symbol more eloquent than description, a metaphor more compelling than logic.
As astronomy was born of the search for meanings in the stars, so the search for mystic functions among the figures of geometry evolved a school of decoration that drowns the eye in pleasure, baffles the mind to explain. From square and compass spring the best of the interlaced ornament of the palace of Alhambra—the ornament that raises material things to a plane almost exempt from material limitations. And not the designer alone gleaned from the geomancer’s play with line. Experiments profitless to the magician yielded of their magic to the architect, to the end that he was able to make of a gateway a song of thanksgiving, of a square tower a hymn of aspiration—and these, if it suited him, by the magic of proportion alone, without the aid of any adornment whatever.
Such a race, if it could have painted and drawn, would have produced artists superlative in more than one direction. Clear observation and the wit to discern significances would have made satirists and commentators of the most subtle kind. In picture, the Arab metaphor would have been better expressed, even, than in words, which often seem a weak translation of a graphic symbol in the Arab story-teller’s mind. As to decoration, it seems inevitable that with knowledge of the figure and freedom to use it, the Moors that adorned Alhambra’s inner walls could have painted such designs as are not even dreamed of; for their designing—so far as its field extended—was to Occidental designing in general as evolved musical composition is to arrangement by guess-work.
All these things the Arab must have done as a painter. Yet despite the injunction depriving him of life as material for picture and sculpture, and indeed because of it, he has evolved an art in which painting and sculpture unite to express the human emotions through the medium of the human form. That art, of course, is dancing. He has dignified it with his accumulated knowledge of decoration, imbued it with the mystic symbolism of his speculative mind. In light mood it narrates the passing occurrence or the amusing anecdote. And not the least of the wonders of the Arab dancing is the emphasis it places upon the beauty of womankind. Instead of movement, as in most European dancing, its essential interest is in a series of pictures, charged with significance and rich in harmony of line. The eye has time to dwell upon a posture, to revel in the sensuous grace into which it casts body and limb. To complete the task of sculptural composition, the Arabic dancer studies to a rare completeness the art of eliminating the many natural crudities of position that prevent arms, legs and body from showing to the utmost advantage their physical perfection. Though the material body does not—in the work of a genuine artist—distract attention from sculptural nobility of pose, neither is physical attractiveness lost sight of in the beauties of the abstract.
That the treasure-house of Arabian choreography never has been really opened to Occidental eyes is probably due, as much as to anything else, to the Arab’s inability to contribute any explanation to a thing which, by his way of thinking, explains itself. He has seen no dancing except that of his own race. To him Arabian dancing is not Arabian; it is just dancing. In his eyes the mimetic symbols are as descriptive as spoken
