F - 4

Carrying the mental approach too far.

A. Lowell's Patterns.

The ear rhythms, the balances and culminations
of various others---less chill and ordered.

In Drama--

Changes -- but significant principle obtains--
more or less.

a. Greeks. Varies in tragedians.

b. Shakespeare.

c. Ibsen.

d. Chekhov-- Symphonic.

The weaving.

The aloneness... of each one, talking to himself, repeating his theme.

e. Sean O'Casey--

The change vs. him in Juno. True?

The breakdown in Silver Tassie??

(who will need a break?;)

F - 5

3.
Examples of Three Writers
On the Same Subject

(TALE: The Santo Domingo Indians.)

Who are they? What are they?
The 23 Pueblos, etc.

Patricio.

Santo Domingo.

Coffee at A nn's.

The baby and hospital, 7 dead, the medicine man
beat them, etc.

The Indian School and the pigs and drawing.

S. Domingo there--but why?

To protest.

"In 1869, Government gave us a stallion."
To raise standard.

Catastrophes: No rain. Deaths. Trachoma.
Starvation.

(The Santa Clara girl's defy---the plough, and
result, etc.)

READ:

Witter Bynner's--<u>A Dance for Rain at Cochiti.</u>

D. H. Lawrence's--<u>The Dance of the Sprouting Corn.</u>

My--<u>Santo Domingo Corn Dance.</u>

(Comment on form, selectivity, effect)

W - 1

SIXTH WEEK
---
THE WILL TO KNOW
---

1.
Curiosity

So alert;--so pure--at first.

It's death--you see the ravages of that death everywhere.

a. The cliches of expression.

b. The rigid uncromising opinions.
(Tale--Minsk-Pinsk)--_Already knew._

c. The stiff habitual actions.

d. The unquestioning respect for conventions.

e. Reliance on the known--So as to feel "stable".

TALE: The athlete.

The hullabaloo for Ashley in _Gone With the Wind_.

The struggle over months; years--Test.

The play already written about Montezuma.
Cortez.

Malinche?
Never heard of her.

Then: The gray man. TWA

Short story technique (Quick-not sound)

Where was the will to know?

**********

2.
Considerations

Discuss Napoleon--not as great--but as "integrated".
(Read Passage from the book of letters by the doctor at
St. Helena)

Obviously--Will to know--deeply.

Pasteur.

Dostoevsky.

Aeschylus-
Keats.

Old woman. (She remarkable, not me)

W - 2

b. Clive Bell--"On fact demolishing".--And facing the truth--.

c. H L --who knows all at first sight.

d. Voltaire--Critic, playwright.

(How easy it seemed to know how to act,
but why was it easy?)

e. D H L and curiosity--the desire to know how to do things. Baking bread--and why?

Facing the truth:

Facing the self:

(DIGRESSION: The spaghetti story)

TALE: About Lawrence at Toulon - the painter.
The tale, etc.

The aftermath--years later.

f. B. Davis - Will to Know. (Of Human Bondage)

Lucky Davis! No, oh, no! Not on your life.

(She would have found out)

g. If you know truth--O. K.--.

(READ--Chekhov and Sea Gull failure)

"PEOPLE ARE WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE"--(Elaborate)

--0--

D - 1

SEVENTH WEEK--DISCIPLINE

1.

Some of the ways we show
lack of discipline

No set schedule--for work.
for fun.

No attempt to enlarge possibilities.

The "I can't" habit.

The fear of the new.

The repetition of the old.

The failure to concentrate.

The "Getting by" instead of pleasing the self.

Fear of failure.

Envy.

Talk, talk, talk.

Never testing or exerting the self.

Abnormal respect for being tired.

(With note on layers of energy)

Over-indulgence in things that divert the energy.

Admiring for too long a time what has been done.

Remembered pain.

The rewards of non-doing.

Non-participation.

Failure to gauge mood of situation or atmosphere of place.

The perennial student.

Leaning on others (The tale of TOMMY)

Habitually consulting someone about every act of your life.

Installing a traffic light that does not exist.

D - 2

## Discipline

The approach: cool, calm, pleasant.

Not what you wish--but what you _desire_. (Henry Miller)

A note on "You can't have everything".

Two questions: What has been done like this?

What new thing can I add to it?

The arbitrary goal:

* Worldly.
* Visionary.

* Worldly.
* Visionary.

Each thing that confronts you is vital to you.

If by trial you fail, examine. No finality.

Giving form to pain, dismay, dispair.

Resilience in meeting new angles in situations as they develop.

(Is there a better way to act than you have planned? then do it.)

Five minutes to disgust.

Returning to the center.

