The Relationship of Poetry and Art to Education

The Relationship of Poetry and Art to Education

By Alfred Lambourne

The subject upon which we have been asked to write, "The Relationship of Poetry and Art to Education," appears to be, at first thought, a simple one, but becomes more complex upon consideration. What is the place of poetry and art in education? That, perhaps, had been the better mode of asking the question. For, let us consider: both poetry and art are a part of education. Yet, if we wish to keep to the original subject, the relationship is that of sister or brother, according as we may symbolize the sex of the sciences and the arts, to those other sciences and arts which, combined, are education. We will not cavil upon definitions. In our question, poetry is the skilled and rythmical placing of words to conduce both greatest beauty and power of expression; and, by art we mean the achievements of the painter, the sculptor and the architect. The labors of the poet and the artist, then, what part do they accomplish, separately or in the use of the educator, in the education of the individual or of the masses, and in shaping the destinies of the state, the nation? In these few paragraphs it is our intention to refer to two distinct teachers, the individual, and the great — educator Nature. Nature, the true teacher of the poet and the artist, the fountain of inspiration at which all may drink! Poetry and art? The poetry of nature and the art of man! There is a poetry of nature that appeals even to the savage as well as to the most cultured races of mankind. It is the poetry that is felt in the millions of hearts, it inspires the exquisite words, now of the plowman of Ayr, the humble dweller in Grasmere Vale, the lordly hall of Newstead, he who dwelt in a cottage at Stratford-on-Avon, and the one who was a blind beggar on the Isle of Chios in the Aegean sea, we mean a Burns, a Wordsworth, a Byron, a Shakespeare and a Homer; and a poetry that inspired the art of a Constable or a Turner. Yes, of a Titian, a Raffaello, or a Michael Angelo; or, farther away from us, the work of an Appelles, a Zeuxis or a Phidias. We mean the poetry of nature which includes the life of man, and, the — other which is developed from within that which goes to the highest education, to the development of the highest civilization. "The arts which flourish," says Francis Bacon, the great

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English philosopher and essayist, "when virtue is in the ascendant, are military; when virtue is in state, are liberal, and when virtue is in decline, are voluptuous." But the art of the poet flourishes in all three stages of the state, and either guides or reflects them. Queen Elizabeth, and the supreme dramatist were contemporary; and in art, did not Phidias and Pericles flourish at the same period, as did Apelles and Alexander? But there were both poets and artists who acted their parts as educators, in keeping with their times in all nations, ancient and modern. Read the poets, look upon the works of the artists of any country, and we learn thereby not only their history, but also their height of education and civilization. "Give me the writing of the nation's songs, and I care not who makes its laws!" The exultation of the poet was justified. And yet, poetry may be said to work in harmony with law, in the highest of education. Perhaps it is not to make too far a claim, that it was the poetry, the songs, the word of mouth, of the skalds and bards that, in the morning twilight of each nation, wrote its name the brightest in civilization, heralded the splendors of its coming day. And were not the great Grecian and Roman poets the educators of their time? We will go farther, the words poet and prophet are svnonvms. In them we have the poet-teachers, the prophets of Holy Writ. The part which is acted by the poet, his place in the scheme of human advancement, is a dual one. He, more than any other is a product and reflex of his time, and yet he is a teacher — an effect and yet a cause. The Catholic Dante, and the Puritan Milton most certainly were the results of two intense and extended theological movements in their day; and yet, in their famous poems, "The Divine Comedy" of Dante, and the "Paradise Lost" and the "Paradise Regained" of Milton, we are shown how they became the two great religious teachers, not only of their respective faiths, to the churches that created them as it were, but also teachers and refiners to the world. The labors of the poets tend to purify, make more beautiful, to spiritualize the material conceptions of primitive faith. Thus they become the teachers of the most exalted ideals; the seers of perfections that have been, the perfections that are, and the perfections that are to come. That is, the true poet perceives and teaches the plrysical beauty bv which he is surrounded, and he comprehends the intellectual, and feels the spiritual and his highest teachings are of these. The masters of phrenology have divided the human brain into groups —the perceptive, the reflective, the animal, or selfish, etc. That group of organs which goes to the making of

