ROMANTICISH & CLASSICISM.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1651, 18 January 1913, Page 9

ROMANTICISH & CLASSICISM.

In all the work 3 of man, says Hilairo Belloc, the gifted English writer, you will find an antagonism between two opposite modes in tho treatment of material, whether the art be rhetoric, exposition, sculpture, painting, drama, lyric,'or prose fiction. The ono is tho Classical, tho other the.Romantic,' spirit. At the present timo.and for three Benerutions past wo havo been living mainly in tho atmosphere of Romanticism. Its influence, Mr. Belloc contends, has been as devastating ns a fover. • "To what excesses in art," ho exclaims, "has it not led us!" ■ ■ • ■ Tho votary of .Romanticism, Mr. Bel-loc'continues,-does not ask of a work of art: Is it beautiful ?. Is it truo ?, "To. what extent docs this excito mo? "With how much violence is this- or that omotion aroused." "What sense of adventure, of novelty, does this author or this artist give mo?" And, incidentally, "How far does ho succeed in evading that dull, clogging tiling—proportion, exacti-tude,-'justice?" These aro the criteria, Mr. Belloc charges, which we have apt plied to modem work .in an increasing, degree since tho Romantic malady seized

Mr. Belloc admits that Romanticism appears at intervals in the history of human art, and that- it is sometimes inspiring. He will not deny that it seems to be ineradicable from human effort. Ho concedes its necessity in the sense Hint "those parasites which prey upon n healthy body, yet without which that •Jiculthy bouy could not survive," are

necessary. He says further (in. the '•fortnightly Keview"):— "At any rate, wo know from the history of art that this Romantic spirit recurs, and. satisfies—always for short periods, never for long—a -violent craving tor novelty, for. adventure, 1 for emotion of an exaggerative type. As, for instance, when you see a piay of Ibsen's: from what known and accepted standards of morality, data common to the, writer, tho audience, and the actors, has-that play proceded? ■ From none. It is the boast of .such work that it. has no. common and known reality from which it proceeds.

"To, what definable ideal does it tend? To none. I will take my one of the plays. Take the 'Doll's House.' You • have there a play proceeding from no fixed, existent moral reality of the institution of marriage, revered and accepted by the author and his audience; neither that of our laws nor that of any other known laws, It has no definable ideal which Ibsen desires to reach; no balanced* perfection of mood into which he desires to lead his public. ; You have violent emotion, of that there is no doubt; and it proceeds from chaos into the unknown. What you enjoy—if you do enjoy it—what, at any rate, you feel is that you have been disturbed. _ -That is what you probably want to feel becausa you are modern. . "That is truo of tho music "you hear when you go to hear Strauss.. It is true'of the philosophy that you read when you read Nietzsche. It Is ttue of the pictures you look at when you look upon any one of those moderns who increase in their, extravagance 'un.til you come to the Cubists and Futurists." • Mr. Belloc hopes that Romanticism has almost spent itself, and that we stand at tho. turn of the tide. Tho time is ripo, he feels, for a ; Classical renaissance, By 'Classicism ho means the spirit that inspired , Greek temples, the - dramas' of Eacine, Corneille, and . Sophocles, ' and the writings of Dryden, Pope, and Swift. Its first principle is moderation. It admits, that is to say, the regimen of authority and-government in artistic effort; it works upon a plan set it by some superior.' . "Wherever," Mr. Belloc tells us, "Classical, work is done, one. of the first tests applied to it by a man who pretends to no more than its recognition is that he .asks whether or no certain rules have been obs-arved."

• A second phenomenon of Classicism, as Mr.' Belloc defines it, is that it works not only: to a set plan, but.also according to a known scale. "It obserws not'only pattern but a size of pattern. A sonnet to be perfect must have fourteen; lines. It must be divided into an octave and a sextet. The rliymes, though- they are permitted a certain latitude of variation, uro not p3rmitted more than that latitude, and the whole combination-must be not only united but single." .■•The Classical spirit_conforms to the 'ancient spirit of religion, it proceeds from a known reality towards a uelinable ideal. And, above all, Mr. belloc conlenus, it signifies proportion: i "You kolc at a great Urtek statue like the winged Victory oi the Louvre, or at the thirteenth-century statue or St. Louis in Kheims, and if you are alflicted with this modern spirit you will say, "Well, it leaves mc cold.' You may even go further, and say, as some'; have said—a sort ot blasphemy—that these perfect works of art .'were..hot' intended to sub-" , serve a human appetite or to fulfill a human need, but were simply jugglery with Certain rules,-and the attempt,,to achieve an ideal which, though capable; "of definition,'was so cold.'6S.to.b'B'.i:eiii6te t ,'. from-.humanity—to 4 be', almost .niathemajti-', •cal.:'in;its' quality. ,'.lf' you'-thiiik,, that; you .are in error. '.Not,only are you in error, but you are missing .what.is, perhaps, after spiritual things, the chief satisfaction' of human life. Tor to- understand the Classical spirit and to take pleasure in its manifestations.is, on the merely esthetic side of life, the highest position to which you can attain.; "I will attempt to entitle its object, its ondeaVour, and tho human need it at-, . jte'uipsito satisfy.;./•''.:' '"' .'•••'..' .* ■ ■■'.< •"" , "'The'object of thd Classical spirit is ipiehit'ude, fulness;.;//\fe-gn^eAYSRr-jfcfe complete--what is-.Jackiiigin- men,, and : ths appetite it professes to satisfy, is tho human demand for proportion, ivhich-is the-expression of ultimate' reality. .la explanation ; of that. last' phraser-tfropptv tion is tho expression of ultimate reality —another [way", of saying it is clearer:' when thinss are out of proportion they, are out. of .truth. To tell the truth, about-a man, to tell the .truth about an. event, you must havo proportion between all the parts of' tho man or the- event, or you are telling a falsehood; and your falsehood will be greater or less'according as your failure in proportion is greater or less, Tho immediate reward which the Classical spirit offers you is se'renityi and the continuance of that reward is repose., .. .'■. It:is-not a'dull plenitude, nor a more vacation which tho .Classical'spirit gives. ,: It i9 r an:.acfiVo: plenitudp, and it' is ' a;; rcpojse.. -instinct. with .life; a permanent',' lasting,' and ihj. creasing pleasure; .'not the, -. repose.,of: fatigue, but the repose of satisfaction., v.VThs Greek spirit, with its-admirably placid completion, precisely struck that mean which is the basis of' the Aristotelian philosophy, the only permanent philosophy of the .world; .. The 'mean docs not mean a sort of average between two extremes; it does not mean an average or a compromise. It has a positive value. ' In the modern slang the mean is 'it.' When you como-upon' that in a work of art of any kind, you have Bone as near as it is permitted' for human nature-to come, to the work of tho Creator, and to a mirroring of' the Divine. To reach, or nearly to reach, such perfection is the boast of the Classical spirit." , , .; - ' -.