Icy Olympus and the Burning Bush

The Need for Art in Life, by I. B. Stoughton Holborn. New York: G. Albert Shaw.

The Spirit of Japanese Art, by Yone Noguchi. New York: E. P. Dutton and Company.

The complete man must consist of three essential fundamentals—the Artistic, the Intellectual, the Moral (mark the initials: aim!); man’s aim should be the full expression of his tripartite nature; he must not leave out any of the three sides, nor develop any one at the expense of the rest. Unfortunately our age has achieved only two-thirds of the diagram, the I and the M, remaining wretchedly poor in the A part. When we look back we find that in the Renaissance period the A and I were overdeveloped, with the total lack of the M side. The Middle Ages present the presence of A and M and the absence of I. It is the Greek ideal we must look for in our endeavor for the complete expression of man. The Greek gentleman, the καλος κάγαθος, the reserved, the moderately good, the not excessively just, the harmonious, the symmetrical—he shall be our standard, our criterion for the completeness of being. Is not Mr. Holborn clever and Olympian and icy-cold?

Now listen:

The evening had already passed when I returned home with that hanging of Koyetsu’s chirography under my arm. “Put all the gaslights out! Do you hear me? All the gaslights out! And light all the candles you have!” I cried. The little hanging was properly hanged at the “togonoma” when the candles were lighted, whose world-old soft flame (wasn’t it singing the old song of world-wearied heart?) allured my mind back, perhaps, to Koyetsu’s age of four hundred years ago—to imagine myself to be a waif of greyness like a famous tea-master, Rikiu or Enshu or, again, Koyetsu, burying me in a little Abode of Fancy with a boiling tea-kettle; through that smoke of candles hurrying like our ephemeral lives, the characters of Koyetsu’s writing loomed with the haunting charm of a ghost.

It is painful for me to stop quoting the religious ravings of dear Noguchi. And all this pathos is about a bit of old Japanese writing! I can see the indignant Mr. Holborn’s moderate condemnation of the Oriental’s unreserved passion, canting the cold-beautiful Μηδὲν ἄγαν (nothing in excess). But, O forgive me, Olympian gods, I must come back to the Burning Bush where Yone Noguchi worships Hashimoro, Hiroshige, Kyosai, Tsukioka, Utamaro, and other such rhythmical names; I am aware of the abyss of excess that yawns before me, but the exotic wine is so luring, so intoxicating, the call of the Orient is so irresistible—I plunge:

I will lay me down whenever I want to beautifully admire Utamaro and spend half an hour with his lady (“Today I am with her in silence of twilight eve, and am afraid she may vanish into the mist”), in the room darkened by the candle-light (it is the candle-light that darkens rather than lights); every book or picture of Western origin (perhaps except a few reprints from Rossetti or Whistler, which would not break the atmosphere altogether) should be put aside. How can you place together in the same room Utamaro’s women, for instance, with Millet’s pictures or Carpenter’s Towards Democracy? The atmosphere I want to create should be most impersonal, not touched or scarred by the sharpness of modern individualism or personality, but eternally soft and grey; under the soft grey atmosphere you would expect to see the sudden swift emotion of love, pain or joy of life, that may come any moment or may not come at all.

I recall an evening at “The Vagabonds,” where some ultra-modern paintings were exhibited and bravely discussed. An idiotic friend of mine suggested that the Vagabonds pass an evening in contemplating the canvasses in absolute silence. The obliging chairman, who is a fair parliamentarian, had the suggestion voted upon with the result of one vote in favor of it. I recall that evening in connection with Noguchi’s lines about Koyetsu:

What need there be but prayer and silence? There is nothing more petty, even vulgar, in the grey world of art and poetry, than to have a too-close attachment to life and physical surroundings; if our Orientalism may not tell you anything much, I think it will teach you at least to soar out of your trivialism.

I refuse to say any more about the book, for I am tempted to quote him all the way through. If you wish to forget yourself and your environment, to melt away in the unreal atmosphere of Japanese prints—read Yone Noguchi’s little book.