WOMEN AND ART.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 496, 1 May 1909, Page 11

WOMEN AND ART.

Misogynists like Schopenhauer iavp _ accusal woman .of. being i.dovoijtfof tKe artistic sense. Tho fcmmmo mind,-ithoy have Eiid, is capable' only of a triangle of theipCTSonal, the practical, and the conventional'; it cannot 'cancel out the conventional and extend the lines of the original and the abstractgeneral, or universal, that complete the perfect squire^ charge, until within the last, fifty •years,.'..was '.justified as regards'- two :of HH6' greitfe'St'- Separtraents ; of creative art, and it still holds good as regards ono of them. If two swallows make a summor, Bosa Bonhour changed Angelica Kanffman': from 'a.. freak into a ; harbinger. Tho Angelica Kauffmann of music has yet to oome: Mdllo. Chaminade is not even a feminine ..Gounod:. In literature only one woman has managed to complete the perfect squaro'of art; and in onr own day the feminine, triangle—with its longest line, the conventional, pushed out into a rebellious curve of anti-conventionalism—has afforded foundation to a dizzying oolumn of novels that, raises the work_of GMrge.Elio.t.higher, every day into'' the_ region of inexplicablo, unconditioned,. and inimitablo .'genius. These adjectives' exclude fletC'tho .theory that .thV Mriect. Bquare' of .art/ in. thofeminine mind,' must'be'greeted on' the line of tho practical, does not rest/'entirely on the fact'that George. Eliot wrote in prose; it is supported also, by-tho still mora significant fact''that: there has /never been a.; feminine Shakespeare, or, 'even:: Tennyson.. But', ! . tho, '!iingo;of:^t^'>is/ : iimnit«i';-it includes the. egotistical plain-song' of a Verlairio as well | as .the.'broad, :universal: counterpoint" of Shakespeaio. Tho essccco of- poetry is ly:ricismj'f:asSthe. essence :!.of "muaic:'is melody; Change, the lino of convention'into one of originality—in other': words, substitute individual for soci&l convention—<ind the feminine triangle fits all but the highest species of- poetic genius. Excluding tne technical aspect, the differonoo between poet and poet, below the highest species, is merely one of degree or accident. "With Byron's intensity, freedom, and experience; barely . placed hrm Dn a higher level than tliat attained by the jven more passionato intensity, of his sister. ■ At this rate, .wo should expect to find the Troves of English literature vocal with , female ' songsters. But apparently _ tho intensity has been lacking, or nesting cares have supervened; or. the malo; rulers' of the 1 roast have sung ' down tho female songstors, or silonced 'them :with "crawin' ben" proverbs; at■ all• evants, tho hen birds, after'a few .feeblo, 'imitative-pipings, usually subsido':'intoi,tho. twitterings -of : prose/ From Quoon'Ehzaboth J s: ,, "daughter of debate" sonnet down"'to i tho " would-be "gnomio reuses of. '.the * mateliless.. Orinda," there aro only a few sententious or decorative copyings. Aphra. <Behn's easy - and 1 tender -'lyrics;' and the pre-TKomsonian • naturalism 'of. the Ootmtos ,of 'AVirichilsea, are. the 'only . cases in the seventeenth century desert, and. Mrs. BarbauldV "Life" is a glowworm in : tho Johnsonian field,through which itho Carters, Sewards, Mores, and Tickles crawl invisible to tho modern: eyo. Then, between the death of Byron and tho recognition.'of Tennyson, came that fatal Amazonian . interregnum, which it would tako'a Carlylo to deecribo/ adequately. .', The /male, 'songsters—' Shelley, Byron, Keats, Wordsworth, and tbe ■ rest-fhad' been singing l naughty, songs, unfit for the. pure' British.ear.- 'The..songstresses .seized .their chance: .with- their ears' turned, to , the malo songsters, and'their eyes on the British' paterfamilias, they perched 'in a compact ■ little 'group on. .'the - ' Blessington Book of Beauty, and • warbled forth tlioir artless lays of chivalrous valour, religions sadness; and innocent love. They sang of hippy cottagers, of shampooed gypsies, ,of Indian and Arabian shores where soap' and chastity, ever reigned. It was the Jtoyali Academy vocalised;; it was a reversal -of tho Miracle of Cana. ■ Felicia, ; placed on high amid the tuneful choir of L.E.L.'s, Nortons, Opies, and Saourneys. slnng her ('falcon eyes" and "noblo boys" and "stately homes" to such molodio_ effect that evon Longfellow bad,.to share-with her the throne slio had won in tho. British heart. "They grow in beauty side by side"—tho Fordinand and Isabella of the Empire of Twopence—Coloured. ' If literary tradition oounted for anything, it was to the North that English feminine poetry should have looked . for deliverance from the mealy-mouthed'- monster of bourgeois sentiment. - Joanna Baillie and.-Lady ISairne wcro only tile most productive of. I tho long line of. Scottish poetesses—from the Lady Griie'U Baillie of the Killing Times down to tho Lady John Scott who .died in 1900—who, while their English sisters wore bloating bowdlorised echoes ." of ' masouline verse, had kept fresh the native wood notes mid 'of ballad poetry. But even had the •national spirit which v inspired it not been moribund; tho Scottish ballad , form would ' not havo held tho growing content of fominino lyricism' which, after running through a Shelloyan mould m "The/ Tempest" and '"i'lio Seraphim," and a Byronic mould in "A Drama of Exile," found a _ now an 4

fceautiful channel in "Lady Geraldino's Courtship,"'threw np jet after jet of ballad and song, crystallised into forty-four of the most exquisite love-sonnets sinoe Shakespeare, and at last, liko a Nile in flood, spread out over the rich discursive plains of the autobiographical veree-novel, "Aurora Leigh." The transition from tho slato diamonds of Mrs. Hemans to the rubies of Elizabeth Barrett Browning marks a glorious "fault" in tho stratum of the feminine mindOf all tho centenaries of this year, to-day's is perhaps the most notable, since it is that of the birth of the first great poetess since Sappho. But not the only ono: as if to prove that the new "strike"; was a permanent one, and that it contained diamonds as well as rubies, the year after Mrs. Browning's death brought the first collected' poema of Christina Rossotti. It has been the fashion'recently to make invidious comparisons between these two great' poetesses. Nothing could -be more' futile. The classicism, of the later poetess ia complemental to tho romanticism of the earlier one.- Mrs. Browning's rubies are loss flawless and far less ■ clearly cut than Christina Roßsetfci's diamonds; but there are more of them. And the rubies' and the diamonds alike owed their birth to the reawakening of that volcano of feminine lyrical passion which, on its poetical side at least, had remained extinct since its flaine drove the Lesbian poetess into the sea.—Glasgow "Herald.".