Unfinished Rainbows, and Other Essays

by George Wood Anderson

One of the richest harvests garnered from the sky is a revelation of the accuracy with which God works. The stars do not dwell in a land of “Hit and Miss,” and eclipses are not accidental happenings. No ship cuts the waves of the sea with half the accuracy as star and planet move in their appointed courses. There are no swervings nor deviations from the plan of God, so that an astronomer can calculate the exact second when a comet will return from its long journey through unseen realms; as well as foretell the conjunction of planets a thousand years from now. God has appointed an exact second for the rising of the sun, and another exact second for its setting, and man knows what both of them are a thousand years before the day arrives. Then let us till the sky until we learn that He who planned the high-arched blue, and marked orbits for stars and planets, is also the Designer of our own lives, and has set for us a divine purpose somewhat like the vastness of the sky. Yielding ourselves to God as the heavenly constellations yield themselves to their controlling powers, each one has a greater life to live, and a more sublime destiny to attain, than his fondest dreams. How foolish it is to till the soil for money, and miss the very essence of life, by failing to utilize the sky that yields such tender ministries with so little effort!

It is well to look upward and learn a lesson of patience, for the open sky teaches that the plans of God are not worked out in a day. The journey from star-dust to harvest-ladened planet peopled by a happy family of contented men, requires many millions of years, yet, from the beginning it was in the mind of God. He has never altered his plan, but with divine accuracy the work has passed from stage to stage of development with perfect progression. With such an example, we must learn patience and not become discouraged when we cannot see the end from the beginning. A child can make a shelf full of mud pies in one summer’s afternoon, and they will last no longer than the first rain. Hasty work means wasted effort. Life that endures must be planned of God, fulfilled with astronomical accuracy, and most patiently developed.

How wonderful the brain that is molded after something of the vastness of the open sky, and how thrilling to walk and till the fields of heavenly blue! We were meant for those heights. It does not require a very great elevation in the pure atmosphere of a Western State to push back the horizon forty and fifty miles. This planet is not the objective of life. It is only the hilltop where God has placed us for a little while that we may catch a vision as wide as the universe and as high as his own White Throne.

V.
Unquarried Statues

Michael Angelo, with his statues of David and Moses, proved that Phidias and Praxiteles had not exhausted the marvelous possibilities of the art of sculpture. Rodin, with his “Thinker,” has shown, while Phidias and Praxiteles demonstrated the possibility of giving immortality to the unsurpassed beauty of Grecian form, and while Michael Angelo revealed the power of expressing grace, as in David, and commanding leadership, as in Moses, that the achievements of these two schools of art were the Pillars of Hercules, not marking the limit of art, but the open gateway to uncharted seas and undiscovered realms in the art of reshaping marble. There is not a lofty sentiment of the soul, a struggling aspiration toward goodness, or form of idealism that cannot be made to live in marble, and exert undying influence. There is more than “an angel in the block of marble.” There are all the hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, laughter and tears, longings and aspirations, desires and despairs; there is all that is manly, noble, and heroic, lying in any block of marble awaiting the coming of the liberating chisel. What inspiration to the young artist of to-day, and what joy to all lovers of the beautiful! The depths of earth are stored with a wealth of unquarried statues.

The progress of civilization is ofttimes hindered because youth, in thinking of statues, consider the pedestals upon which they rest rather than the depth from which they were quarried. They very often do not care to begin life at the right place. Because they covet praise, and enjoy the warm, congenial atmosphere of appreciation, they shun the depths, hours of loneliness, the unrequited toil of preparation, and the laborious efforts of beginning. Modeling clay is an important part of the achievement; but getting the proper marble is one of the first essentials.

The experience of Michael Angelo is common to all men of real achievement: he found that the market place does not offer marble blocks of sufficient size for him to work out his divine conception. Hucksters and makers of money in the market place seldom understand ambitious youth that asks for larger blocks than they are capable of handling. Their idea of a great thought is an ornament for the mantelpiece. But men of achievement will not be daunted. Locking his studio, Angelo went to superintend the breaking of blocks in the mountain of Carrara, and when the sluggish-minded people of the mountains refused to do his bidding, he opened new quarries in Seravez. Before he could carve his statue he knew that he must quarry a block of marble sufficiently large. He knew also that the block of marble could be had for the digging. He found what he needed but did not exhaust the treasury. The world still has the material, richer than that which made Angelo and Rodin famous, awaiting the youth of ambition to undertake great things, and the willingness, at any cost, to superintend the breaking of the marble blocks from the buried storehouses.

The pleasure of nature is to store her raw material in seemingly inaccessible strongholds. She does not willingly yield them to men lacking vision and great conceptions. If they were of easy access, common men would crush them to make roads for donkeys to tramp over. Nature’s treasures are too valuable for ignorance to destroy, so she locks them in secret depths or inaccessible heights, awaiting the coming of the man of genius. If only a man yields himself to the divine leadings, and catches a vision of a statue like Moses, or a façade for the Church of San Lorenzo, or for a mausoleum for the Medici, no mountainside is too steep to chisel a roadway through the jagged rocks, no morass so yielding but that a solid highway may be erected, no water so troubled but that boats may safely transport the precious marble. He will not depend upon hirelings nor lean upon borrowed strength. The dream of beauty must be wrought in marble, the unquarried statue must be lifted from obscurity and made to live in some public place, therefore he will personally attend to the breaking of the blocks.

It is not an easy matter to live out a divine idea and make it a thing tangible and real for a critical world to examine and criticize and afterwards love and venerate. Sluggards and lovers of ease cannot do it. To them an unquarried statue is only a stone. For centuries no one has given it any attention; why should they? They would rather have something to eat and drink. A cushioned chair is far more comfortable to sit on, and a potato is much more substantial food. What they want is something to eat, and a place in which to lounge, and because they do not see the value of great ideas they can never be forgotten when dead, for they were never known while living.