mountain peak is a sun past the dew
of his birth; he has walked some way towards the common fires of
noon. But on the flat country the uprising is early and fresh, the arc is
wide, the career is long. The most distant clouds, converging in the
beautiful and little-studied order of cloud-perspective (for most painters
treat clouds as though they formed perpendicular and not horizontal
scenery), are those that gather at the central point of sunrise. On the
plain, and there only, can the construction--but that is too little vital a
word; I should rather say the organism--the unity, the design, of a sky
be understood. The light wind that has been moving all night is seen to
have not worked at random. It has shepherded some small flocks of
cloud afield and folded others. There's husbandry in Heaven. And the
order has, or seems to have, the sun for its midst. Not a line, not a curve,
but confesses its membership in a design declared from horizon to
horizon.
To see the system of a sky in fragments is to miss what I learn to look
for in all achieved works of Nature and art: the organism that is unity
and life. It is the unity and life of painting. The Early Victorian
picture--(the school is still in full career, but essentially it belongs to
that triumphal period)--is but a dull sum of things put together, in
concourse, not in relation; but the true picture is ONE, however
multitudinous it may be, for it is composed of relations gathered
together in the unity of perception, of intention, and of light. It is
organic. Moreover, how truly relation is the condition of life may be
understood from the extinct state of the English stage, which resembles
nothing so much as a Royal Academy picture. Even though the actors
may be added together with something like vivacity (though that is
rare), they have no vitality in common. They are not members one of
another. If the Church and Stage Guild be still in existence, it would do
much for the art by teaching that Scriptural maxim. I think, furthermore,
that the life of our bodies has never been defined so suggestively as by
one who named it a living relation of lifeless atoms. Could the value of
relation be more curiously set forth? And one might penetrate some
way towards a consideration of the vascular organism of a true literary
style in which there is a vital relation of otherwise lifeless word with
word. And wherein lies the progress of architecture from the stupidity
of the pyramid and the dead weight of the Cyclopean wall to the spring
and the flight of the ogival arch, but in a quasi-organic relation? But the
way of such thoughts might be intricate, and the sun rules me to
simplicity.
He reigns as centrally in the blue sky as in the clouds. One October of
late had days absolutely cloudless. I should not have certainly known it
had there been a hill in sight. The gradations of the blue are
incalculable, infinite, and they deepen from the central fire. As to the
earthly scenery, there are but two 'views' on the plain; for the aspect of
the light is the whole landscape. To look with the sun or against the
sun--this is the alternative splendour. To look with the sun is to face a
golden country, shadowless, serene, noble and strong in light, with a
certain lack of relief that suggests--to those who dream of
landscape--the country of a dream. The serried pines, and the lighted
fields, and the golden ricks of the farms are dyed with the sun as one
might paint with a colour. Bright as it is, the glow is rather the dye of
sunlight than its luminosity. For by a kind of paradox the luminous
landscape is that which is full of shadows--the landscape before you
when you turn and face the sun. Not only every reed and rush of the
salt marshes, every uncertain aspen-leaf of the few trees, but every
particle of the October air shows a shadow and makes a mystery of the
light. There is nothing but shadow and sun; colour is absorbed and the
landscape is reduced to a shining simplicity. Thus is the dominant sun
sufficient for his day. His passage kindles to unconsuming fires and
quenches into living ashes. No incidents save of his causing, no delight
save of his giving: from the sunrise, when the larks, not for pairing, but
for play, sing the only virginal song of the year--a heart younger than
Spring's in the season of decline--even to the sunset, when the herons
scream together in the shallows. And the sun dominates by his absence,
compelling the low country to sadness
Continue reading on your phone by scaning this QR Code
Tip: The current page has been bookmarked automatically. If you wish to continue reading later, just open the
Dertz Homepage, and click on the 'continue reading' link at the bottom of the page.