Home > Authors Index > John Ruskin > Selections From the Works of John Ruskin > This page
Selections From the Works of John Ruskin, a non-fiction book by John Ruskin |
||
Introduction - II. The Unity Of Ruskin's Writings |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ [Sidenote: Diversity of his writings.] Ruskin is often described as an author of bewildering variety, whose mind drifted waywardly from topic to topic--from painting to political economy, from architecture to agriculture--with a license as illogical as it was indiscriminating. To this impression, Ruskin himself sometimes gave currency. He was, for illustration, once announced to lecture on crystallography, but, as we are informed by one present,[5] he opened by asserting that he was really about to lecture on Cistercian architecture; nor did it greatly matter what the title was; "for," said he, "if I had begun to speak about Cistercian abbeys, I should have been sure to get on crystals presently; and if I had begun upon crystals, I should soon have drifted into architecture." Those who conceive of Ruskin as being thus a kind of literary Proteus like to point to the year 1860, that of the publication of his tracts on economics, as witnessing the greatest and suddenest of his changes, that from reforming art to reforming society; and it is true that this year affords a simple dividing-line between Ruskin's earlier work, which is sufficiently described by the three titles, _Modern Painters, The Seven Lamps of Architecture_, and _The Stones of Venice_, and his later work, chiefly on social subjects such as are discussed in _Unto This Last, The Crown of Wild Olive_, and _Fors Clavigera_. And yet we cannot insist too often on the essential unity of this work, for, viewed in the large, it betrays one continuous development. The seeds of _Fors_ are in _The Stones of Venice_. [Sidenote: Underlying idea in all his works.] The governing idea of Ruskin's first published work, _Modern Painters, Volume I_, was a moral idea. The book was dedicated to the principle that that art is greatest which deals with the greatest number of greatest ideas,--those, we learn presently, which reveal divine truth; the office of the painter, we are told,[6] is the same as that of the preacher, for "the duty of both is to take for each discourse one essential truth." As if recalling this argument that the painter is a preacher, Carlyle described _The Stones of Venice_ as a "sermon in stones." In the idea that all art, when we have taken due account of technique and training, springs from a moral character, we find the unifying principle of Ruskin's strangely diversified work. The very title _The Seven Lamps of Architecture_, with its chapters headed "Sacrifice," "Obedience," etc., is a sufficient illustration of Ruskin's identification of moral principles with aesthetic principles. A glance at the following pages of this book will show how Ruskin is for ever halting himself to demand the moral significance of some fair landscape, gorgeous painting, heaven-aspiring cathedral. In "Mountain Glory," for example, he refers to the mountains as "kindly in simple lessons to the workman," and inquires later at what times mankind has offered worship in these mountain churches; of the English cathedral he says, "Weigh the influence of those dark towers on all who have passed through the lonely square at their feet for centuries";[7] of St. Mark's, "And what effect has this splendour on those who pass beneath it?"--and it will be noticed on referring to "The Two Boyhoods," that, in seeking to define the difference between Giorgione and Turner, the author instinctively has recourse to distinguishing the _religious_ influences exerted on the two in youth. [Sidenote: Underlying idea a moral one.] Now it is clear that a student of the relation of art to life, of work to the character of the workman and of his nation, may, and in fact inevitably must, be led in time to attend to the producer rather than to the product, to the cause rather than to the effect; and if we grant, with Ruskin, that the sources of art, namely, the national life, are denied, it will obviously be the part, not only of humanity but of common sense, for such a student to set about purifying the social life of the nation. Whether the reformation proposed by Ruskin be the proper method of attack is not the question we are here concerned with; our only object at present being to call attention to the fact that such a lecture as that on "Traffic" in _The Crown of Wild Olive_ is the logical outgrowth of such a chapter as "Ideas of Beauty" in the first volume of _Modern Painters_. Between the author who wrote in 1842, of the necessity of revealing new truths in painting, "This, if it be an honest work of art, it must have done, for no man ever yet worked honestly without giving some such help to his race. God appoints to every one of his creatures a separate mission, and if they discharge it honourably ... there will assuredly come of it such burning as, in its appointed mode and measure, shall shine before men, and be of service constant and holy,"[8] and the author who wrote, "That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings,"[9] or, "The beginning of art is in getting our country clean, and our people beautiful,"[10]--between these two, I say, there is no essential difference. They are not contradictory but consistent. [Sidenote: Art dependent upon personal and national greatness.] Amidst the maze of subjects, then, which Ruskin, with kaleidoscopic suddenness and variety, brings before the astonished gaze of his readers, let them confidently hold this guiding clue. They will find that Ruskin's "facts" are often not facts at all; they will discover that many of Ruskin's choicest theories have been dismissed to the limbo of exploded hypotheses; but they will seek long before they find a more eloquent and convincing plea for the proposition that all great art reposes upon a foundation of personal and national greatness. Critics of Ruskin will show you that he began _Modern Painters_ while he was yet ignorant of the classic Italians; that he wrote _The Stones of Venice_ without realizing the full indebtedness of the Venetian to the Byzantine architecture; that he proposed to unify the various religious sects although he had no knowledge of theology; that he attempted a reconstruction of society though he had had no scientific training in political economy; but in all this neglect of mere fact the sympathetic reader will discover that contempt for the letter of the law which was characteristic of the nineteenth-century prophet,--of Carlyle, of Arnold, and of Emerson,--and which, if it be blindness, is that produced by an excess of light.
[6] Part 2, sec. 1, chap. 4. [7] See p. 159. [8] _Modern Painters_, vol. 1, part 2, sec. 1, chap. 7. [9] _Unto This Last_. [10] See p. 262. _ |
||