Do a difficult--or even an easy thing to gain your own respect.

No remorse (Cool analysis--that's all it's worth)

Dependence on ill health (If it's failing; restore it, if possible.)

Where to look for the miraculous.

A body of work.

Conferring with great minds instead of flimsy ones.

The thing at hand and the farthest star.

The unaccidental nature of experience.

Tricks: "I start a new work on Monday" (Puritan shame)

Make a life by working.

Solving a problem--by not solving it--by working.

The pleasures of relaxation (with a note on tension).

REMEMBRANCE OF CHILDHOOD CHARACTERS

December 12, 1941

Thornton-7, Christmas eve--W. Texas. Leather sofa. Fat. Brown. Fat feather mattress. Smelled potatoes and gravy for breakfast. Feather bed <u>rest</u> her over. Doll buggy on Christmas tree. To breakfast. Red fried potatoes to new doll.

Mueller- Grandfather's. Old structure that covered a well. Forbidden to go near it. Evening, yarn, Kept going nearer to it. Played with flowers, getting nearer. Grandfather soundly spanked her.

Farrow- Visits to grandmother. 200 miles away. A n acre farm. "Grandmother doesn't know you." Ask to buy eggs. Cried.

Crews- 400 or 500 yards from own house, a fallen-down house. Old woman. Still there. Her husband killed in S.A. War. Son died of lock-jaw. Small dark, gray hair in a knot on top. House stuffy. Snuffy smell-Sometimes shouted at strangers, with muzzle-loading shotgun. <u>Her hands</u>-thin, brown, delicate. Blue veins.

Greer- Huge, gray house. Cancer inside. Swayed in wind. Loose. Cold. Farm in Ark. way back in woods. Builder, crazy. Rode around house on broomstick. Some said horrible sight. Some funny. Killed himself with knife. Kept "death in the attic". Fertilizer. Visitors. Bed put there. Boy had to sleep there.

Collier- 7½. Negro washwoman to get clothes. Helped carry clothes in tub. Got mail. Mother hysterical at news.-"Florence is dead."--"Who is Florence?" His mother's look.

Cooper- 7. Brother older. Sam home with them at school. Brought die, learned, having all chocolate soldered.

James- Second grade. Story. Bottom-basement-lattice. 20 minute recess. Daily fought at side of building. Back against lattice. Hit. Felt bump.

Lindsey- "My grandmother was blind". Tall, straight. My soles flapped. She knew her by that. Embarrassed.

Nelson- 2 store town. Chruch-unpainted pulpit. Lanterns smoked-Thousands of bugs. Speech by Johnny. Wondered what would happen if she forgot. Red satin dress. Forgot. Father embarrassed.

McIver-
Miss Minerva. Kept old house. Hobby of cats.
50. Crawling and slinking. High lace collar.
Face bulged above. Met her. Saw books stacked
high. She took 2 armfuls. Proud of knowing her.

Griffin-
Young. Fear of death. Sermon on end of world.
Thought it would be a week. Two weeks' visit
to country. Storm. Ran in house got pillow.
Uncle, cynically, swinging foot over railing.

Compton-
Action boomeranged. Revival, every summer.
Nudged girl. -Fun. Sermon not so dull. Tired
yellow-haired ugly girl. But *she* laughed. Dis-
graced.

Hinely-
Woodshed. Kettle under it. Pot for boiling canes.
Hunks of lye soap. Sturdy Georgia pine.
"Lighter" wood (According to "darkies")
Possums.

Kolb-
Uncle's farm. *Broccoli harvest.*
7 A. M. To town on horse. Two of them. Quiet.
Dew. An even hum. Bridge. Horse ran, stumbled,
both thrown.

Williams-
Farm rambled. Dirt road to diver. House rambled.
Christmas morning. Bare board floor. Doll.
"Baby". Private joy before confronting rest.

Hardin-
Grandmother in fit of temper. Broke hand-painted
dishes. Her glasses popped off. Hand on ear.
Every day for two hours a week--Sat by window.
Punishment.

Hawkins-
6th and Speight. Haunted house. Old brick house.
Tiles behind. Through window, a fireplace. Went
in. Up stairs, which creaked. Closet by chimney.
Ghost would be there. Empty. Ran home.

Ratcliffe-
Not so long ago. 16 or 17. "Still a boy in
Cheyenne ". Three three-room houses just alike.
Wyoming grass--not any. Broken cold-cream jar.
"Gay old time". Cut hand. Screamed. Blood.
Mother ran from one room to another, frantic.
Father. Fuss.

McElroy-
Uncle's farm. Old well by barn. Milking.
"Daddy-when are they going to milk the bull?"

