the Ancients_, Paris, 1802, 3 vols., in 4to. Vol. i., book iv., chap.
iii., _Art among the Greeks_:--"The Apollo of the Vatican offers us that
God in a movement of indignation against the serpent Python, which he
has just killed with arrow-shots, and in a sentiment of contempt for a
victory so little worthy of a divinity. The wise artist, who proposed to
represent the most beautiful of the gods, placed the anger in the nose,
which, according to the ancients, was its seat; and the disdain on the
lips. He expressed the anger by the inflation of the nostrils, and the
disdain by the elevation of the under lip, which causes the same
movement in the chin."--_Ibid._, vol. ii., book iv., chap. vi., _Art
under the Emperors_:--"Of all the antique statues that have escaped the
fury of barbarians and the destructive hand of time, the statue of
Apollo is, without contradiction, the most sublime. One would say that
the artist composed a figure purely ideal, and employed matter only
because it was necessary for him to execute and represent his idea. As
much as Homer's description of Apollo surpasses the descriptions which
other poets have undertaken after him, so much this statue excels all
the figures of this god. Its height is above that of man, and its
attitude proclaims the divine grandeur with which it is filled. A
perennial spring-time, like that which reigns in the happy fields of
Elysium, clothes with lovable youth the beautiful body, and shines with
sweetness over the noble structure of the limbs. In order to feel the
merit of this _chef-d'oeuvre of art_, we must be penetrated with
intellectual beauty, and become, if possible, the creatures of a
celestial nature; for there is nothing mortal in it, nothing subject to
the wants of humanity. That body, whose forms are not interrupted by a
vein, which is not agitated by a nerve, seems animated with a celestial
spirit, which circulates like a sweet vapor in all the parts of that
admirable figure. The god has just been pursuing Python, against which
he has bent, for the first time, his formidable bow; in his rapid
course, he has overtaken him, and given him a mortal wound. Penetrated
with the conviction of his power, and lost in a concentrated joy, his
august look penetrates far into the infinite, and is extended far beyond
his victory. Disdain sits upon his lips; the indignation that he
breathes distends his nostrils, and ascends to his eyebrows; but an
unchangeable serenity is painted on his brow, and his eye is full of
sweetness, as though the Muses were caressing him. Among all the figures
that remain to us of Jupiter, there is none in which the father of the
gods approaches the grandeur with which he manifested himself to the
intelligence of Homer; but in the traits of the Apollo Belvidere, we
find the individual beauties of all the other divinities united, as in
that of Pandora. The forehead is the forehead of Jupiter, inclosing the
goddess of wisdom; the eyebrows, by their movement, announce his supreme
will; the large eyes are those of the queen of the gods, orbed with
dignity, and the mouth is an image of that of Bacchus, where breathed
voluptuousness. Like the tender branches of the vine, his beautiful
locks flow around his head, as if they were lightly agitated by the
zephyr's breath. They seem perfumed with the essence of the gods, and
are charmingly arranged over his head by the hand of the Graces. At the
sight of this marvel of art, I forget every thing else, and my mind
takes a supernatural disposition, fitted to judge of it with dignity;
from admiration I pass to ecstasy; I feel my breast dilating and rising,
like those who are filled with the spirit of prophecy; I am transported
to Delos, and the sacred groves of Syria,--places which Apollo honored
with his presence:--the statue seems to be animated as it were with the
beauty that sprung of old from the hands of Pygmalion. How can I
describe thee, O inimitable master-piece? For this it would be necessary
that art itself should deign to inspire my pen. The traits that I have
just sketched, I lay before thee, as those who came to crown the gods,
put their crowns at their feet, not being able to reach their heads."
[107] See the last part of the _Banquet_, the discourse of Alcibiades,
p. 326 of vol. vi. of our translation.
[108] We here have in mind, and we avow it, the Socrates of David, which
appears to us, the theatrical character being admitted, above its
reputation. Besides Socrates, it is impossible not to admire Plato
listening to his master, as it were from the bottom of his soul, without
looking at him, with his back turned upon the scene that is passing, and
lost in the contemplation of the intelligible world.
[109] We are fortunate in finding this theory, which is so dear to us,
confirmed by the authority of one of the severest and most circumspect
minds:--it may be seen in Reid, 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 23. The
Scotch philosopher terminates his _Essay on Taste_ with these words,
which happily remind us of the thought and manner of Plato
himself:--"Whether the reasons that I have given to prove that sensible
beauty is only the image of moral beauty appear sufficient or not, I
hope that my doctrine, in attempting to unite the terrestrial Venus more
closely to the celestial Venus, will not seem to have for its object to
abase the first, and render her less worthy of the homage that mankind
has always paid her."
