Devil's Tor (23 page)

"The soul of a professional actor, for example—how would you paint that? His face is seldom an index, and we will suppose that his ruling passion is money."

"I shouldn't attempt to paint it, unless it had previously given me some very strong impression. In the first place, hadn't we better understand what we mean by 'soul'?"

"I mean of course the deepest and most important part of our personality."

"Then how can it be concerned with money?" demanded Peter bluntly. … "You see, my dear Mrs. Fleming, how necessary it is to start off with definitions. I have argued with a man for an hour, and found at the end that we had been losing our tempers over totally different things. There are any number of 'souls'. There is the immortal soul, and the soul that goes out at death, yet in the meantime is capable of feeling very fine emotions, and the soul by courtesy, like that of your actor-friend, and the soul of animals—you have seen into a dog's eyes? ... and I don't know what else. Define! define! define!—that is my constant recommendation."

"Then let us leave the soul out of it, Peter; and tell me what I want to know. Do you crave to paint
insides,
because
outsides
are false?"

He sat back thoughtfully, watching the ascending of his smoke towards the ceiling.

"The postulate is debatable," he said after a moment or two. "Outsides, perhaps, are not so false, only they happen pretty frequently to disagree with what they cover. Take the bodily inside and outside of a man. No two collections of things could be more unlike, yet why have we to assume that the viscera are a grim reality, while the eye's shining and the noble sweep of the forehead are an accepted delusion for the amenities of life? No, outsides should be true enough. Only, what every painter worth his salt is trying to present—probably without knowing it—is neither beauty, nor life, nor truth (charming words, all of them!) ... but—I don't know what...

Old Colborne grinned into his lifted cup, while Helga waited, full content at least that Peter was now in full stride. His pause was brief.

"... But
the whole universe
—
at
one stroke. By means, necessarily, of
action.
That is symbolism in a nutshell. Nothing exists apart, but only the universe exists. Whatever individual person or thing I paint must stand, not for itself, but for the entire scheme. As to the machinery by which this is to be effected, that's another matter. I've done quite a lot of smoking and lying face-upwards on the sofa lately."

"A dangerous practice, Peter!"

"None knows it better than I. On the other hand, I don't call it to work, to stand before a canvas furiously tracing the wrong road. One of the most energetic men of my acquaintance does allegory after allegory, while I do nothing; and still I am advancing, and he is not. … Allegories! The symbol and the allegory. Yet there remain quite well-educated persons who definitely don't know one from the other. A symbol is a mystic sign of the Creator. An allegory is a wall decoration with a label attached; if you remove the label it is just as decorative, but less illuminating; and that means that its special interest is purely literary. Nearly all allegories treat pretty girls, and that gives the game away at once. But it is just the same if they treat factory-hands or square-legged young male spirits mounting the path to heaven. It's all either voluptuousness or flattery or deliberate mystification. It explains nothing of the universe. … A picture should be
passionate
," he added.

Helga asked him to explain that.

"A picture can't help being quiet," replied Peter, "but underneath that quietness should be visible the mighty workings of the spirit; and that is passion. … For now consider, say, the stupendous feelings caused in us by gazing upwards at a dizzy cathedral vault; or consider our wild unrest before such a play as
Macbeth;
or the terrific rocking of our faculties when seized by such a piece of music as the beginning movement of the Ninth Symphony. Can pictorial stillness—that resembles a sort of glaze or enamel for the preservation of the painter's ideas—can it, in itself and for itself, aspire to the same class of importance as that cathedral vault, that play, and that symphony movement?

"Take these Netherland paintings on the walls." He gestured towards them, and threw a glance at the master of the house, but at once returned to Helga. "I'm a guest here, so mustn't criticise the appointments, yet in what single feature can a single one of these pictures compare with the symphonies and quartets of Beethoven, or the tragedies of Sophocles, Ford, or Shakespeare? You may see for yourself that what they are going for is the beauty of serenity. Serenity is the peculiar character of paintwork, by reason of its being stationary and unmoving and at the same time not
immediately
impressive like architecture; therefore that kind of beauty is the easiest kind for any picture. Our nerves are first soothed, then lulled, then numbed; the mere physical operation gives us pleasure, while there is just enough intellectual interest and aesthetic mastery to keep us dreaming instead of sleeping.

