Chapter 13

Being as Exaggeration; or, Repose & Energy in Art

History consists of man seeking energy and repose at once, and here he is no different from anything else. There is a battle between motion and quietness in all things. Nothing seems to be satisfied with either inertia or mobility by itself. Space has a tendency to become matter; and matter has a tendency to move, and then to find a new calm through its motion. All this is, of course, imagined, and outrageously endows objects with tendencies, even purposes and desires—but the fact remains that the world doesn’t seem to be pleased with either energy by itself or quietness by itself.

There is an old description of the river Androscoggin as it flows in New England:

The Androscoggin rises in Umbagog lake, among the highlands which form the northwest boundary of Maine, and descending through a succession of lakes enters New Hampshire at Errol; it re-enters Maine at Gilead, and flows east and south till it joins the Kennebec at Merry­meeting bay. Its length is one hundred and forty miles; the whole course is broken by rapids and falls, which prevent the transportation of any thing except timber and logs. ^[1]

In a scientific age, we are quite sure that the Androscoggin does not suffer a bit, yet if the line of this river were presented in a painting, it would be called a “tormented” line; and if the opposition the Androscoggin got, from somewhere, in its course, were presented musically, there would be “aspects of modernistic torment,” or some such thing.

If one looks at a map, one can see that the Susquehanna, and other rivers, also have trouble. We don’t have to give rivers attitudes they don’t have. What is clear is that the Androscoggin and the Susquehanna present lines to someone in the sky that don’t have the repose of a simple curved line or the repose of a straight line. Put in different words, a simple curved line, a straight line, and a twisted line solve the problem of energy and repose in different manners. Yet energy-and-repose can be felt in the three kinds of line.

They Tell of Something

The contemplation of rivers has its use in art. Rivers have found a large and safe place in aesthetics because they tell something to aesthetics. One instance of a river making for an aesthetic problem is in Johnson’s “Life of Pope.” There the 18th-century critic says:

I have been told that the couplet by which he declared his own ear to be most gratified was this: “Lo, where Maeotis sleeps, and hardly flows / The freezing Tanais through a waste of snows.” But the reason of this preference I cannot discover. ^[2]

Well, some reason can be found. The Tanais—an old name for the River Don in Russia—unlike the Androscoggin and Susquehanna, does not twist so much but has opposition through itself and a “waste of snows.” The heaviness of this opposition is presented gracefully. The energy of inertia is interfered with by the lightness and accuracy of syllables. Death and sleep are forces, and there is a neat, though hardly perceptible, battling of these forces with energy. The flow of water with freezingness about is an important co-presence and interchange of stillness and motion, repose and energy, immobility and life. A principal sound in the couplet is that of the z, which is a sound of somnolence and motion. Then there is the energetic Lo and the keen, alive sharpness of freezing. Everything considered, Pope was not incorrect.

Energy and repose change into each other. Repose is in behalf of energy; energy goes for repose. The goal of athleticism is tranquility; the harbor of distortion is self-respecting peace. Exertion has its eye on a green dell.

Like the Baroque

The rivers Androscoggin and Susquehanna are like the baroque and that intense assertion of the baroque, the Churrigueresque. The baroque questioned the calm of classicism; yet it cannot be said that the purpose of the baroque, the aesthetic objective, was not calm. Through visual multiplicity, ornate energy, insistence of detail, the baroque goes for that satisfaction which is perceptive tranquility. The final purpose of Raphael and Bernini was the same.

And so, if there were not some repose found in Italy, Spain, and Mexico within the energetic and surprising baroque, it would not have been accepted at all.

There is “A Defense of Baroque Art in America,” by Manuel Toussaint of the National University of Mexico. According to Toussaint:

The hidden heart of America seeks shelter in those works apparently made by immaterial fingers—the mosaics of feathers; or made in secret by the Neolithic hatchet—Christian gods carved as primitive idols….The essence of the baroque art is the classic art itself which has been transformed through the influence of an internal ferment of fantasy and luxury. The baroque writers themselves, when they speak of their works, refer to them as if they were classical structures—bases, capitals, cornices, friezes—like a Parthenon which had been showered with gilted carvings, overlaying it from top to bottom.

Toussaint describes baroque technique as:

Individualized by its twisting forms, by the exaggeration of its outlines, by its disregard of proportions, and a complete disrespect for moderation and prudence. ^[3]

All these years the problem of energy and repose has existed in Mexico, Central America, South America. When Indian and Spaniard met and mingled, the history of energy and repose as they are in man received something new. Visual violence and exaggeration took on new developments.

But elsewhere, too, there was the fight between exaggeration and proportion—a phase of the relation between energy and repose. To be intense and calm, exaggerated and reposeful, devilish and tranquil has always been an inclination, a hope of man.