[110] Part iii., lecture 15.
[111] Vol. vi. of our translation, p. 816-818
LECTURE VIII
ON ART.
Genius:--its attribute is creative power.--Refutation of the
opinion that art is the imitation of nature.--M. Emeric David,
and M. Quatremere de Quincy.--Refutation of the theory of
illusion. That dramatic art has not solely for its end to excite
the passions of terror and pity.--Nor even directly the moral
and religious sentiment.--The proper and direct object of art is
to produce the idea and the sentiment of the beautiful; this
idea and this sentiment purify and elevate the soul by the
affinity between the beautiful and the good, and by the relation
of ideal beauty to its principle, which is God.--True mission of
art.
Man is not made only to know and love the beautiful in the works of
nature, he is endowed with the power of reproducing it. At the sight of
a natural beauty, whatever it may be, physical or moral, his first need
is to feel and admire. He is penetrated, ravished, as it were
overwhelmed with the sentiment of beauty. But when the sentiment is
energetic, he is not a long time sterile. We wish to see again, we wish
to feel again what caused us so vivid a pleasure, and for that end we
attempt to revive the beauty that charmed us, not as it was, but as our
imagination represents it to us. Hence a work original and peculiar to
man, a work of art. Art is the free reproduction of beauty, and the
power in us capable of reproducing it is called genius.
What faculties are used in this free reproduction of the beautiful? The
same that serve to recognize and feel it. Taste carried to the highest
degree, if you always join to it an additional element, is genius. What
is this element?
Three faculties enter into that complex faculty that is called
taste,--imagination, sentiment, reason.
These three faculties are certainly necessary for genius, but they are
not sufficient for it. What essentially distinguishes genius from taste
is the attribute of creative power. Taste feels, judges, discusses,
analyzes, but does not invent. Genius is, before all, inventive and
creative. The man of genius is not the master of the power that is in
him; it is by the ardent, irresistible need of expressing what he feels,
that he is a man of genius. He suffers by withholding the sentiments, or
images, or thoughts, that agitate his breast. It has been said that
there is no superior man without some grain of folly; but this folly,
like that of the cross, is the divine part of reason. This mysterious
power Socrates called his demon. Voltaire called it the devil in the
body; he demanded it even in a comedian in order to be a comedian of
genius. Give to it what name you please, it is certain that there is a
I-know-not-what that inspires genius, that also torments it until it has
delivered itself of what consumes it; until, by expressing them, it has
solaced its pains and its joys, its emotions, its ideas; until its
reveries have become living works. Thus two things characterize genius;
at first, the vivacity of the need it has of producing, then the power
of producing; for the need without the power is only a malady that
resembles genius, but is not it. Genius is above all, is essentially,
the power of doing, of inventing, of creating. Taste is contented with
observing, with admiring. False genius, ardent and impotent imagination,
consumes itself in sterile dreams and produces nothing, at least nothing
great. Genius alone has the power to convert conceptions into creations.
If genius creates it does not imitate.
But genius, it is said, is then superior to nature, since it does not
imitate it. Nature is the work of God; man is then the rival of God.
The answer is very simple. No, genius is not the rival of God; but it is
the interpreter of him. Nature expresses him in its way, human genius
expresses him in its own way.
Let us stop a moment at that question so much discussed,--whether art is
any thing else than the imitation of nature.
Doubtless, in one sense, art is an imitation; for absolute creation
belongs only to God. Where can genius find the elements upon which it
works, except in nature, of which it forms a part? But does it limit
itself to the reproduction of them as nature furnishes them to it,
without adding any thing to them which belongs to itself? Is it only a
copier of reality? Its sole merit, then, is that of the fidelity of the
copy. And what labor is more sterile than that of copying works
essentially inimitable on account of the life with which they are
endowed, in order to obtain an indifferent image of them? If art is a
servile pupil, it is condemned never to be any thing but an impotent
pupil.
