapse. You're about in tune with that sort of thing; you're not serious. Have you ever read Bergson, or William James, or that wonderful American professor—I forget his name—who writes about aesthetics? Non, n'est-ce pas? But there must be praise somewhere to emphasize the abuse, and praise from the little student papers will help on the big move. And it will come well from you. Nobody will take it seriously."
Leverly agreed. He raised his little glass of brandy, squinting as if he had cut a lemon. " I drink to the failure of Anna Vaddock," he said.
"P ros i t ! " shouted Heller.
A N N A V A D D O C K ' S F A M E 5 III .
I muddle things up so when I write, or I should have said before that at the time we were making our plan we knew that the great Anna had arranged for a show in London some six months later, in the gallery of a dealer supposed to be friendly to the "advanced" of all kinds. Our campaign opened a few months before the show, and, though I say it myself, it was astonishingly well done. For weeks there had been dull preparative growling. Once the doors opened all the dogs were unleashed. The big papers were incredibly scurrilous and insolent. The American correspondent, never famous for an amicable reception of the unusual, yelled. Perhaps the best of all were the cari­ catures of the Vaddock touch in the comic papers.
Six weeks the show was to run, and at the end of the fifth I managed to reach London. My main thought was to get a glimpse of poor Anna's things before they were packed away.
It was a bright afternoon, and as I went through the streets I fancied there would be a few people, thinking themselves very brave, in the gallery, moving about discreetly and talking in low voices, as people do in a house where there has been a scandal.
I ran into a throng of halted carriages and motor cars. My thought, of course, was that something big and social was going on near by. But no! A crowd, a rich-looking crowd, clogged the door of the gallery. More were arriving every minute. Footmen, distracted, struggled to reach their employers. Royalty, I gathered, had either just arrived or just left. Thrown by the surge against the wall, I read on a poster— an undeniable Vaddock poster in black and red—that the show would remain open still for several weeks. My heart paused. How could one deny in the very teeth of the event? Anna Vaddock was become a success.
I don't quite remember how I got into that heated room. I know I was dishevelled bodily and mentally. The Duchess of Leamington passed, talking art with authority. Braced against a railing in a corner, to save myself from being carried away in her wash, I made out Posseback and Minster, those two critics who are always pioneers when a thing begins to look safe. In front of me, a ponderous gentleman in a frock coat, a well-known American millionaire, came to anchor with the dealer, the founder of the feast.
6 R H Y T H M
"She's an honour to our great country," the millionaire decided. " Y o u can take that from me right here. We Americans always wait for success before we take any notice. We don't encourage artists who can't make money; we don't want that kind of truck lying about. This woman is a money-getter. The Metropolitan Museum in New York will be proud to enshrine her work. I'm going to turn myself loose on Anna Vaddocks."
The dealer looked at him admiringly. " Y o u know a good invest­ ment."
After that, I battled to the door. In the rush I just missed not see­ ing a man who was sauntering up and down on the opposite side of the street. I drew a breath of salvation and ran over to him. It was Heller.
"Well , how do you like i t ? " H e smiled evilly. ' ' She's a public success!" I gasped. ' ' A success first shot, too. How
do you make it o u t ? " " H o w do I make it o u t ? " H e beat the kerbstone with his stick.
" I don't try to make it out. It's all up. Fichue, Anna Vaddock! How can you go about complaining that an artist is neglected who persists in being popular? Nothing could hold her. There must have been a flaw in her somewhere and none of us saw it. You see, my chap, there are some people born for revolt, and others who lean against the recog­ nized lines as hard as they will bear, and one is often mistaken for the other. It's the second that win—win this sort of thing." H e swept with his arm. " W h a t can you do with a revolutionary whom all the world accepts the moment the flag is raised? You can make out the Vaddock's career from this point. Big expensive studio at Hampstead; portraits of the aristocracy, of a few safe actresses, of royalty; two pictures in the Academy regularly till old age. Great ornament to British Art . Apotheosis in the Tate gallery. Ah . . . "
Two ladies had crossed the street from the exhibition, and were getting into a carriage which stood near us. Then they drove off.
Heller looked after them disgustfully. "Fashionable picture buyers, my chap," he muttered. "Always in the vanguard. People who are so anxious to be on the spot when the clock strikes, that they don't know when it has struck. Ten years hence, if they ever let the likes of us into their houses, they'd show the Vaddocks on the wall and tell
ANNA VADDOCK'S FAME 7
us"—he minced outrageously—"'Oh, I discovered Anna Vaddock when hardly anybody had a word to say for her. Don't you think I'm rather clever?'—Ach, Gott!" He stared gloomily at the throngs.
