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LECTURE IV - THE INFLUENCE OF IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE
_An Address Delivered to the Members of the Architectural
Association, in Lyon's Inn Hall, 1857._
If we were to be asked abruptly, and required to answer briefly, what
qualities chiefly distinguish great artists from feeble artists, we
should answer, I suppose, first, their sensibility and tenderness;
secondly, their imagination; and thirdly, their industry. Some of us
might, perhaps, doubt the justice of attaching so much importance to
this last character, because we have all known clever men who were
indolent, and dull men who were industrious. But though you may have
known clever men who were indolent, you never knew a great man who was
so; and, during such investigation as I have been able to give to the
lives of the artists whose works are in all points noblest, no fact
ever looms so large upon me--no law remains so steadfast in the
universality of its application, as the fact and law that they are all
great workers: nothing concerning them is matter of more astonishment
than the quantity they have accomplished in the given length of their
life; and when I hear a young man spoken of, as giving promise of high
genius, the first question I ask about him is always--
Does he work?
But though this quality of industry is essential to an artist, it does
not in anywise make an artist; many people are busy, whose doings are
little worth. Neither does sensibility make an artist; since, as I
hope, many can feel both strongly and nobly, who yet care nothing about
art. But the gifts which distinctively mark the artist--_without_
which he must be feeble in life, forgotten in death--_with_ which
he may become one of the shakers of the earth, and one of the signal
lights in heaven--are those of sympathy and imagination. I will not
occupy your time, nor incur the risk of your dissent, by endeavouring
to give any close definition of this last word. We all have a general
and sufficient idea of imagination, and of its work with our hands and
in our hearts: we understand it, I suppose, as the imaging or picturing
of new things in our thoughts; and we always show an involuntary
respect for this power, wherever we can recognize it, acknowledging it
to be a greater power than manipulation, or calculation, or
observation, or any other human faculty. If we see an old woman
spinning at the fireside, and distributing her thread dexterously from
the distaff, we respect her for her manipulation--if we ask her how
much she expects to make in a year, and she answers quickly, we respect
her for her calculation--if she is watching at the same time that none
of her grandchildren fall into the fire, we respect her for her
observation--yet for all this she may still be a commonplace old woman
enough. But if she is all the time telling her grandchildren a fairy
tale out of her head, we praise her for her imagination, and say, she
must be a rather remarkable old woman. Precisely in like manner, if an
architect does his working-drawing well, we praise him for his
manipulation--if he keeps closely within his contract, we praise him
for his honest arithmetic--if he looks well to the laying of his beams,
so that nobody shall drop through the floor, we praise him for his
observation. But he must, somehow, tell us a fairy tale out of his head
beside all this, else we cannot praise him for his imagination, nor
speak of him as we did of the old woman, as being in any wise out of
the common way, a rather remarkable architect. It seemed to me,
therefore, as if it might interest you to-night, if we were to consider
together what fairy tales are, in and by architecture, to be told--what
there is for you to do in this severe art of yours "out of your heads,"
as well as by your hands.
Perhaps the first idea which a young architect is apt to be allured by,
as a head-problem in these experimental days, is its being incumbent
upon him to invent a "new style" worthy of modern civilization in
general, and of England in particular; a style worthy of our engines
and telegraphs; as expansive as steam, and as sparkling as electricity.
But, if there are any of my hearers who have been impressed with this
sense of inventive duty, may I ask them first, whether their plan is
that every inventive architect among us shall invent a new style for
himself, and have a county set aside for his conceptions, or a province
for his practice? Or, must every architect invent a little piece of the
new style, and all put it together at last like a dissected map? And if
so, when the new style is invented, what is to be done next? I will
grant you this Eldorado of imagination--but can you have more than one
Columbus? Or, if you sail in company, and divide the prize of your
discovery and the honour thereof, who is to come after you clustered
Columbuses? to what fortunate islands of style are your architectural
descendants to sail, avaricious of new lands? When our desired style is
invented, will not the best we can all do be simply--to build in it?--
and cannot you now do that in styles that are known? Observe, I grant,
for the sake of your argument, what perhaps many of you know that I
would not grant otherwise--that a new style _can_ be invented. I
grant you not only this, but that it shall be wholly different from any
that was ever practised before. We will suppose that capitals are to be
at the bottom of pillars instead of the top; and that buttresses shall
be on the tops of pinnacles instead of at the bottom; that you roof
your apertures with stones which shall neither be arched nor
horizontal; and that you compose your decoration of lines which shall
neither be crooked nor straight. The furnace and the forge shall be at
your service: you shall draw out your plates of glass and beat out your
bars of iron till you have encompassed us all,--if your style is of the
practical kind,--with endless perspective of black skeleton and
blinding square,--or if your style is to be of the ideal kind--you
shall wreathe your streets with ductile leafage, and roof them with
variegated crystal--you shall put, if you will, all London under one
blazing dome of many colours that shall light the clouds round it with
its flashing, as far as to the sea. And still, I ask you, What after
this? Do you suppose those imaginations of yours will ever lie down
there asleep beneath the shade of your iron leafage, or within the
coloured light of your enchanted dome? Not so. Those souls, and
fancies, and ambitions of yours, are wholly infinite; and, whatever may
be done by others, you will still want to do something for yourselves;
if you cannot rest content with Palladio, neither will you with Paxton:
all the metal and glass that ever were melted have not so much weight
in them as will clog the wings of one human spirit's aspiration.
