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262 ART FORM AND MATERIAL
there are few outstanding events in history which have not served as material for ballads, plays, epics or novels. But a historical event is in itself only material, not theme. Material can still be regarded from the angle of various art forms. But a theme is already something regarded from the viewpoint of one or the other art form, lifted out of a multiform reality and developed into a dominant motif. Such themes can be adequately expressed in only one art form; they determine their art form, for they have themselves been determined by it. Such a theme, such a reality, such a material is already 'content' and determines its form.
Take a portrait. The reality of the model is as yet only raw material. It can be painted or drawn in black-and-white or modelled in clay. But if a true painter looks at the model, he will see colours in the first place, the colours will be the dominant characteristic and once this has happened the colours will no longer be raw material — they will be a theme for a painter, a content which determines the form, which is the art form, which is painting. A black-and-white artist will see the lines of the same model. Here, the same material will provide a different artistic theme, and this theme will be the content determining the art form, which will be drawing or etching or some other line technique. A sculptor may see the same model, and yet not the same model, for in his case it will be a model for a sculpture. The same material will provide for him a theme of plastic shapes, and thereby determine the adequate art form, sculpture.
The same applies to the literary forms. One writer may feel the atmosphere, the fleeting moods in a subject and take that for his theme; probably he will make it a short story. Another will see in the same subject a central conflict, an inexorable problem which demands a dramatic approach. The raw material of life may be the same, but the themes of the two writers will be different. And the different themes will give rise to different contents and demand different art forms. A third writer might come across the same event and see in it not the event itself but the inner adventures of human beings interacting with one another and showing the web of their destinies like a multicoloured carpet of life. This third writer would