Creative Unity | Page 9

us the clue to the
mystery of creation. We find that the endless rhythms of the world are
not merely constructive; they strike our own heart-strings and produce
music.
Therefore it is we feel that this world is a creation; that in its centre
there is a living idea which reveals itself in an eternal symphony,
played on innumerable instruments, all keeping perfect time. We know
that this great world-verse, that runs from sky to sky, is not made for
the mere enumeration of facts--it is not "Thirty days hath
September"--it has its direct revelation in our delight. That delight
gives us the key to the truth of existence; it is personality acting upon
personalities through incessant manifestations. The solicitor does not
sing to his client, but the bridegroom sings to his bride. And when our
soul is stirred by the song, we know it claims no fees from us; but it
brings the tribute of love and a call from the bridegroom.
It may be said that in pictorial and other arts there are some designs that
are purely decorative and apparently have no living and inner ideal to
express. But this cannot be true. These decorations carry the emotional
motive of the artist, which says: "I find joy in my creation; it is good."
All the language of joy is beauty. It is necessary to note, however, that
joy is not pleasure, and beauty not mere prettiness. Joy is the outcome
of detachment from self and lives in freedom of spirit. Beauty is that
profound expression of reality which satisfies our hearts without any
other allurements but its own ultimate value. When in some pure
moments of ecstasy we realise this in the world around us, we see the
world, not as merely existing, but as decorated in its forms, sounds,
colours and lines; we feel in our hearts that there is One who through
all things proclaims: "I have joy in my creation."
That is why the Sanskrit verse has given us for the essential elements of
a picture, not only the manifoldness of forms and the unity of their
proportions, but also bhávah, the emotional idea.

It is needless to say that upon a mere expression of emotion--even the
best expression of it--no criterion of art can rest. The following poem is
described by the poet as "An earnest Suit to his unkind Mistress":
And wilt thou leave me thus? Say nay, say nay, for shame! To save
thee from the blame Of all my grief and grame. And wilt thou leave me
thus? Say nay! say nay!
I am sure the poet would not be offended if I expressed my doubts
about the earnestness of his appeal, or the truth of his avowed necessity.
He is responsible for the lyric and not for the sentiment, which is mere
material. The fire assumes different colours according to the fuel used;
but we do not discuss the fuel, only the flames. A lyric is indefinably
more than the sentiment expressed in it, as a rose is more than its
substance. Let us take a poem in which the earnestness of sentiment is
truer and deeper than the one I have quoted above:
The sun, Closing his benediction, Sinks, and the darkening air Thrills
with the sense of the triumphing night,-- Night with her train of stars
And her great gift of sleep. So be my passing!
My task accomplished and the long day done, My wages taken, and in
my heart Some late lark singing, Let me be gathered to the quiet West,
The sundown splendid and serene, Death.
The sentiment expressed in this poem is a subject for a psychologist.
But for a poem the subject is completely merged in its poetry, like
carbon in a living plant which the lover of plants ignores, leaving it for
a charcoal-burner to seek.
This is why, when some storm of feeling sweeps across the country, art
is under a disadvantage. In such an atmosphere the boisterous passion
breaks through the cordon of harmony and thrusts itself forward as the
subject, which with its bulk and pressure dethrones the unity of creation.
For a similar reason most of the hymns used in churches suffer from
lack of poetry. For in them the deliberate subject, assuming the first
importance, benumbs or kills the poem. Most patriotic poems have the
same deficiency. They are like hill streams born of sudden showers,

which are more proud of their rocky beds than of their water currents;
in them the athletic and arrogant subject takes it for granted that the
poem is there to give it occasion to display its powers. The subject is
the material wealth for the sake of which poetry should never be
tempted to barter her soul, even though the temptation should