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poets and artists is styled the self-perfecting group, among which are ideality and sublimity, and the group, as its name implies, is secondary in spiritual uplift only to the religious group, and refines and gives grandeur even to that group, as it also does to all of the others of the brain. Our inference is obvious. The true poet is among the greatest of teachers. Without the aid of the poet, without his inspiration, the education of the world were dull and commonplace, devoid of the sweetest and most' ennobling attribute of spiritual and physical perception. The merely intellectual cannot reach the topmost heights, the poetic imagination is also necessary. Was there a greater poet than Christ? His parables are also poems. They have taken an exalted part in the education of mankind. Poetry is a most insistent teacher. It will not be gainsaid. The poem impresses itself upon the mind. It is remembered when the prose is not assimilated, or when forgotten. Take, for instance, the poetry and prose in the work of Walter Scott. Both the poems and the novels of the famous writer abound in vivid descriptions of natural scenery. Thev are found in the romantic poems, "Lay of the Last Minstrel," "Marmion," and "The Lady of the Lake." But there are also prose descriptions in the "Waverleys." Yet who can repeat the famous paragraphs describing the oak forest which opens the novel of "Ivanhoe," or those of the storm on the coast in the "Antiouarv," or those it pictures in Loch Lomond, in "Rob Roy"? The descriptions in verse, however, of Melrose Abbey, Norman Castle, and of Ellen's Isle on Loch Katrine, are repeated by thousands of students and numberless admirers of the Scottish bard. The inference, again, is not to be missed. And one might cite endless modern instances. Even in these busy days, this age of scientific and mechanical progress, the words of the poet sink into the heart and echo in the brain, and poetry becomes a might in education. Tell us, is there not one popular poem that stands out as a great educator? One poem that has affected the thought and lives of millions of souls? We mean Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Church -yard." No! Not any age of war, of finance, of electricity, of iron, of steel or concrete, can eliminlae the poet as an educator, or eliminate poetry from education. Poetry is elemental, the poetic feeling has a fixed place in nature and in the human being. It is found in primitive man as well as in the most civilized and intellectual modern. It is of the highest importance in education. To come to the question of art: Art, has not the chance of reaching the many that poetry has. There — are thousands nay, tens or even hundreds of thousands of homes in which

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there is a well-selected library of books, giving a perfect conception of the life-work of the most eminent authors of all ages, of all countries, in which there may not be a single work of art that would give an adequate conception of even one great artist of even the present age. To get the same knowledge of art, it would be necessary for the possessor of such a library — to visit the art centers the many galleries of France, England, Italy, and Germany; and even then, under ordinary circumstances, the knowledge of art obtained by him would be but fragmentary, compared with the lasting impressions made by the calm and deliberate reading of authors year after year at home. Early impressions influence us through life, and here the poet and the artist may be said to stand equal. Youth is the age of poetical impressions, but the young are also fond of pictures. The means to gratify both passions are generally near at hand, though not in equal proportions. The book of poetry is easily reached; the good work of art not so much so. It naturally follows that literature is better understood by the young than is art, that the poet is nearer to the hearts of the people than is the artist. In the seclusion of the library, or by the winter fireside, we can commune with the spirit of the poet, while the very nature of the work done by the artist debars us from him.

Hence, art cannot become so great a teacher as poetry. We mean in the education of the masses. This is true of the work of the educator in the school, the academy, or the college. Therefore, the relationship of art to education is not so close as is the relationship of poetry to education. The educator in the school, or the university, is generally handicapped by the necessity of teaching the pupil in the realms — of art from translations engravings, or photographs, of the work of art, whose lesson she wishes to convey, or whose mastery he wishes to point out. We are referring now, of course, to the American teacher, and in the smaller cities. The reader's pardon is asked for our treating our subject is free a manner: so " The Relationship of Poetry and Art to Education;" we wander somewhat from the letter of the law, but hope to be with it in spirit. The poet and the artist do their work, which yet is to become universal in its application, in a sort of aloofness. The actual work is done more or less in solitude, in isolation. They educate, not like the professional educator, in contact with those whom they instruct, but the better the work, the farther away they are from the student in person, yet that work lends itself to the labor of the academic educator. Let us think of Thomas Hood upon his sick-bed; Robert Burns, in the savage pride of his poverty; of Dante, in his exile; Tasso, in prison, and Milton, in his seclusion of blindness. These men were educators. The poet and the artist take their place as educators of the educators. The recluse, J. M. W. Turner, the world's greatest landscape painter, what an educator was he; what hitherto uncomprehended beauties did he not point out, from his dingy, unvisited home in Chelsea, in the physical world What educators were the !