Drummond-
Man to build apartment house. Boys built fortress
of building blocks. Broke bricks. Hid in
fortress.

Lee-
Grandchildren--Wade in creek. Slid down bank.
Knee deep. Walked up creek. Grew dark. Tunnel
of trees.

Fraley-
10. First pigs. Wading in garbage. - Aversion.

Bush- Grandmother's house changed. Gayety gone. Not dead. Quiet, peaceful. Still. Fastinating. Junk in wood-shed.

December 13, 1941

Harris-Singer machine. On it, huge Family Bible. Tugged at it. Spanked.

Phelps-Woodstove. Allowed to build fire. Hard.

Cass- Stolen joy--Aunt's books. Girls with bows in hair. Kitchen table for everything. Learned reading here.

Murray-When Grandmother was 6, bad a baby brother. Rolled under bed to think. Saw ornate scissors on wall. Called baby "Scissors."

Smith- Two years at San Marcos. Youngest of five. House with novels. Thought it would be nice to find a boy. Made fudge. Knew it was obvious. What can I do? Without betraying crush. Red pepper in candy.

Skipper-Pictures on walls. Dull. Snow one. French chateau. Uncle liked it-and killed people. Photo of uncle. Wanted to be like him. "Maybe lost the pattern."

Fulgham-

Meek- Mother wanted her to stay away from horses. Saw picture. Mother embarrassed. Horse had killed him, and mother hated horses.

Briscoe-"Grandpa" told stories. "Lafe White". One about jokester--red beard, never bathed. "Wave of gravy had rolled across his peaceful bosom."

Baylor- Pictures. Huge rooms at ranch. Ancestors. Two curls. grandmother had. Father in military uniform. Great Aunt Amanda and Great Uncle Bud. She stern, he sweet. "Pioneer woman from the word go." "Hide in horse's ear" in game.

Bean- Black dirt in front yard. Played and dug--maybe he'd find grandfather.

----0----

NEW MEXICO TALES

1. "Curio" home. Stamps. "The Decoration of Peace, or
whatever he signed."

2. Peter Hurd story. "My father. The fierce look,
the mustache, the best. "Yes, that is sure my
father. But my God, how he have change. "

3. "Ankle she hang myself."

4. How I came to Give this Course. The 4th of July
dinner - and how I felt. Then the further Sund-
ay. Hitler, and people not knowing really. Five
minutes. What do I know? 15 yrs. experience. So...

5. Patricio. Santo Domingo. (Maybe use in connection
with Lawrence, Bynder, Riggs) - Coffee at Ann's.
The baby and hospital, 7 dead, the medicine man/
beat them, etc. The Indian School and the pigs
and drawing. S. Domingo there -- but why? To
protest. "In 1869, Govt. gave us a stallion." Catastrophe.

(The Santa Clara girl's defy. Theplough.)

6. Pablo's original story at store. The scene from
*Russet Mantle*. Pablo, the cop.

7. The maid -- and the "grass" story, and "I stay
home with my mother." Descr. first her looks.

8. Hazel - and "Kinnel" on first interview. Descr.

NEW YORK TALES

1. Hopkins and "Roadside" interview. First trial of birth speech. Then Read Birth speech. Ralph Bel-lamy.

2. Theatre Guild and first conference. Mamoulian. Green Grow. Last scene. The trauma. Opening in Boston. Cast changes and why. The conference in Ritz. Aunt Eller's dominance came from new feeling. Also, pre-chivoree scene.

Also, the law in Boston. With a note on such things.

3. Boy at Northwestern - and obstructionist part in More Sky. Read scene? Later, his letter. My innocence, and his hard luck.

EUROPEAN TALES

1. The trip from Cagnes - Toulon. The painter's story in the tea shop. Frieda. D.H.L.

Years later- in Santa Fe. Vitality and exuberance.
Her tears.

2. Karl in the gardens of the Luxembourg. Writing and music. How do you dare? The knowing made them afraid of ridicule.

Also, K Ann's friend. The psycho. The piano.
the bliss. One week. Then gave it up. Unable
to do it for fun. ! This in Lecture on
Emotion as against Mind.

(ART AS EXPERIENCE)

2

a hair's breadth. Or it may have been something that in
comparison was slight -- and which perhaps because of its
very slightness illustrates all the better what is to be
an experience. There is that meal in a Paris restaurant
of which one says "that was an experience." It stands out
as an enduring memorial of what food may be. Then there is
that storm one went through in crossing the Atlantic --
the storm that seemed in its fury, as it was experienced,
to sum up in itself all that a storm can be, complete in
itself, standing out because marked out from what went be-
fore and what came after.

