Platonic text : from lectures on art ...
But, in the second place, you will find in those books of the Polity, stated with far greater accuracy of expression than our English language admits, the essential relations of art to morality; the sum of these being given in one lovely sentence, which, considering that we have to-day grace done us by fair companionship,* you will pardon me for translating. “Must it be then only with our poets that we insist they shall either create for us the image of a noble morality, or among us create none? or shall we not also keep guard over all other workers for the people, and forbid them to make what is ill-customed, and unrestrained, and ungentle, and without order or shape, either in likeness of living things, or in buildings, or in any other thing whatsoever that is made for the people? and shall we not rather seek for workers who can track the inner nature of all that may be sweetly schemed;3 so that the young men, as living* There were, in fact, a great many more girls than University men at the lectures. [1887.]
1 [377 D. The passage translated (and condensed) by Ruskin is in Book iii. 401.]
2 [For the Greek feeling, summed by Ruskin in this phrase, see below, pp. 403, 404.]
3 [The words “can . . . schemed” were put into capitals in 1887.]
II. THE RELATION OF ART TO RELIGION 49
in a wholesome place, may be profited by everything that, in work fairly wrought, may touch them through hearing or sight—as if it were a breeze bringing health to them from places strong for life?”
What an appalling translation ??
see Cornford rather ?
THe exemples Ruskin gives from Turner's works are minute images (see imagism vorticism) that present in minute form to some extent the whole teaching of Plato's Republic
The republic seeks to give a definition of justice
Written large in the state...this turns out to be the appropraprite finctionning of each class of society ...
Temperance ...
Find idea of willingness ...must be de plein accord in Cornford commentary
felicitous function ? vital beauty
Justice is the relation between the different parts of the soul
Chapter III
Of Region Rain Cloud, § 16-17
(Swept up
into Energy land’s end )
(Is Land’s
End ill. in Electronic edition ? )
(See our
slide could transfer to ….)
§ 15. The drawing of transparent vapour in the Land’s End.
In the Long Ships Lighthouse, Land’s End, we have clouds2 without rain, at twilight, enveloping the cliffs of the coast, but concealing nothing, every outline being visible through their gloom; and not only the outline, for it is easy to do this, but the surface. The bank of rocky coast approaches the spectator inch by inch, felt clearer and clearer as it withdraws from the garment of cloud; not by edges more and more defined, but by a surface more and more unveiled. We have thus the painting, not of a mere transparent veil,1 but of a solid body of cloud, every inch of whose increasing distance is marked and felt. But the great wonder of the picture is the intensity of gloom which is attained in pure warm grey, without either blackness or blueness. It is a gloom dependent rather on the enormous space and depth indicated, than on actual pitch of colour; distant by real drawing, without a grain of blue; dark by real substance, without a stroke of blackness: and with all this, it is not formless, but full of indications of character, wild, irregular, shattered, and indefinite; full of the energy of storm, fiery in haste, and yet flinging back out of its motion the fitful swirls of bounding drift, of tortured vapour tossed up like men’s hands, as in defiance of the tempest, the jets of resulting whirlwind, hurled back from the rocks into the face of the coming darkness, which, beyond all other characters, mark the raised passion of the elements.
It is this
untraceable,2 unconnected, yet perpetual form, this fulness of
character absorbed in universal energy, which distingusih nature and Turner
from all their imitators. To roll a volume of smoke before the
wind, to indicate motion or violence by monotonous similarity of line and
direction, is for the multitude; but to mark the independent passion, the
tumultuous separate existence, of every wreath of writhing vapour, yet swept
away
collection
of Mr. John E. Taylor) is engraved by photogravure in vol. ii. of Turner and
Ruskin. A portion of the foreground, engraved by Armytage from a drawing by
Ruskin, is here given (plate facing p. 566, see note above, on p. liv.).]
1 [Eds. 1 and 2 here insert, “like Fielding’s rain.”]
2 [In eds. 1–4 a marginal note was added here:—§ 17: “The individual
character of its parts.”]
Ch. IV OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS 405
and
overpowered by one omnipotence of storm, and thus to bid us
“Be as a
presence or a motion—one
Among the
many there; and while the mists
Flying, and
rainy vapours, call out shapes
And phantoms
from the crags and solid earth,
As fast as a
musician scatters sounds
Out of an
instrument,”—1
this
belongs only to nature and to him.
