EASE

Evening Star, Issue 21038, 27 February 1932, Page 2

EASE

The ease of which we wish to write is uot that indicated in “I will take mine ease in mine inn.” Nor is it that in which Bunyan’s Pilgrims once found themselves, “ the delicate plain called Ease,” where wo are told they went “ with much content.” But it turned out to bo close to the Hill of Lucre that led on to the tragedy, Dead Man’s Lane. The ease of which we are thinking is not that which comes from cessation of work, but that which is the crown and consummation of work, its flower and fruitage. * « • ♦ Ease is the thing which impresses us iu all the great achievements of Nature and art and life. It is so with the first. The sense of ease lies on the face of Nature. “ There is no effort on her brow.” She teaches us, as Matthew Arnold puts it, the lesson

Of toil unsevered from tranquillity, Of labour that in lasting fruit out-

grows Far noisier schemes accomplished in repose.

And so, also, it is iu the great works of art and life. In all spheres of the former we see this. The accomplished musician seems to produce his effects without striving. His fingers move with an unconscious celerity that astonishes us by its ease. So, also, with the writer. What charms us in the great masters of style is this same sense of ease. The words floiv as smooth and inevitable as the rhythm of a brook or the silent urge of the deep river to the sea. A reader is scarcely conscious of the charm of the style of the best writers till he stops and begins, and perhaps tries, to imitate it himself. Then he finds that it cannot be done. This, as someone has pointed put, is the test of supreme style. It cannot be imitated or parodied by another. It is a thing by itself. It is the personality of the writer. The style is the man. The same thing is true of pictorial art. Watch a great painter transferring to his canvas a scene from Nature or the portrait of a person. It is surprising how quickly, how simply, he seems to do it. A brush there, a touch here and yonder, and the picture begins to shape and colour as if it were a living thing. And it all seems so easy—till you try. Then you discover, though there is no appearance of strain or toil, that a long, long process of both has been needful before that ease which charms is acquired. Michael Angelo’s Last Judgment ’ was preceded by more than two thousand sketches.

Genius has been defined as an infinite capacity for taking pains. That is probably a better description of talent than of genius. Nevertheless, it still remains true that genius is no more exempt from toil than talent. ‘I or perfection never conies from instinct; it is always the final expression of a completely harmonised nature.” As Alfred de Musset finely says: “It takes a great deal of life to make a little art.” Take, again, the great masters of literary style. Iu every case the ease and simplicity which charm us are the last results of long toil and effort. Stevenson writes; “ I imagine nobody over had such pains to learn a trade as I. But I slogged at it day in and day out.” Another master stylist says: “It is only by continual labour that the average man can bring into his stylo the opulence, the resilience, and the brightness with which even artists arc vaguely stirred.” We suppose ‘ Sentimental Tommy ’ is quoting the experience of his creator—Barrie—when ho is said to have failed in an examination because he could not find the exact word and would not use another. Cardinal Newman is one of the supreme artists in style. One who is almost equal says of him: “ I oscillate between supreme content as a reader and envious despair as a writer.” How did Newman acquire this mastery of expression? We get an insight into the secret when he says regarding one of his books that by the time it was finally posted to the printer he was quite worn out with correcting. Three times over ho wrote it. Then he covered the MS. with corrections so thickly that another person could scarcely read them. Then he prepared it for the printer. “ I put it by; I take it up again; I begin to correct again; it will not dp. Alterations multiply; whole pages are rewritten; little lines sneak in and crawl about. The whole page is disfigured. I write again. I cannot count how many times this process is repeated.” Life may seem too short for most of us to waste it over trifling alterations like this. But trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.

And yet, when wo have adduced all this evidence of how needful is hard work to the production of art of any kind, wo have not reached the inner secret of its genius yet. One may toil slavishly acquiring the principles and practices of oratory, writing, music, painting, and never achieve the highest success. After all, we have to take account, for other things and of one in particular, that no labour, however unremitting, can command. We came on an illustration of this while recently reading a very able book, ‘ Mind at the Cross-roads,’ by Professor Morgan. The author tells that he was once visiting a friend —an art master —who could dash off lightning sketches with admirable economy of line. He asked him how he managed to do it, to make it all stand out solid with so few strokes of his pencil in the flat. “ I don’t know,” he replied; “that’s where I feel so palpable a fraud as, an art teacher. So far as I can make out, one just goes on pounding away and wasting a lot of paper, and all is as flat as the paper itself. And then some fine day this and that begin to stand out. That is. a great moment. A lot more practice—say a month or two with a few dozen sketches a day—and all comes right.” And then he goes on to say that he can’t always make it come. “ I wish I could. I still have, to wait on my fingers to do the trick for me.” In other words, though it took long, long practice to perfect his finger work, he had to wait for a factor {hat,

somehow, came in from the outside; ho could not just tell when or where. This is still more,pointedly put in another incident recorded by the same author. A young man once came to him with a problem that’was pressing upon him. Ho said ho was a bit of a poet, wrote sonnets, lyrics, and suchlike ; had done so “ since he was a kid.” “ They just come to me, not always, but now and then in glad moments of ecstasy. What I want to ask is: ‘ Where do I come in?’ Of course, in a sense, it is I who do it. But there is somewhat at work in me or through me that is far greater than I am.”

Tho common factor in Loth these cases is that in neither could the outcome bo adequately explained in terms of his own activity. And it would not be possible without it. What was this agency at work in both? We may call it, with Emerson, the over-soul; or, with religion, the eternal spirit. It is not only in the world of art that such experiences arise. They are felt more or less in any life and in all spheres of toil. Our point is that the sine qua non of the ease that charms us in all artistic productions is the product of long, strenuous effort. But there is an agency operating without us that chooses us at times or passes us by and selects another. It is the influence of this agency, call it what we may, that transforms talent into gn'.nus and morality into religion. We cannot order the tides of tho sea or tho coming of the sun, but we can be prepared to use them when they arrive. This is tho significance of toil in its unromantic and unrecorded hours. “It takes centuries to make tho soil, and then, born of earth and nurtured by the sky, blooms the flower, without care or toll, mysterious and inexplicable—tho touch of the imperishable beauty resting for an hour on its fragile petals.”