DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61217#0031
‘MODERN PAINTERS’—FIRST VOLUME.
19
Ruskin was, it is evident in a score of places, no
musician. How should a musician consent to the
judgment that his art should do its highest and most
musicianly work in uttering thoughts that another art
might have served ? Is not an absolute melody, or an
absolute musical phrase, or a harmony — Batti, batti,
the opening notes of Parsifal, This is My Body from
Bach’s St Matthew, or the chords of Purcell’s Winter—•
aloof—not far, but different—from the several worlds
of the other arts ? The man who has not music in his
soul may perhaps be a man debarred from thought
that is not, in some sense, literature; the other arts,
albeit distinct enough, may not have the power that
music has to prove the distinction in the ear that is
able to hear. Therefore he who has not the ear lacks
the strongest of the proofs that the arts are not inter-
changeable. The able eye will not do so much. To
advance such a conjecture here may be something like
presumption, but it is intended to explain one of the
few faults or weak places in the great body of doctrine
of Modern Painters. The least thoughtful reader has
by rote the accusation against Ruskin that his teaching
on art abounds in errors and “ inconsistencies.” The
present writer finds no such abundance of faults in
the great argument. There, however, is one.
From the chapter on “ Ideas of Power ” may be
cited the admirable explanation of the conviction of
power produced in all minds, ignorant and educated,
by the “ sketch,” or by the beginning. “ The first
19
Ruskin was, it is evident in a score of places, no
musician. How should a musician consent to the
judgment that his art should do its highest and most
musicianly work in uttering thoughts that another art
might have served ? Is not an absolute melody, or an
absolute musical phrase, or a harmony — Batti, batti,
the opening notes of Parsifal, This is My Body from
Bach’s St Matthew, or the chords of Purcell’s Winter—•
aloof—not far, but different—from the several worlds
of the other arts ? The man who has not music in his
soul may perhaps be a man debarred from thought
that is not, in some sense, literature; the other arts,
albeit distinct enough, may not have the power that
music has to prove the distinction in the ear that is
able to hear. Therefore he who has not the ear lacks
the strongest of the proofs that the arts are not inter-
changeable. The able eye will not do so much. To
advance such a conjecture here may be something like
presumption, but it is intended to explain one of the
few faults or weak places in the great body of doctrine
of Modern Painters. The least thoughtful reader has
by rote the accusation against Ruskin that his teaching
on art abounds in errors and “ inconsistencies.” The
present writer finds no such abundance of faults in
the great argument. There, however, is one.
From the chapter on “ Ideas of Power ” may be
cited the admirable explanation of the conviction of
power produced in all minds, ignorant and educated,
by the “ sketch,” or by the beginning. “ The first