"How does Leverly take i t ?" I asked, to divert him. "Damn him! He's the worst of all. He's going about saying, ' I
told you so.' The Discoverer! Picked her out of the gutter in Paris; brought her to London; organized her show—you know the sort. The only thing he needs now is that the Vaddock would consent to die."
He stretched, affecting unconcern. "Well, I only came to watch the crowds. I'm off to Munich to-night."
VINCENT O'SULLIVAN.
THE GUARDIAN DEMON Do what we will,
One horror haunts us still, And down the course where shines the goal For the swift contest of the soul A Spectre glides; where'er we set Our footsteps, there will he be met, Our guardian demon: grant us grace To lift the veil that hides his face!
If once we dare Those eyes beneath his hair,
If once that demon visage see, His power is spent, he leaves us free; But if we try to pass him by, He'll seize our hand and presently Will lead us to that land of dream Where lost men grovel and blaspheme.
FRANCIS GOUTTS.
THE AESTHETIC OF BENEDETTO CROCE(*)
The path by which Ar t has travelled for two thousand years has been littered with Theories of Aesthetic: and perhaps the only result has been that their failures have served always to emphasize the uniqueness of the inexplicable phenomenon—the Artistic creation. Nevertheless, although finality be as distant as ever, some progress always remains to be recorded; the field of inquiry is cleared of irre­ levances ; the old prejudices and intolerances smoothed away, until we are become, in spite of our ignorance of the truth, at least certain in our refutation of error. Thus a new Aesthetic becomes of a real im­ portance to the artistic and philosophic world alike; for the old fairy tale of the divine artist, the inspired madman, is a little threadbare. The cult of the genius is on the wane; and the world is brought closer and closer to the truth that art is self conscious; and that in art it is brains, and not madness, concentration and not diffusion of personality, that is from first to last essential.
The Aestetica of Benedetto Croce will have none of this. " T h e Aesthetic intuition is generically different to the intellectual faculty. The Aesthetic fact is wholly exhausted in the expressive elaboration of impressions. In fact, aesthetic intuition is expression." At first sight perhaps, such a theory would seem to allow ample room for the in­ clusion of a definitely intellectual process, in the " expressive elabora­ tion" of the impressions—but expression with Croce bears a different sense. "Expression" is spiritual synthesis, the combination of previous impressions in the mind, the construction of unity from variety; a spiritual state different indeed from that of mere receptiveness of im­ pressions, but equally removed from that of the activity of " extrinse- cation." Indeed it is difficult to reconcile the vigorous criticism directed against the pretensions of those who imagine that they have an artistic intuition, and yet are unable to give it expression, with the definite statements of later chapters. " T h u s , " says Croce in the first chapter, ' ' those who deceive themselves as to the richness of their thoughts or images are brought back to the world of reality when they are com­ pelled to cross the pons asinorum of expression. ' C o u n t ' we say to
(*) Fillosofia dello Spirito. I. Aestetica. Benedetto Croce. Gius. Laterza. Bari. 1909.
12 R H Y T H M
the one. Speak, here is a brush, paint, express yourself—we will say to the other." But this is flatly contradicted when the stages of Artistic production are distinguished into impressions, expression or spiritual synthesis, aesthetic pleasure, physical expression or extrinsecation; of which the spiritual synthesis is the true aesthetic moment. The destruc­ tive criticism of the earlier chapters is based upon that very confusion between internal expression (or spiritual synthesis) and physical ex­ pression (or extrinsecation) so profoundly reprobated in the course of the work.
In truth, so far from intuition being expression in any ordinary sense of the word, expression is practical, a matter outside the aesthe­ tic fact, and forming an item in the economic activity of man. I may say I have the intuitions of a Raphael and no one can gainsay me—my language of internal "expression" is however a private code; and the finality of the challenge in Chapter I melts away before the admission in Chapter III—and is totally inconsistent with the conten­ tion of Chapter XI I I .
And this is no quibbling over terminologies. On this distinction between expression and extrinsecation the whole theory rests. " No intuition exists without expression " is explained away when expression not only does not imply, but is generically different to, extrinsecation. The practical failure to paint does not imply the absence of aesthetic expression. Failure in a practical does not mean failure in a spiritual activity. But Criticism loses its criterion, and we are plunged from our terra firma into a very bog of subjectivity. The whole of Aesthetic is made to pivot on a process of whose existence we know nothing, and which, if it does exist, is absolutely alien to that which men, since speculation began, have called Artistic creation.
