Parallel Paths: A Study in Biology, Ethics, and Art

by T. W. Rolleston

The principle of the arch was known in very early times to Pelasgians in Greece and to Etruscans in Italy, both of whom, no doubt, derived it from the East. But it was valued more for its utility in certain constructions than for its artistic quality, and Greek classical architecture knows nothing of it. It was freely used in Rome, and here its extraordinary effect of vital energy as a supporter of weight first began to be perceived. When Romanesque and Gothic architecture seized on this principle, the strength of stonework, heretofore essentially placid, leapt into vehement life and action. A Gothic cathedral is the expression of a war of mighty forces held in equilibrium by their own antagonism. Every part seems to threaten destruction to some other. There is, of course, a war of forces in a Greek temple also, but there the weight and thrust answer each other, as we have said, directly; a vertical column supports a horizontal architrave, and must support it, for nothing can give way without crumbling to pieces. In Gothic building the counter-stresses meet indirectly, a dead weight or a thrust is met by the springing curve of an arch; the whole structure would fall to ruin were it not for something in the stone which is not mere solidity, which arises from something vital and energetic in the scheme of the structure. The expression of conflict, therefore, as compared with Greek architecture, is greatly intensified; the serenity of power has given place to the play of forces rushing into eager and often tempestuous action, and saved from being mutually destructive by the control of a far-seeing design.[182]

To treat fully the various ways in which structure may be made expressive of life would need a volume rather than a chapter. Enough has however been said to indicate the principle and to suggest a criterion by which good and bad structure may be judged. Let us turn to the question of ornament. In European art it is very common for ornament to be used as a kind of adjunct to structure; it follows the lines of structure and accentuates them. In Japanese art, however, the contours of an object often appear to determine the ornament applied to it as little as a window-frame determines the landscape we see through it. The apparent insouciance of Japanese ornament is, however, carefully calculated in relation to the field which is to be covered. In either case ornament as such—that is to say, apart from whatever charm of colour and rhythm its individual forms may have—is to be interpreted as an attempt to give life by introducing what is so characteristic of life—the element of change and variety. Popular language has hit the mark when it talks of a ‘dead’ wall, meaning thereby a wall whose surface is unbroken by openings or ornament. Ruskin has somewhere spoken of the magnificent work of Ghiberti on the bronze doors of the Baptistery in Florence as having been primarily designed to produce “a pleasant bossiness of surface.” The breaking up of the surface will not, however, be pleasant unless the forms of the decoration are in themselves good and instinct with life.

The beauty which so often arises from the effects of use and exposure may perhaps seem in some cases hard to reconcile with the principle which it is here sought to establish. If aptness for use, it may be asked, is an element in the beauty of an object of use, how are we to account for the strong appeal which the ruin of a noble building certainly makes to the sense of beauty? For my own part I am inclined to think that the taste for ruins is often a sign of a want of taste for art. A beautiful thing is better whole and sound than in decay. Yet the spectacle of the silent struggle of strength and grace with destructive forces has in it a sense of action, of drama, to which beauty cannot be denied. Apart from the question of actual decay, every one feels the æsthetic gain which has been made when a thing ceases to be blankly new. A natural adornment has then been added to it. A room that has been lived in, a piece of silver that has been rubbed and handled for a lifetime, the steps of an ancient building worn by thousands of passing feet, a wall whose angles are softened and whose surface is stained by having fronted the sun and rain for many years—all these have the natural and inimitable charm produced by the touch of life—they no longer stand in crude isolation, they are related to the goings-on of the world.