If you will think over this quietly by yourselves, and can get the
noise out of your ears of the perpetual, empty, idle, incomparably
idiotic talk about the necessity of some novelty in architecture, you
will soon see that the very essence of a Style, properly so called, is
that it should be practised _for ages_, and applied to all
purposes; and that so long as any given style is in practice, all that
is left for individual imagination to accomplish must be within the
scope of that style, not in the invention of a new one. If there are
any here, therefore, who hope to obtain celebrity by the invention of
some strange way of building which must convince all Europe into its
adoption, to them, for the moment, I must not be understood to address
myself, but only to those who would be content with that degree of
celebrity which an artist may enjoy who works in the manner of his
forefathers;--which the builder of Salisbury Cathedral might enjoy in
England, though he did not invent Gothic; and which Titian might enjoy
at Venice, though he did not invent oil painting. Addressing myself
then to those humbler, but wiser, or rather, only wise students who are
content to avail themselves of some system of building already
understood, let us consider together what room for the exercise of the
imagination may be left to us under such conditions. And, first, I
suppose it will be said, or thought, that the architect's principal
field for exercise of his invention must be in the disposition of
lines, mouldings, and masses, in agreeable proportions. Indeed, if you
adopt some styles of architecture, you cannot exercise invention in any
other way. And I admit that it requires genius and special gift to do
this rightly. Not by rule, nor by study, can the gift of graceful
proportionate design be obtained; only by the intuition of genius can
so much as a single tier of facade be beautifully arranged; and the man
has just cause for pride, as far as our gifts can ever be a cause for
pride, who finds himself able, in a design of his own, to rival even
the simplest arrangement of parts in one by Sanmicheli, Inigo Jones, or
Christopher Wren.
Invention, then, and genius being granted, as necessary to accomplish
this, let me ask you, What, after all, with this special gift and
genius, you _have_ accomplished, when you have arranged the lines
of a building beautifully?
In the first place you will not, I think, tell me that the beauty there
attained is of a touching or pathetic kind. A well-disposed group of
notes in music will make you sometimes weep and sometimes laugh. You
can express the depth of all affections by those dispositions of sound:
you can give courage to the soldier, language to the lover, consolation
to the mourner, more joy to the joyful, more humility to the devout.
Can you do as much by your group of lines? Do you suppose the front of
Whitehall, a singularly beautiful one ever inspires the two Horse
Guards, during the hour they sit opposite to it, with military ardour?
Do you think that the lovers in our London walk down to the front of
Whitehall for consolation when mistresses are unkind; or that any
person wavering in duty, or feeble in faith, was ever confirmed in
purpose or in creed by the pathetic appeal of those harmonious
architraves? You will not say so. Then, if they cannot touch, or
inspire, or comfort any one, can your architectural proportions amuse
any one? Christmas is just over; you have doubtless been at many merry
parties during the period. Can you remember any in which architectural
proportions contributed to the entertainment of the evening?
Proportions of notes in music were, I am sure, essential to your
amusement; the setting of flowers in hair, and of ribands on dresses,
were also subjects of frequent admiration with you, not inessential to
your happiness. Among the juvenile members of your society the
proportion of currants in cake, and of sugar in comfits, became
subjects of acute interest; and, when such proportions were harmonious,
motives also of gratitude to cook and to confectioner. But did you ever
see either young or old amused by the architrave of the door? Or
otherwise interested in the proportions of the room than as they
admitted more or fewer friendly faces? Nay, if all the amusement that
there is in the best proportioned architecture of London could be
concentrated into one evening, and you were to issue tickets for
nothing to this great proportional entertainment;--how do you think it
would stand between you and the Drury pantomine?
You are, then, remember, granted to be people of genius--great and
admirable; and you devote your lives to your art, but you admit that
you cannot comfort anybody, you cannot encourage anybody, you cannot
improve anybody, and you cannot amuse anybody. I proceed then farther
to ask, Can you inform anybody? Many sciences cannot be considered as
highly touching or emotional; nay, perhaps not specially amusing;
scientific men may sometimes, in these respects, stand on the same
ground with you. As far as we can judge by the results of the late war,
science helps our soldiers about as much as the front of Whitehall; and
at the Christmas parties, the children wanted no geologists to tell
them about the behaviour of bears and dragons in Queen Elizabeth's
time. Still, your man of science teaches you something; he may be dull
at a party, or helpless in a battle, he is not always that; but he can
give you, at all events, knowledge of noble facts, and open to you the
secrets of the earth and air. Will your architectural proportions do as
much? Your genius is granted, and your life is given, and what do you
teach us?--Nothing, I believe, from one end of that life to the other,
but that two and two make four, and that one is to two as three is to
six.
You cannot, then, it is admitted, comfort any one, serve or amuse any
one, nor teach any one. Finally, I ask, Can you be of _Use_ to any
one? "Yes," you reply; "certainly we are of some use--we architects--in
a climate like this, where it always rains." You are of use certainly;
but, pardon me, only as builders--not as proportionalists. We are not
talking of building as a protection, but only of that special work
which your genius is to do; not of building substantial and comfortable
houses like Mr. Cubitt, but of putting beautiful facades on them like
Inigo Jones. And, again, I ask--Are you of use to any one? Will your
proportions of the facade heal the sick, or clothe the naked? Supposing
you devoted your lives to be merchants, you might reflect at the close
of them, how many, fainting for want, you had brought corn to sustain;
how many, infected with disease, you had brought balms to heal; how
widely, among multitudes of far-away nations, you had scattered the
first seeds of national power, and guided the first rays of sacred
light. Had you been, in fine, _anything_ else in the world
_but_ architectural designers, you might have been of some use or
good to people. Content to be petty tradesmen, you would have saved the
time of mankind;--rough-handed daily labourers, you would have added to
their stock of food or of clothing. But, being men of genius, and
devoting your lives to the exquisite exposition of this genius, on what
achievements do you think the memories of your old age are to fasten?