In such experiences, every successive part flows
freely, without seam and without unfilled blanks, into what
ensues...

Because of continuous merging, there are no holes,
mechanical junctions, and dead centers when we have an
experience. There are pauses, places of rest, but they
punctuate and define the quality of movement. They sum up
what has been undergone and prevent its dissipation and idle
evaporation. Continued acceleration is breathless and pre-
vents parts from gaining distinction. In a work of art,
different acts, episodes, occurrences melt and fuse into
unity, and yet do not disappear and lose their own character
as they do so -- just as in a genial conversation there is
a continuous interchange and blending, and yet each
speaker not only retains his own character but manifests it
more clearly than is his wont.

p. 38. It is possible to be efficient in action and yet not have a conscious experience. The activity is too automatic to permit of a sense of what it is about and where it is going. It comes to an end but not to a close or consummation in consciousness. Obstacles are overcome by shrewd skill, but they do not feed experience. There are also those who are wavering in action, uncertain, and inconclusive like the shades in classic literature. Between the poles of aimlessness and mechanical efficiency, there lie those courses of action in which through successive deeds there runs a sense of growing meaning conserved and accumulating toward an end that is felt as accomplishment of a process. Successful politicians and generals who turn statesmen like Caesar and Napoleon have something of the showman about them. This of itself is not art, but it is, I think, a sign that interest is not exclusively, perhaps not mainly, held by the result taken by itself (as it is in the case of mere efficiency), but by it as the outcome of a process. There is interest in completing an experience. The experience may be one that is harmful to the world and its consummation undesirable. But it has esthetic quality.

(ART AS EXPERIENCE)

3

p. 40. ... For in much of our experience we are not concerned with the connection of one incident with what went before and what comes after. There is no interest that controls attentive rejection or selection of what shall be organized into the developing experience. Things happen, but they are neither definitely included nor decisively excluded; we drift. We yield according to external pressure, or evade and compromise. There are beginnings and cessations, but no genuine initiations and concludings. One thing replaces another, but does not absorb it and carry it on. There is experience, but so slack and discursive that it is not an experience. Needless to say, such experiences are anesthetic.

The enemies of the esthetic are neither the practical nor the intellectual. They are the humdrum; slackness of loose ends; submission to convention in practice and intellectual procedure. Rigid abstinence, coerced submission, tightness on one side and dissipation, incoherence and aimless indulgence on the other, are deviations in opposite directions from the unity of an experience...

p. 42. ... Physical things from far ends of the earth are physically transported and physically caused to act and react upon one another in the construction of a new object. The miracle of mind is that something similar takes place in experience without physical transport and assembling. Emotion is the moving and cementing force. It selects what is congruous and dyes what is selected with its color, thereby giving qualitative unity to materials externally disparate and dissimilar. It thus provides unity in and through the varied parts of an experience. When the unity is of the sort already described, the experience has esthetic character even though it is not, dominantly, an esthetic experience.

p. 43. ... There are, therefore, common patterns in various experiences, no matter how unlike they are to one another in the details of their subject matter. There are conditions to be met without which an experience cannot come to be. The outline of the common pattern is set by the fact that every experience is the result of interaction between a live creature and some aspect of the world in which he lives. A man does something; he lifts, let us say, a stone. In consequence he undergoes, suffers, something: the xix weight, strain, texture of the surface of the thing lifted. The properties thus undergone determine further doing. The stone is too heavy or too angular, not solid enough; or else the properties undergone show it is fit for the use for which it is intended. The process continues until a mutual adaptation of the self and the object emerges and that

p. 44-45

(ART AS EXPERIENCE)

4

particular experience comes to a close. What is true of
this simple instance is true, as to form, of every experience.
The creature operating may be a thinker in his study and the
environment with which he interacts may consist of ideas
instead of a stone. But interaction of the two constitutes
the total experience that is had, and the close which com-
pletes it is the institution of a felt harmony.

An experience has pattern and structure, because
it is not just doing and undergoing in alternation, but con-
sists of them in relationship. To put one's hand in the fire
that consumes it is not necessarily to have an experience.
The action and its consequence must be joined in perception.
This relationship is what gives meaning; to grasp it is the
objective of all intelligence. The scope and content of
the relations measure the significant content of an experience.
A child's experience may be intense, but, because of lack
of background from past experience, relations between under-
going and doing are slightly grasped, and the experience does
not have great depth or breadth. No one ever arrives at
such maturity that he perceives all the connections that are
involved...

