Laurus Nobilis: Chapters on Art and Life — John Shaqi
Laurus Nobilis: Chapters on Art and LifeLee, Vernon
Philosophy
Laurus Nobilis: Chapters on Art and Life
Lee, Vernon
Aesthetics
How often do we not see this! Natures whose various parts have rambled
asunder, or have come to live, like strangers in an inn, casually,
promiscuously, each refusing to be his brother's keeper: instincts of
kindliness at various ends, unconnected, unable to coalesce and conquer;
thoughts separated from their kind, incapable of application; and, in
consequence, strange superficial comradeships, shoulder-rubbings of
true and false, good and evil, become indifferent to one another,
incapable of looking each other in the face, careless, unblushing.
Nay, worse. For lack of all word of command, of all higher control,
hostile tendencies accommodating themselves to reign alternate,
sharing the individual in distinct halves, till he becomes like unto
that hero of Gautier's witch story, who was a pious priest one-half of
the twenty-four hours and a wicked libertine the other: all power of
selection, of reaction gone in this passive endurance of conflicting
tendencies; all identity gone, save a mere feeble outsider looking on
at the alternations of intentions and lapses, of good and bad. And the
soul of such a person--if, indeed, we can speak of one soul or one
person where there exists no unity--becomes like a jangle of notes
belonging to different tonalities, alternating and mingling in hideous
confusion for lack of a clear thread of melody, a consistent system of
harmony, to select, reject, and keep all things in place.
Melody, harmony: the two great halves of the most purely aesthetic of
all arts, symbolise, as we might expect, the two great forces of life:
consecutiveness and congruity, under their different names of
intention, fitness, selection, adaptation. These are what make the
human soul like a conquering army, a fleet freighted with riches, a
band of priests celebrating a rite. And this is what art, by no paltry
formula, but by the indelible teaching of habit, of requirement, and
expectation become part of our very fibre--this is what art can teach
to those who will receive its highest lesson.
VI.
Those who can receive that lesson, that is to say, those in whom it
can expand and ramify to the fulness and complexity which is its very
essence. For it happens frequently enough that we learn only a portion
of this truth, which by this means is distorted into error. We accept
the aesthetic instinct as a great force of Nature; but, instead of
acknowledging it as our master, as one of the great lords of life, of
whom Emerson spoke, we try to make it our servant. We attempt to get
congruity between the details of our everyday existence, and refuse to
seek for congruity between ourselves and the life which is greater
than ours.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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