Beauty, we are told, is successful "expression." Successful in what sense? How can a spiritual synthesis be successful? Surely it either exists or does not exist. If there is a synthesis it is unique: if there is not, we have a spiritual vacuum. We have, not ugliness, but nothing in the latter, not beauty but individuality or uniqueness in the former case. Beauty at most on such a theory is "expression." There it begins and there it ends. Beauty and Ugliness in the sense (however empiri­ cal and fluctuating), in which these terms are generally understood— (a quality, a something in the "extrinsecation," which gives us pleasure or pain according as there is something or nothing to under-
T H E A E S T H E T I C O F B E N E D E T T O C R O C E 13
stand in the work of art) is alien to Aesthetic; a matter of technique, of purely "economical activity" as Croce's philosophy has it.
The Aestetica, like so many theories of Aesthetic, leaves us to grope our way out from a maze of subjectivity to that security, of which it gave promise, and which to the very last the author imagines he has given us. To the last we have been deluded by a word—expres­ sion, and when we reach the end, our delusions vanished, we shrink in terror from the salt6 mortale offered us in that ambiguous word, and grasp, with thankfulness that worse things have not befallen us, the comfort of that intellectualist aesthetic which Plato all but gave us, and which Modernism has so nobly illustrated.
It is a thankless task to criticise the theory further. That Aesthe­ tic cannot be made to cover the ground that Croce makes it cover without losing all its individuality will be obvious to the artist if not to the philosopher. Yet even philosophers do not think that a grocer's bill and a song by Sappho are on the same level; and it will require a less fallible aesthetic than this to confute the common consent of generations. But while we reject Croce's philosophy of Aesthetic, it is well to remember, with gratitude and respect, the great efforts that he has made and is making towards lifting literature and literary criticism above the level of journalism and a cheap pseudo-aestheticism. H e has insisted, in spite of his philosophy, upon the "sanity of true genius"; rightly rejecting literature wherein there is not to be found what even Rossetti called fundamental brainwork, and with the appear­ ance of La Gritica there has dawned the renaissance of criticism. This is no slight service. With his philosophy we may disagree, to his ser­ vices towards the spiritual progress of mankind, to the great ideal he has so well served we can but do honour. In his own words, " L a lotta per l'onesta et per la verita non e stata e non sara composta in nessun tempo, perche e stata di tutti i tempi; e i disonesti, i ciarlatani, i leggieri, stimolo a quella lotta, sono di tutti i tempi, e, come classe, immortali. Meglio, in ogni caso, avere a fronte forme superiori, anziche forme inferiori di errori; meglio forme superiori, anziche forme inferiori di disonesta; meglio la moda della filosofia che quella del pettegolezzo erudito o della chiacchiera litteraria. Perche cio vorra dire che, se noi individui non siamo, pur troppo, divenuti migliori, il mondo, esso, e divenuto migliore."
J O H N M I D D L E T O N M U R R Y .
DRAWING. BY J. D. FERGUSSON.
IN THE COOL OF THE EVENING The day's eye shut, a malignant wink,
Sudden, before I was prepared: I felt the mute earth shudder and shrink
As though her breast to a knife she bared: My mind was in riot. I durst not think
What face of evil behind me glared Over the Shadow's awful brink!
The trees strove madly to give some cry; The stream writhed onward in numb despair,
The birds fled sobbing from the sky, As I turned half round with a strangled prayer.
And then I shrieked and turned to fly— He stood there:
He was there,—and I could not die. J O H N HARVEY.
THOMPSON
THOMPSON
16
THE LETTERS OF VINCENT VAN GOGH.(*)
THE letters of a great man may be of bio­ graphical or of psychological interest, or of both combined. Stevenson's letters, partly from their contents, partly as a re­ sult of careful editing, have the double value. Vincent's are almost pure psycho­ logy. The fantastic arrangement chosen by Margarete Mauthner, who has edited this German edition, tends to obscure what little biographical information the letters contain. There is one date only in the whole
series, and the correspondence is arbitrarily arranged in blocks ac­ cording to the recipient. First, a group of letters to Vincent's brother Theodore, the picture dealer; then a group to Emile Bernard; then more to Theodore, and so on. N o attempt whatever is made to show the place from which each letter is written; this one has to gather, as best one can, from the contents of the letters themselves.
But editorial incompetence cannot lessen the interest and value of the letters as revelations of a wonderful personality. They give just the same feeling as many of Vincent's pictures, the feeling of a tortured soul who lived for art and for nothing else, whose passionate vision saw a new whirl in nature, a new meaning in colour, whose searching in­ tensity seemed to burn its way into things from the side of the future.
But it was colour which meant more to him than anything. Colour ran through his life like a devouring flame, brilliant but consuming. " I know for sure that I have the feeling for colour and will acquire it more and more, that painting is in my very marrow." Again and again throughout the letters, in his descriptions of nature, it is the colour
(*) Vincent van Gogh. Briefe. Cassirer. Berlin. 1911. 3mk. 60.