Experience is limited by all the causes which inter-
fere with perception of the relations between undergoing and
doing. There may be interference because of excess on the
side of doing or of excess on the side of receptivity, of
undergoing. Unbalance on either side blurs the perception
of relations and leaves the experience partial and distorted,
with scant or false meaning. Zeal for doing, lust for action,
leaves many a person, especially in this hurried and impatient
human environment in which we live, with experience of an
almost incredible paucity, all on the surface. No one ex-
perience has a chance to complete itself because something
else is entered upon so speedily. What is called experience
becomes so dispersed and miscellaneous as hardly to deserve
the name. Resistance is treated as an obstruction to be
beaten down, not as an invitation to reflection. An individual
comes to seek, unconsciously even more than by deliberate
choice, situations in which he can do most ≠ things in the
shortest time.

Experiences are also cut short from maturing by ex-
cess of receptivity. What is prized is then the mere under-
going of this and that, irrespective of perception of any
meaning. The crowding together of as many impressions as
possible is thought to be "life," even though no one of them
is more than a flitting and a sipping. The sentimentalist
and the day-dreamer may have more fancies and impressions
pass through their consciousness than has the man who is
animated by lust for action. But his experience is equally
distorted, because nothing takes root in mind when there
is no balance between doing and receiving. Some decisive
action is needed in order to establish contact with the
realities of the world and in order that impressions may be
so related to facts that their value is tested and organized.

(ART AS EXPERIENCE)

5

Because perception of relationship between what is done and what is undergone constitutes the work of intelligence, and because the artist is controlled in the process of his work by his grasp of the connection between what he has already done and what he is to do next, the idea that the artist does not think as intently and penetratingly as a scientific inquirer is absurd. A painter must consciously undergo the effect of his every brush stroke or he will not be aware of what he is doing and where his work is going. Moreover, he has to see each particular connection of doing and undergoing in relation to the whole that he desires to produce.

p. 46. Any idea that ignores the necessary role of intelligence in production of works of art is based upon identification of thinking with use of one special kind of material, verbal signs and words. To think effectively in terms of relations of qualities is as severe a demand upon thought as to think in terms of symbols, verbal and mathematical. Indeed, since, words are easily manipulated in mechanical ways, the production of a work of genuine art probably demands more intelligence than does most of the so-called thinking that goes on among those who pride themselves on being "intellectuals."

p. 47. Craftsmanship to be artistic in the final sense must be "loving"; it must care deeply for the subject matter upon which skill is exercised. A sculptor comes to mind him whose busts are marvelously exact. It might be difficult to tell in the presence of a photograph of one of them and a photograph of the original which was of the person himself. For virtuosity they are remarkable. But one doubts whether the maker of the busts had an experience of his own that he was concerned to have those share who look at his products. To be truly artistic, a work must also be esthetic -- that is, framed for enjoyed receptive perception...

In short, art, in its form, unites the very same relation of doing and undergoing, outgoing and incoming energy, that makes an experience to be an experience. Because of elimination of all that does not contribute to mutual organization of the factors of both action and reception into one another, and because of selection of just the aspects and traits that contribute to their interpenetration of each other, the product is a work of esthetic art. Man whittles, carves, sings, dances, gestures, molds, draws and paints. The doing or making is artistic when the perceived result is of such a nature that its qualities as perceived have controlled the question of production. The act of producing

(ART AS EXPERIENCE)

6

that is directed by intent to produce something that is enjoyed in the immediate experience of perceiving has qualities that a spontaneous or uncontrolled activity does not have. The artist embodies in himself the attitude of the perceiver while he works.

Suppose, for the sake of illustration, that a finely wrought object, one whose texture and proportions are highly pleasing in perception, has been believed to be a product of some primitive people. Then there is discovered evidence that proves it to be an accidental natural product. As an external thing, it is now precisely what it was before. Yet at once it ceases to be a work of art and becomes a natural "curiosity." It now belongs in a museum of natural history, not in a museum of art. And the extraordinary thing is that the difference that is thus made is not one of just intellectual classification. A difference is made in appreciative perception and in a direct way. The esthetic experience -- in its limited sense -- is thus seen to be inherently connected with the experience of making.

The sensory satisfaction of eye and ear, when esthetic, is so because it does not stand by itself but is linked to the activity of which it is the consequence. Even the pleasures of the palate are different in quality to an epicure than in one who merely "likes" his food as he eats it. The difference is not of mere intensity. The epicure is conscious of much more than the taste of the food. Rather, there enter into the taste, as directly experienced, qualities that depend upon reference to its source and its manner of production in connection with criteria of excellence. As production must absorb into itself qualities of the product as perceived and be regulated by them, so, on the other side, seeing, hearing, tasting, become esthetic when relation to a distinct manner of activity qualifies what is perceived.

p. 49. Until the artist is satisfied in perception with what he is doing, he continues shaping and reshaping. The making comes to an end when its result is experienced as good -- and that experience comes not by mere intellectual and outside judgment but in direct perception. An artist, in comparison with his fellows, is one who is not only especially gifted in powers of execution but in unusual sensitivity to the qualities of things. This sensitivity also directs his doings and makings.

