White Hyacinths to Feed the Soul

White Hyacinths to Feed the Soul I .F I ihad two loaves, I would sell one of them and buy white hyacinths to feed my soul." In these lines is expressed indi- rectly the great truth that our souls need nourishing quite as much as our physical beings. Too frequent- ly we ,forget this, and no matter how many loaves we have we let the soul starve. What are these white hyacinths of which the writer speaks? A teacher of a first grade once hung up in her school room a copy of a beautiful painting — "The Song of the Lark." She told her pupils to look at it for a few mo- ments and then to tell her what it made them think of, or how it made .them feel. The children responded with a variety of com- ments. One little boy whose face seemed fairly to glow with respon- siveness to the beauty in the picture said: "Why — it — it makes me forget I had to carry in wood." Recently at devotional exercises at the Brigham Young University, when President George H. Brim- hall arose to give one of his cele- brated four-minute addresses, he exclaimed : "I am not the same man I was before I heard the beautiful music we have just listened to. I am a different man; I am a better man. That music added something to me that was not of me before." The child and the man each had fed his soul on beauty. In the one case, beauty of color and form; in the other, beauty of sound. And so we might define these white hyacinths that feed the soul as those things which satisfy the aesthetic, the spiritual side of our natures: musk, painting, literature — the products of the fine arts. Browning, who might have been a master in three arts, tells us in one of his poems that the mission of the artist is to interpret the beauty in the world in such a way that we who are riot artists can see it and be fed by it. He says that we've seen the world, the beauty and the wonder By ELSIE C. CARROLL and the power; the shapes of things, their colors, lights and shades; their changes, and sur- prises— but we are made so that "we love first, when we see them painted, things we have passed per- haps a hundred times, nor cared to see. * * * Art was given for that." He goes on to say that God uses us to help each other so — "lending our minds out." Artists, then, because they see these beauties which we who are not artists cannot see until they have been pointed out to us, have as their mission the interpretation of beauty in a way that we]can as- similate it. One of the mediums of the in- terpretation of beauty is words. — One poet has expressed her appre- ciation of the medium of her art in these lines: j "God wove a web of loveliness. Of clouds and stars and birds, But made not anything at all As beautiful as words." It is of the art of literature that I wish to speak — of what literature can do for us — of some of the ways it can feed our souls. Literature has been defined by someone as including all of those writings that express for us ;what we consciously or unconsciously feel the need of saying but cannot say. In other words, just as the painter with his colors shows us beauties we haven't been able to see before, so the writer reveals for us beauties we have not been able to express. T HERE are many things that literature can do for us. One writer has pointed out five of the outstanding benefits to be derived from the study of lit- erature, two of which I wish to dwell upon in particular. He shows how literature keeps before us the vision of the ideal. The impor- tance of this value can hardly- be over - emphasized. Everything worthwhile in life is built upon ideals, and literature has been called a storehouse of ideals. "He who builds no castles in the air," sings the poet, "builds no castles anywhere." The great Danish sculptor, Thorwaldson, realized the importance of keeping before us a vision of the ideal to such a degree that he wept over the perfection of his statue of Christ, explaining to his friends that he wept because his genius must be decaying since the statue absolutely satisfied him. He ex- plained that always before his ideal was far beyond what he could execute, and that because this was no longer true he could never create a great work of art again. Browning expresses the impor- tance of this vision of the ideal when he says: "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?" And again in these lines: "What hand and brain went over paired? What heart alike conceived and dared? What act proved all its thought had been? What will but felt the fleshly screen?" Literature holds up before us the ideals of the past and the present. Furthermore, each piece of great literature itself, grows out of a great ideal. Another of these five values is that literature can give us a mastery of our own language. When we read the beautiful things that have been woven out of words— —rightly chosen and arranged, we even un- consciously absorb some of that beauty of expression. We become like that with which we associate in more ways than one. If we are constantly thrown with persons who use slang, we may at first be shocked, but in time we will find ourselves using slang ex- pressions. Just so if 'we are con- tinuously reading great and beau- tiful literature, we not only are unconsciously becoir|ing familiar with the great ideals of the liter- ature, and becoming more like them, just as Ernest in "The Great Stone Face," unconsciously took on the characteristics which the face on the mountain symbolized, but we are also assimilating a knowledge of words and their beauty of arrangement. With ..

