Our subject for next week grew naturally out of this week’s talk. I said: “As a drop of water can be a sphere as perfect as the suns and planets, so each smallest thing, if it be perfect in itself, typifies the universe. You must realize that in an infinite universe there is really no such thing as size.”
“There is only comparative size,” said Virginia.
“Yes,” I answered; “and it is with this idea in mind that I wish to consider beauty, and the definite separate creation. I shall want to know next week what each of you means by beauty, or thinks beautiful.”
Marian—thinking of the personal side immediately—said: “I think it’s because most people are homely, that we think some beautiful.”
We were amused at that. I said I did not mean personal beauty in particular. Then they asked, did I mean artistic beauty? I meant beauty in anything. I would want to know what made certain things seem beautiful to us.
Virginia said: “I think there is nothing so beautiful as taking a deep, deep breath. That brings beautiful thoughts into my head, and makes everything right.”
This remark did not seem pertinent to any of us. Virginia insisted, too, that she thought a man was an artist, even if he could not express himself; that to have artistic thoughts made one an artist. I answered, it might be so; work itself was not good art unless it was a good expression, no matter what the artist might be. Virginia explained: “I mean an artist is more interesting than his work, sometimes.”
Florence said: “A beautiful thing—in art—is a complete thing, complete and perfect in itself.”
“I don’t think so,” answered Virginia. “If you were to sketch a tree—without finishing it at all—and that sketch were your whole idea of the tree as you saw it, then it would be no sketch, but a finished picture. A thing is a sketch until you have altogether expressed your idea. But then, no matter how sketchy it may look, it is finished.”
I had to interpret Florence to Virginia. I said: “Florence did not mean completeness in the sense of exactness. She meant that the tree, no matter how indicated, must seem to us so complete, in a world of its own, as to leave nothing lacking or intruding; that everything in the picture is there in relation to the tree, and the whole makes a perfect little world. If there were suggestions of other things which had nothing to do with the tree, such as there always are in life, it would not be a perfect picture. You said it must be a complete expression of the artist’s thought. That is just the completeness Florence means. It must be a complete, self-sufficient harmonious vision of a tree. And harmony means wholeness, doesn’t it?”
