In Italy (and perhaps in other
countries) the scales commonly in use are furnished with only a single
weight that increases or diminishes in value according as you slide it
nearer or farther upon a horizontal arm. It is equivalent to so many
ounces when it is close to the upright, and to so many pounds when it
hangs from the farther end of the horizontal rod. Distance plays some
such part with the twig or the bird in the upper corner of a Japanese
composition. Its place is its significance and its value. Such an art
of position implies a great art of intervals. The Japanese chooses a few
things and leaves the space between them free, as free as the pauses or
silences in music. But as time, not silence, is the subject, or
material, of contrast in musical pauses, so it is the measurement of
space--that is, collocation--that makes the value of empty intervals. The
space between this form and that, in a Japanese composition, is valuable
because it is just so wide and no more. And this, again, is only another
way of saying that position is the principle of this apparently wilful
art.
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