In
the trembling grey
of a spring dawn, when the birds were whispering in mysterious cadence
among the trees, have you not felt that they were talking to their
mates about the flowers? Surely with mankind the appreciation of
flowers must have been coeval with the poetry of love. Where better
than in a flower, sweet in its unconsciousness, fragrant because of its
silence, can we image the unfolding of a virgin soul? The primeval man
in offering the first garland to his maiden thereby transcended the
brute. He became human in thus rising above the crude necessities of
nature. He entered the realm of art when he perceived the subtle use of
the useless.
In joy or sadness, flowers are our
constant friends. We eat, drink, sing, dance, and flirt with them. We
wed and christen with flowers. We dare not die without them. We have
worshipped with the lily, we have meditated with the lotus, we have
charged in battle array with the rose and the chrysanthemum. We have
even attempted to speak in the language of flowers. How could we live
without them? It frightens one to conceive of a world bereft of their
presence. What solace do they not bring to the bedside of the sick,
what a light of bliss to the darkness of weary spirits? Their serene
tenderness restores to us our waning confidence in the universe even as
the intent gaze of a beautiful child recalls our lost hopes. When we
are laid low in the dust it is they who linger in sorrow over our
graves.
Sad as it is, we cannot conceal the
fact that in spite of our companionship with flowers we have not risen
very far above the brute. Scratch the sheepskin and the wolf within us
will soon show, his teeth. It has been said that man at ten is an
animal, at twenty a lunatic, at thirty a failure, at forty a fraud, and
at fifty a criminal. Perhaps he becomes a criminal because he has never
ceased to be an animal. Nothing is real to us but hunger, nothing
sacred except our own desires. Shrine after shrine has crumbled before
our eyes; but one altar forever is preserved, that whereon we burn
incense to the supreme idol, – ourselves. Our god is great,
and money, is his Prophet! We devastate nature in order to make
sacrifice to him. We boast that we have conquered Matter and forget
that it is Matter that has enslaved us. What atrocities do we not
perpetrate in the name of culture and refinement!
Tell me, gentle flowers, teardrops of
the stars, standing in the garden, nodding your heads to the bees as
they sing of the dews and the sunbeams, are you aware of the fearful
doom that awaits you? Dream on, sway and frolic while you may in the
gentle breezes of summer. To-morrow a ruthless hand will close around
your throats. You will be wrenched, torn asunder limb by limb, and
borne away from your quiet homes. The wretch, she may be passing fair.
She may say how lovely you are while her fingers are still moist with
your blood. Tell me, will this be kindness? It may be your fate to be
imprisoned in the hair of one whom you know to be heartless or to be
thrust into the button-hole of one who would not dare to look you in
the face were you a man. It may even be your lot to be confined in some
narrow vessel with only stagnant water to quench the maddening thirst
that warns of ebbing life.
Flowers, if you were in the land of the
Mikado, you might some time meet a dread personage armed with scissors
and a tiny saw. He would call himself a Master of Flowers. He would
claim the rights of a doctor and you would instinctively hate him, for
you know a doctor always seeks to prolong the troubles of his victims.
He would cut, bend, and twist you into those impossible positions which
he thinks it proper that you should assume. He would contort your
muscles and dislocate your bones like any osteopath. He would burn you
with red-hot coals to stop your bleeding, and thrust wires into you to
assist your circulation. He would diet you with salt, vinegar, alum,
and sometimes, vitriol. Boiling water would be poured on your feet when
you seemed ready to faint. It would be his boast that he could keep
life within you for two or more weeks longer than would have been
possible without his treatment. Would you not have preferred to have
been killed at once when you were first captured? What were the crimes
you must have committed during your past incarnation to warrant such
punishment in this?