T H E L E T T E R S O F V I N C E N T V A N G O G H 17
which strikes him most. Even in grey northern Europe he sees a wonderful brilliance and variety of tint. In one of the early letters, written from Holland when still under the influence of the Hague School, he writes:—
"Last night I was busy painting the gently rising ground in the wood, which is quite covered with dry shrivelled beech leaves. It was an expanse of every shade of red-brown, the shadows of the trees striking across it, like stripes . . . . And I noticed as I worked how much light there still was in the darkness. One must suggest the light and also the glow, in order not to lose the depths of rich colour . . . . Beech trunks grow here, which in a clear light are dazzlingly green, while in the shadow they appear a vivid green-black. Behind the trunks, beyond the red-brown floor, one could see the sky, a perfectly clear blue . . . . and in front of it a dim film of green and a network of stems and yellow leaves . . . . The figures of a few wood-gatherers creep about like dark shadows. A woman's white b o n n e t . . . . stands out from the deep red-brown of the earth. The dark silhouette of a man appears on the edge of the wood That is my description of nature. How far in my sketches I have reproduced the feeling, I do not know, but I do know how deeply I was impressed with the harmony of green, red, black, yellow, blue and grey."
Later on the brighter colours of the south laid their spell on him. Describing a view of Aries he has painted, he writes:—
"Of the town itself one sees only a few red roofs and a tower, standing among some green fig-trees, quite in the background; over the whole is a thin strip of blue sky. The town is surrounded by meadows covered with dandelions, like a yellow sea. Right in the fore­ ground a ditch cuts across the fields, full of purple iris . . . . What about that for a motif! A sea of yellow flowers, with the gash of purple, and in the background the charming little town."
I could go on multiplying quotations to the same effect, but there is no need. Colour so filled his mind, that he got to see moods expressed by different colours and combinations of colour. His daring juxta­ positions became almost a system, despite his constant assertions to the contrary. Blue must be accompanied by yellow, red by orange. In his Arlesian period, the great period of all, the problem of yellow held his attention, and yellow for him grew to express " love . "
18 R H Y T H M
" I want to paint," he writes, " the portrait of an artist friend, a man who dreams great dreams, who works, as the nightingale sings, because it is his nature to do so. The man must be fair. I want the love I bear him to appear in the picture. I shall, as a beginning, try to make the likeness as true as possible. But the picture will not be done then. To finish it, I shall proceed to colour it quite arbitrarily. I shall exaggerate the blondness of the hair into shades of orange, chrome, pale lemon- yellow. Behind the head I shall paint, instead of the dull cottage wall, a plain background of the richest blue, as intense as ever I can, and by this simple contrast, the fair head shining out against this rich blue background will have the mysterious effect of a star in a deep blue sky."
Another example of this same use of yellow is supplied by M. Bernard's assertion that Vincent intended to paint on either side of the figure of the ' ' Berceuse " two great golden suns to symbolize the power of love. The picture was to hang in a sailors' home at Mar­ seilles or Sainte Marie.
Meier-Graefe in his monograph on the artist (*) goes further into the question of Vincent's colour symbolism, and to this scholarly study I would refer the curious.
Largely as a result of this pre-occupation with colour, there is the striking fact that Vincent alone of the leaders of Fauvism, dead or living, owed anything to Pointillism. The renaissance of line had com­ paratively little appeal to him, and, despite his frequently expressed admiration of the Japanese, flat colour washes seldom appear in his work. H e felt the beauty of design as strongly as any, but it was more by colour than by form that he sought to attain it. There is only one mention in these letters—and that right at the end—of any attempt at simplification, the aim which engrossed Cezanne and Gauguin. " I am only now beginning to try a simplified technique, which could not per­ haps be called 'impressionist'." H e clung to the Impressionists with a devotion and eagerness which is very striking, inventing plans for their better advertisement, consulting his brother about their exhibitions— and always with hardly a word of himself or his advancement. He had a personal affection for Seurat and Anquetin and believed strongly in the value of their Pointillism. There is, however, one important fact which
(*) Vincent van Gogh, by Julius Meier-Graefe. Piper Verlag. Munchen. 1910. 3mk.
T H E LETTERS OF V I N C E N T V A N GOGH 19
distinguishes the Pointillism of Vincent from the mechanical stippling of the neo-impressionists—it is never used to create illusion, and this consideration definitely attaches Vincent to Fauvism, style himself what he may. The neo-impressionists used their technique to give an effect of light; they were realists. Vincent strove for brilliance of colour as a means to design and, as has been seen, to suggest deeper meaning. Then also his strokes of pure colour are far from mathe­ matical in size or position. " I follow no system in painting; I flog the canvas with irregular strokes and let them stand. Impasto—here and there uncovered patches—overpainting—brutalities, and the result is far too disturbing and tuneless to satisfy people who look for technique." And further on:—"No photographic imitation, that is the chief thing."
