The Artist's Solution To The World Problem

The Artist's

Solution to the World Problem

BY C. JINARAJADASA, M.A., (Cantab)

In spite of every religion and every philosophy that exists, mankind will never give up asking certain questions concerning the origin of things. In far-off days in India, men asked: "At whose behest doth mind light on its perch? At whose command doth life, the first, proceed?" (Kena Upanishad). In spite of the answers given by the Upanishads, we still ask the same questions.

Till lately, in the history of civilisation, two types of answers are familiar to us; they are the solutions offered by religion and philosophy. The answer of religion is either that all life is the action of a Personal God, a Creator, or that it is the manifestation of an Impersonal Principle, an Absolute; the answer of philosophy is largely to show that in man himself is the solution.

With the rise of modern science, another answer is offered to us which, summarised briefly, is that all life is the result of a mechanical process due to forces inherent in the composition of matter itself. ‘Evolution’ is the word which sums up the solution of science to the world problem, just as religion sums it up in the word ‘God’ or philosophy in ‘Unity’.

There is yet another solution to the world problem, to which so far little attention has been paid. It is that given by Art. Scarcely any seeker for truth looks to Art as having solutions to his puzzles, for mankind mostly looks upon Art, the cult of Beauty, as merely the embellishment of activities, the result of refinement and sensitiveness to civilisation. That Art may have a solution to the world problem equal in rank or value to that of religion, philosophy or science, is perhaps a novel theory.

But it is that theory which I wish to propound, though I cannot expound it here at any very great length. Indeed, somewhat as a pioneer, I have to feel my way far more by intuition than by clear mental sight; and hence there will necessarily be many gaps in my exposition.

Let us start with an example, that of a rainbow. Suppose one were to ask, "What is a rainbow?", we shall certainly have the scientific explanation, that it is an effect due to the refraction of light, as that light is broken up by prisms made by falling rain-drops. That explanation is true. But it is only one explanation. But a second explanation, not less true, is that of Art: "A rainbow is an exquisite thing of beauty." The two truths do not contradict; nor do they supplement each other, for they move on two different planes. But what will be the effect of a rainbow on a sorrowful man or woman who sees one? It will be to suggest a "way out", for however brief a time, from the prison-house of grief, by offering pictures to the mind, or tendernesses and realisations to the intuition. Does not an artistic reaction to the beauty of a rainbow contain a solution to one part of the world problem?

I have before me as I write a small picture by Manishi Dey, the size of a postcard, of a Madras jutka and pony. The moment I saw it, I "fell in love" with it, and purchased it. My heart went out to the pony, and every time I look at him I feel that he is the archetype of all the suffering jutka ponies of Madras. Certainly he is bony, and depressed; but the artist has made him near to my heart. I know that that picture whispers to me one tiny part of the great answer which I am seeking. Opposite to me on a bracket on a wall are two brass lotahs picked up for a few rupees the other day in Calcutta, and a tiny earthenware cup (its worth is one-twelfth of an anna) found in Benares some years ago, and now mounted in a glass case; I know they too whisper some part of the great solution. My shelves are full of books describing this or that solution to the great problem; but so do my artist, my brassware maker, and my potter. For where Art is, there too is something of a great solution.

Who can describe what type of solution is offered by a great landscape? It cannot be stated in words; yet a solution is there. We cannot describe in words the formula for an algebraical equation; the formula is a sequence of symbols, and yet to the mathematician the sequence gives an illumination, a solution. I know by experience that the following lines are true, for they describe the way that a landscape, or the painting of one by a great painter, affects me.

Once,

On looking from a window on a land

That lay in silence underneath the sun–

A land of broad green meadows, through which poured

Two rivers, slowly widening to the sea–

Thus as I looked, I know not how or whence,

Was borne to my hush'd expectant soul

That thought, late learned by anxious-witted man,

The infinite patience of the Eternal Mind.

What a different type of a solution to the riddle of life is offered by a great piece of architecture, for instance, that of the Taj and its attendant mosques and gardens. It is as if some great Divine Thought had descended to earth and become materialised in marble, with an aura of green trees and sunlit water. So too is the effect of Borobudur in Java.

It is when we come to music, that the solution given by Art to the great problem is profoundest and most lasting. Thus speaks Adelaide Anne Procter in her Lost Chord:

I know not what I was playing,
Or what I was dreaming then;
But I struck one chord of music
Like the sound of a great Amen.
It quieted pain and sorrow,
Like love overcoming strife;
It seemed the harmonious echo
From our discordant life.
It linked all perplexed meanings
Into one perfect peace,
And trembled away into silence
As if it were loth to cease.

That one single chord of ten notes should link "all perplexed meanings into one perfect peace"–does not that prove that Art has a solution to the great problems? It is only when we come to the ‘abstract’ music of the West–its sonatas and symphonioes–that we find the majestic power of music, especially in this particular aspect which I am considering of Art as offering solutions. Every sonata and symphony of Beethoven–particularly Beethoven–has to me a solution. What that is I cannot state in words. It is the same with every musician's composition.

Consider the solution to the problem whither death leads offered in the three great "funeral marches" of Beethoven, Chopin, and Wagner. They tell us of Something, greater, nobler, more majestic than anything we know in our human experiences, more poignant in sorrow, more radiant with hope, more certain than life itself. I think the Upanishad gives a faint realisation whither great music leads. "What no word can reveal, what revealeth the word, that know thou as Brahman indeed, not this which they worship below." Of all the three funeral marches, it is Wagner's that moves me most. It describes the life history of Siegfried–the love of his father and mother, his heroic youth, the curse on all three, his glory and his failure, the strange karma of it all–by the interblending of musical ‘motives,’ in a slow march so awe-inspiring and majestic, that one feels that the composer is uttering truth, describing not only why an earthly hero must cease to be but also why a whole cosmos must come to its cessation.

All who know what Western music at its greatest can be feel immediately that it was a far-reaching truth which Browning uttered when he said:

Sorrow is hard to bear and doubt is slow to clear,
Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe;
But God has a few of us, whom He whispers in the ear;
The rest may reason, and welcome; ’tis we musicians know.

So Art too has its solution. The poet, the sculptor, the painter, the architect, the musician gets a flash of that solution, and states it adequately or inadequately in his creation. Not less a great dancer also. But as to the dance, do we not know in India that Shiva is ever dancing a cosmic dance, and that the flow of His rhythm is in the clouds as they fly and in the branches as they wave? Let us certainly be thankful to the saint, the philosopher and the scientist for showing us ‘the Way’; but not less thankful to the artist that he too is showing us that Way, even if his own feet are not yet treading it.