Whose gratitude will surround you with its glow, or on what
accomplished good, of that greatest kind for which men show _no_
gratitude, will your life rest the contentment of its close? Truly, I
fear that the ghosts of proportionate lines will be thin phantoms at
your bedsides--very speechless to you; and that on all the emanations
of your high genius you will look back with less delight than you might
have done on a cup of cold water given to him who was thirsty, or to a
single moment when you had "prevented with your bread him that fled."
Do not answer, nor think to answer, that with your great works and
great payments of workmen in them, you would do this; I know you would,
and will, as Builders; but, I repeat, it is not your _building_
that I am talking about, but your _brains_; it is your invention
and imagination of whose profit I am speaking. The good done through
the building, observe, is done by your employers, not by you--you share
in the benefit of it. The good that _you_ personally must do is by
your designing; and I compare you with musicians who do good by their
pathetic composing, not as they do good by employing fiddlers in the
orchestra; for it is the public who in reality do that, not the
musicians. So clearly keeping to this one question, what good we
architects are to do by our genius; and having found that on our
proportionate system we can do no good to others, will you tell me,
lastly, what good we can do to _ourselves_?
Observe, nearly every other liberal art or profession has some intense
pleasure connected with it, irrespective of any good to others. As
lawyers, or physicians, or clergymen, you would have the pleasure of
investigation, and of historical reading, as part of your work: as men
of science you would be rejoicing in curiosity perpetually gratified
respecting the laws and facts of nature: as artists you would have
delight in watching the external forms of nature: as day labourers or
petty tradesmen, supposing you to undertake such work with as much
intellect as you are going to devote to your designing, you would find
continued subjects of interest in the manufacture or the agriculture
which you helped to improve; or in the problems of commerce which bore
on your business. But your architectural designing leads you into no
pleasant journeys,--into no seeing of lovely things,--no discerning of
just laws,--no warmths of compassion, no humilities of veneration, no
progressive state of sight or soul. Our conclusion is--must be--that
you will not amuse, nor inform, nor help anybody; you will not amuse,
nor better, nor inform yourselves; you will sink into a state in which
you can neither show, nor feel, nor see, anything, but that one is to
two as three is to six. And in that state what should we call
ourselves? Men? I think not. The right name for us would be--numerators
and denominators. Vulgar Fractions.
Shall we, then, abandon this theory of the soul of architecture being
in proportional lines, and look whether we can find anything better to
exert our fancies upon?
May we not, to begin with, accept this great principle--that, as our
bodies, to be in health, must be _generally_ exercised, so our
minds, to be in health, must be _generally_ cultivated? You would
not call a man healthy who had strong arms but was paralytic in his
feet; nor one who could walk well, but had no use of his hands; nor one
who could see well, if he could not hear. You would not voluntarily
reduce your bodies to any such partially developed state. Much more,
then, you would not, if you could help it, reduce your minds to it.
Now, your minds are endowed with a vast number of gifts of totally
different uses--limbs of mind as it were, which, if you don't exercise,
you cripple. One is curiosity; that is a gift, a capacity of pleasure
in knowing; which if you destroy, you make yourselves cold and dull.
Another is sympathy; the power of sharing in the feelings of living
creatures, which if you destroy, you make yourselves hard and cruel.
Another of your limbs of mind is admiration; the power of enjoying
beauty or ingenuity, which, if you destroy, you make yourselves base
and irreverent. Another is wit; or the power of playing with the lights
on the many sides of truth; which if you destroy, you make yourselves
gloomy, and less useful and cheering to others than you might be. So
that in choosing your way of work it should be your aim, as far as
possible, to bring out all these faculties, as far as they exist in
you; not one merely, nor another, but all of them. And the way to bring
them out, is simply to concern yourselves attentively with the subjects
of each faculty. To cultivate sympathy you must be among living
creatures, and thinking about them; and to cultivate admiration, you
must be among beautiful things and looking at them.
All this sounds much like truism, at least I hope it does, for then you
will surely not refuse to act upon it; and to consider farther, how, as
architects, you are to keep yourselves in contemplation of living
creatures and lovely things.
You all probably know the beautiful photographs which have been
published within the last year or two of the porches of the Cathedral
of Amiens. I hold one of these up to you, (merely that you may know
what I am talking about, as of course you cannot see the detail at this
distance, but you will recognise the subject.) Have you ever considered
how much sympathy, and how much humour, are developed in filling this
single doorway [Footnote: The tympanum of the south transcept door; it
is to be found generally among all collections of architectural
photographs] with these sculptures of the history of St. Honore (and,
by the way, considering how often we English are now driving up and
down the Rue St. Honore, we may as well know as much of the saint as
the old architect cared to tell us). You know in all legends of saints
who ever were bishops, the first thing you are told of them is that
they didn't want to be bishops. So here is St. Honore, who doesn't want
to be a bishop, sitting sulkily in the corner; he hugs his book with
both hands, and won't get up to take his crosier; and here are all the
city aldermen of Amiens come to _poke_ him up; and all the monks
in the town in a great puzzle what they shall do for a bishop if St.
Honore won't be; and here's one of the monks in the opposite corner who
is quite cool about it, and thinks they'll get on well enough without
St Honore,--you see that in his face perfectly. At last St. Honore
consents to be bishop, and here he sits in a throne, and has his book
now grandly on his desk instead of his knees, and he directs one of his
village curates how to find relics in a wood; here is the wood, and
here is the village curate, and here are the tombs, with the bones of
St. Victorien and Gentien in them.
After this, St. Honore performs grand mass, and the miracle occurs of
the appearance of a hand blessing the wafer, which occurrence
afterwards was painted for the arms of the abbey. Then St. Honore dies;
and here is his tomb with his statue on the top; and miracles are being
performed at it--a deaf man having his ear touched, and a blind man
groping his way up to the tomb with his dog. Then here is a great
procession in honour of the relics of St. Honore; and under his coffin
are some cripples being healed; and the coffin itself is put above the
bar which separates the cross from the lower subjects, because the
tradition is that the figure on the crucifix of the Church of St.