But while anti-realistic, he lays continual stress on the importance of finding every motif in nature. " One must attend more to Nature 's teaching than to that of painters." The same sentiment everywhere. He pours scorn on the painters of imaginary historical scenes, on Constant, Cabanel, Jacques, applauding Courbet's quest ion—"How can I paint angels when I have never seen o n e ? " Ar t must be in touch with life and the artist must rely on a personal interpretation of nature. He must live the life of his models before he can really understand them.
There can be no denying the personalness of Vincent's outlook. To him landscape vibrated, lived in its every line. In that wonderful picture—"Les Bles"—the corn swells like the sea and the wings of the ravens seem to writhe across the sky. In this curious twisted vision appears the tragedy of Vincent's life. Gauguin's joy in sunlight was the frank unreasoning joy of the animal; Vincent loved it with a passion far more complex, far more fevered. With this same passion he lived his short crowded life and the strain of it drove that patient tortured mind slowly into madness. H e died by his own hand in a lunatic asylum in 1890. H e was 37 years old.
And here I would close, recommending this volume of letters to any who may still regard his work as that of a madman, as also to whoever would mourn the tragedy of a noble soul.
M I C H A E L T. H . SADLER.
IS A
D O
R A
PRIESTCRAFT I dwelt with Ammon in the tents of Thebes
When all the Nile in winding lines of white Across the desert's dusty, sunburned face
Game, presents in their hands. They were my right,— Fame, fear, and worship, and the power to smite.
'Twas I who in that cell of Delphi's mount The murmur gave that trembling ears received,
And wrought to counsel for their loves and wars ; I need but mutter, and a world believed, Self teaching self, and each by self deceived.
Think not I perish in the bright to-day; I always shunned the market and the town.
Who parts the leaves before my screened shrine, He hears amongst the shade my silken gown; Still at my whisper golden showers rain down.
J U L I A N PARK.
DRAWING BY ANNE ESTELLE RICE.
THREE ECLOGUES I.
With a movement now drearily monotonous, now twitching as though half in anger at he knew not what, he bent hoeing the long lines of green on the slope. His eyes were glazed and fixed on the ground. There was something of malevolence in it all, in the crouching curve of his back, in the vicious stab of the shining iron at the earth, in the relentless advance along the rows. H e seemed to be part of the field where he worked; as though it had turned to wound itself.
The sky all about was dull and d rab : the trees bare and trembling for their nakedness beneath the east wind. The end of the hill-side
22
T H R E E E C L O G U E S 23
and the grey heavens seemed to melt into one dreary monotone of grey, fading into brown beneath the curtain of steady mist that hung damp and immobile over the hills. Yet at one tiny point a speck of light began to show, at first feebly, but gaining strength as it forced ever more of the mist and the cloud away. The birds had hardly marked the light, when they began to pour forth a welcome: though, as yet, the light remained weak, and the mists were still low.
The man paused from his movement to listen. As he stood motion­ less, there came from the distant hollow of the hills the sound of bells, striking the hour. At the sound, he slowly scraped his hoe, and tramped heavily down the slope to where his coat and bag lay almost indistinguishable. H e put on his coat and heaved the bag to his shoul­ der, still bent down.
The light grew stronger and stronger. Through the widening rift the red fire of the sun streamed low over the hill slopes. The long bare pines cast eerie shadows across the hills: yet all that was cruel and devilish in the shadows the warm light burnt away. The hedge- tops were caught in the burning glow. The mist-drops on the bare twigs were shot with many-coloured fires. The birds now strove against each other fittingly to welcome the light—the whole hill seemed aflame with a thousand tongues.
He lurched to the heavy gate, his back against the sun: and then paused, to pull forth a foul black pipe. He filled it slowly and put a match to it. The gate clattered behind him, as he blew forth the smoke.
The sky was now all clear of cloud, save for a few wisps flecked with silver and red. The round red ball of the sun stood clear and brilliant. The world had come back to the life it had left. The brook rushed valiantly over the stones. The sun began to touch the horizon: the birds lifted their voices in one last full-throated symphony. The red light seemed to glow to whiteness, to blend with the transparent song.
H e paused: turned slowly half towards the sun: and spat in the hedgerow.
II . She turned wearily to the blood-red light that flamed through the
tiny window. Her face, blanched and livid, seemed like an effigy beneath the stained windows of an old cathedral, where marble features
24 R H Y T H M
writhed under the stab of pain. He r frail hands twitched. The red rays made play with the crazy mosaic of the quilt and broke in a hundred sombre colours over the room. Her body trembled sudden and quick with anguish. He r sunken eyes were filled with the blood of the sun. Heavy footsteps plodded along the cobbles to the door. A short fumbling with the latch: and a broad, bowed man swung the door to with a crash. H e dropped his bag heavily on the stone of the floor, and sat at the little table to eat ; and flung a few brusque words at the woman.