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artists upon the subject of the divine beauty of the human body! x Titian, Correggio, Veronese! Sometimes the artist, as well as the poet, becomes a moralist, or even a preacher, as well as an educator. Then, what a great educator was Albrecht Durer! What a great educator was Holbein who painted the wonderful series of pictures, "The Dance of Death." The educators in the academies, the colleges, and universities, the teachers of algebra, chemistry, geology, botany, mineralogy, geometry, — astronomy of all the sciences, they are cognizant of the necessity of knowledge of poetry and art to complete the circle of human comprehension. The theology that omits poetry and art — beauty, is at fault. Beauty is the highest expression of the Divine. It is the dream of the poet and the artist, the dream which, in his labor, he endeavors to make a reality. He is the educator who desires to educate all humanity to the perception of beauty. Remove the perception of beauty from the human being, and we have the cynic, the dullard or the brute. The relationship of poetry and art to education, then, is to complete, in combination with religion, the education of the educators! From its poetry and its art the history of a nation may be conceived. Not the sequence of events, the names of chiefs, or kings or battles, this event or that, but the history of ideals, the heart of the nation, which, after all, is the true history. The development of the Ideals of Europe is as important to know as the "Intellectual Development of Europe." And then we shall meet as educators, the artist and the poet. In the sherds of pottery, from a cliff-dwelling, we shall trace the artist as educator, as well as in the galleries of Florence, Paris, or Rome, and the primitive poet was an educator of the heart and soul, as well as the most famous one of our day. Education! What is Education? A correlation of emotions and experiences, we take it, as well as a knowledge of knowledge. The artist and the poet deal in these things which cannot be tabulated or classified. They put into a knowledge of facts, the breath of life. The poet gives to airy writings a local habitation and a name, but he also educates deep into the soul. "Art covers the earth with palaces, carves the statue, covers the wall with glorious paintings, and keeps before our eyes the features of beloved ones gone." The artist and the poet educate while they make us feel. Over the gulf of the centuries comes to us the words of the psalmist, the Song of Sonajs, and the majestic lines of Homer! But the living artist still educates to make us see the beauteous wonders of creation and the poet still enters the soul ;

of the shepherd upon the hills, the plowman in the vales. The beauties of poetry and art, like those of nature, renew themselves

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through the ages. Their creation by the poet and the artist, their comprehension by the people, is the standard of their education. It is not in the admiration alone of the poetry and art of the past, that even the poetic and artistic knowledge of man consists, it is in the education, the directing of the lmilg fire. To make perfect with beauty the circle of human knowledge, is the relationship of poetry and art to education.

The Sea Gull

Here's to the Sea Gull, that very plain bird. ... ^ • ;+*

For the story told, my heart has stirred. I was told of "the days of forty-eight"

When the locusts came that the Sea Culls ate, When the Pioneer was grieving so At the fate he feared, with his head hung low, When the loyal wife, with many a care, Found comfort in her silent prayer.

The locusts moving towards the grain, The Pioneer thought, my work is vain; The praying wife, in her belief, Felt they would have a sure relief. Then the Sea Gulls 'rose from the Great Salt Lake, Flew to the east their fast to break; The swarms of locusts, that the Pioneers feared, Soon from the lands had disappeared.

Is it any wonder, that the Pioneers say, "The Sea Gulls saved, for us, the day"? The monument, to the Sea Gull raised, j

Shows how the Pioneer has praised. How gratitude lived in his heart, Exemplified in this work of art. So again, we toast, to a bird thought dull The "Mormon's" friend, a plain Sea Gull. San Francisco, Cal. W. W. Cooley !

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