For Instance, Hamlet

Hamlet can calmly say, “To be, or not to be: that is the question”—but within his mind are many complicated shapes of thought. After asking something with profound philosophic decorum, Hamlet starts energetically to ramify, tormentedly to be complex. And it has been thus for years. Repose is sought for, but it isn’t everything. Energy, complexity must be found in it. Stillness has been popular, but motion has been too. Quiet has been looked for, but the turbulent has been yearned for likewise.

The presence of the “Churrigueresque altar in the church of N.S. de Aransasu” ^[4]  in Guadalajara, Mexico, instances and typifies, then, a possibility which is universal. The calm of unity has to be put into motion by the manyness of energy—and in turn repose must be found in energetic manyness. That God, through a saint, should be given the multitudinous, insistent detail he is given in the Guadalajara altar, shows that oneness needs insistent detail to assert itself by. Out of the peacefulness of nothing came the unlimited hubbub of happenings—and something like this is in art. In the same way as happening honors the unseen glory of nothing, the energy of detail honors the tranquil unity of being.

Humanity is shown by “To be, or not to be: that is the question,” but is also shown by “Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler”—in “Chicago,” by Sandburg.

Both of these lines have energy and repose: the difference is that the Shakespeare line seems to begin with philosophic decorum. In it, though, are the energy of the arranged syllable and the energy of much previous, arduous pondering. The Sandburg line begins with energy—seemingly—but has at the same moment a grace in weightiness and wideness, the repose of the powerful disposed musically and in lightsome space.

Repose and energy, present as death and beauty, color and swiftness, are in the “Chorus” of Edna St. Vincent Millay. When she writes of a girl who has died—

Give away her gowns,

Give away her shoes—

She has no more use

For her fragrant gowns.

Take them all down—

Blue, green, blue,

Lilac, pink, blue—

From their padded hangers.

She will dance no more

In her narrow shoes;

Sweep her narrow shoes

From the closet floor—

the quietness of death has joined deeply the color of gowns, the swiftness of feet. The picture-and-swiftness of the poetic syllable has done this.

Wordsworth Too

Repose and energy are in these renowned lines of Wordsworth:

Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows

Like harmony in music; there is a dark

Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles

Discordant elements, makes them cling together

In one society. How strange, that all

The terrors, pains, and early miseries,

Regrets, vexations, lassitudes interfused

Within my mind, should e’er have borne a part,

And that a needful part, in making up

The calm existence that is mine when I

Am worthy of myself! ^[5]

Repose, then, can come from the unknown, energetic organization—“a dark inscrutable workmanship”—of “regrets, vexations, lassitudes.”

Energy as form works to bring vividness out of blankness, inertia, inanity. Repose as form works to bring calm, organization, quietude out of the turbulent, the gyrating, the violently broken, the unsettlingly fragmentary. Both energy and repose are deeply forces. We say, for instance, “With repose, I shall get new strength and clearness.” What gives us strength and clearness is a force.

A large phase of the history of art can be put in this way: 1) unacceptable repose; 2) accurate energy; 3) more acceptable, more authentic repose. Or one can begin with energy, and by the use of the repose in form, get to more acceptable energy.

There Are Gardens

Meanwhile, rivers are flowing in a disturbed and calm way. The sun is shining with energy and calm. Clouds go about with cloudlike energy and restfulness. The waves of ocean and ocean itself are tranquil and busy. Metals contain energy in a state of metallic quietude. Wood grows peaceably and strenuously. And there are gardens, which are of great value, because they are such a fine compound of nature as itself and man as thoughtful arranger. Every garden, like the earth itself, like art in its entireness, is some relation of energy and stillness. This passage from From a New Garden, by Mrs. Francis King, implies that in a garden there may be not such a successful relation of energy and stillness, but that there is always a relation.

There are gardens so bright during the summer and spring that benches of a wild green are an affront (and by a wild green I mean a green verging strongly upon either blue or yellow). Soft greys here may be better. And much depends upon the scale of the furniture—a seat of huge proportions in a little garden throws the whole out of scale. The pergola, heavy and without reason, is a fearful gardening offence. The coarsely designed arbour, the too thin trellis-work, these affect the garden badly, and even more the feelings of those who see it who may be sensitive to design. The pretty painted iron settees and chairs, rather French in type, with grape and flower designs, are delightful in the small gay garden. ^[6]

According to the Theory of Opposites, what is true about Mrs. King’s garden is true about Mozart and galaxies, Bernini and Lake Superior, Léger and the Susquehanna. Art studies energy and repose for their oneness, because it is the task the universe is and has.