She turned from the light. Under her eyes he munched on brutishly to the end. He r gaze fixed half pitifully upon him. He r quivering nerves gave a sudden shudder as he rose kicking the chair from beneath him. He stretched himself, a Titan in the deep light, and lurched to the window on the other side. The hard rasp as he opened it shook her again. He leant on the sill, his back one huge red curve, and sucked moodily at a pipe. H e stopped to reach further through the window, snapped his knife open, and scraped the ashes from the bowl.
She turned back to the light, coughed a little blood on the white of the sheets, and died.
I I I . The preacher's voice rose and fell unctuously in the little church.
The infinite goodness of God rang through his periods. " T h e Father will not suffer that any of his children pass unregarded." " T h e noble­ ness of toil, and the divinity that showed in the labour of the hands. The life of daily labour on the fields was the noblest work of man, the highest blessing of God conferred upon him; more honoured than the pomp of kings, more peace-bringing than the lordship of empires, more divine than the leading of armies." H e listened bowed and wondering to the strange words and a blind disquietude showed like a tiny spark within him. The voice died away to silence and the church emptied.
H e trudged his way homewards and the little spark kindled into groping words. A dull fury festered in his soul: fury against the fields he trod, the air he breathed, the endless brown rows that he followed every day, the clogging furrows, the dull ache in the limbs, the hunger that clawed within him. The blind fury grew more coherent, more
THREE ECLOGUES 25
brutal, more pointed. A desire to lead, not to be led, to fight against the God that set him there. Only to kill God—a little sweet sharp revenge for a life of dull unheeded pain. To kill God—the thought danced within his brain. His steps grew lighter and his shoulders lost the sullen curve. The murder of God would be a deed, and the murderer a hero. Only to kill, to watch the blood shoot forth—but to kill God. There was almost a joy in his eyes. His steps quickened.
- He entered the low damp hovel and glanced round. There was a child in the shadow. He seized and beat it brutally. The screams cut through the air, cut into his brain. The light died out of his eyes. God would not scream thus even before his blows. His form sank back to the old curve, as he half released, half flung the child away. He sank back upon a chair: his head buried in his arms. The child lay still where it had been flung, and sobbed itself to sleep.
ARTHUR CROSSTHWAITE.
26
IMAGINATION Moods Titanic, masters of the hills, Mountainous in grandeur, unconfined, This morning ere the sun rose and the wind Ye were but waterdrops in oaken rills; Footless ye were, and bound in leaf and grass, The narrow confines of a leaf could hold Yon vapour striving unto heights untold, Rising above each mantled peak and pass.— Ah, spirit, spirit, waterdrop confined In tiny realm of purposes and will, Beneath the sun thy vapours rise and fill And Titan shadows move along the wind !
R H Y S C A R P E N T E R .
N A
T U
R E
DISMORR
Je devine a travers un murmure Le contour subtil des voix anciennes Et dans les lueurs musiciennes Amour pale, une aurore future.
Verlaine.
Music in France has been remarkable during the last century for its vitality. Moreover, it has developed more independently than that of any other nation, with the possible exception of Russia. For which very reason, perhaps, it has been of late years rather a stumbling block in the path of those "labellers" whose passion it is to classify art by nationality and codify glibly what they are pleased to call "national characteristics."
Of course it is true, not only theoretically, but historically, that nationality has an influence upon art ; but it is also true that the art which is least obviously "nat ional" may be of the greatest permanent value.
The impulse given to music in France by Cesar Franck and the so-called Schola Cantorum was a strong and vigorous one; and, owing its origin to great individual temperaments, it was therefore as markedly individual as it was independent of external influence. Thus, in a sense, it was "national," in so far as it was self-sufficing, but not "nat ional" in the sense that it merely reflected the conventional ideals and spirit of the nation as a whole. True nationality should be big enough to include all the forms of true individuality.
