Gesture.
The artist should have three objects: To move, to interest, to persuade. He interests by language; he moves by thought; he moves, interests and persuades by gesture.
Language is the weakest of the three agents. In a matter of the feelings language proves nothing. It has no real value, save that which is given to it by the preparation of gesture.
Gesture corresponds to the soul, to the heart; language to the life, to the thought, to the mind. The life and the mind being subordinate to the heart, to the soul, gesture is the chief organic agent. So it has its appropriate character which is persuasion, and it borrows from the other two agents interest and emotion. It prepares the way, in fact, for language and thought; it goes before them and foretells their coming; it accentuates them.
By its silent eloquence it predisposes, it guides the listener. It makes him a witness to the secret labor performed by the immanences which are about to burst forth. It flatters him by leading him to feel that he partakes in this preparation by the initiation to which it admits him. It condenses into a single word the powers of the three agents. It represents virtue effective and operative. It assimilates the auxiliaries which surround it, and reflects the immanence proper to its nature, the contemplation of its subject deeply seen, deeply felt. It possesses them synthetically, fully, absolutely.
Artistic gesture is the expression of the physiognomy; it is transluminous action; it is the mirror of lasting things.
Lacordaire, that spoiled child of the intellect, spoke magnificently. He interested, he aroused admiration, but he did not persuade. His organism was rebellious to gesture. He was the artist of language. Ravignan, inferior intellectually, prepared his audience by his attitude, touched them by the general expression of his face, fascinated them by his gaze. He was the artist of gesture.
Thus, if we sing, let us not forget that the prelude, the refrain, is the spiritual expression of the song; that we must take advantage of this exordium to guide ourselves, to predispose our hearers in our favor; that we must point out to them, must make them foresee by the expression of our face the thought and the words which are to follow; that, in fact, the ravished spectator may be dazzled by a song which he has not yet heard, but which he divines or thinks that he divines.
Definition of Gesture.
(Compare Delaumosne, page 43.)
Gesture is the direct agent of the heart. It is the fit manifestation of feeling. It is the revealer of thought and the commentator upon speech. It is the elliptical expression of language; it is the justification of the additional meanings of speech. In a word, it is the spirit of which speech is merely the letter. Gesture is parallel to the impression received; it is, therefore, always anterior to speech, which is but a reflected and subordinate expression.
Gesture is founded on three bases which give rise to three orders of studies; that is, to three sciences, namely: The static, the dynamic and the semeiotic.
What are these three sciences, and, first of all, what are they in relation to gesture? The semeiotic is its mind; the dynamic is its soul; the static is founded on the mutual equilibrium or equipoise of the agents.
The dynamic presents the multiple action of three agents; that is to say, of the constituent forces of the soul.
The semeiotic presents to our scrutiny a triple object for study. It sets forth the cause of the acts produced by the dynamic and the static harmonies. Moreover, it reveals the meaning of the types which form the object of the system. It offers us a knowledge of the formal or constitutional types, of the fugitive or accidental types, and, finally, of the habitual types.
The triple object of the dynamic are the rhythmic, inflective and harmonic forms. Dynamic rhythm is founded upon the important law of mobility, inversely proportionate to the masses moved. Dynamic inflections are produced by three movements: Direct movements, rotary movements and movements of flexion in the arc of a circle.
Dynamic harmony is founded on the concomitance of the relations existing between all the agents of gesture. This harmony is regulated by three states, namely: The tonic or eccentric state, the atonic or concentric state, and the normal state. It, therefore, remains for us to fix the three vital conditions of the static part of gesture. The vital condition of the static is based upon the knowledge of the nine stations. The spirit of the static entails the study of scenic planes which embrace three conditions: The condition of the personage in relation to the scenic centre or to the interlocutor whom he addresses; in the second place, his situation; and, finally, the direction assumed by his body in regard to the conditions already indicated.
The soul of the static is in the harmonic opposition of the surfaces moved.
The most powerful of all gestures is that which affects the spectator without his knowing it.
From this statement may be deduced the principle that: Outward gesture, being only the echo of the inward gesture which gave birth to it and rules it, should be inferior to it in development and should be in some sort diaphanous.