Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1906 (Heft 14))

MYSTERY.
THE mystery sense is an integral temperamental attribute of
northern races and is shown in their lives, in their myths, and
their painting, literature, and architecture. Southern peoples
manifest the mystery feeling only occasionally, and linked
especially with their religious ideas. Religions and churches
have always cultivated some atmosphere of mystery, yet it is not merely
mysticism.
Greek art displayed it only in the drama, in dealing with the super-
natural. In Italian art the Umbrians showed it not, and the Tuscans only
in occasional Gothic outcroppings. The Venetians would seem to have
approached closer, owing to their way of painting, but it was in a technical
manner, to secure sacrifice of extra line and detail; and melting outline in
art is but a first physical step from the common ground of fact into the
infinitude of the thought-world. The Dutch fared further; Rembrandt
infused a deeper quality into his technical treatment. But from remote
times runs the roll of northern men who have been seers — and so down to
present times, and to Arnold Böcklin, to Whistler, to Albert Ryder—to
mention a few that come first to mind in graphic art. In literature, examples
will crowd to the reader’s mind. And most of these workers in all arts
would illustrate intellectual, as well as technical mystery.
But what is mystery? Is it a survival of wild times and things; of long
northern nights and cruel winters, and the swift rebirth of a world compassed
by cold and threatening seas? Is it the child of wonder? Too thoroughly
has man banished the spirits with which he used to people the unknown, to
make their recall, even in art, more than a rare imaginative play, or a fanciful
symbolism—though even this little of a renascence of wonder is welcome.
But the world is full of mystery still, although nothing but its poles remain
unexplored and unexploited. The sea breathes mystery; the woods and
mountains are full of it; so is the dusk, starlight, the dawn—all vague or
vast spaces, all ever-recurring, basic things. Materially and scientifically has
man banished the unknown to the farthest confines of his physical world —
yet it is ever about and within him, and by its promptings must he live and
feel and have his being.
Mystery in art is as hard to define as it is easy to exemplify. It is not
mysticism. It is not reserve, nor selection, but includes them all in its
service. Begotten of man’s spiritual needs and melancholy possibilities,
suggestion is its handmaid. Death is its brother. And its essence is as
its name — mystery !
Dallett Fuguet.

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