(ART AS EXPERIENCE)

7

p. 50. In an emphatic artistic-esthetic experience, the relation is so close that it controls simultaneously both the doing and the perception. Such vital intimacy of connection cannot be had if only hand and eye are engaged. When they do not, both of them, act as organs of the whole being, there is but a mechanical sequence of sense and movement, as in walking that is automatic. Hand and eye, when the experience is esthetic, are but instruments through which the entire live creature, moved and active throughout, operates. Hence the expression is emotional and guided by purpose.

... The general situation remains the same in painting a picture or molding a bust. Moreover, at each stage there is anticipation of what is to come. This anticipation is the connecting link between the next doing and its outcome for sense. What is done and what is undergone are thus reciprocally, cumulatively, and continuously instrumental to each other.

p. 50-51... An incredible amount of observation and of the kind of intelligence that is exercised in perception of qualitative relations characterizes creative work in art. The relations must be noted not only with respect to one another, two by two, but in connection with the whole under construction; they are exercised in imagination as well as in observation. Irrelevancies arise that are tempting distractions; digressions suggest themselves in the guise of enrichments. There are occasions when the grasp of the dominant idea grows faint, and then the artist is moved unconsciously to fill in until his thought grows strong again. The real work of an artist is to build up an experience that is coherent in perception while moving with constant change in its development.

... Even the composition conceived in the head and, therefore, physically private, is public in its significant content, since it is conceived with reference to execution in a product that is perceptible and hence belongs to the common world. ..

Writer, composer of music, sculptor, or painter can retrace, during the process of production, what they have previously done. When it is not satisfactory in the under-going or perceptual phase of experience, they can to some degree start afresh. This retracing is not readily accom-plished in the case of architecture -- which is perhaps one reason why there are so many ugly buildings. Architects are obliged to complete their idea before its translation into a complete object of perception takes place. Inability to build up simultaneously the idea and its objective embodi-ment imposes a handicap. Nevertheless, they too are

(ART AS EXPERIENCE)

8

obliged to think out their ideas in terms of the medium of
embodiment and the object of ultimate perception unless they
workmechanically and by rote. Probably the esthetic quality
of medieval cathedrals is due in some measure to the fact
that their constructions were not so much controlled by plans
and specifications made in advance as is now the case.
Plans grew as the building grew.

p. 52... Sometimes in contact with a human being we
are struck with traits, perhaps of only physical character-
istics, of which we were not previously aware. We realize
that we never knew the person before; we had not seen
him in any pregnant sense. We now begin to study and to
"take in." Perception replaces bare recognition. There is
an act of reconstructive doing, and consciousness becomes
fresh and alive.

But an act of perception proceeds by waves that extend
serially throughout the entire organism. There is, there-
fore, no such thing in perception as seeing or hearing <u>plus</u>
emotion. The perceived object or scene is emotionally
pervaded throughout. When an aroused emotion does not
permeate the material that is perceived or thought of, it
is either preliminary or pathological.

The esthetic or undergoing phase of experience is
receptive. It involved surrender. But adequate yielding
of the self is possible only through a controlled activity
that may well be intense. In much of our intercourse with
our surroundings we withdraw; sometimes from fear,
if only of expending unduly our store of energy; sometimes
from preoccupation with other matters, as in the case of
recognition. Perception is an act of the going-out
of energy in order to receive, not a withholding of energy.
To steep ourselves in a subject-matter we have first to
plunge into it. When we are only passive to a scene, it
overwhelms us and, for lack of answering activity, we
do not perceive that which bears us down. We must summon
energy and pitch it at a responsive key in order to <u>take</u>
in.

p. 54. For to perceive, a beholder must create
his own experience. And his creation must include relations
comparable to those which the original producer underwent.
They are not the same in any literal sense. But with the
perceiver, as with the artist, there must be an ordering
of the elements of the whole that is in form, although
not in details, the same as the process of organization the
creator of the work consciously experienced.

(ART AS EXPERIENCE)

9

p. 54. There is work done on the part of the percipient as there is on the part of the artist. The one who is too lazy, idle, or indurated in convention to perform this work will not see or hear. His "appreciation" will be a mixture of scraps of learning with conformity to norms of conventional admiration and with a confused, even if genuine, emotional excitation.

p. 55. The most elaborate philosophic or scientific inquiry and the most ambitious industrial or political enterprise has, when its different ingredients constitute an integral experience, esthetic quality. For then its varied parts are linked to one another, and do not merely succeed one another. And the parts through their experienced linkage move toward a consummation and close, not merely to cessation in time. This consummation, moreover, does not wait in consciousness for the whole undertaking to be finished. It is anticipated throughout and is recurrently savored with special intensity.