Firmin bowed its head in token of acceptance, as the relics of St.
Honore passed beneath.
Now just consider the amount of sympathy with human nature, and
observance of it, shown in this one bas-relief; the sympathy with
disputing monks, with puzzled aldermen, with melancholy recluse, with
triumphant prelate, with palsy-stricken poverty, with ecclesiastical
magnificence, or miracle-working faith. Consider how much intellect was
needed in the architect, and how much observance of nature before he
could give the expression to these various figures--cast these
multitudinous draperies--design these rich and quaint fragments of
tombs and altars--weave with perfect animation the entangled branches
of the forest.
But you will answer me, all this is not architecture at all--it is
sculpture. Will you then tell me precisely where the separation exists
between one and the other? We will begin at the very beginning. I will
show you a piece of what you will certainly admit to be a piece of pure
architecture; [Footnote: See Appendix III., "Classical Architecture."]
it is drawn on the back of another photograph, another of these
marvellous tympana from Notre Dame, which you call, I suppose, impure.
Well, look on this picture, and on this. Don't laugh; you must not
laugh, that's very improper of you, this is classical architecture. I
have taken it out of the essay on that subject in the "Encyclopaedia
Britannica."
Yet I suppose none of you would think yourselves particularly ingenious
architects if you had designed nothing more than this; nay, I will even
let you improve it into any grand proportion you choose, and add to it
as many windows as you choose; the only thing I insist upon in our
specimen of pure architecture is, that there shall be no mouldings nor
ornaments upon it. And I suspect you don't quite like your architecture
so "pure" as this. We want a few mouldings, you will say--just a few.
Those who want mouldings, hold up their hands. We are unanimous, I
think. Will, you, then, design the profiles of these mouldings
yourselves, or will you copy them? If you wish to copy them, and to
copy them always, of course I leave you at once to your authorities,
and your imaginations to their repose. But if you wish to design them
yourselves, how do you do it? You draw the profile according to your
taste, and you order your mason to cut it. Now, will you tell me the
logical difference between drawing the profile of a moulding and giving
_that_ to be cut, and drawing the folds of the drapery of a statue
and giving _those_ to be cut. The last is much more difficult to
do than the first; but degrees of difficulty constitute no specific
difference, and you will not accept it, surely, as a definition of the
difference between architecture and sculpture, that "architecture is
doing anything that is easy, and sculpture anything that is difficult."
It is true, also, that the carved moulding represents nothing, and the
carved drapery represents something; but you will not, I should think,
accept, as an explanation of the difference between architecture and
sculpture, this any more than the other, that "sculpture is art which
has meaning, and architecture art which has none."
Where, then, is your difference? In this, perhaps, you will say; that
whatever ornaments we can direct ourselves, and get accurately cut to
order, we consider architectural. The ornaments that we are obliged to
leave to the pleasure of the workman, or the superintendence of some
other designer, we consider sculptural, especially if they are more or
less extraneous and incrusted--not an essential part of the building.
Accepting this definition, I am compelled to reply, that it is in
effect nothing more than an amplification of my first one--that
whatever is easy you call architecture, whatever is difficult you call
sculpture. For you cannot suppose the arrangement of the place in which
the sculpture is to be put is so difficult or so great a part of the
design as the sculpture itself. For instance: you all know the pulpit
of Niccolo Pisano, in the baptistry at Pisa. It is composed of seven
rich _relievi_, surrounded by panel mouldings, and sustained on
marble shafts. Do you suppose Niccolo Pisano's reputation--such part of
it at least as rests on this pulpit (and much does)--depends on the
panel mouldings, or on the relievi? The panel mouldings are by his
hand; he would have disdained to leave even them to a common workman;
but do you think he found any difficulty in them, or thought there was
any credit in them? Having once done the sculpture, those enclosing
lines were mere child's play to him; the determination of the diameter
of shafts and height of capitals was an affair of minutes; his
_work_ was in carving the Crucifixion and the Baptism.
Or, again, do you recollect Orcagna's tabernacle in the church of San
Michele, at Florence? That, also, consists of rich and multitudinous
bas-reliefs, enclosed in panel mouldings, with shafts of mosaic, and
foliated arches sustaining the canopy. Do you think Orcagna, any more
than Pisano, if his spirit could rise in the midst of us at this
moment, would tell us that he had trusted his fame to the foliation, or
had put his soul's pride into the panelling? Not so; he would tell you
that his spirit was in the stooping figures that stand round the couch
of the dying Virgin.
Or, lastly, do you think the man who designed the procession on the
portal of Amiens was the subordinate workman? that there was an
architect over _him_, restraining him within certain limits, and
ordering of him his bishops at so much a mitre, and his cripples at so
much a crutch? Not so. _Here_, on this sculptured shield, rests
the Master's hand; _this_ is the centre of the Master's thought;
from this, and in subordination to this, waved the arch and sprang the
pinnacle. Having done this, and being able to give human expression and
action to the stone, all the rest--the rib, the niche, the foil, the
shaft--were mere toys to his hand and accessories to his conception:
and if once you also gain the gift of doing this, if once you can carve
one fronton such as you have here, I tell you, you would be able--so
far as it depended on your invention--to scatter cathedrals over
England as fast as clouds rise from its streams after summer rain.