This is an exemple of the main category of beauty called unity in diversity as Ruskin defines it in the second volume of MP
Quote this here, MP II, p. 100 :
§ 8. The conducing of variety towards Unity of Subjection,
Receiving, therefore, variety only as that which accomplishes unity, or makes it perceived, its operation is found to be very precious, both in that which I have called Unity of Subjection, and Unity of Sequence, as well as in Unity of Membership; † for although things in all respects the same may, indeed, be subjected to one influence, yet the power of the influence, and their obedience to it, are best seen by varied operation of them on their individual differences; as in clouds and waves there is a glorious unity of rolling, wrought out by the wild and wonderful differences of their absolute forms; which differences, if removed, would leave in them only multitudinous
* Not proved. The adversary may ask,—and lately, not without good grounds for inquiry,—Why it is not to be held? [1883.]
† The four unities above specified were,—
1. Of Subjection.
2. Of Origin.
3. Of Sequence.
4. Of Membership.
That of Origin is omitted here, because things springing from one root must be of one nature. [1883.]
100 MODERN PAINTERS Pt. III. Sec. I
and petty repetition, instead of the majestic oneness of shared passion.
Ruskin is the first to have spoken of climate change due to human activities, and to have attempted to act against it, and other forms of environmental problems. He had early been sensitive to the negative social effect of the Industrial Revolution.
From MP II,
…the object I propose to myself is of no partial nor accidental importance. It is not now to distinguish between disputed degrees of ability in individuals, or agreeableness in canvases; it is not now to expose the ignorance or defend the principles of party or person; it is to summon the moral energies of the nation to a forgotten duty, to display the use, force, and function of a great body of neglected sympathies and desires, and to elevate to its healthy and beneficial operation that art which, being altogether addressed to them, rises or falls with their variableness of vigour, now leading them with Tyrtæan fire, now singing them to sleep with baby murmurings.
(LE4, p. 27)
From MP II :
“…And at this time, when the iron roads are tearing up the surface of Europe, as grapeshot do the sea; when their great net is drawing and twitching the ancient frame and strength of England together, contracting all its various life, its rocky arms and rural heart, into a narrow, finite, calculating metropolis of manufactures; when there is not a monument throughout the cities of Europe that speaks of old years and mighty people, but it is being swept away to build cafés and gaming-houses;…..
…..when we ravage without a pause all the loveliness of creation which God in giving pronounced Good, and destroy without a thought all those labours which men have given their lives and their sons’ sons’ lives to complete;… —there is need, bitter need, to bring back into men’s minds, that to live is nothing, unless to live be to know Him by whom we live;
…. He has not cloven the earth with rivers,4 that their white wild waves might turn wheels and push paddles, nor turned it up under as it were fire,
(But to be contemplated ….so must act so greatest number may have nature to contemplate this being the greatest pleasure according to Plato and Aristotle, see Plato in Republic in happiness of just man )
But in the discussion of human beauty is not energy that is placed high but a passive form, prefers hand holding in confidence that calm resolution of Thermopylae)
MODERN PAINTERS V
Chapter 2 Lance of Pallas
"No more daydreaming
Action
Taking up arms against evils"
§ 14. The ruling purpose of Greek poetry is the assertion of victory, by heroism, over fate, sin, and death. The terror of these great enemies is dwelt upon chiefly by the tragedians. The victory over them, by Homer.
Chapter X
The Two Boyhoods
Death of England
Death of Europe
The Nereid's Gard
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=14738&searchid=14026&tabview=image
Goddess of Discord Choosing the Apple of Contention in the Garden of Hesperides
That power, it appears, on the hill-top, is our British Madonna: whom, reverently, the English devotional painter must paint, thus enthroned, with nimbus about the gracious head. Our Madonna,—or our Jupiter on Olympus,—or, perhaps, more accurately still, our unknown god, sea-born, with the cliffs, not of Cyrene, but of England, for his altar; and no chance of any Mars’ Hill proclamation concerning him, “whom therefore ye ignorantly worship.”