In every integral experience there is form because there is dynamic organization. I call it organization dynamic because it takes time to complete it, because it is a growth. There is inception, development, fulfillment. Material is ingested and digested through interaction with that vital organization of the results of prior experience that constitutes the mind of the worker. Incubation goes on until what is conceived is brought forth and is rendered perceptible as part of the common world. An esthetic experience can be crowded into a moment only in the sense that a climax of prior long enduring processes may arrive in an outstanding movement which so sweeps everything else into it that all else is forgotten. That which distinguishes an experience as esthetic is conversion of resistance and tensions, of excitations that in themselves are temptations to diversion, into a movement toward an inclusive and fulfilling close.

William James aptly compared the course of a conscious experience to the alternate flights and perchings of a bird. The flights and perchings are intimately connected with one another; they are not so many unrelated lightings succeeded by a number of equally unrelated hoppings. Each resting place in experience is an undergoing in which is absorbed and taken home the consequences of prior doing, and, unless the doing is that of utter caprice or sheer routine, each doing carries in itself meaning that has been extracted and conserved. As with the advance of an army, all gains from what has been already effected are periodically consolidated, and always with a view to what is to be done next. If we move too rapidly, we get away from the base of supplies -- of accrued meanings -- and the experience is flustered, thin, and confused. If we dawdle too long after having extracted a net value, experience perishes of inanition.

(ART AS EXPERIENCE)

10

An ingraver, painter or writer is in process of completing at every stage of his work. He must at each point retain and sum up what has gone before as a whole and with reference to a whole to come. Otherwise, there is no consistency and no security in his successive acts. The series of doings in the rhythm of experience give variety and movement; they save the work from monotony and useless repetitions. The undergoings are the corresponding elements in the rhythm, and they supply unity; They save the work from the aimlessness of a mere succession of excitations.

ART AS EXPERIENCE

Chapter IV

The Act of Expression.

p. 58. Impulsions are the beginnings of complete experience, because they proceed from need; from a hunger and demand that belongs to the organism as a whole and that can be supplied only by instituting definite relations (active relations, interactions) with the environment.

p. 59. It is the fate of a living creature, however, that it cannot secure what belongs to it without an adventure in a world that as a whole it does not own and to which it has no native title. Whenever the organic impulse exceeds the limit of the body, it finds itself in a strange world and commits in some measure the fortune of the self to external circumstance. It cannot pick just what it wants and automatically leave the indifferent and adverse out of account. If, and as far as, the organism continues to develop, it is helped on as a favoring wind helps the runner. But the impulsion also meets many things on its outbound course that deflect and oppose it. In the process of converting these obstacles and neutral conditions into favoring agencies, the live creature becomes aware of the intent implicit in its impulsion. The self, whether it succeed or fail, does not merely restore itself to its former state. Blind surge has been changed into a purpose; instinctive tendencies are transformed into contrived undertakings. The attitudes of the self are informed with meaning.

p. 60. Mere opposition that completely thwarts, creates irritation and rage. But resistance that calls out thought generates curiosity and solicitous care, and, when it is overcome and utilized, eventuates in elation...

That tension calls out energy and that total lack of opposition does not favor normal development are familiar facts. In a general way, we all recognize that a balance between furthering and retarding conditions is the desirable state of affairs -- provided that the adverse conditions bear intrinsic relation to what they obstruct, instead of being arbitrary and extraneous...

It is this double change which converts an activity into an act of expression. Things in the environment that would otherwise be mere smooth channels are else blind obstructions become means, media. At the same time, things retain from past experience that would grow stale

(ART AS EXPERIENCE)

12

or inert from lack of use, become coefficients in new
adventures and put on a raiment of fresh meaning.

p. 62. As the infant matures, he learns that par-
ticular acts effect different consequences... He thus begins
to be aware of the meaning of what he does... becomes capable
of acts of true expression.

... An activity that was "natural" -- spontaneous and unintended -- is transformed because it is undertaken as a means to a consciously entertained consequence. Such transformation marks every deed of art.

p. 64. Etymologically, an act of expression is a squeezing out, a pressing forth... Nothing is pressed forth except from original raw or natural material...