Nay, but perhaps you answer again, our sculptors at present do not
design cathedrals, and could not. No, they could not; but that is
merely because we have made architecture so dull that they cannot take
any interest in it, and, therefore, do not care to add to their higher
knowledge the poor and common knowledge of principles of building. You
have thus separated building from sculpture, and you have taken away
the power of both; for the sculptor loses nearly as much by never
having room for the development of a continuous work, as you do from
having reduced your work to a continuity of mechanism. You are
essentially, and should always be, the same body of men, admitting only
such difference in operation as there is between the work of a painter
at different times, who sometimes labours on a small picture, and
sometimes on the frescoes of a palace gallery.
This conclusion, then, we arrive at, _must_ arrive at; the fact
being irrevocably so:--that in order to give your imagination and the
other powers of your souls full play, you must do as all the great
architects of old time did--you must yourselves be your sculptors.
Phidias, Michael Angelo, Orcagna, Pisano, Giotto,--which of these men,
do you think, could not use his chisel? You say, "It is difficult;
quite out of your way." I know it is; nothing that is great is easy;
and nothing that is great, so long as you study building without
sculpture, can be _in_ your way. I want to put it in your way, and
you to find your way to it. But, on the other hand, do not shrink from
the task as if the refined art of perfect sculpture were always
required from you. For, though architecture and sculpture are not
separate arts, there is an architectural _manner_ of sculpture;
and it is, in the majority of its applications, a comparatively easy
one. Our great mistake at present, in dealing with stone at all, is
requiring to have all our work too refined; it is just the same mistake
as if we were to require all our book illustrations to be as fine work
as Raphael's. John Leech does not sketch so well as Leonardo da Vinci;
but do you think that the public could easily spare him; or that he is
wrong in bringing out his talent in the way in which it is most
effective? Would you advise him, if he asked your advice, to give up
his wood-blocks and take to canvas? I know you would not; neither would
you tell him, I believe, on the other hand, that because he could not
draw as well as Leonardo, therefore he ought to draw nothing but
straight lines with a ruler, and circles with compasses, and no figure-
subjects at all. That would be some loss to you; would it not? You
would all be vexed if next week's _Punch_ had nothing in it but
proportionate lines. And yet, do not you see that you are doing
precisely the same thing with _your_ powers of sculptural design
that he would be doing with his powers of pictorial design, if he gave
you nothing but such lines. You feel that you cannot carve like
Phidias; therefore you will not carve at all, but only draw mouldings;
and thus all that intermediate power which is of especial value in
modern days,--that popular power of expression which is within the
attainment of thousands,--and would address itself to tens of
thousands,--is utterly lost to us in stone, though in ink and paper it
has become one of the most desired luxuries of modern civilization.
Here, then, is one part of the subject to which I would especially
invite your attention, namely, the distinctive character which may be
wisely permitted to belong to architectural sculpture, as distinguished
from perfect sculpture on one side, and from mere geometrical
decoration on the other.
And first, observe what an indulgence we have in the distance at which
most work is to be seen. Supposing we were able to carve eyes and lips
with the most exquisite precision, it would all be of no use as soon as
the work was put far above the eye; but, on the other hand, as beauties
disappear by being far withdrawn, so will faults; and the mystery and
confusion which are the natural consequence of distance, while they
would often render your best skill but vain, will as often render your
worst errors of little consequence; nay, more than this, often a deep
cut, or a rude angle, will produce in certain positions an effect of
expression both startling and true, which you never hoped for. Not that
mere distance will give animation to the work, if it has none in
itself; but if it has life at all, the distance will make that life
more perceptible and powerful by softening the defects of execution. So
that you are placed, as workmen, in this position of singular
advantage, that you may give your fancies free play, and strike hard
for the expression that you want, knowing that, if you miss it, no one
will detect you; if you at all touch it, nature herself will help you,
and with every changing shadow and basking sunbeam bring forth new
phases of your fancy.
But it is not merely this privilege of being imperfect which belongs to
architectural sculpture. It has a true privilege of imagination, far
excelling all that can be granted to the more finished work, which, for
the sake of distinction, I will call,--and I don't think we can have a
much better term--"furniture sculpture;" sculpture, that is, which can
be moved from place to furnish rooms.
For observe, to that sculpture the spectator is usually brought in a
tranquil or prosaic state of mind; he sees it associated rather with
what is sumptuous than sublime, and under circumstances which address
themselves more to his comfort than his curiosity. The statue which is
to be pathetic, seen between the flashes of footmen's livery round the
dining-table, must have strong elements of pathos in itself; and the
statue which is to be awful, in the midst of the gossip of the drawing-
room, must have the elements of awe wholly in itself. But the spectator
is brought to _your_ work already in an excited and imaginative
mood. He has been impressed by the cathedral wall as it loomed over the
low streets, before he looks up to the carving of its porch--and his
love of mystery has been touched by the silence and the shadows of the
cloister, before he can set himself to decipher the bosses on its
vaulting. So that when once he begins to observe your doings, he will
ask nothing better from you, nothing kinder from you, than that you
would meet this imaginative temper of his half way;--that you would
farther touch the sense of terror, or satisfy the expectation of things
strange, which have been prompted by the mystery or the majesty of the
surrounding scene. And thus, your leaving forms more or less undefined,
or carrying out your fancies, however extravagant, in grotesqueness of
shadow or shape, will be for the most part in accordance with the
temper of the observer; and he is likely, therefore, much more
willingly to use his fancy to help your meanings, than his judgment to
detect your faults.
