BORDER WARFARE OF THE ARTS.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 294, 5 September 1908, Page 12

BORDER WARFARE OF THE ARTS.

Tho ' young 'writer who contemplates settling in the province of letters must view with somo consternation the inroads made upon that territory by the painters and photographers. If,ho run's'through the ctrrTent magazines, lie must bo. concerned for his art by the subservience of the text to the illustrations.';, Is" it an aooount of foreign travel? ,The pyramid-of Cheops'frowns upon him, the jungles of India flame at him, the Northern ice-fields glare. Is -it - a narrative of adventure? With his own eye ho'sees the Alpine climber'hovering; over the abyss, the harpooned whale spouting in Labrador, and the -Canadiah elk'tumbling in its blood. Is it an article on the dramatic hit of the season ? The ■ star—all that one cares about —-is presented in all her costumes. Is it a short' story, or a serial ? All tho critical moments and leading' characters—including the automobile—are, pictured by the artist who is setting the .fashions for the day (or by his disciples) and a lino of the text beneath serves as a connecting thread. Even the poem is frequently but a perfunctory inscription beheath the 'gorgeous, dream of some passionate colourist, of the soft idyll of a pastoral brush. The province of literature seems dwindling under tho forays" of the artists to a /narrow strip of negligible if not, impertinent-coiqmontary. - The'reduction of the magazines to picture books is due partly to Cause's'over which the writer has no control. He,has.not been able to prevent' the development of tho sombre Daguerro process; into "art photography." : It; is: not, his 'fault'.-. that the lithographer's work has reached such a high degreo of perfection that/ tho • magazines can presont artistic' masterpieces almost in their native colours.: Ho could-not check tho startling iarid original movements of landscape painting. ' He could-not hinder Monet from clothing Ajitibes in glory or Whistler from saying ;the last word about London fogs. It is useless to protest against';': Mt.''SaTgent's descriptions •• cf .publicmen or Mr. Abbey's Holy Grail. Neither is he responsible for the radium dancers or the artjficial alligators which the modern theatrical public so muoh prefers to Lear addressing the oak-cleaving thunderbolt. Least of all' can he' curb tho growing curiosity of all men to soe all other men and places faco to face, and not through the dark glass of the literary interpreter.

His fault lies in trying to mako tho literary art do what the . pictorial art can do much better. Crowded on tbo borders of his province by a powerful neighbour, instead of retreating into his imprcgnablo stronghold of reason and rational passion, ho tries to push tho warfare into the enemy's territory of sense impressions; and ho is wiped out.' In vain he endeavours to represent the tragi-comedy of man as a varicoloured pattern woven in tho arras of time by tho indifferent atoms. In vain docs the writer with only a pair of good lenses iu.his head set up for a literary man. If the traveller's mind is only a sensitised plate, though ho survey mankind from Chjna to Peru, ho brings back only a set of pictures which ho could havo taken better with a kodak. If tho playwright's eye in line frenzy rolling can. see nothing but flamboyant stage pictures of tho Flowery Kingdom, if his imagination bodies forth nothing but the antics of human lions and ostriches, ho must givo way to tho scene-painter, the costume-maker, and the stage-carponter. If the novelist -becomes infatuated With "environment;" down raid tho illustrators, exclaiming, "We can do that, and you can read tho story in five minutes." When it is a choice of the »:imo thing in two mediums, tho public is always on tho side of speed. In the duel of the writer, and tho illustrator the

literary man must give up the ghost when the artist has choice of weapons. To the wiser men of both professions, however, this border warfare scorns wholesome in its effects. • On the one hand it tends to kill off tho intellectual weaklings who think that literature can livo by tho eyo alone. On the other hand, it frustrates the artist who hopes to livo on tho Strength of a narrative in' paint. The historians keen tho Sensible painters from portraying tho wholo panorama of the French Revolution. The painters prevent the writers, from describing every tint of the Mediterranean Sea. Literature is probably on tho wholo the greater gainer of tho two. For example, is it fantastic to credit the pictorial arts with' a share in tho reaction against the late oxccssivoly realistic school of fiction? In tho middle of tho last century, the Darwinian theorios profoundly affected intelligent literary men, and gave a tremendous impulso to a minute study of the relation of the creature to his environment —must to the disparagement of the creature. As time went on, weaker brothers, caught by the "laboratory method," put more and more faith in their eyes and less in their brains, till the environment absorbed them, and the creature was neglected almost entirely. Wheu they becaino quite daft over local colour, background atmosphere, "photographic transcripts" of'life, did not tho photographer help to save them from their sins by showing them how much better ho could do this work than they? . The reaction against the tyranny of physical vision must go further still, if writers are to hold their own against illustrators. "War on tho adjective 'and death, to the ootiiv nerve" was the slogan of Robert Louis Stevenson. The difference between him and the literary Darwinasterß that corrupt their art is that he had brains and thej; had not. He knew as much 'about tho doctrine of environment as they," and a thing, or two besides. For example, he had dipped into Herbert Spencer, and had come into contact with the vitalising doctrine of the Unknowable. Now, the Unknowable is that power which forces a healthy man to rise in sinewy revolt against his environment. Of the Unknowable that important fact is known I It is the power which persuades one to be a man in a world of men, and not a chameleon. _ Upon that fact is founded the' true art of literature, the literaturo that lifts tho weight of the visible universe from the soul. There is one passage of human lifo which the painter cannot portray, before which ho can only draw back in admiration —it is the heat of that gallant action when the will flashes from its scabbard, and tho heart cries* to its destiny.— New York "Post."