Page:Four Japanese Tales.pdf/18

 his paintings nor with fears that future generations would slight or forget him. He was an artist because he knew ; and an artist who sees more or better than it is given to his contemporaries to see is never understood by them. He was an artist who, creating his own world, did not vex himself with those to whom this world remained foreign; but there were many who, heard the spring breezes rustle in the bamboo shoots he painted on sliding-doors, who unbarred their souls to the charm of his white plum-blossoms, who comprehended that the mist rising above his lakeshores fringed with irises rose also above the beauty of their own native country, which was overlooked by the disciples of the Koreans and the Chinese. But then envy began to gnaw at the hearts of those who feared that their own narrow horizons would be overshadowed by the brush of the intruder; they raised hue and cry in the name of sacred tradition and effected his falling out of the good graces of the court before he could attain the emperor’s favour. To this he was well-nigh insensible; for it was not his ambition to paint for the sake of praise, but to paint well. A cloud hanging on the gnarled and twisted branch of a pine fascinated him more than Chinese sages seated in the clouds; and his brush loved rather to quicken the outlines of beautiful boulders of which no one before him had taken any notice, than to make petrified symbols of the gods according to patterns repeated hundreds of times. He was visited by a suave courtier and refused to take an order for a picture in the Korean style; he did not know that he was in fact opposing the sovereign will of the court and falling into a snare prepared for him; he painted wisps of bamboo bending under the weight of snow, and in return for his efforts was banished to the north country where the snow lies on the mountains long after everything is green and blooming in the south.

He went away into exile contented that he would no longer be exposed to disturbing influences, whether of praise or of incomprehension; he found himself a dwelling in a secluded hamlet beneath the mountain pass called Shimizu, west of sacred Nikko, deep in the interior, in the neighborhood of the wild Ainus, who at that time still inhabited these regions; and roaming over the mountain paths, in wonder he opened his eyes, which day by day saw more and more of the things before hidden from them. There were days when his: brush was paralyzed into inactivity, in despair over the manifold beauties that he did not wish to record but imperfectly. The secret of perspective was disclosed to his inner sight and tortured him; the feeling of latent movement embodied in a branch seemingly immobile, in a stone seemingly unfeeling, in the mist ensnared be-