BEAUTY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20490, 15 February 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

BEAUTY.

THE NEED FOR SURPRISE.

BY VINCENT BAEXIETT.

In one of the' earlier essays of Mr. W. B. Yeats, there is a passage which seems to me to have a peculiar bearing on the life we lead to-day. The poet confesses that he is often tempted to accept as true the world of faery which is so dear to the Irish peasantry. " I will not of a certainty believe," he says, " that there is nothing in the sunset, where our forefathers imagined the* dead following their shepherd the sun. ... If beauty is not a gateway out of the net wo were taken in at our birth, it will not long be beauty, and we will find it better to sit at home by the fire and fatten a lazy body, or to run hither and thither in some foolish sport, than to look at the finest show light and shadow ever made among green leaves."

Here is a passage which vrc of this century may well ponder, for we are in danger of shutting ourselves off from beauty altogether. Not that we would do so wittingly, for wo are as well aware as was Keats of the value of it. Perhaps it is our very eagerness to secure it that is the danger. For we are apt to standardise beauty, to measure it out as we would a health-giving potion, as something to be taken at stated intervals with unfailing regularity, and always in exactly the same way. We have our parks and our statues, one park very much the same as another, and one statue just as pleasant to look upon as its fteighbour. But for real beauty—the beauty that will in very truth " keep a bower quiet for us"—for that we may often look in vain.

Back to Nature. For beauty of this order, which is something more than neatness or prett:ness, we must get away 'from mankind, and take ourselves to some place where we may find solitude —to the peak of a lonely hill, or to the quiet gloom of the forest. Man has lifted himself to a high level, but he has seldom been able to compete with Nature in the making of a beautiful thing. But lec him study natural beauty, and there he will find all that he needs to know of aesthetics. Among many other things, I think, he will find that at the heart of beauty there lurks surprise, and that without surprise beauty of the highest order can scarcely exist. t

' You have only to think of some of the great moments you have yourself experienced to realise that this is true; and to realise, too. that beauty is like the patupaiarehe of the Maori—elusive and shy of mortals, to be chanced upon only un-

awares. Some months ago I was spending a few months in the Wanganui district, in high country a thousand feet above the sea. Once, at the close of the day, I set out by myself while the sun was sinking, and slowly climbed to the top of a small hill. Before I reached the summit I could see nothing of the sea, or of the low country skirting it. But suddenly the climb ended, and far out in the west a scarlet globe sank into the ocean, and over sea and land was a softly tinted haze that stayed for a moment, and vanished with the sun. And many miles to the northward Egmont was visible, calm and majestic, more than ever mysterious in the dim light of evening. ... It was a common enough sight, doubtless, but to me it was unique, and probably I shall never see it again. For what gave it its wonder was not the mere harmony of colour, or " the light that never was on sea or land" —though these were part of it —but that moment of intense astonishment in which I first saw so much of loveliness spread out before me. The actual scene I may recapture, but that first astounding moment is gone for ever.

Literary Style. In his painting and his sculpture man is largely imitating Nature, and according to the faithfulness of his imitation is his success. But. in literature—in prose and in poetry —he. has a means of expression entirely his own. But even in these arts, perhaps the greatest of them ail, beauty is still dependent, upon the ability of "the artist to produce surprise. Critics have not been- slow to'recognise this fact. Sir Arthur Quillor-Couch has pointed out that the capital difficulty of verso is the negotiation of the flat intervals which separate the moments, of great emotional interest. And Lord Madox Ford, in writing of Conrad, tells us that " a good style in literature, if closely examined, will be seen to consist in a" constant succession of tiny surprises." The analysis of any great piece of writing, from the story of Ruth to the "Ode to a Nightingale," will soon show the truth of this dictum. Monotony in prose or verse is fatal to greatness, and nothing will prevent this more surely than " a constant succession of tiny surprises." There is anvell-known poein by Siegfried Sassoon which illustrates admirably this dependence of beauty upon surprise. It is a product of the War, and the poet describes the effect upon his spirits of a sudden outburst of song from his fellows:

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted. And beauty came like She setting sun. My heart was shaken with tears, and horror Drifted away. . . . O, but Everyone Was a. bird; and tho sons was wordless; tho sincing wyll never be done. One can imagine ; tftc situation, and realise that tho memory of such a moment would novei- depart from a man's mind. And perhaps it is not too fanciful to trace a kinship between those suddenly uplifted voices anil Shakespeare's

Daffodils ~13 1 That- come before tho swallow dares, ami take Tho winds of March with beauty.

A Better Day. It. is true, of course, that surprise alone does not produce beauty, for we may bo surprised by ugliness or by fear. One cannot define beauty in twelve hundred words, or in twelve thousand—but it. is perhaps not (00 hold to say that nothing can be bcautifuPui the highest sense that, is not eternally, astonishing. I can never read Shfliey's " Ode to the West Wind." or Wordsworth's " Tintern Abbey." without, astonishment; nor can I look 011 Kodin s thought, 01* on the sun first rising in the morning, without it. Walter de la Mare would have us believe that a

Beauty vanishes; beauty passes However rare—rare it be;

but I cannot help feeling that there is much that will last for ever. Thus may we find some consolation for the fact tha.t civilisation has never hesitated to sacrifice beauty to progress, an ideal to a reality. For I have no doubt that the day will come—is already approaching—when even this will be. no more; when beauty will be regarded as something sacred, and more to be desired than gold.