Of all the arts there is none which seems to evade analysis so much as Music; none whose power is at once so mighty and so mysterious. Saying nothing it seems to mean everything. We can think of nothing in the world so lofty, so sweet, so profound as to be the fit embodiment of what Music conveys to us. Closely analogous in its outward form to what in line and colour is called Pattern, we are yet evidently far short of expressing the whole character of Music when we say, what in itself is quite true, that it is beautiful pattern in sound. It has more of humanity about it than pattern can have. It neither gives us representations of objects of sense, nor even definite emotions, but it has a unique power over the moods of the soul. This power seems to arise first from its complete control over the resources of movement and rhythm, secondly from the fact that by virtue of certain acoustic laws it can excite the sense of fulfilment, of suspense, of unexpected sweetness, unexpected failure and depression, in a way open to no other art which appeals directly to the senses. But rhythm and movement are the main things in Music, and the nature of the power which it exercises by means of them must now be considered.

Rhythm and movement are closely related to each other, but they are not quite the same thing. The term rhythm is given to any kind of movement which is marked by the regular recurrence of stresses, undulations, beats. This is the essential character of the movement of life. Action and reaction, systole and diastole, the vibrations of the atom, the breaking of sea-waves, the changes of day and night, the alternations of the seasons—wherever we look, into things great or small, we find the same principle of rhythmic movement pervading all. Man has found out how to turn this principle to account in his mechanical contrivances, indeed in all ways in which he endeavours to exercise force on matter. Once get your force to work rhythmically, and it will do ten times the work it is capable of when evenly continuous. Our own bodies and nervous systems are attuned to the same law. Under the spell of rhythm the mind is capable of moods and emotions which without it could never have been evoked into consciousness. And that makes the difference between telling a thing in verse and in prose. Verse arouses the mood in which the subject has emotional value and significance. Even prose always becomes more or less rhythmic when impassioned.

Now Music has a control unrivalled among the arts over this element of rhythm. Other arts can suggest rhythm, Music actually is rhythm—it is the very pulse of life. It can produce rhythm, moreover, in a great variety of ways. The mere succession of sounds is rhythm, but music also has at command the varying stresses or accents of notes, alternations in volume of sound, alternations in pitch and quality of sound. And since a sequence of notes will cling to the memory, Music can put into rhythmical relations, not only single notes, but groups of notes, i.e. musical phrases, and chords, which are musical phrases played all at once. Music can therefore not only thunder upon the brain with mighty shocks of sound, but can enchant it with the most delicate complexities. The range of its power over rhythm is incomparably greater and subtler than that of the only two other arts in which rhythm works directly on the senses—dancing and metrical verse.

The element of beauty in a rhythmical phrase seems to depend mainly on the kind of mood it awakens. There are moods of meditation, moods of tenderness, moods of ardour, moods of yearning, moods of gaiety—all these and many more are under the control of rhythmic phrases. And there are common-place, self-assertive, bouncing rhythms which produce corresponding moods, and which may therefore be called ugly. The precise connexion of certain phrases with certain moods depending, as it does, on a world of dim associations stretching far beyond our personal, conscious life, is probably incapable of scientific statement. In the last result I think we should find that the characters of different rhythms are associated with bodily movements, attitudes, gestures, in short with dancing; but a host of other associations, branching out from this in many directions, have introduced a complexity of meaning which defies analysis.

To turn to the consideration of Movement in art, we find that the power of rendering this characteristic of life is shared by Music only with Dancing and with Literature. By movement in an art-work I mean movement whose sequences have proportion and design, progressing by stages linked to each other through natural and organic associations towards a significant conclusion. In nature, movement can be immensely varied in character. It can be slow or swift, rough and laboured or smooth and fluent, massive and voluminous or arrowy and intense; it can leap or undulate, march or dance, soar or swoop, and each of these kinds of movement means something to the spirit of man. All these Music controls, and can order and harmonize at will. It can represent that in the movement of nature which goes beyond and overmasters Rhythm; for Rhythm in itself does not involve Progression; in fact, a perfect rhythm would forbid it. If Action and Reaction were always precisely equal, we should have a universe as stationary as a spinning top—it might be in vehement action, but it would never develop into something new.[183] Music by its complete command of the phases of movement can illustrate the progressive force, the life-impulse in nature, and this not merely by symbols and intellectual forms, but by playing directly on the nervous system as a harp-player on the strings of his instrument.