CHAPTER XVII.
GNAPHISTHASIA.
The day following our arrival in Calnogor his majesty the king hadprojected for us a journey to the palace of art at Gnaphisthasia,which stood on the slope of a mountain in a rich valley lying onehundred miles southwest of Calnogor. The palace itself was surroundedby high walls of massive porcelain, beautifully adorned with sculpturemouldings, and midway on each side massive gateways, each formed ofrounded cones, rising to a great height and covered with sculpturedforms, between which the porcelain wall was pierced with frettedarabesque, running high above the arched opening beneath. Once withinthe gorgeous gateway, the porcelain walls of Gnaphisthasia stoodbefore the enraptured eyes more than a mile in length and half a milein depth, a many-colored dream of imposing magnificence covered withthe work of sculptors. The principal part of the wall was of agreenish-white vitrification, finely diversified by horizontalfriezes, with arabesques in red and green, purple and yellow,lavender, sea-green, blue and silver and pale rose and deep gray, allseparated by wide bands of greenish-white stone.
In the centre of the buildings stood a semi-circle of massive conicaltowers, gleaming like enormous jewels and connected by sculpturedwalls. The four corners of the palace were also groups of towers, allthe various groups being connected with the rectangular walls thatwere decorated with arcades and balconies.
Here in this splendid abode were poets and painters, musicians,sculptors and architects, dancers, weavers of fabrics, ceramists,jewellers, engravers, enamellers, artists in lacquer, carvers,designers and workers in glass and metal, pearl and ivory and theprecious stones.
A PROCESSION OF PRIESTS AND PRIESTESSES PASSED DOWN THELIVING AISLES, BEARING TROPHIES OF ART.]
In an immense chamber of the palace a _fete_ was being held. On eitherside a double range of massive porcelain pillars supported the roof,which covered this grand sanctuary of art like an immense vitrifiedjewel. The floor of the court was formed of polished wood of a deeprose color that emitted a rich, heavy perfume. Wood of a brilliantgreen, with interlacing arabesques of red, formed the border of thefloor. At the further end of the court stood three thrones, beingcomposed, respectively, of terrelium, aquelium, and plutulium, thethree most precious metals. On the threefold throne sat Yermoul, lordof art, his majesty the king, and myself. In ample recesses amid thepillars stood the devotees of art, while the centre of the court wasfilled with the musicians. A procession of priests and priestessespassed down the living aisles, clad in the most gorgeous fabrics ofsilk spun by gigantic spiders, and they bore singly trophies of art,or moved in groups, supporting golden litters carrying piled-uptreasures of dazzling splendor.
First came a band of priestesses bearing fan-like ensigns of carvedwood and fretwork, and panels filled with silks, rare brocades andembroideries. Then came priests bearing heavy vases and urns of gold,terrelium, aquelium, plutulium, silver, and alloys of precious bronze.Then followed others bearing litters piled with vases and figurescarved from solid pearl, or fashioned in precious metals. Cups,plates, vases in endless shapes, designs and colors went past, piledhigh on golden litters, looking like gardens of tropic flowers. Rarelaces made of threads spun from the precious metals of Atvatabar,mosaics, ivories, art forgings, costly enamels, decorativebas-reliefs, implements of war, agriculture and commerce, magnicspears and daggers, with shaft and handle encrusted with grotesquecarvings in metallic alloys. These alloys took the forms of figures,animals and emblems, having the strangest colorings, like the hiltsand scabbards of Japanese swords carved in shakudo and shibuichi.There were exhibited vases of cinnabar, vases wondrously carved fromtea-rose, coral-red, pearl-gray, ashes-of-roses, mustard-yellow,apple-green, pistache and crushed-strawberry colored metals. Therewere also splendid crowns, flowers, animals, birds, and fishes, carvedfrom precious kragon, an imperial stone harder than the diamond and ofa pale rose-pink color. Every object was as perfect as though modelledin wax.
Through all this decorative movement there was something more thandecoration understood as mere ornamentation--there was the keenestevidence of soul movement on the part of the artist. The musicgloriously celebrated the passions of love, ambition and triumph thathad filled the souls of the artists when engaged in their incomparablelabors, and pealed forth that serene life of the spirit as symbolizedin the perfect works of art exhibited, wherein were sealed in eternalmagnificence fragments of the souls that had created them.
Between the pauses of the music an organ-megaphone shouted forth inmusically-stentorian tones the words that had been impressed on itscylinders in praise of art. The five thousand priests and priestessesof art had simultaneously shouted their art ritual down five thousandtubes, which were all focussed into a single tube of large calibre.The multitudinous sound of their voices had been indelibly impressedon this phonograph-megaphone that now yielded up the sentimentsimpressed upon it, its tones being that of a vast multitude,re-enforced by the vibrating music of an organ, which was a part ofthe megaphone. These were the passages repeated by the instrument witha startling splendor of sound:
THE MESSAGE OF THE MEGAPHONE.
I.
To define art is to define life.
II.
Art is a language that describes the souls of things.
III.
Art in nature is the expression of life; in art it is life itself.
IV.
Art is too subtle a quality to be defined by the formula of the critic. It is greater than all of the definitions that have tried to grasp it.
V.
Art is the glowing focus from which radiate thought, imagination and feeling, gifted with the power of utterance.
VI.
True art is generous, passionate, earnest, vivid, enthusiastic. So also is the true artist.
VII.
