Spontaneous Activity in Education by Maria Montessori (best historical biographies txt) 📕

The same thing holds good in art. The artist "imagines" his figure; he does not copy it, he "creates" it. But this creation is in fact the fruit of the mind which is rooted in the observation of reality. The painter and the sculptor are, par excellence, types of visual susceptibility to the forms and colors of their environment, capable of perceiving its harmonies and contrasts; and it is by refining his powers of observation that the artist finally perfects himself and succeeds in creating a masterpiece. The immortal art of Greece was above all an art based on observation; the scanty clothing which was the fashion of his day enabled the Greek artist to contemplate the human form freely; and the exquisite sensibility of his eye enabled him to distinguish the beautiful body from that which lacked harmony, until under the impulse of genius, he was able to create the ideal figure, conceived by the fusion of individual beauties chosen from details in the sensorial storehouse of the mind. The artist, when he creates certainly does not compose by putting together the parts which are to form the whole as in a mosaic; in the ardor of inspiration he sees the complete new figure, born of his genius; but details he has accumulated have served to nourish it, as the blood nourishes the new man in the bosom of his mother.

Raphael continually visited the Trastevere, a popular quarter where the most beautiful women in Rome were to be found, in order to seek the type of a Madonna. It was here he became acquainted with the Fornarina and his models. But when he painted the Madonna he reproduced "the image of his soul." We are told that Michelangelo would spend entire evenings gazing into space; and when they asked him at what he was gazing, he replied: "I see a dome." It was after this form, so marvelously created within him, that the famous cupola of St. Peter's in Rome was fashioned. But it could never have been born, even in the mind of Michelangelo, if his architectural studies had not prepared the material for it.

No genius has ever been able to create the absolutely new. We have only to think of certain forms much used in art, and heavy and grotesque as the human fancy which is incapable of rising above the earth. It seems to me amazing that the figure of the winged angel should still persist, and that no artist should have yet improved upon it. To represent a being more diaphanous than man, and without corporeal weight, we have robust beings whose backs are furnished with colossal wings covered with heavy feathers. Strange indeed is this fusion in a single creature of such incompatible natural features as hair and feathers, and this attribution to a human being of six limbs—arms, legs and wings, as to an insect. This "strange conception" continues to be so materialized, not certainly as an artistic idea, but as the result of poverty of language. Indeed, we talk of angels "flying" because our language is human and earthly, and we cannot imagine the attributes of angels. Few indeed are the artists who in pictures of the Annunciation represent the Angel as a luminous, delicate, and evanescent figure.

The more perfect the approximation to truth, the more perfect is art.

When, for instance, in a drawing-room, some one pays us a compliment, if this is founded upon one of our real qualities, and touches it closely, we feel legitimate satisfaction, because what has been said is relevant, and we may conclude that the person has observed us and feels a sincere admiration for us. We accordingly think of such a person: He is subtle and intellectual; and we feel disposed to reciprocate his friendliness. But if the compliment praises us for qualities we do not possess, or distorts or exaggerates our true attributes, we think with disgust: What a coarse creature! and feel even more coldly to him than before.

Dante's sublime sonnet must certainly have touched the heart of Beatrice profoundly:

My lady looks so gentle and so pure
When yielding salutation by the way,
That the tongue trembles and has nought to say,
And the eyes, which fain would see, may not endure.
And still, amid the praise she hears secure,
She walks with humbleness for her array;
Seeming a creature sent from Heaven, to stay
On earth, and show a miracle made sure.
She is so pleasant in the eyes of men
That through the sight the inmost heart doth gain
A sweetness which needs proof to know it by;
And from between her lips there seems to move
A soothing essence that is full of love,
Saying for ever to the spirit: "Sigh!"
(Rossetti's translation, Dante's Vita nuova, §XXVI.)

A very different impression must have been made on the self-respect and delicate sensibility of a feminine soul by this other sonnet, which is clumsy and bombastic because it is full of inappropriate and exaggerated metaphors:

Your salutation and your glances bright
Deal death to him who greets you on your way;
Love my assailant, heedless of my plight,
Cares nought if what he does shall heal or slay.

Straight to the mark his arrow flew apace
Piercing my heart and cleaving it in twain;
I was as one who sees Death face to face;
No word I spake—so great my burning pain.

