The Art of the Moving Picture | Page 7

architectural standardization and architectural thinking, such as it is. But I meant this suggestion to go further, and to be taken in a higher sense, so I ask these people to read this chapter again. I have carried out the idea, in a parable, perhaps more clearly in The Golden Book of Springfield, when I speak of the World's Fair of the University of Springfield, to be built one hundred years hence. And I would recommend to those who have already taken seriously chapter eighteen, to reread it in two towns, amply worth the car fare it costs to go to both of them. First, Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the end of the Santa Fe Trail, the oldest city in the United States, the richest in living traditions, and with the oldest and the newest architecture in the United States; not a stone or a stick of it standardized, a city with a soul, Jerusalem and Mecca and Benares and Thebes for any artist or any poet of America's future, or any one who would dream of great cities born of great architectural photoplays, or great photoplays born of great cities. And the other city, symbolized by The Golden Rain Tree in The Golden Book of Springfield, is New Harmony, Indiana. That was the Greenwich Village of America more than one hundred years ago, when it was yet in the heart of the wilderness, millions of miles from the sea. It has a tradition already as dusty and wonderful as Abydos and Gem Aten. And every stone is still eloquent of individualism, and standardization has not yet set its foot there. Is it not possible for the architects to brood in such places and then say to one another:--"Build from your hearts buildings and films which shall be your individual Hieroglyphics, each according to his own loves and fancies?"
Chapter XIX
--On Coming Forth by Day. This is the second Egyptian chapter. It has its direct relation to the Hieroglyphic chapter, page 171. I note that I say here it costs a dime to go to the show. Well, now it costs around thirty cents to go to a good show in a respectable suburb, sometimes fifty cents. But we will let that dime remain there, as a matter of historic interest, and pass on, to higher themes.
Certainly the Hieroglyphic chapter is in words of one syllable and any kindergarten teacher can understand it. Chapter nineteen adds a bit to the idea. I do not know how warranted I am in displaying Egyptian learning. Newspaper reporters never tire of getting me to talk about hieroglyphics in their relation to the photoplays, and always give me respectful headlines on the theme. I can only say that up to this hour, every time I have toured art museums, I have begun with the Egyptian exhibit, and if my patient guest was willing, lectured on every period on to the present time, giving a little time to the principal exhibits in each room, but I have always found myself returning to Egypt as a standard. It seems my natural classic land of art. So when I took up hieroglyphics more seriously last summer, I found them extraordinarily easy as though I were looking at a "movie" in a book. I think Egyptian picture-writing came easy because I have analyzed so many hundreds of photoplay films, merely for recreation, and the same style of composition is in both. Any child who reads one can read the other. But of course the literal translation must be there at hand to correct all wrong guesses. I figure that in just one thousand years I can read hieroglyphics without a pony. But meanwhile, I tour museums and I ride Pharaoh's "horse," and suggest to all photoplay enthusiasts they do the same. I recommend these two books most heartily: Elementary Egyptian Grammar, by Margaret A. Murray, London, Bernard Quaritch, 11 Grafton Street, Bond Street, W., and the three volumes of the Book of the Dead, which are, indeed, the Papyrus of Ani, referred to in this chapter, pages 255-258. It is edited, translated, and reproduced in fac-simile by the keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum, Professor E.A. Wallis Budge; published by G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, and Philip Lee Warner, London. This book is certainly the greatest motion picture I ever attended. I have gone through it several times, and it is the only book one can read twelve hours at a stretch, on the Pullman, when he is making thirty-six hour and forty-eight hour jumps from town to town.
American civilization grows more hieroglyphic every day. The cartoons of Darling, the advertisements in the back of the magazines and on the bill-boards and in the street-cars, the acres of photographs in the Sunday newspapers,