Speaking of the production of poetry Samuel Alexander remarked that "the artist's work proceeds not from a finished imaginative experience to which the work of art corresponds, but from passionate excitement about the subject matter... The poet's poem is wrung from him by the subject which excites him."

p. 67. In reality, however, poet and novelist have an immense advantage over even an expert psychologist in dealing with an emotion. For the former build up a concrete situation and permit it to evoke emotional response. Instead of a description of an emotion in intellectual and symbolic terms, the artist "does the deed that breeds" the emotion.

p. 70. There is, when one is mastered by an emotion, too much undergoing... and too little active response to permit a balanced relationship to be struck. There is too much "nature" to allow of the development of art. ... Insufficient emotion shows itself in a coldly "correct" product. Excessive emotion obstructs the necessary elaboration and definition of parts...

Reflection, even long and arduous reflection, may have been concerned in the generation of material. But an expression will, nevertheless, manifest spontaneity if that matter has been vitally taken up into a present experience. The inevitable self-movement of a poem or drama is compatible with any amount of prior labor provided the results of that labor emerge in complete fusion with an emotion that is fresh.

1

THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE by R. L. Duffus.

## Chapter 1. Foreword:

p. 1. This is the record of a more or less random pilgrimage undertaken in the hope of finding out if there are signs of an aesthetic revival in America, and if so what forms it is likely to take and what the typical American approach to the arts may be. One method of beginning this exploration seemed to be to inquire into the various ways in which the arts are being taught -- a very broad classification in which it was thought logical to include not only art schools and collegiate art departments, but also art museums and non-commercial theatres.

p. 2. I hesitate to define art, partly because I know I shall invite criticism if I do so, and partly because I do not know how. But in at least one sense it is a medium of communication. It is not only a language through which the artist conveys a message to his fellow men, but also a device by the aid of which the latter reach an understanding among themselves. Those who love Botticelli or Degas are not strangers. But a medium of communication may be considered successful only to the extent that it communicates. If the layman cannot understand the artistic message of his generation something is wrong with his education or with the education of the artist.

p. 4. To predict is not to advocate. For instance, as I shall try to show, there is reason to believe that artistic expression in this as in every highly industrialized country will become less individualistic, more highly organized, more mechanized -- in a sense more Egyptian and less Grecian. The dominant art of the future may be foreshadowed, not in easel paintings, but in automobiles and set-back apartment houses. Personally one might be willing to sacrifice all that may thus be accomplished, sanely, responsibly and scientifically, for the year's work of one mad genius. Thoreau or Gaugin may have been right, or they may not. It does not matter...

p. 5. There are types of art teaching which have not altered in any essential way for more than three hundred years. The whole form and color of man's life on earth has changed during those three centuries, but this teaching has gone complacently on.

(THE AM. RENAISSANCE)

2

p. 7. I shall touch, a little later, on the evolution of the artist. It is enough at the moment to remind the reader that not so long ago tradition set the painter or sculptor apart from the rest of mortality. He was a priest, he understood mysteries, he communed with the stars, for he

"... on honey dew had fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise."

The common run, subsisting on bread and butter, tea and jam, were not supposed to have a stomach for this more ethereal fare. But the artist of late, whether in lines or colors or in words, has begun to play a new role. He strives to be more human than humanity, more earthy than the earth. He bites nails in two. He paints pictures with his own blood and sweat. He has more than a touch of the Whitmanesque about him. Or he tries another tack. He drops handicraft, jumps into the current of the age, hails the machine as his brother.

p. 10. What most men seek in the arts is something that will give significance and coherence to what would otherwise seem an insignificant and incoherent existence. To do this art must not only have lustiness and gusto, but it must be the record of a recognizable experience.

## Chapter 1

p. 22. Norton had fairly precise ideas as to what he wanted to do. He had fairly precise ideas about everything, even to the proper way of tying up parcels. And he put his ideas about his teaching into words. He wanted, as he told Ruskin, to inspire the youth of Harvard "with love of things that make life beautiful and generous... I have it as much at heart to make them understand that the same principles underlie all forms of human expression, -- and that there cannot be good poetry, or good painting or sculpture, or architecture, unless men have something to express which is the result of long training of soul and sense in the ways of high living and true thought."

(THE AM. RENAISSANCE)

3

p. 282. ...

But the very nature of the dramatic arts demands a breadth of view and a cooperativeness that are not essential in most other fields of aesthetic expression. The successful director must be able to instill group consciousness into a miscellaneous assemblage of individuals, often mutually jealous and suspicious. The successful playwright must remember that his words are to be strained through other personalities. He must write, in a sense, cooperatively.

p. 318...

Teachers of the arts realize more and more that their work is not half done if they do not enable their students to fit into an actual, industrial, commercial world.