"A stroll through any gallery tells this story. We stand in front of some reputed first-magnitude picture not very well known to us, for the purpose of studying it; and the more completely we enter into its spirit—the more we find ourselves in the process of rising admiration—so also the more steadily tranquillised we become. The picture's idea has to struggle into us through a heavy soporose atmosphere of peace and rest. It's like being unmanned by the slow penetration of our veins and organs by some sweetly-poisonous Oriental syrup. This is first of all what the painter of living things has to contend against. The tranquillity is wrong, if only because it presents an illusion."

"These are new opinions, aren't they, Peter?" asked Helga.

"They're
my
views. I say, an illusion is presented, because as a matter of fact Nature doesn't know tranquillity. Shall I illustrate? Imagine, then, a ruined classical temple of white limestone, standing up on the crest of a bare grass hill, against a sky of faultless blue. Here is
apparent
serenity in perfection, and it's the fault of your lack of sensibility if the tears don't spring to your eyes at the continued spectacle—though I fancy I'm speaking now of other and moister times. However, with or without tears, you would be worked up to emotional agitation by a fraud. The structure, in short, will be in violent action. All its constituents are straining towards the mass of the earth, towards each other, and towards their own interiors. And so with pictures. A picture's subject must be one of rest, because the representation of a movement never ending and never developing must be ridiculous. But if such rest is made absolute and self-sufficient, as in the Dutch paintings, then you get your illusion. To counteract the rest and so avoid the illusion, one needs the deeper internal movement. To discover what that movement shall be, is the business of symbolism."

"Doesn't our imagination supply the movement, Peter? A tall, solitary tree, growing in a meadow—someone paints
it,
and all that we see on the canvas is the stiff hieroglyph of a tree, unmoving in the wind, scentless, without ancientness, and smaller than ourselves. It is certainly not the tree. But our imagination supplies whatever is lacking to the image, and lo and behold! it
is
the tree."

"There are paintings of trees and paintings of trees. The imagination, as you remark, is very accommodating, and most paintings of trees do in fact remind us of pleasant times in the country, if we wish to be so reminded. Only symbolism doesn't wish to fill the equivalent of a snapshot album. A symbolic picture is not to be less, but more important than the beholder. It is to grip him roughly, and not send him to sleep or set him dreaming of happier days, but transform his life for him. The contemplation of a right symbolic picture should be like a visit to church in a spirit of piety."

"Then you propose to confine yourself to religious subjects?"

"No. Behind the representation of a tree even, one might present the everlasting Spirit."

"You would say that God is the soul of everything?"

"I have that faith."

"And this is the aspect of the individual you would wish to bring to your pictures?"

"Yes. We are all, not self-existing, but symbols of the divine. Hence the name, Symbolism."

"But how to start painting the divine, you don't as yet know?"

"Anyway, it is the problem I am hammering at."

"Peter, what is wrong with the method of the early Italian masters? Why seek a fantastic solution, when their quite simple one was so very good?"

"Some of the Italian primitives did in fact make an approach to symbolism, but it was only an approach. A very few angels and Madonnas
were
feebly suggestive of heaven. We have to do better than that if we're to stir people to their depths, instead of winning their gracious approval of our efforts. I'm at present experimenting with the light of the human eye. That may be the solution—not so fantastic! I am not going for pictorial puzzles, or strange mystic alphabets; I'm not to furnish a separate clue with my work; it has to speak for itself—represent as well as present. The eye is the one part of the physique that is a window, not a wall. The light passes in, and the light passes out. If we want to see another world, it must be by way of the eye. So far I've got."

"A tree has no eye."