Again. Remember that when the imagination and feelings are strongly
excited, they will not only bear with strange things, but they will
_look_ into _minute_ things with a delight quite unknown in
hours of tranquillity. You surely must remember moments of your lives
in which, under some strong excitement of feeling, all the details of
visible objects presented themselves with a strange intensity and
insistance, whether you would or no; urging themselves upon the mind,
and thrust upon the eye, with a force of fascination which you could
not refuse. Now, to a certain extent, the senses get into this state
whenever the imagination is strongly excited. Things trivial at other
times assume a dignity or significance which we cannot explain; but
which is only the more attractive because inexplicable: and the powers
of attention, quickened by the feverish excitement, fasten and feed
upon the minutest circumstances of detail, and remotest traces of
intention. So that what would at other times be felt as more or less
mean or extraneous in a work of sculpture, and which would assuredly be
offensive to the perfect taste in its moments of languor, or of
critical judgment, will be grateful, and even sublime, when it meets
this frightened inquisitiveness, this fascinated watchfulness, of the
roused imagination. And this is all for your advantage; for, in the
beginnings of your sculpture, you will assuredly find it easier to
imitate minute circumstances of costume or character, than to perfect
the anatomy of simple forms or the flow of noble masses; and it will be
encouraging to remember that the grace you cannot perfect, and the
simplicity you cannot achieve, would be in great part vain, even if you
could achieve them, in their appeal to the hasty curiosity of
passionate fancy; but that the sympathy which would be refused to your
science will be granted to your innocence: and that the mind of the
general observer, though wholly unaffected by the correctness of
anatomy or propriety of gesture, will follow you with fond and pleased
concurrence, as you carve the knots of the hair, and the patterns of
the vesture.
Farther yet. We are to remember that not only do the associated
features of the larger architecture tend to excite the strength of
fancy, but the architectural laws to which you are obliged to submit
your decoration stimulate its _ingenuity_. Every crocket which you
are to crest with sculpture,--every foliation which you have to fill,
presents itself to the spectator's fancy, not only as a pretty thing,
but as a _problematic_ thing. It contained, he perceives
immediately, not only a beauty which you wished to display, but a
necessity which you were forced to meet; and the problem, how to occupy
such and such a space with organic form in any probable way, or how to
turn such a boss or ridge into a conceivable image of life, becomes at
once, to him as to you, a matter of amusement as much as of admiration.
The ordinary conditions of perfection in form, gesture, or feature, are
willingly dispensed with, when the ugly dwarf and ungainly goblin have
only to gather themselves into angles, or crouch to carry corbels; and
the want of skill which, in other kinds of work would have been
required for the finishing of the parts, will at once be forgiven here,
if you have only disposed ingeniously what you have executed roughly,
and atoned for the rudeness of your hands by the quickness of your
wits.
Hitherto, however, we have been considering only the circumstances in
architecture favourable to the development of the _powers_ of
imagination. A yet more important point for us seems, to me, the place
which it gives to all the _objects_ of imagination.
For, I suppose, you will not wish me to spend any time in proving, that
imagination must be vigorous in proportion to the quantity of material
which it has to handle; and that, just as we increase the range of what
we see, we increase the richness of what we can imagine. Granting this,
consider what a field is opened to your fancy merely in the subject
matter which architecture admits. Nearly every other art is severely
limited in its subjects--the landscape painter, for instance, gets
little help from the aspects of beautiful humanity; the historical
painter, less, perhaps, than he ought, from the accidents of wild
nature; and the pure sculptor, still less, from the minor details of
common life. But is there anything within range of sight, or
conception, which may not be of use to _you_, or in which your
interest may not be excited with advantage to your art? From visions of
angels, down to the least important gesture of a child at play,
whatever may be conceived of Divine, or beheld of Human, may be dared
or adopted by you: throughout the kingdom of animal life, no creature
is so vast, or so minute, that you cannot deal with it, or bring it
into service; the lion and the crocodile will couch about your shafts;
the moth and the bee will sun themselves upon your flowers; for you,
the fawn will leap; for you, the snail be slow; for you, the dove
smooth her bosom; and the hawk spread her wings toward the south. All
the wide world of vegetation blooms and bends for you; the leaves
tremble that you may bid them be still under the marble snow; the thorn
and the thistle, which the earth casts forth as evil, are to you the
kindliest servants; no dying petal, nor drooping tendril, is so feeble
as to have no more help for you; no robed pride of blossom so kingly,
but it will lay aside its purple to receive at your hands the pale
immortality. Is there anything in common life too mean,--in common too
trivial,--to be ennobled by your touch? As there is nothing in life, so
there is nothing in lifelessness which has not its lesson for you, or
its gift; and when you are tired of watching the strength of the plume,
and the tenderness of the leaf, you may walk down to your rough river
shore, or into the thickest markets of your thoroughfares, and there is
not a piece of torn cable that will not twine into a perfect moulding;
there is not a fragment of cast-away matting, or shattered basket-work,
that will not work into a chequer or capital. Yes: and if you gather up
the very sand, and break the stone on which you tread, among its
fragments of all but invisible shells you will find forms that will
take their place, and that proudly, among the starred traceries of your
vaulting; and you, who can crown the mountain with its fortress, and
the city with its towers, are thus able also to give beauty to ashes,
and worthiness to dust.
Now, in that your art presents all this material to you, you have
already much to rejoice in. But you have more to rejoice in, because
all this is submitted to you, not to be dissected or analyzed, but to
be sympathized with, and to bring out, therefore, what may be
accurately called the moral part of imagination. We saw that, if we
kept ourselves among lines only, we should have cause to envy the
naturalist, because he was conversant with facts; but you will have
little to envy now, if you make yourselves conversant with the feelings
that arise out of his facts. For instance, the naturalist coming upon a
block of marble, has to begin considering immediately how far its
purple is owing to iron, or its whiteness to magnesia; he breaks his
piece of marble, and at the close of his day, has nothing but a little
sand in his crucible and some data added to the theory of the elements.
But _you_ approach your marble to sympathize with it, and rejoice
over its beauty. You cut it a little indeed; but only to bring out its
veins more perfectly; and at the end of your day's work you leave your
marble shaft with joy and complacency in its perfectness, as marble.
