Is the true Artist ever alone? Do not the creatures of his brain walk beside him wherever he may go? Do they not lie down with him and rise up with him, and even when he is old and grey, his heart still keeps fresh, from association with the Young and Beautiful, with the blossoms of Womanhood and of Spring, that have bloomed upon his canvas—with the notes of the birds and the sounds of falling water that his fingers have conjured to life upon his instrument—with the fair maidens and noble youths that he has accompanied through so many trials and conducted to such a blissful termination in his pages. And beyond all this—beyond the joy of conception and the pride of fruition—there is an added blessing on the artistic temperament. Surely the minds which are always striving after the ideally Perfect must be, in a measure, refined and purified by the height of the summit they try to reach. “We needs must love the highest, when we see it.” It is a Blessing to have the desire to reach the highest, even though we fail, and our natures are raised by the mere contemplation of it. So that the Artist may well forget the rebuffs and cold douches which he receives from those who cannot sympathise with him, and thank Heaven that he can walk out of their world into his own.
Zangwill draweth a distinction.
There are two aspects of the artistic temperament—the active or creative side, and the passive or receptive side. It is impossible to possess the power of creation without possessing also the power of appreciation; but it is quite possible to be very susceptible to artistic influences while dowered with little or no faculty of origination. On the one hand is the artist—poet, musician, or painter—on the other, the artistic person to whom the artist appeals. Between the two, in some arts, stands the artistic interpreter—the actor who embodies the aëry conceptions of the poet, the violinist or pianist who makes audible the inspirations of the musician. But in so far as this artistic interpreter rises to greatness in his field, in so far he will be found soaring above the middle ground, away from the artistic person, and into the realm of the artist or creator. Joachim and De Reszke, Paderewski and Irving, put something of themselves into their work; apart from the fact that they could all do (in some cases have done) creative work on their own account. So that when the interpreter is worth considering at all, he may be considered in the creative category. Limiting ourselves then to these two main varieties of the artistic temperament, the active and the passive, I should say that the latter is an unmixed blessing, and the former a mixed curse.
He speaketh of ye curse.
What, indeed, can be more delightful than to possess good æsthetic faculties—to be able to enjoy books, music, pictures, plays! This artistic sensibility is the one undoubted advantage of man over other animals, the extra octave in the gamut of life. Most enviable of mankind is the appreciative person, without a scrap of originality, who has every temptation to enjoy, and none to create. He is the idle heir to treasures greater than India’s mines can yield; the bee who sucks at every flower, and is not even asked to make honey. For him poets sing, and painters paint, and composers write. “O fortunatos nimium,” who not seldom yearn for the fatal gift of genius! For this artistic temperament is a curse—a curse that lights on the noblest and best of mankind! From the day of Prometheus to the days of his English laureate it has been a curse
“To vary from the kindly race of men,”
and the eagles have not ceased to peck at the liver of men’s benefactors. All great and high art is purchased by suffering—it is not the mechanical product of dexterous craftsmanship. This is one part of the meaning of that mysterious Master Builder of Ibsen's. “Then I saw plainly why God had taken my little children from me. It was that I should have nothing else to attach myself to. No such thing as love and happiness, you understand. I was to be only a master builder—nothing else.” And the tense strings that give the highest and sweetest notes are most in danger of being overstrung.