But if the Schola Cantorum was individual and independent, still more so is Claude Debussy—who belongs to no school; and yet his nationality could hardly be other than it is. Born with the artist- nature, and endowed with a sense of beauty of the rarest and finest quality, he had not far to look for his medium—for music was in every pulse of his nature—and he soon found for himself that strongly indi­ vidual mode of expression that raised around him and his methods the
30 RHYTHM
dust of controversy which has only recently shown signs of settling. I myself heard hisses mingled with the applause when M. Debussy was conducting some of his own works in London, not more than a year or two ago. But, setting aside the gross incivility of this, the incident shows how great an impression his music must have made, even upon an unappreciative audience; for at least it made them afraid. But now that his methods are more or less familiar to all, his meaning and aims may need more explanation. And on this point it is worth while re­ marking that those who, after seriously trying to understand the in­ tentions of the composer, finally declare themselves opposed to him, are not in the least to blame—for to understand and appreciate Debussy's music, one must be in sympathy with the composer's outlook and ideals. It is, of course, only possible to gather what these may be from a study of his works; but the man for whom they carry no message, in whom they wake no responsive thrill, as on hearing a thought beautifully expressed that one has long felt without having power to utter it, must turn elsewhere; for the composer will be speaking to him in an unknown tongue;—the gulf of alien tempera­ ments is yawning between them. In this way the music of Debussy is largely subjective; it depends for its appreciation on some similarity of sensation between composer and hearer, and it is doubtful whether even two admirers are drawn by the same subtle attraction, or admire for the same reasons. To attempt a definite analysis of either the com­ poser or his music would be not only impossible, but useless. But, at the same time, the external characteristics of his music cannot be ignored—they suggest new developments in the realm of art in the same way that the conception of a sixth sense suggests an extended world of sense-perception for all humanity. But the significance of Debussy's innovations is that they show, not only that music can rid itself of all fetters and gain thereby, but that musicians are coming more and more to see that it must do so, if it is to express the ever- increasing complexities of life as a whole, and the ever-varying sensa­ tions of individual experience.
Briefly then, the salient characteristics of his music may be said to consist in a free use of the whole-tone scale, unusual progressions (as a natural result), and a lack of what is usually meant by melody. The whole-tone scale, to begin with (which to some is all that Debussy's
THE ART OF CLAUDE DEBUSSY 31
music stands for), is not, of course, an invention of his—nor even was he the first to adapt it to modern conditions. In his early youth Debussy spent some time in Russia, and the music of Moussorgsky especially appealed to him. And it was from Moussorgsky that he learnt the peculiar properties of the whole-tone scale, and its artistic possibilities.
The outstanding feature of this scale is the absence of any "leading note"—and it is probably this that produces at first on the listener a feeling of incompleteness, that is displeasing because it is unfamiliar. But so far from this in itself being a new departure, Debussy is in this respect more indebted to antiquity than to his own inventive powers. For he has drawn upon the old church modes, such as the Mixolydian and the Dorian, and has made them part of the basis of his harmonic system. But in his method of handling them he has, of course, opened up entirely new ground. The elaborate harmonic system that he has built upon them is very different from the bald open fourths and octaves that in early church music were almost the only sanctioned intervals. It is easy to see that with such a scale as this to build upon:
progressions hitherto undreamt of will be possible, and tonality almost lost sight of. But scales being mere arbitrary conventions, to say that one is better than another means little or nothing. One might say with as little meaning that one alphabet was better than another—whereas, like a scale, an alphabet, qua alphabet, is neither good nor bad; it merely exists as a necessary condition of the expression of thought in writing.
But where Debussy has really innovated is in the new value he has given to the more remote and hitherto unexplored regions of the the "upper partials" in a harmonic series. It is said that while on his term of military service as a young man, in listening to certain bells which were rung in a convent near his regiment's camp, Debussy was greatly fascinated by the peculiar effect of the free vibrations of the overtones, and this gave him the idea of introducing such effects into the realm of ordinary diatonic music. And he has been the first to treat the overtones in abstraction, as it were, and to build upon and combine those harmonics further away from the ground tone than the
32 R H Y T H M
7th—which in the series formed by the natural harmonics of the funda­ mental G (for example)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
would be B —and marks about the limit of hitherto exploited ground. But not only has Debussy penetrated higher in the harmonic series than former composers have done, he has built chords entirely con­ sisting of these harmonies, and he employs them, too, without any sort of resolution. The sonority of each individual combination is his only guide. (*)
All these overtones, of course, are present when any single note is struck, but Debussy has been the first to emphasize them, and to get the idea of using them as the basis of a new harmonic system. It is true that to many, perhaps the majority of, ears they are ordinarily inaudible; but none the less they are always present. What Debussy has done, then, is to have inked in, as it were, lines that before were merely suggested, or even, like a water-mark, invisibly ingrained in the texture of ordinary diatonic music. It is obvious, then, that har­ monic resources are thus instantly enriched.
Now it is true that in this process of enrichment melody is to some extent sacrificed. And this leads at once into the whole question of melody and its relation to harmony.
For a true musician to despise melody is little short of blasphemy; but it is not a crime to recognize its limitations. Because Debussy has, in a sense, renounced melody, that does not mean that he despises it— still less that he is incapable of writing it. On the contrary, some of the purest and most exquisite melody has come from his brain, as a glance at almost any of the earlier songs will show. But as his art de­ veloped, and as he steeped himself more and more in the mysteries of
(*) On this technical point, cf. Claude Achille Debussy, by Mrs Franz Liebich. (Living Masters of Music Series.)
