In visual rhythm, however, the symmetrically rhythmic group drives the attention in toward the centre, and whatever excursion it makes to either side, it returns finally to the centre. In the even-number rhythmic group, there is no such central line to restrain it, and as one goes across it one has less check at the edge, the rhythm does not wholly finish, and the space is thereby overestimated. The overestimation is due to the rhythmic activity in the group which oversteps its limit.
The essentially rhythmic character of the experience is, however, the same in both. The experience of visual repetition is only one-sided when the symmetry or proportion of a finished series is regarded as the explanation of its essential character, and when the temporal rhythmic factor is neglected.
PART II
The purpose of the latter half of this discussion of repetition is to consider a certain number of examples of its use in typical buildings of all the European styles of architecture from Greece down, and to show that the principles laid down in the earlier half have been expressed almost without exception in those of recognized merit. In other words it is to show that the laws of repetition, which have been brought out in the experiments of the first part, and which would of necessity be true if that explanation were correct, have indeed been exemplified in types of architecture universally accepted as beautiful.
The illustrations have all been drawn from architecture beginning with Greece, and not from the older Eastern styles. Egyptian architecture, although it recognized the importance of repetition to some extent, in its colonnades, avenues of sphinxes, and hieroglyphic decoration, never reduced it to any principle, nor adhered to any one scheme throughout a piece of work. Supports of the same kind and diameter have no fixed relation to each other, they may be of the same or different lengths, and may vary in diameter as well.[98] Spaces between columns of one size and design may vary considerably, and the entablatures be of different proportions. The art of Egypt was not rhythmic.
The architecture of Assyria and Chaldea had even less of repeated forms in its style. They made but little use of columns or piers, and had few arches.[99] The bare Assyrian edifice was like a great box, perpendicular to its foundations, and the long walls pierced by hardly an opening in the way of windows or doors.
Persian architecture was noted for extreme nicety of execution, but a monotony in all its forms, and conventionality about its use of the column, which makes it little more fruitful for our study of repetition as an artistic value. In its decorations of bas-relief, the pose and gesture of each figure is so exactly similar that they appear almost machine-made.[100] When a little variety is introduced, it is evidently done with misgivings, and shows none of the spontaneity or first-hand pleasure in either repetition or variation which would make it profitable for illustration.
Such a lack of feeling for repetition is, indeed, according to the peculiar genius of these styles of architecture, what might have been expected. The ruling idea, especially in Egyptian and Assyrian architecture, was ponderous strength. Everything was built with the idea of remaining immoveable through centuries to come. The enormous temples and tombs, the long palaces with their heavy walls without an opening to relieve them, the pyramids themselves like mountains of rock—all these meant strength and immutability, to which the motion and rhythm involved in repetition was totally foreign in spirit. In Persia indeed (as well as India and China, which will not be considered here) there was a change in tone. The column was used, not the massive one of Egypt, but a lighter shaft, which showed a tendency toward other effects than immensity and strength.
With this change of ideal, repetition in some kind of system made its appearance, but its variations were tentative. It had not become used to its new sense, and it was left for Greece to develop the rhythm and movement of repetition, and to combine it with proportion and symmetry into its perfection.