Perfection in Imperfection

“I believe it is a result of the experience of all artists, that it is the easiest thing in the world to give a certain degree of depth and transparency to water; but that it is next thing to impossible, to give a full impression of surface. If no reflection be given—a ripple being supposed—the water looks like lead: if reflection be given, it in nine cases out of ten looks morbidly clear and deep, so that we always go down into it, even when the artist most wishes us to glide over it.” Chapter III of Water, As Painter by Turner


This piece captures the surface of water so accurately it is almost as if I am there instead of looking at a painting. I don’t feel the water is “morbidly clear and deep”, but it does allow the viewer’s eyes to glide over it. I think the landscape surrounding the water and the clouds in the sky all help even this out and sort of draw the viewer’s attention to the center of the painting.

“We invariably, under ordinary circumstances, use the surface focus; and, in consequence, receive nothing more than a vague and confused impression of the reflected colors and lines, however clearly, calmly, and vigorously all may be defined underneath, if we choose to look for them. We do not look for them, but glide along over the surface, catching only playing light and capricious color for evidence of reflection, except where we come to images of objects close to the surface, which the surface focus is of course adapted to receive; and these we see clearly, as of the weeds on the shore, or of sticks rising out of the water, etc.”

I think this painting shows exactly what was written in this section. When looking at reflections in water directly it is as if you are almost staring at the tree or the sky itself. Especially if the water is calm it acts as a mirror of some sorts. However, if you choose not to focus on the water directly and put your sights on some point behind it like in this painting in which the artist draws the view to the center point of the landscape where the sky and earth meet, then your eyes don’t capture the reflection of the water in its entirety. The reflections in the water become obscured.

“We cannot tell when we look at them and for them, what they mean. They have all character, and are evidently reflections of something definite and determined; but yet they are all uncertain and inexplicable; playing color and palpitating shade, which, though we recognize in an instant for images of something, and feel that the water is bright, and lovely, and calm, we cannot penetrate nor interpret: we are not allowed to go down to them, and we repose, as we should in nature, upon the lustre of the level surface. It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art here, as in all other cases, consists.”

The whole concept of “saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly” creates this “perfection of art” that is really honest. The painting above along with these statements shows how heavily the artists and the school were influenced by Romanticism. The perfection of the painting is so intense it looks almost like a picture taken with a camera and shows the artist was trying to simply paint the “truth” and what was right in front of them at the time. The whole idea of these imperfect reflections amongst the “perfect” background is so real and honest. It makes the painting something that is both beautiful and simple all at once.

A Simple Piece of Crape

“Such was the effect of this simple piece of crape, that more than one woman of delicate nerves was forced to leave the meeting-house. Yet perhaps the pale-faced congregation was almost as fearful a sight to the minister, as his black veil to them.”
I enjoyed the idea that by simply wearing a veil the minister stirred up all these different emotions from his neighbors. He made the veil into a great mystery and from reading the story it was obviously not his intention to cause a scene or simply cause drama. He was openly doing what everyone else was doing more privately. He was “masking his sins” so to speak. Simply looking within yourself, especially into that dark part of yourself that you hide from the world has a tremendous amount to do with dark romanticism. I think that the people were so disturbed by this because it suddenly made sin visible whereas before it was tucked away in the back of your mind.

Another aspect of dark romanticism that I noticed was (obviously) death. The scenery alone screams dark romanticism when death is considered. When Hawthorne writes, “Nearly all his parishioners, who were of mature age when he was settled, had been borne away by many a funeral: he had one congregation in the church, and a more crowded one in the churchyard; and having wrought so late into the evening, and done his work so well, it was now good Father Hooper's turn to rest.” I can’t help, but picture an enormous crowded graveyard.

I heard from my poetry class that Edgar Allen Poe had said the best subject to write about was the death of a beautiful woman. I read online that when Poe read this story he believed that the veil was worn after the death of the woman in the beginning because the minister secretly had an affair with her; hence the whole vision of them walking hand in hand. Although I’m not too sure if I agree with this or not it does put a darker twist on the story.

I know that if Julie came to class suddenly wearing a veil for the rest of the semester, I might be a little freaked out. I would want to know why. It would bother me immensely.

Circles

I’m going to agree with the thought that this epigraph comments or elucidates the meaning of the text. The idea that Nature centres into balls is cohesive to Emerson’s entire text, it isn’t simply describing the title. Not only is nature made up of these spheres or “circles” as the title describes, but man thinking is also made up this way. The idea that man as well as nature has this outward circling, ripple effect is described in the text. Every thought for which a man takes action has a reaction or another sphere just as nature has several indefinable spheres. “The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles and that without end the extent to which this generation of circles, wheel without wheel, will go, depends on the force or truth of the individual soul.”
The next line discusses her proud ephemerals or nature’s short lived organisms. I believe this is describing the part of the text where he basically says nothing is permanent. “There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees.”
Fast to surface and outside scan the profile of the sphere. Knew they what that signified. With every action we are causing unpredictable outcomes. Nature and men are creating new beginnings (A new genesis were here). It is implying what comes from the end of the text, “The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our sempiternal memory, and to do something without knowing how or why; in short, to draw a new circle.” A new genesis is his way of saying to draw a new circle. The epigraph is describing what is to come from the text. It is giving little hints to what the text actually means.