THE ART OF CLAUDE DEBUSSY 33 pure harmony, its magic may well have seemed more powerful than that of melody. The whole trend of modern music is towards using as basis of expression pure harmony, which is capable of much more variegation and is more definitely coloured than melody. And on the whole it is a right trend, and inevitable. For, after all, melody is limited, but harmony infinite. And Claude Debussy has realized this. The next step is that form, as such, becomes of secondary importance, for music is coming more and more to be treated as pure sound, and this means increased plasticity and greater emphasis on its purely rhythmic qualities. All this greatly widens the field of music, though at first sight it seems like a return to primitive conditions. And in a sense, perhaps, it is—for are not harmony and rhythm inextricably combined in the simplest phenomena of Nature, and essential to the simplest manifestations of Beauty?
That Debussy realizes the potency of pure sound is evident in many ways. For instance, it is to be observed that his chords are nearly always distributed or spread in the way that secures the greatest sonority; and of such directions as "laissez vibrer" he is very fond, for individual details are to him no less important than the general effect. And his rhythms are marvellous. Rhythm in his hands is as expressive as harmony, and in welding the two he is without a rival.
It is impossible now to go into many of his writings in detail, but "Pelleas et Melisande" is so full of illustrations of so many aspects of his genius that it serves as a kind of key to the man and his art. Here , in his only opera, he has definitely renounced melody—at any rate in writing for the voice. But in the marvellous harmonic background supplied by the orchestra melody is never really absent. And this is the same with all his works. As M. Vincent D'Indy has expressed it, "Tou t est melodie dans sa musique." With him the melodic impulse expresses itself in harmonic colouring and combinations. But in his treatment of the voices he has here taken an entirely fresh step. The characters speak in a kind of psalmodic declaration, expressed in melodic curves, and thus their personalities and actions stand out more poignantly against the shimmering, pulsing, harmonic background than if they had merely to sing to the accompaniment of the orchestra, as in the old-fashioned opera, or be almost entirely subservient to it, as in the Wagnerian music-dramas. The characters are always prominent,
34 R H Y T H M
and while their music is designed generally so as to follow the natural inflection of the voice, the orchestra reflects all their emotions and heightens the atmosphere of the whole. And in such a drama as " Pelleas et Melisande," atmosphere is everything. N o one, perhaps, is more absolutely in sympathy with the Maeterlinckian view of things, and certainly no one can convey more perfectly the peculiar, poignant remoteness of Maeterlinckian romance than Claude Debussy.
H e is sometimes accused of lack of grip, but it is hard to see how the composer of "Pelleas et Melisande" could deserve such a charge. To take only two instances, the ecstatic music in the third act, when Melisande from her window lets down her marvellous hair, has the thrill of strong wine; and the poignancy and tension is almost insup­ portable throughout the scene where Golaud is holding up his little son to spy upon the lovers.
Debussy's music is often called Impressionist, and rightly; but it is something more: it is in its essence Fauvist. That is to say it does not only aim at securing an impression of things as they are, but it aims at reflecting their psychological effect on the mind of the observer. This tendency is especially noticeable in "Pelleas." In fact, the opera itself is simply the total impression of the drama on the composer's mind bodied forth again in sound, but with the action still preserved. Many of the songs give this same impression of completeness, the settings of Verlaine's lyrics and thumb-nail sketches, such as "Fantoches ," in which the poet's caprice of the moment is caught and fixed in sound. The musical setting is simply a translation into sound, instantaneously carried out, of the very essence and spirit of the words.
Finally, it is said that Debussy's music can never sound to outward ears as it sounded to the inward ear of his imagination;—his inspira­ tion is of so rare a quality that it cannot find full expression through the present too limited and circumscribed channels. But even if we only hear a paraphrase, as it were, of the music that throbs within him, we can hear enough to guess what that music must be like— music that is distilled from the large vibrations of Nature, from the stillness of forest glades, and the delicate shimmer of dews at dawn, in a mind that knows the secrets of far-off things, as of one "Sole- sitting on the shores of old Romance."
R O L L O H. M Y E R S .
* Communications and contributions to be addressed to the Editor, care of the St Catherine Press, Norfolk St, London.
LETCHWORTH: AT THE ARDEN PRESS
Contents
Francis Coutts. TheGuardian Demon
Labour. by Augustus John
Drawing. by J. D. Fergusson
John Harvey. In the Cool of the Evening
Michael T. H. Sadler. The Letters of Vincent Ban Gogh
Isadora. by Jessie Dismorr
Arthur Crossthwaite. Thre Eclogues
Rhys Carpenter. Imagination