This is no irony. The fact is verily so. The greatest man of our England, in the first half of the nineteenth century, in the strength and hope of his youth, perceives this to be the thing he has to tell us of utmost moment, connected with the spiritual world. In each city and country of past time, the master-minds had to declare the chief worship which lay at the nation’s heart; to define it; adorn it; show the range and authority of it. Thus in Athens, we have the triumph of Pallas; and in Venice the Assumption of the Virgin; here, in England, is our great spiritual fact for ever interpreted to us—the Assumption of the Dragon.(Greed is good, commerce above all, mondialisation...See Susan George, la finance au centre, au lieu des of fondamentaux, les resources naturelles, CN , Marc, 18.02.12+)
CHAPTER XI
THE HESPERID ÆGLÉ
§ 1. Five years after the Hesperides were painted, another great mythological subject appeared by Turner’s hand. Another dragon—this time not triumphant, but in death-pang,
Apollo and Python, exh 18111
http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/turner/paintings/python.html
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-apollo-and-python-n00488
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-apollo-and-python-n00488
§ 15. I say you will find, not knowing to how few I speak; for in order to find what is fairest, you must delight in what is fair; and I know not how few or how many there may be who take such delight. Once I could speak joyfully about beautiful things, thinking to be understood;—now I cannot any more; for it seems to me that no one regards them. Wherever I look or travel in England or abroad, I see that men, wherever they can reach, destroy all beauty. They seem to have no other desire or hope but to have large houses and to be able to move fast. Every perfect and lovely spot which they can touch, they defile.*
§ 16. Nevertheless, though not joyfully, or with any hope of being at present heard, I would have tried to enter here into some examination of the right and worthy effect of beauty in Art upon human mind, if I had been myself able to come to demonstrable conclusions. But the question is so complicated with that of the enervating influence of all luxury,1 that I cannot get it put into any tractable compass. Nay, I have many inquiries to make, many difficult passages of history to examine, before I can determine the just limits of the hope in which I may permit myself to continue to labour in any cause of Art.2
Nor is the subject connected with the purpose of this book. I have written it to show that Turner is the greatest landscape painter who ever lived; and this it has sufficiently accomplished. What the final use may be to men, of landscape painting, or of any painting, or of natural beauty, I do not yet know. Thus far, however, I do know.3
* Thus, the railroad bridge over the Fall of Schaffhausen, and that round the Clarens shore of the lake of Geneva, have destroyed the power of two pieces of scenery of which nothing can ever supply the place, in appeal to the higher ranks of European mind.
§ 17. Three principal forms of asceticism have existed in this weak world. Religious asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake (as supposed) of religion; seen chiefly in the Middle Ages. Military asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of power; seen chiefly in the early days of Sparta and Rome. And monetary asceticism, consisting in the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of money; seen in the present days of London and Manchester.
“We do not come here to look at the mountains,” said the Carthusian to me at the Grande Chartreuse.1 “We do not come here to look at the mountains,” the Austrian generals would say, encamping by the shores of Garda. “We do not come here to look at the mountains,” so the thriving manufacturers tell me, between Rochdale and Halifax.
§ 18. All these asceticisms have their bright and their dark sides. I myself like the military asceticism best, because it is not so necessarily a refusal of general knowledge as the two others, but leads to acute and marvellous use of mind, and perfect use of body. Nevertheless, none of the three are a healthy or central state of man. There is much to be respected in each, but they are not what we should wish large numbers of men to become. A monk of La Trappe, a French soldier of the Imperial Guard, and a thriving mill-owner, supposing each a type, and no more than a type, of his class, are all interesting specimens of humanity, but narrow ones,—so narrow that even all the three together would not make up a perfect man. Nor does it appear in any way desirable that either of the three classes should extend itself so as to include a majority of the persons in the world, and turn large cities into mere groups of monastery, barracks, or factory. I do not say that it may not be desirable that one city, or one country, sacrificed for the good of the rest, should become a mass of barracks or factories. Perhaps, it may be well that this England should become the furnace of the world;1 so that the smoke of the island, rising out of the sea, should be seen from a hundred leagues away, as if it were a field of fierce volcanoes; and every kind of sordid, foul, or venomous work which, in other countries, men dreaded or disdained, it should become England’s duty to do,—becoming thus the offscourer of the earth, and taking the hyena instead of the lion upon her shield. I do not, for a moment, deny this; but, looking broadly, not at the destiny of England,2 nor of any country in particular, but of the world, this is certain—that men exclusively occupied either in spiritual reverie, mechanical destruction, or mechanical productiveness,3 fall below the proper standard of their race, and enter into a lower form of being; and that the true perfection of the race, and, therefore, its power and happiness, are only to be attained by a life which is neither speculative nor productive;4 but essentially contemplative and protective, which (A) does not lose itself in the monk’s vision or hope, but delights in seeing present and real things as they truly are; which (B) does not mortify itself for the sake of obtaining powers of destruction, but seeks the more easily attainable powers of affection, observance, and protection; which (C), finally, does not mortify itself with a view to productive accumulation, but delights itself in peace, with its appointed portion. So that the things to be desired for man in a healthy state, are that he should not see dreams, but realities; that he should not destroy life, but save it; and that he should be not rich, but content.