The wanton waste of flowers among
Western communities is even more appalling than the way they are
treated by Eastern Flower Masters. The number of flowers cut daily to
adorn the ballrooms and banquet-tables of Europe and America, to be
thrown away on the morrow, must be something enormous; if strung
together they might garland a continent. Beside this utter carelessness
of life, the guilt of the Flower-Master becomes insignificant. He, at
least, respects the economy of nature, selects his victims with careful
foresight, and after death does honour to their remains. In the West
the display of flowers seems to be a part of the pageantry of wealth,
– the fancy of a moment. Whither do they all go, these
flowers, when the revelry is over? Nothing is more pitiful than to see
a faded flower remorselessly flung upon a dung heap.
Why were the flowers born so beautiful
and yet so hapless? Insects can sting, and even the meekest of beasts
will fight when brought to bay. The birds whose plumage is sought to
deck some bonnet can fly from its pursuer, the furred animal whose coat
you covet for your own may hide at your approach. Alas! The only flower
known to have wings is the butterfly; all others stand helpless before
the destroyer. If they shriek in their death agony their cry never
reaches our hardened ears. We are ever brutal to those who love and
serve us in silence, but the time may come when, for our cruelty, we
shall be deserted by these best friends of ours. Have you not noticed
that the wild flowers are becoming scarcer every year? It may be that
their wise men have told them to depart till man becomes more human.
Perhaps they have migrated to heaven.
Much may be
said in favour of him who cultivates plants. The man of the pot is far
more humane than he of the scissors. We watch with delight his concern
about water and sunshine, his feuds with parasites, his horror of
frosts, his anxiety when the buds come slowly, his rapture when the
leaves attain their lustre. In the East the art of floriculture is a
very ancient one, and the loves of a poet and his favourite plant have
often been recorded in story and song. With the development of ceramics
during the Tang and Sung dynasties we hear of wonderful receptacles
made to hold plants, not pots, but jewelled palaces. A special
attendant was detailed to wait upon each flower and to wash its leaves
with soft brushes made of rabbit hair. It has been written that the peony should be bathed by a
handsome maiden in full costume, that a winter-plum should be watered
by a pale, slender monk. In Japan, one of the most popular of the
No-dances, the Hachinoki, composed during the Ashikaga period, is based
upon the story of an impoverished knight, who, on a freezing night, in
lack of fuel for a fire, cuts his cherished plants in order to
entertain a wandering friar. The friar is in reality no other than
Itojo-Tokiyori, the Haroun-Al-Raschid of our tales, and the sacrifice
is not without its reward. This opera never fails to draw tears from a
Tokio audience even to-day.
Great
precautions were taken for the preservation of delicate blossoms.
Emperor Huensung, of the Tang dynasty, hung tiny golden bells on the
branches in his garden to keep off the birds. He it was who went off in
the springtime with his court musicians to gladden the flowers with
soft music. A quaint tablet, which tradition ascribes to Yoshitsune,
the hero of our Arthurian legends, is still extant in one of the
Japanese monasteries. It is a notice put up for
the protection of
a certain wonderful plum-tree, and appeals to us with the grim humour
of a warlike age. After referring to the beauty of the blossoms, the
inscription says: "Whoever cuts a single branch of this tree shall
forfeit a finger therefor." Would that such laws could be enforced
nowadays against those who wantonly destroy flowers and mutilate
objects of art!
Yet even in the case of pot flowers ,we
are inclined to suspect the selfishness of man. Why take the plants
from their homes and ask them to bloom mid strange surroundings? Is it
not like asking the birds to sing and mate cooped up in cages? Who
knows but that the orchids feel stifled by the artificial heat in your
conservatories and hopelessly long for a glimpse of their own Southern
skies?
The ideal lover of flowers is he who
visits them in their native haunts, like Taoyuenming, who sat before a
broken bamboo fence in converse with the wild chrysanthemum, or
Linwosing, losing himself amid mysterious fragrance as he wandered in
the twilight among the plum-blossoms of the Western Lake. 'Tis said
that Chowmushih slept in a boat so that his dreams might mingle with
those of the lotus. It was this same spirit which moved the Empress
Komio, one of our most renowned Nara sovereigns, as she sang: "If I
pluck thee, my hand will defile thee, O Flower! Standing in the meadows
as thou art, I offer thee to the Buddhas of the past, of the present,
of the future."