When you have to watch an animal instead of a stone, you differ from
the naturalist in the same way. He may, perhaps, if he be an amiable
naturalist, take delight in having living creatures round him;--still,
the major part of his work is, or has been, in counting feathers,
separating fibres, and analyzing structures. But _your_ work is
always with the living creature; the thing you have to get at in him is
his life, and ways of going about things. It does not matter to you how
many cells there are in his bones, or how many filaments in his
feathers; what you want is his moral character and way of behaving
himself; it is just that which your imagination, if healthy, will first
seize--just that which your chisel, if vigorous, will first cut. You
must get the storm spirit into your eagles, and the lordliness into
your lions, and the tripping fear into your fawns; and in order to do
this, you must be in continual sympathy with every fawn of them; and be
hand-in-glove with all the lions, and hand-in-claw with all the hawks.
And don't fancy that you will lower yourselves by sympathy with the
lower creatures; you cannot sympathize rightly with the higher, unless
you do with those: but you have to sympathize with the higher, too--
with queens, and kings, and martyrs, and angels. Yes, and above all,
and more than all, with simple humanity in all its needs and ways, for
there is not one hurried face that passes you in the street that will
not be impressive, if you can only fathom it. All history is open to
you, all high thoughts and dreams that the past fortunes of men can
suggest, all fairy land is open to you--no vision that ever haunted
forest, or gleamed over hill-side, but calls you to understand how it
came into men's hearts, and may still touch them; and all Paradise is
open to you--yes, and the work of Paradise; for in bringing all this,
in perpetual and attractive truth, before the eyes of your fellow-men,
you have to join in the employment of the angels, as well as to imagine
their companies.
And observe, in this last respect, what a peculiar importance, and
responsibility, are attached to your work, when you consider its
permanence, and the multitudes to whom it is addressed. We frequently
are led, by wise people, to consider what responsibility may sometimes
attach to words, which yet, the chance is, will be heard by few, and
forgotten as soon as heard. But none of _your_ words will be heard
by few, and none will be forgotten, for five or six hundred years, if
you build well. You will talk to all who pass by; and all those little
sympathies, those freaks of fancy, those jests in stone, those
workings-out of problems in caprice, will occupy mind after mind of
utterly countless multitudes, long after you are gone. You have not,
like authors, to plead for a hearing, or to fear oblivion. Do but build
large enough, and carve boldly enough, and all the world will hear you;
they cannot choose but look.
I do not mean to awe you by this thought; I do not mean that because
you will have so many witnesses and watchers, you are never to jest, or
do anything gaily or lightly; on the contrary, I have pleaded, from the
beginning, for this art of yours, especially because it has room for
the whole of your character--if jest is in you, let the jest be jested;
if mathematical ingenuity is yours, let your problem be put, and your
solution worked out, as quaintly as you choose; above all, see that
your work is easily and happily done, else it will never make anybody
else happy; but while you thus give the rein to all your impulses, see
that those impulses be headed and centred by one noble impulse; and let
that be Love--triple love--for the art which you practise, the creation
in which you move, and the creatures to whom you minister.
I. I say, first, Love for the art which you practise. Be assured that
if ever any other motive becomes a leading one in your mind, as the
principal one for exertion, except your love of art, that moment it is
all over with your art. I do not say you are to desire money, nor to
desire fame, nor to desire position; you cannot but desire all three;
nay, you may--if you are willing that I should use the word Love in a
desecrated sense--love all three; that is, passionately covet them, yet
you must not covet or love them in the first place. Men of strong
passions and imaginations must always care a great deal for anything
they care for at all; but the whole question is one of first or second.
Does your art lead you, or your gain lead you? You may like making
money exceedingly; but if it come to a fair question, whether you are
to make five hundred pounds less by this business, or to spoil your
building, and you choose to spoil your building, there's an end of you.
So you may be as thirsty for fame as a cricket is for cream; but, if it
come to a fair question, whether you are to please the mob, or do the
thing as you know it ought to be done; and you can't do both, and
choose to please the mob, it's all over with you--there's no hope for
you; nothing that you can do will ever be worth a man's glance as he
passes by. The test is absolute, inevitable--Is your art first with
you? Then you are artists; you may be, after you have made your money,
misers and usurers; you may be, after you have got your fame, jealous,
and proud, and wretched, and base: but yet, _as long as you won't
spoil your work_, you are artists. On the other hand--Is your money
first with you, and your fame first with you? Then, you may be very
charitable with your money, and very magnificent with your money, and
very graceful in the way you wear your reputation, and very courteous
to those beneath you, and very acceptable to those above you; but you
are _not artists_. You are mechanics, and drudges.
II. You must love the creation you work in the midst of. For, wholly in
proportion to the intensity of feeling which you bring to the subject
you have chosen, will be the depth and justice of our perception of its
character. And this depth of feeling is not to be gained on the
instant, when you want to bring it to bear on this or that. It is the
result of the general habit of striving to feel rightly; and, among
thousands of various means of doing this, perhaps the one I ought
specially to name to you, is the keeping yourselves clear of petty and
mean cares. Whatever you do, don't be anxious, nor fill your heads with
little chagrins and little desires. I have just said, that you may be
great artists, and yet be miserly and jealous, and troubled about many
things. So you may be; but I said also that the miserliness or trouble
must not be in your hearts all day. It is possible that you may get a
habit of saving money; or it is possible, at a time of great trial, you
may yield to the temptation of speaking unjustly of a rival,--and you
will shorten your powers arid dim your sight even by this;--but the
thing that you have to dread far more than any such unconscious habit,
or--any such momentary fall--is the _constancy of small emotions_;--the
anxiety whether Mr. So-and-so will like your work; whether such and such
a workman will do all that you want of him, and so on;--not wrong feelings
or anxieties in themselves, but impertinent, and wholly incompatible with
the full exercise of your imagination.