The Improvement Era for October , 1930 813 little conscious effort we could in- deed master our language through our contacts with literature. There are in our language over a hundred thousand words. The average person uses about three thousand of them; Milton used eight thou- sand and Shakespeare many times the average. A THIRD value of literature lies in its power to restore the past and broaden our under- standing of human nature. His- tory may teach us what people did, but literature tells ushow they felt about it. By way of literature we can transport ourselves to any age or any country; we can associate in the most intimate way with the finest and noblest of characters. And so, vicariously, we can broad- en and enrich our experiences to a limitless degree. There is no need of anyone ever being lonely, or of needing to associate 'with in- ferior personalities with the my- riads of great .characters in liter- ature ready to give companionship, courage and inspiration upon the mere opening of books. The last two values, and those I wish to amplify, are literature as an outlet, and literature as a glori- fication of the commonplace. Just in what way is literature an outlet? How does it help us ex- press what we could not express without it? When you have been reading something especially fine, haven't you often exclaimed to yourself or others: "I have felt just that way myself but couldn't express it." The poet has expressed it for you, and when you thrill and find your- self being lifted above your usual level as you read it, you are in re- ality expressing it yourself- — your soul is being fed as you read just as the writer's was while he wrote. Bi ►URNS was idolized by his countrymen, because he ex- pressed what they felt but knew not how to express. They would read his poems and laugh and cry. for through their reading they were finding an outlet for their own emotions. On one occasion a carriage in which Longfellow was riding was suddenly halted and the door opened. The poet was sur- prised and somewhat alarmed when he discovered himself sur- rounded by a group of coal-be- grimed miners. He thought he was going to be robbed. However, one of the men told him that they had heard he was going to pass there at that time and that they had gained permission to come out of the .mine and see him. "We just want to shake your hand," the miner concluded. "We just wanted to say 'God bless the man who wrote 'The Psalm of Life.' " Lincoln's Gettysburg speech in two minutes went straight to the central idea of a great occasion, and became a literary masterpiece, be- cause it spoke for a people who needed a spokesman and as one commentator says: "It put into fitting words the dumb emotions that filled every heart of his au- dience." . , ,,, We must find ourselves in what we read; then the reading will serve as a medium for us. Expression is need of us all. It helps us in times of sorrow as well as in times, of joy. Scotts' "Home They Brought her Warrior Dead," in its refrain, "She must weep, or she will die," reveals this need of expression — or outlet. Shakespeare says: "Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak, whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break." Wordsworth has the same thought in these lines: "To me alone there came a thought of grief. A timely utterance gave that thought re- lief And I again was strong." Emerson says, "All men live by truth and stand in need of expres- sion. The man is only half him- self; the other half is expression." A great picture, or piece of mu- sic, or poem satisfies first a want of the artist's soul, and if this is a national or a universal want the production of the artist becomes a national or a universal expres- sion. Is not "The Star Spangled Banner" as much our expression of patriotism as it was Francis Scott Keys? Is not "Home Sweet Home" an outlet of our devotion to a uni- versal ideal, just as it was an outlet for the love of John Howard Payne? Perhaps some iiius-' trations as to how literature is an outlet of our feelings, an unlock- ing and expansion of our person- alities may help. When we feel discouraged over handicaps and disappointments and are groping for courage in our need, Milton's sonnet on his blindness gives* us a means of growth: :^; "When I consider how my life is spent Ere half my days in this dark world and wide And that one talent which Were death to hide • ! Lodged in me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and pre- sent my true account Lest he returning chide; " 'Doth God exact day-labor, light der nied?' I fondly ask. But Patience to prevent That murmur, soon replies, 'God doth not need Either man's work or his own gifts.: Who •'•• i best • •...,. Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state Is kingly; thousands , at his bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest ; They also serve who only stand and . .wait." Again, we may feel the intensity of love aching for an expression of which we have not the power. We need only to turn to Burns, or Browning, or Mrs. Browning to find an outlet. Surely Mrs. Browning has said it for us in her sonnets — the eighteenth for ex- ample : "How do I love thee? Let me count the way. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of every day's Most quiet need, of sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose, With my lost saints — I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life! and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death." JTERHAPS the need of keeping an ideal before us has possession of us and strives in vain for expression. Then will we turn to Longfellow's "Excelsior," or to Bryant's "The Chambered Nautil- us" with its: "Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul. As thy swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last. Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,. Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!"