However, let us not be too sentimental.
Let us be less luxurious but more magnificent. Said Laotse: "Heaven and
earth are pitiless." Said Kobodaishi: "Flow, flow, flow, flow, the
current of life is ever onward. Die, die, die, die, death comes to
all." Destruction faces us wherever we turn. Destruction below and
above, destruction behind and before. Change is the only Eternal,
– why, not as welcome Death as Life? They are but
counterparts one of the other, – the Night and Day of Brahma.
Through the disintegration of the old, re-creation becomes possible. We
have worshipped Death, the relentless goddess of mercy, under many
different names. It was the shadow of the All-devouring that the
Gheburs greeted in the fire. It is the icy purism of the sword-soul
before which Shinto-Japan prostrates herself even to-day. The mystic
fire consumes our weakness, the sacred sword cleaves the bondage of
desire. From our ashes springs the phoenix of celestial hope, out of
the freedom comes a higher realisation of manhood.
Why not destroy flowers if thereby we
can evolve new forms ennobling the world idea? We only ask them to join
in our sacrifice to the beautiful. We shall atone for the deed by
consecrating ourselves to Purity and Simplicity. Thus reasoned the
tea-masters when they established the Cult of Flowers.
Anyone acquainted with the ways of our
tea- and flower-masters must have noticed the religious veneration with
which they regard flowers. They do not cull at random, but carefully
select each branch or spray with an eye to the artistic composition
they have in mind. They would be ashamed should they chance to cut more
than were absolutely necessary. It may be remarked in this connection
that they always associate the leaves, if there be any, with the
flower, for their object is to present the whole beauty of plant life.
In this respect, as in many others, their method differs from that
pursued in Western countries. Here we are apt to see only the flower
stems, heads, as it were, without body, stuck promiscuously into a vase.
When a tea-master has arranged a flower
to his satisfaction he will place it on the tokonoma, the place of
honour in a Japanese room. Nothing else will be placed near it which
might interfere with its effect, not even a painting, unless there be
some special aesthetic reason for the combination. It rests there like
an enthroned prince, and the guests or disciples on entering the room
will salute it with a profound bow before making their addresses to the
host. Drawings from masterpieces are made and published for the
edification of amateurs. The amount of literature on the subject is
quite voluminous. When the flower fades, the master tenderly consigns
it to the river or carefully buries it in the ground. Monuments even
are sometimes erected to their memory.
The birth of the Art of Flower
Arrangement seems to be simultaneous with that of Teaism in the
fifteenth century. Our legends ascribe the first flower arrangement to
those early Buddhist saints who gathered the flowers strewn by the
storm and, in their infinite solicitude for all living things, placed
them in vessels of water. It is said that Soami, the great painter and
connoisseur of the court of Ashikaga Yoshimasa, was one of the earliest
adepts at it. Juko, the tea-master, was one of his pupils, as was also
Senno, the founder of the house of Ikenobo, a family as illustrious in
the annals of flowers as was that of the Kanos in painting. With the
perfecting of the tea-ritual under Rikiu, in the latter part of the
sixteenth century, flower arrangement also attains its full growth.
Rikiu and his successors, the celebrated Ota-wuraka, Furuka-Oribe,
Koyetsu, Kobori-Enshiu, Katagiri-Sekishiu, vied with each other in
forming new combinations. We must remember, however, that the flower
worship of the tea-masters formed only a part of their aesthetic
ritual, and was not a distinct religion by itself. A flower
arrangement, like the other works of art in the tea-room, was
subordinated to the total scheme of decoration. Thus Sekishiu ordained
that white plum blossoms should not be made use of when snow lay in the
garden. "Noisy" flowers were relentlessly banished from the tea-room. A
flower arrangement by a tea-master loses its significance if removed
from the place for which it was originally intended, for its lines and
proportions have been specially worked out with a view to its
surroundings.