§ 19. Towards which last state of contentment, I do not see that the world is at present approximating. There are, indeed, two forms of discontent: one laborious, the other indolent and complaining. We respect the man of laborious desire, but let us not suppose that his restlessness is peace, or his ambition meekness. It is because of the special connection of meekness with contentment that it is promised that the meek shall “inherit the earth.”1 Neither covetous men, nor the Grave, can inherit2 anything;* they can but consume. Only contentment can possess.
§ 20. The most helpful and sacred work, therefore, which can at present be done for humanity, is to teach people (chiefly by example, as all best teaching must be done) not how “to better themselves,” but how to “satisfy themselves.” It is the curse of every evil nation and evil creature to eat, and not be satisfied.3 The words of blessing are, that they shall eat and be satisfied. And as there is only one kind of water which quenches all thirst, so there is only one kind of bread which satisfies all hunger—the bread of justice, or righteousness; which hungering after, men shall always be filled, that being the bread of heaven; but hungering after the bread, or wages, of unrighteousness, shall not be filled, that being the bread of Sodom.
§ 21. And, in order to teach men how to be satisfied, it is necessary fully to understand the art and joy of humble life,—this, at present, of all arts or sciences being the one most needing study. Humble life,—that is to say, proposing to itself no future exaltation, but only a sweet continuance;1 not excluding the idea of foresight, but wholly of fore-sorrow, and taking no troublous thought for coming days;2 so, also, not excluding the idea of providence, or provision,* but wholly of accumulation;—the life of domestic affection and domestic peace, full of sensitiveness to all elements of costless and kind pleasure;—therefore, chiefly to the loveliness of the natural world……………………………… …..
§ 23. Again, respecting degrees of possible refinement, I cannot yet speak positively, because no effort has yet been made to teach refined habits to persons of simple life.
The idea of such refinement has been made to appear absurd, partly by the foolish ambition of vulgar persons in low life, but more by the worse than foolish assumption, acted on so often by modern advocates of improvement, that “education” means teaching Latin, or algebra, or music, or drawing, instead of developing or “drawing out” the human soul.2
It may not be the least necessary that a peasant should know algebra, or Greek, or drawing. But it may, perhaps, be both possible and expedient that he should be able to arrange his thoughts clearly, to speak his own language intelligibly, to discern between right and wrong, to govern his passions, and to receive such pleasures of ear or sight as his life may render accessible to him. I would not have him taught the science of music; but most assuredly I would have him taught to sing. I would not teach him the science of drawing; but certainly I would teach him to see; without learning a single term of botany, he should know accurately the habits and uses of every leaf and flower in his fields; and unencumbered by any theories of moral or political philosophy, he should help his neighbour, and disdain a bribe.
FORS CLAVIGERA
Letter 5
THE WHITE-THORN BLOSSOM2
“For lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone,
The flowers appear on the earth,
The time of the singing of birds is come,
Arise, O my fair one, my dove,
And come.”3
Denmark Hill,
1st May, 1871.
1. My Friends,—It has been asked of me, very justly, why I have hitherto written to you of things you were little likely to care for, in words which it was difficult for you to understand.4
I have no fear but that you will one day understand all my poor words,—the saddest of them, perhaps, too well. But I have great fear that you may never come to understand these written above, which are part of a king’s love-song, in one sweet May, of many long since gone.
14. There are three Material things, not only useful, but essential to Life. No one “knows how to live”3 till he has got them.
These are, Pure Air, Water, and Earth.
15. The first three, I said, are Pure Air, Water, and Earth.
Heaven gives you the main elements of these. You can destroy them at your pleasure, or increase, almost without limit, the available quantities of them.
You can vitiate the air by your manner of life, and of death, to any extent. You might easily vitiate it so as to bring such a pestilence on the globe as would end all of you. You, or your fellows, German and French, are at present busy in vitiating it to the best of your power in every direction; chiefly at this moment with corpses, and animal and vegetable ruin in war: changing men, horses, and garden-stuff into noxious gas. But everywhere, and all day long, you are vitiating it with foul chemical exhalations; and the horrible nests, which you call towns, are little more than laboratories for the distillation into heaven of venomous smokes and smells, mixed with effluvia from decaying animal matter, and infectious miasmata from purulent disease.
29.91 On the other hand, your power of purifying the air, by dealing properly and swiftly with all substances in corruption; by absolutely forbidding noxious manufactures; and by planting in all soils the trees which cleanse and invigorate earth and atmosphere,—is literally infinite. You might make every breath of air you draw, food.
