XVI.—DAUBIGNY, Spring. Louvre, Paris.
It is well for us then at the start that we have no misunderstanding about the relationship between literature and art. That they are related in measure may be said with equal truth of preaching and science, of poetry and politics, of music and history. Science has been preached and politics have been poetized, and history has been shrieked in a high treble at the opera. Just so art has illustrated literature and literature art; but it can hardly be contended that any one of them has been put to its proper purpose. The main affair of literature is to illustrate literature, and the business of art is primarily to produce art. They are independent pursuits and there is no need of confounding their aims or being confused by their apparent resemblances.
Therefore, in using the phrase pictorial poetry I would be understood as meaning pictorial poetry and not literary poetry. They are two quite different things by virtue of their means of expression. The idea in art, whether poetic or otherwise, has its material limitations, which we must not fail to take into account. The first limitation is the major one and it demands that painting deal with things seen. We have referred to this in speaking of Tintoretto’s “Annunciation,” but it is worth while to take it up again and more definitely.
The couplet,
“The mind that broods o’er guilty woes
Is like the scorpion girt by fire,”
is certainly a poetic image; but fancy, if you can, how a painter would paint that brooding mind. He could not do it. Why? Because it is not tangible, it cannot be seen, it has no form or color. It is an abstract idea to be comprehended by the mind through sound, and belongs to literature. Perhaps you think the painter might have rendered it by showing a sad face and a wrinkled brow, but how would you know whether the wrinkles came from mental or from physical pain? And what can he say to you about “guilty woes” with a paint brush? The writer can tell you about the inside and the outside of the head, but the painter is limited to the outside.
The inability of painting to deal with sound—a something without tangible form—may be further illustrated by Millet’s celebrated picture of the “Angelus.” It has already served me for illustration, but I shall not at this time go out of my way for a newer example. The expressed thought of the picture, the whole story, hinges on the sound of a church-bell—the Angelus bell of sunset. How does Millet attempt to picture this sound? Why, by painting far back in the distance a church-spire seen against a sunset sky, and in the foreground two peasants with bowed heads. But the effort at sound is inadequate. The peal of the bell is beyond the reach of paints and brushes. The most brilliant colors make no sound. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that there have been half a dozen different readings of the picture’s meaning. The idea of the Angelus is in the picture only because it has been read into it by the title of the work. That is a leaning upon literature which is unnecessary in art. The painting should require no explanation by language.
It need not be denied that the Angelus story is poetic; but it is perfectly just and proper to contend that by its dependence upon sound it is better fitted for literature than for art. A Tennyson could have made a poem about it wherein the sound of the bells would have been in the cadences of the language—in the very syllables breaking upon the ear. We all remember his flying notes from the horns of Elfland in “The Princess.”