Keep yourselves, therefore, quiet, peaceful, with your eyes open. It
doesn't matter at all what Mr. So-and-so thinks of your work; but it
matters a great deal what that bird is doing up there in its nest, or
how that vagabond child at the street corner is managing his game of
knuckle-down. And remember, you cannot turn aside from your own
interests, to the birds' and the children's interests, unless you have
long before got into the habit of loving and watching birds and
children; so that it all comes at last to the forgetting yourselves,
and the living out of yourselves, in the calm of the great world, or if
you will, in its agitation; but always in a calm of your own bringing.
Do not think it wasted time to submit yourselves to any influence which
may bring upon you any noble feeling. Rise early, always watch the
sunrise, and the way the clouds break from the dawn; you will cast your
statue-draperies in quite another than your common way, when the
remembrance of that cloud motion is with you, and of the scarlet
vesture of the morning. Live always in the springtime in the country;
you do not know what leaf-form means, unless you have seen the buds
burst, and the young leaves breathing low in the sunshine, and
wondering at the first shower of rain. But above all, accustom
yourselves to look for, and to love, all nobleness of gesture and
feature in the human form; and remember that the highest nobleness is
usually among the aged, the poor, and the infirm; you will find, in the
end, that it is not the strong arm of the soldier, nor the laugh of the
young beauty, that are the best studies for you. Look at them, and look
at them reverently; but be assured that endurance is nobler than
strength, and patience than beauty; and that it is not in the high
church pews, where the gay dresses are, but in the church free seats,
where the widows' weeds are, that you may see the faces that will fit
best between the angels' wings, in the church porch.
III. And therefore, lastly, and chiefly, you must love the creatures to
whom you minister, your fellow-men; for, if you do not love them, not
only will you be little interested in the passing events of life, but
in all your gazing at humanity, you will be apt to be struck only by
outside form, and not by expression. It is only kindness and tenderness
which will ever enable you to see what beauty there is in the dark eyes
that are sunk with weeping, and in the paleness of those fixed faces
which the earth's adversity has compassed about, till they shine in
their patience like dying watchfires through twilight. But it is not
this only which makes it needful for you, if you would be great, to be
also kind; there is a most important and all-essential reason in the
very nature of your own art. So soon as you desire to build largely,
and with addition of noble sculpture, you will find that your work must
be associative. You cannot carve a whole cathedral yourself--you can
carve but few and simple parts of it. Either your own work must be
disgraced in the mass of the collateral inferiority, or you must raise
your fellow-designers to correspondence of power. If you have genius,
you will yourselves take the lead in the building you design; you will
carve its porch and direct its disposition. But for all subsequent
advancement of its detail, you must trust to the agency and the
invention of others; and it rests with you either to repress what
faculties your workmen have, into cunning subordination to your own; or
to rejoice in discovering even the powers that may rival you, and
leading forth mind after mind into fellowship with your fancy, and
association with your fame.
I need not tell you that if you do the first--if you endeavour to
depress or disguise the talents of your subordinates--you are lost; for
nothing could imply more darkly and decisively than this, that your art
and your work were not beloved by you; that it was your own prosperity
that you were seeking, and your own skill only that you cared to
contemplate. I do not say that you must not be jealous at all; it is
rarely in human nature to be wholly without jealousy; and you may be
forgiven for going some day sadly home, when you find some youth,
unpractised and unapproved, giving the life-stroke to his work which
you, after years of training, perhaps, cannot reach; but your jealousy
must not conquer--your love of your building must conquer, helped by
your kindness of heart. See--I set no high or difficult standard before
you. I do not say that you are to surrender your pre-eminence in
_mere_ unselfish generosity. But I do say that you must surrender
your pre-eminence in your love of your building helped by your
kindness; and that whomsoever you find better able to do what will
adorn it than you,--that person you are to give place to; and to
console yourselves for the humiliation, first, by your joy in seeing
the edifice grow more beautiful under his chisel, and secondly, by your
sense of having done kindly and justly. But if you are morally strong
enough to make the kindness and justice the first motive, it will be
better;--best of all, if you do not consider it as kindness at all, but
bare and stern justice; for, truly, such help as we can give each other
in this world is a _debt_ to each other; and the man who perceives
a superiority or a capacity in a subordinate, and neither confesses,
nor assists it, is not merely the withholder of kindness, but the
committer of injury. But be the motive what you will, only see that you
do the thing; and take the joy of the consciousness that, as your art
embraces a wider field than all others--and addresses a vaster
multitude than all others--and is surer of audience than all others--so
it is profounder and holier in Fellowship than all others. The artist,
when his pupil is perfect, must see him leave his side that he may
declare his distinct, perhaps opponent, skill. Man of science wrestles
with man of science for priority of discovery, and pursues in pangs of
jealous haste his solitary inquiry. You alone are called by kindness,--
by necessity,--by equity, to fraternity of toil; and thus, in those
misty and massive piles which rise above the domestic roofs of our
ancient cities, there was--there may be again--a meaning more profound
and true than any that fancy so commonly has attached to them. Men say
their pinnacles point to heaven. Why, so does every tree that buds, and
every bird that rises as it sings. Men say their aisles are good for
worship. Why, so is every mountain glen, and rough sea-shore. But this
they have of distinct and indisputable glory,--that their mighty walls
were never raised, and never shall be, but by men who love and aid each
other in their weakness;--that all their interlacing strength of
vaulted stone has its foundation upon the stronger arches of manly
fellowship, and all their changing grace of depressed or lifted
pinnacle owes its cadence and completeness to sweeter symmetries of
human soul.
Content of LECTURE IV - THE INFLUENCE OF IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE [John Ruskin's essay: The Two Paths]
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