DOI article:
Benjamin de Casseres, Pamela Colman Smith
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.31041#0033
A manually made transcription or edition is also available for this page. Please change to the tab "transrciption" or "edition."
will be; we stand as near the sources of that outstreaming magic mist we call
the imagination as we ever did or ever shall; we are no wiser as to the cause or
the meaning of anything than we ever were or ever will be. And that seems
to me to be the metaphysic of Pamela Colman Smith, and into all her work
has passed her soul, drunk with the wonder and the mystery of things. For
wonder and mystery shall we poets put on as golden veils to cover our fleeting
souls.
I have spoken of the “overwhelming simplicity” of her work. They are
so simple that fat practical brains will either see in them nothing or lunacy.
All simplicity is akin to madness because it is nearer unity—it sees far and
deep and drinks directly from the founts of Mystery. The world is so com-
pletely and irretrievably lost in the concrete, it has so carefully moulded of
the secondary and incidental characteristics of creation a world within a world,
that a poet, such as Pamela Colman Smith, who speaks directly of things as
they are perceived by the mind not yet overlaid by the painted illusions of
sight and not affected by the deadly automatism of routine, is believed to have
a touch of insanity. All absolute simplicity startles, is eccentric and bears
about it the mark of other-worldness, when in reality it is merely the reserva-
tion of the virginal, first-day mind in the bogs of matter, the perception of
unity and fundamental things through the blinding fogs of this multiplied
absurdity called practical life. This spirit of artistic simplicity is the immortal
red bud that miraculously, age after age, in art, literature and philosophy,
bursts through the leaden strata of custom; the sword whetted with light that
cuts the thongs of familiarity that are twisted round and round the living,
palpitant soul of man.
Fat Mind standing before these wonderful offerings of Miss Smith
will let this ooze from his mouth: “There is no such world as I see here;
there are no such mountains, no such moons, no such flowers with baby heads
on them, no such ships, no such skies.” Thus, Fat Brain, who is legion.
In art, imagination is fact. What I see, that is my fact. “The world is my
idea”—in the great formula of Schopenhauer. My truth is the only truth;
MY world is the only world. That should be the great artist’s creed. The
world that Pamela Colman Smith has evoked is great just because it is her
world and no one else’s. The brain is the radiant hub of the universal illusion.
It is the brain that has exiled the stars in their infinities and imprisoned light
in air. Pole star and the frozen mountains of the moon are the mere flotsam
and jetsam of our highly elaborated imaginations. What I see and feel and
the way I see and feel—you shall sooner dissever the sun from its fires than
sunder me from my vision. And it is thus the individualist in art is born—
the eternal ghost fabricating its dreams. We can do nothing but duplicate
ourselves. Our images and dreams and thoughts are eggs. We enwomb
and unwomb ourselves. We have eternities, infinities, nadirs, zeniths boxed
in our brains. We are always delivering ourselves to ourselves. In so far
as we differ from others in that measure do we grow. Miss Smith’s drawings
are great because they are like no one else’s.
9
the imagination as we ever did or ever shall; we are no wiser as to the cause or
the meaning of anything than we ever were or ever will be. And that seems
to me to be the metaphysic of Pamela Colman Smith, and into all her work
has passed her soul, drunk with the wonder and the mystery of things. For
wonder and mystery shall we poets put on as golden veils to cover our fleeting
souls.
I have spoken of the “overwhelming simplicity” of her work. They are
so simple that fat practical brains will either see in them nothing or lunacy.
All simplicity is akin to madness because it is nearer unity—it sees far and
deep and drinks directly from the founts of Mystery. The world is so com-
pletely and irretrievably lost in the concrete, it has so carefully moulded of
the secondary and incidental characteristics of creation a world within a world,
that a poet, such as Pamela Colman Smith, who speaks directly of things as
they are perceived by the mind not yet overlaid by the painted illusions of
sight and not affected by the deadly automatism of routine, is believed to have
a touch of insanity. All absolute simplicity startles, is eccentric and bears
about it the mark of other-worldness, when in reality it is merely the reserva-
tion of the virginal, first-day mind in the bogs of matter, the perception of
unity and fundamental things through the blinding fogs of this multiplied
absurdity called practical life. This spirit of artistic simplicity is the immortal
red bud that miraculously, age after age, in art, literature and philosophy,
bursts through the leaden strata of custom; the sword whetted with light that
cuts the thongs of familiarity that are twisted round and round the living,
palpitant soul of man.
Fat Mind standing before these wonderful offerings of Miss Smith
will let this ooze from his mouth: “There is no such world as I see here;
there are no such mountains, no such moons, no such flowers with baby heads
on them, no such ships, no such skies.” Thus, Fat Brain, who is legion.
In art, imagination is fact. What I see, that is my fact. “The world is my
idea”—in the great formula of Schopenhauer. My truth is the only truth;
MY world is the only world. That should be the great artist’s creed. The
world that Pamela Colman Smith has evoked is great just because it is her
world and no one else’s. The brain is the radiant hub of the universal illusion.
It is the brain that has exiled the stars in their infinities and imprisoned light
in air. Pole star and the frozen mountains of the moon are the mere flotsam
and jetsam of our highly elaborated imaginations. What I see and feel and
the way I see and feel—you shall sooner dissever the sun from its fires than
sunder me from my vision. And it is thus the individualist in art is born—
the eternal ghost fabricating its dreams. We can do nothing but duplicate
ourselves. Our images and dreams and thoughts are eggs. We enwomb
and unwomb ourselves. We have eternities, infinities, nadirs, zeniths boxed
in our brains. We are always delivering ourselves to ourselves. In so far
as we differ from others in that measure do we grow. Miss Smith’s drawings
are great because they are like no one else’s.
9