16. Secondly, your power over the rain and river-waters of the earth is infinite. You can bring rain where you will,1 by planting wisely and tending carefully;—drought where you will, by ravage of woods and neglect of the soil. You might have the rivers of England as pure as the crystal of the rock; beautiful in falls, in lakes, in living pools; so full of fish that you might take them out with your hands instead of nets. Or you may do always as you have done now, turn every river of England into a common sewer, so that you cannot so much as baptize an English baby but with filth, unless you hold its face out in the rain; and even that falls dirty.
17. Then for the third, Earth,—meant to be nourishing for you, and blossoming. You have learned, about it, that there is no such thing as a flower;2 and as far as your scientific hands and scientific brains, inventive of explosive and deathful, instead of blossoming and life-giving, Dust, can contrive, you have turned the Mother-Earth, Demeter,*into the Avenger-Earth, Tisiphone1—with the voice of your brother’s blood crying out of it,2 in one wild harmony round all its murderous sphere.
This is what you have done for the three Material Useful Things.
Letter 96
He ends Fors with this letter on a hopeful note ….
Ruskin quotes a long story about
5. This lovely history, of a life spent in the garden of God, sums, as it illumines, all that I have tried to teach in the series of letters which I now feel that it is time to close.
The “Go and do thou likewise,”1 which every kindly intelligent spirit cannot but hear spoken to it, in each sentence of the quiet narrative, is of more searching and all-embracing urgency than any appeal I have dared to make in my own writings. (Central importance of living on land) Looking back upon my efforts for the last twenty years, I believe that their failure has been in very great part owing to my compromise with the infidelity of this outer world, and my endeavour to base my pleading upon motives of ordinary prudence and kindness, instead of on the primary duty of loving God,—foundation other than which can no man lay.2 I thought myself speaking to a crowd which could only be influenced by visible utility; nor was I the least aware how many entirely good and holy persons were living in the faith and love of God as vividly and practically now as ever in the early enthusiasm of Christendom, (this is illusory, and this fast answers reticenceof Green Letters to exmine scientific meaning of R’s declaration) soruuntil, chiefly in consequence of the great illnesses which, for some time after 1878, forbade my accustomed literary labour,3 I was brought into
1 [Luke x. 37.]
2 [1 Corinthians iii. 11.]
3 [For the illness of 1878, see Vol. XXV. p. xxvi. Ruskin was again seriously ill in 1881 and 1882: see the Introduction to Vol. XXXIII. The friends to whom he here alludes include, no doubt, Professor Norton in America, Dr. John Brown in Scotland, Mr. and Mrs. La Touche in Ireland, and Mrs. and Miss Francesca Alexander in Italy.]
528 FORS CLAVIGERA: Vol. VIII
closer personal relations with the friends in America, Scotland, Ireland, and Italy, to whom, if I am spared to write any record of my life, it will be seen that I owe the best hopes and highest thoughts which have supported and guided the force of my matured mind. These have shown me, with lovely initiation, in how many secret places the prayer was made which I had foolishly listened for at the corners of the streets;1 and on how many hills which I had thought left desolate, the hosts of heaven still moved in chariots of fire.2
6. But surely the time is come when all these faithful armies should lift up the standard of their Lord,—not by might, nor by power, but by His spirit,3 bringing forth judgment unto victory. That they should no more be hidden, nor overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. If the enemy cometh in like a flood, how much more may the rivers of Paradise? Are there not fountains of the great deep that open to bless, not destroy?
And the beginning of blessing, if you will think of it, is in that promise, “Great shall be the peace of thy children.” All the world is but as one orphanage, so long as its children know not God their Father; and all wisdom and knowledge is only more bewildered darkness, so long as you have not taught them the fear of the Lord. (This would be Wheeler rhetoric ).
Not to be taken out of the world in monastic sorrow, but to be kept from its evil in shepherded peace;—ought not this to be done for all the children held at the fonts beside which we vow, in their name, to renounce the world? Renounce! nay, ought we not, at last, to redeem?
The story of Rosy Vale is not ended;—surely out of its silence the mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing, and round it the desert rejoice, and blossom as the rose!
1 [Compare Matthew vi. 5, 6.]
2 [2 Kings vi. 17.]
3 [Zechariah iv. 6. The other Bible references in § 6 are Matthew xii. 20; Romans xii. 21; Isaiah lix. 19; Genesis vii. 11; Isaiah liv. 13; Isaiah lv. 12; and Isaiah xxxv.