"Now we're getting into deep waters, and had better stop."

"But has it?"

"A tree, I presume, has no existence, as we know its existence, until we've created it with
our eye.
Let us create it differently, that's all. Let us pass a different sort of light through our eye, resting on where the real tree should be."

"Do you mean that the artist must change his nature and become spiritual, when the things he sees will also become spiritual?"

"Oh, dear no! Anyone may quite well go on loving good cheer and soft living, without in the least detracting from his ability to behold the symbol where another man beholds merely a fact. In general, the school of philistine thought that hopelessly confounds the use of life with its artistic presentation has done more to bring affairs to a dead level than all the freaks together. Persons are not to be made virtuous by my pictures. I am not a parson in paint. I don't care whether the public is moral or immoral, nor much whether it is theistic or atheistic—I simply want people to understand by means of my pictures that this world they are in isn't at all what it seems to them, but something infinitely more significant."

"It's difficult. Have you anything to show me round at the studio?"

"Nothing I'd care to be seen."

Helga suddenly gave it up. She wondered why she was asking Peter all these questions, and why he was troubling to answer them at such patient length, when both knew, and knew that the other knew, that the true centre of their interest in this room was sitting there alive, breathing, but pale, dumb, and motionless; like a clock mysteriously ticking beneath a continuous loud clamour of talk. Ingrid had not contributed one word. Helga was disturbed. Was she vexed on an earlier account, or was it a real indifference about Peter's artistic future? She must be vexed. It was barely a week since the topic of his work had come up between them, when Ingrid had half-complained to her that she still actually knew nothing,
nothing,
about his last plannings, yet supposed it was unnecessary. So her silence now could not mean that she didn't care. They must have been pulling different ways in that arranging interview in the garden. The event certified that they had compromised the point of dispute, yet evidently her daughter had been upset by his opposition, or it had begun to rankle in her mind since; or she was reconsidering a part of what they had agreed to.

Why was he not wanting the regular engagement? What was he waiting for?—what was he expecting in a few months' time that he hadn't got now? Certainly Ingrid had told her that she would have preferred an interval for self-examination, but somehow it struck her that a determined man would have got his way on the double question of definiteness and date. Since he hadn't insisted, it was more likely that he had suggested the form of their understanding, and she had reluctantly consented, and was now realising at leisure the offence of his grounds.

And it was disconcerting to become suddenly sensible how vague and dark his circumstances remained, even after the long years of their intimacy. Perhaps it was nobody's fault. She and Ingrid were hardly ever in town; it afforded neither any pleasure to go alone, but Uncle Magnus mustn't be deserted by both together. It might be a couple of years since her daughter had paid a brief visit to the Chelsea studio, and then she had been introduced to no one, and appeared to have seen only sketches which conveyed nothing to her. But he seemed to be neither exhibiting nor selling his work; nor even finishing anything. At twenty-seven he still hadn't begun to be known. He was certainly clever—but how clever? Giving him every credit for the magnificence of his ideas and ideals, more things than that went towards the making of a first-class painter. He never lately showed them anything, so how could they judge? His host of friends, some very high up in the arts, was no guarantee of a professional standing. He was young, unattached, handsome, quick-tongued, free with his money—how should he not be popular? Especially with women. … Especially with women. No, no! There could be no earthly sense in his unnecessarily tying himself to her daughter if he had other involvements. He was too cool-headed to be a fool with women...

The silence prolonged itself without any in the room seeming to find it embarrassing or strange. Old Colborne drank his tea at intervals, and looked at nobody. Peter smoked on, gazing out of the window. Helga's eyes were resting pensively on her daughter, who, at a little way off, appeared unconscious of the regard. She thought her face looked thinner and her eyes tired, with a darkness beneath them. Was she merely feeling physically indisposed? Yet surely she would make some effort, and she was not so much as noticing Peter's existence in the room. It couldn't be a quarrel, for they had not been together since Ingrid had told her the news.