Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1909 (Heft 25))

press were shocked. It was a desecration of such music to associate with it
so “primitive'' an art as dancing; too much, I suppose, like opening a
cathedral window and letting nature's freshness blow through the aisles and
vaulting. It ruffles the hair of the worshippers, and disturbs the serene de-
tachment of their reveries.
From their own standpoint, quite possibly, the pundits are right. Like
so many musical folks, they have trained their ears at the expense of their
eye-sight, and accustomed their brains to respond exclusively to aural im-
pressions. Why should they sympathize with an effort to reach the imag-
ination simultaneously through the avenues of sight and sound ? So they
belittled the dancer and her art.
If you have seen her dance, I wonder whether you do not agree with me
that it was one of the loveliest expressions of beauty one has ever experienced.
In contrast with the vastness of the Metropolitan Opera House and the
bigness of the stage her figure appeared small, and distance lent it additional
aloofness. The personality of the woman was lost in the impersonality of
her art. The figure became a symbol of the abstract conception of rhythm
and melody. The spirit of rhythm and melody by some miracle seemed to
have been made visible.
A presence, distilled from the corporeality of things, it floated in, bring-
ing with it the perfume of flowers, the breath of zephyrs, and the ripple of
brooks; the sway of pine trees on hill sides, and the quiver of reeds beside
woodland pools; the skimming of swallows in the clear blue, and the poise of
the humming bird in a garden of lilies; the gliding of fish, and dart of fire-
fly, and the footfall of deer on dewy grass; the smile of sunlight on merry
beds of flowers and the soft tread of shadows over nameless graves; the purity
of dawn, tremble of twilight, and the sob of moonlit waves. These and a
thousand other hints of the rhythm which nature weaves about the lives
and deaths of men seemed to permeate the stage. The movement of beauty
that artists of all ages have dreamed of as penetrating the universe through all
eternity, in a few moments of intense consciousness, seemed to be realized
before one's eyes. It was a revelation of beauty so exquisite, that it brought
happy, cleansing tears. Brava, Isadora !
But why should I think of her while writing about Matisse ? Simply,
I believe, because the musical critic thought her performance primitive
and therefore beneath his notice. It was primitive; old as the world, and it
was for that reason that I loved it. And yet toward Matisse's motive, not-
withstanding that it also is an expression of primitive elemental feeling, I
find myself like the musical pundit. At least, not quite; I can appreciate the
motive, but not understand the interpretation of it. That may be my
fault or Matisse's. I may still be too sophisticated to appreciate; too wed-
ded to the need of scholarly drawing and the preconceived ideas of beauty;
too much at the mercy of our habit of expecting to find in pictures accurate
representation of the ocular impressions; not yet able to detach the spiritual
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