To satisfy the far-reaching longing of the spirit, art makes things more glorious than they are. It is the perfect expression of a perfect environment.
VIII.
To mould his symbols with the same life that fills his conception of the idea is the supreme effort of the artist.
IX.
As nature from the coarse soil produces flowers, so also the artist from every-day life produces the subtle sweets of art.
X.
Art that is simply utility is not sufficiently decorative to delight every nerve of feeling in the soul. To feed these, many flavors of form and color are necessary, and hence the necessity of art.
XI.
Where do emotion and imagination begin in art? Where do spirit and flesh unite in a living creature?
XII.
The artist is a creator. He breathes into dull matter the breath of art, and it thenceforth contains a living soul.
XIII.
Poetry and art make life splendid without science, which is the cold investigation of that which was once thrilled with the passion of life. Invention makes life splendid without poetry and art. By whom will the glorious union of art and science be consummated?
XIV.
What is the world we live in? It is for the most part a collection of souls hidebound with treachery and selfishness; of souls covered with a slag from which have departed the fires of love and passion and delight. Such incinerated _aliases_ of their former selves are your judges, oh, artists!
XV.
Art is a green oasis in an arid and mechanical civilization. It creates an earthly home for the soul, for those wounded by the riot of trade, the weariness of labor, the fierce struggle for gold, and the deadly environment of rushing travel, blasted pavements and the withering disappointments of l
ife.
XVI.
Where is that artist that can sway imagination, create emotion, lift the banner of a high ideal, give the soul a keener appreciation of beauty, add to the mind, strength and grace, cause the brain to develop new nerves of feeling and newer cells of thought, that we may salute him as genius?
XVII.
Art is the emotion within made splendid by imagination that clothes everything with perfection. Like color it dwells only in the soul, but the cause of the sensation is without. In all art, the artist seeks to reproduce the cause of his ecstasy, that he may communicate to others a similar delight. He is like a god, he always gives but never receives, for fame, not money, is his recompense.
XVIII.
Given a soul that can feel sublimely, that can respond to beauty and feel thrilled with the joy of existence, that can feel the burden of anguish, that can appreciate the humors and absurdities of life, and given the power to adequately represent the knowledge, truth, understanding and conviction of these impressions in fitting symbols, vitalized by imagination and emotion, then have we both poet and artist.
XIX.
The soul in such inspired moments takes the form of sculptured arabesques, or flowers, or resembles the refluent sea, full of incredible shapes and symbols. It accompanies the march of thought, the profusive swell of emotion, is capable of pain and ecstasy, and seeks to be fed with those delightful symbols of its life which we call art, the most priceless of earthly possessions.
XX.
Four things are necessary for art, viz.: idea, sentiment, imagination and manipulative skill. After these comes prestige, or the applause of the world, to crown the work.
XXI.
The art decorator is a type of all art workmen. See him about to manipulate a plastic ornament on the wall. The plaster resembles his idea; its plastic qualities his sentiment, or emotion; the style of ornament into which it is to be moulded resembles his imagination, and the power of the artist to successfully and triumphantly embody in the finished ornament the living, breathing idea that fills him is his manipulative skill. Any work of art, if perfect in itself, still remains unfinished until the world comes along and applauds.
XXII.
The age wants the artist. It wants imagination, originality, inspiration, ideality. It requires fertile, dreaming souls, to create ideal breadth.
It requires an earthly Nirvana wherein one may escape a selfish, barbarous, pitiless world. There is a great dearth of the coinage of the soul. We want artists to explain the souls of things, not their mechanical construction, but the unseen secret of their purposes, their unspeakable existence. We want heart-expanding triumphs to counteract the withering influences of life. If a soul is entranced with man or nature, we also want to feel his fascination, to be penetrated with his rapture.
* * * * *
The megaphone ceased its musical vociferation, which formed aspiritual exercise for the souls assembled before us. I felt entrancedand lifted up to a plane of splendid life hitherto unknown in myexperience. I began to understand that art, after all, is the onething in our terrestrial life worth striving for, in fact our onlypossession. For is it not the transmission of the soul to outermatter, whose savagery may be thus charmed and subdued to become asatisfactory spiritual environment?
Following the procession of artists came beautiful, wondrously-arrayeddancers, whose evolutions made the brain dizzy with delight. Fairpriests and priestesses of art formed upon the floor of the palacedecorative arabesques of scrolls and interlacements of living bodies,the color of their garments mingling in perfectly harmonious hues,beautiful beyond comparison. Their ceaseless evolutions were made tothe measure of perfect music. Panels and bands of living decorationswere framed and transformed like the magical changes of thekaleidoscope. At last Yermoul, the Lord of Art, waved his wand, andthe dancers stood transfixed, a garden of ecstatic color like aPersian carpet, wonderfully designed and vividly emblazoned. It was ascene of royal magnificence. These priests and priestesses were theart workers of Gnaphisthasia, who had so finely exhibited theirtreasures.
Following the rhythmic movements of the art workers came poets,painters, sculptors, whose works lifted the soul to higher planes ofbeing. These in their trophies of art recited or exhibited gave thesoul imagination and sentiment, lifting it almost to the enrapturedheight of worship, adoration and love.
At the close of the ceremonies we were entertained by Yermoul, Lord ofArt, at a banquet, at which music and song and the dancing ofvoluptuous priestesses made hearts thrill with delight. Biddingfarewell at last to the Lord of Art and his priests and priestesses,his majesty, myself and our company returned by the sacred locomotiveto Calnogor.