The adoration of the flower for its own
sake begins with the rise of "Flower-Masters,'' toward the middle of
the seventeenth century. It now becomes independent of the tea-room and
knows no law save that that the vase imposes on it. New conceptions and
methods of execution now become possible, and many were the principles
and schools resulting therefrom. A writer in the middle of the last
century said he could count over one hundred different schools of
flower arrangement. Broadly speaking, these divide themselves into two
main branches, the Formalistic and the Naturalesque. The Formalistic
schools, led by the Ikenobos, aimed at a classic idealism corresponding
to that of the Kano-academicians. We possess records of arrangements by
the early masters of this school which almost reproduce the flower
paintings of Sansetsu and Tsunenobu. The Naturalesque school, on the
other hand, as its name implies, accepted nature as its model, only
imposing such modifications of form as conduced to the expression of
artistic unity. Thus we recognise in its works the same impulses which
formed the Ukiyoe and Shijo schools of painting.
It would be interesting, had we time,
to enter more fully than is now possible into the laws of composition
and detail formulated by the various flower-masters of this period,
showing, as they would, the fundamental theories which governed
Tokugawa decoration. We find them referring to the Leading Principle
(Heaven), the Subordinate Principle (Earth), the Reconciling Principle
(Man), and any flower arrangement which did not embody these principles
was considered barren and dead. They also dwelt much on the importance
of treating a flower in its three different aspects, the Formal, the
Semi-Formal, and the Informal. The first might be said to represent
flowers in the stately costume of the ballroom, the second in the easy
elegance of afternoon dress, the third in the charming deshabille of
the boudoir.
Our personal sympathies are with the
flower-arrangements of the tea-master rather than with those of the
flower-master. The former is art in its proper setting and appeals to
us on account of its true intimacy with life. We should like to call
this school the Natural in contradistinction to the Naturalesque and
Formalistic schools. The tea-master deems his duty ended with the
selection of the flowers, and leaves them to tell their own story.
Entering a tearoom in late winter, you may see a slender spray of wild
cherries in combination with a budding camellia; it is an echo of
departing winter coupled with the prophecy of spring. Again, if you go
into a noon-tea on some irritatingly hot summer day, you may discover
in the darkened coolness of the tokonoma a single lily in a hanging
vase; dripping with dew, it seems to smile at the foolishness of life.
A solo of flowers is interesting, but
in a concerto with painting and sculpture the combination becomes
entrancing. Sekishiu once placed some water-plants in a flat receptacle
to suggest the vegetation of lakes and marshes, and on the wall above
he hung a painting by Soami of wild ducks flying in the air. Shoha,
another tea-master, combined a poem on the Beauty of Solitude by the
Sea with a bronze incense burner in the form of a fisherman's hut and
some wild flowers of the beach. One of the guests has recorded that he
felt in the whole composition the breath of waning autumn.
Flower stories are endless. We shall
recount but one more. In the sixteenth century the morning-glory was as
yet a rare plant with us. Rikiu had an entire garden planted with it,
which he cultivated with assiduous care. The fame of his convolvuli
reached the ear of the Taiko, and he expressed a desire to see them, in
consequence of which Rikiu invited him to a morning tea at his house.
On the appointed day Taiko walked through the garden, but nowhere could
he see any vestige of the convolvulus. The ground had been leveled and
strewn with fine pebbles and sand. With sullen anger the despot entered
the tea-room, but a sight waited him there which completely restored
his humour. On the tokonoma, in a rare bronze of Sung workmanship, lay
a single morning-glory – the queen of the whole garden!
In such instances we see the full
significance of the Flower Sacrifice. Perhaps the flowers appreciate
the full significance of it. They are not cowards, like men. Some
flowers glory in death – certainly the Japanese cherry
blossoms do, as they freely surrender themselves to the winds. Anyone
who has stood before the fragrant avalanche at Yoshino or Arashiyama
must have realised this. For a moment they hover like bejewelled clouds
and dance above the crystal streams; then, as they sail away on the
laughing waters, they seem to say: "Farewell, O Spring! We are on to
Eternity."