As through the window of the lordly tower
The missile hurtles, shattering all within,
So did the arrow enter through my eye;

Bereft of life and spirit in that hour
I stood there, to a man of brass akin,
That mocks with semblance of humanity.
(Guinizelli, 1300.)

If, then, the true basis of the imagination is reality, and its perception is related to exactness of observation, it is necessary to prepare children to perceive the things in their environment exactly, in order to secure for them the material required by the imagination. Further, the exercise of the intelligence, reasoning within sharply defined limits, and distinguishing one thing from another, prepares a cement for imaginative constructions; because these are the more beautiful the more closely they are united to a form, and the more logical they are in the association of individual images. The fancy which exaggerates and invents coarsely does not put the child on the right road.

A true preparation digs the beds where the waters which well up from intellectual creation will flow in smiling or majestic rivers, without overflowing and so destroying the beauty of internal order.

In the matter of causing the springing up of these rushing waters of internal creation we are powerless. "Never to obstruct the spontaneous outburst of an activity, even though it springs forth like the humble trickle of some almost invisible source," and "to wait"—this is our task. Why should we delude ourselves with the idea that we can "create an intelligence," we who can do nothing but "observe and await" the blade of grass which is sprouting, the microbe which is dividing itself?

We must consider that creative imagination must rise like an illuminated palace, on dark foundations deeply imbedded in the rock, if it is to be anything but a house of cards, an illusion, an error; and the salvation of the intelligence is "to be able to plant the feet on firm ground."

Imagination in children.—It is a very common belief that the young child is characterized by a vivid imagination, and therefore a special education should be adopted to cultivate this special gift of nature.

His mentality differs from ours; he escapes from our strongly marked and restricted limits, and loves to wander in the fascinating worlds of unreality, a tendency which is also characteristic of savage peoples.

This childish characteristic, however, gave rise to the generalization of a materialistic idea now discredited: "Ontogenesis sums up philogenesis": that is, the life of the individual reproduces the life of the species; just as the life of man reproduces the life of civilization, so in young children we find the psychical characteristics of savages. Hence the child, like the savage, is attracted by the fantastic, the supernatural, and the unreal.

Instead of indulging in such flights of scientific fancy as these, it would be much simpler to declare that an organism as yet immature, like that of the child, has remote affinities with mentalities less mature than our own, like those of savages. But even if we refrain from interfering with the belief of those who interpret childish mentality as "a savage state," we may point out that as, in any case, this savage state is transient, and must be superseded, education should help the child to overcome it; it should not develop the savage state, nor keep the child therein.

All the forms of imperfect development we encounter in the child have some resemblance to corresponding characteristics in the savage; for instance, in language, poverty of expression, the existence only of concrete terms, and the generalization of words, by means of which a single word serves several purposes and indicates several objects, the absence of inflections in verbs, causing the child to use only the infinitive. But no one would maintain that "for this reason" we ought to restrict the child artificially to such primitive language, to enable him to pass through his prehistoric period easily.

And if some peoples remain permanently in a state of imagination in which unrealities predominate, our child, on the contrary, belongs to a people for whom the delights of the mind are to be found in the great works of art, and the civilizing constructions of science, and in those products of the higher imagination which represent the environment in which the intelligence of our child is destined to form itself. It is natural that in the hazy period of his mental development the child should be attracted by fantastic ideas; but this must not make us forget that he is to be our continuator, and for that reason should be superior to us; and the least we ought to give him to this end is the maximum at our disposal.

A form of imagination supposed to be "proper" to childhood, and almost universally recognized as creative imagination, is that spontaneous work of the infant mind by which children attribute desirable characteristics to objects which do not possess them.

Who has not seen a child riding upon and whipping his father's walking-stick, as if he were mounted upon a real horse? There we have a proof of "imagination" in the child! What pleasure it gives to children to construct a splendid coach with chairs and armchairs; and while some recline inside, looking out with delight at an imaginary landscape, or bowing to an applauding crowd, other children, perched on the backs of chairs, beat the air as if they were whipping fiery horses. Here is another proof of "imagination."

But if we observe rich children, who own quiet ponies, and drive out habitually in carriages and motor-cars, we shall find that they look with a touch of contempt at the child who is running about whipping a stick in great excitement; they would be astonished to see the delight of children who imagine themselves to be drawn along by stationary armchairs. They would say of such children: "They are very poor; they act thus because they have no horses or carriages." An adult resigns himself to his lot; a child creates an illusion. But this is not a proof of imagination, it is