The true artist feels and profoundly admires nature; but every thing in
nature is not equally admirable. As we have just said, it has something
by which it infinitely surpasses art--its life. Besides that, art can,
in its turn, surpass nature, on the condition of not wishing to imitate
it too closely. Every natural object, however beautiful, is defective on
some side. Every thing that is real is imperfect. Here, the horrible and
the hideous are united to the sublime; there, elegance and grace are
separated from grandeur and force. The traits of beauty are scattered
and diverse. To reunite them arbitrarily, to borrow from such a face a
mouth, eyes from such another, without any rule that governs this choice
and directs these borrowings, is to compose monsters; to admit a rule,
is already to admit an ideal different from all individuals. It is this
ideal that the true artist forms to himself in studying nature. Without
nature, he never would have conceived this ideal; but with this ideal,
he judges nature herself, rectifies her, and dares undertake to measure
himself with her.
The ideal is the artist's object of passionate contemplation.
Assiduously and silently meditated, unceasingly purified by reflection
and vivified by sentiment, it warms genius and inspires it with the
irresistible need of seeing it realized and living. For this end, genius
takes in nature all the materials that can serve it, and applying to
them its powerful hand, as Michael Angelo impressed his chisel upon the
docile marble, makes of them works that have no model in nature, that
imitate nothing else than the ideal dreamed of or conceived, that are in
some sort a second creation inferior to the first in individuality and
life, but much superior to it, we do not fear to say, on account of the
intellectual and moral beauty with which it is impressed.
Moral beauty is the foundation of all true beauty. This foundation is
somewhat covered and veiled in nature. Art disengages it, and gives to
it forms more transparent. On this account, art, when it knows well its
power and its resources, institutes with nature a contest in which it
may have the advantage.
Let us establish well the end of art: it is precisely where its power
lies. The end of art is the expression of moral beauty, by the aid of
physical beauty. The latter is only a symbol of the former. In nature,
this symbol is often obscure: art in bringing it to light attains
effects that nature does not always produce. Nature may please more,
for, once more, it possesses in an incomparable degree what makes the
great charm of imagination and sight--life; art touches more, because in
expressing, above all, moral beauty, it addresses itself more directly
to the source of profound emotions. Art can be more pathetic than
nature, and the pathetic is the sign and measure of great beauty.
Two extremes are equally dangerous--a lifeless ideal, or the absence of
the ideal. Either we copy the model, and are wanting in true beauty, or
we work _de tete_, and fall into an ideality without character. Genius
is a ready and sure perception of the right proportion in which the
ideal and the natural, form and thought, ought to be united. This union
is the perfection of art: _chefs-d'oeuvre_ are produced by observing
it.
It is important, in my opinion, to follow this rule in teaching art. It
is asked whether pupils should begin with the study of the ideal or the
real. I do not hesitate to answer,--by both. Nature herself never offers
the general without the individual, nor the individual without the
general. Every figure is composed of individual traits which distinguish
it from all others, and make its own looks, and, at the same time, it
has general traits which constitute what is called the human figure.
These general traits are the constitutive lineaments, and this figure is
the type, that are given to the pupil that is beginning in the art of
design to trace. It would also be good, I believe, in order to preserve
him from the dry and abstract, to exercise him early in copying some
natural object, especially a living figure. This would be putting pupils
to the true school of nature. They would thus become accustomed never to
sacrifice either of the two essential elements of the beautiful, either
of the two imperative conditions of art.
But, in uniting these two elements, these two conditions, it is
necessary to distinguish them, and to know how to put them in their
place. There is no true ideal without determinate form, there is no
unity without variety, no genus without individuals, but, in fine, the
foundation of the beautiful is the idea; what makes art is before all,
the realization of the idea, and not the imitation of such or such a
particular form.
At the commencement of our century, the Institute of France offered a
prize for the best answer to the following question: _What were the
causes of the perfection of the antique sculpture, and what would be the
best means of attaining it?_ The successful competitor, M. Emeric
David,[112] maintained the opinion then dominant, that the assiduous
study of natural beauty had alone conducted the antique art to
perfection, and that thus the imitation of nature was the only route to
reach the same perfection. A man whom I do not fear to compare with
Winkelmann, the future author of the _Olympic Jupiter_,[113] M.
Quatremere de Quincy, in some ingenious and profound disquisitions,[114]
combated the doctrine of the laureate, and defended the cause of ideal
beauty. It is impossible to demonstrate more decidedly, by the entire
history of Greek sculpture, and by authentic texts from the greatest
critiques of antiquity, that the process of art among the Greeks was
not the imitation of nature, either by a particular model, or by
several, the most beautiful model being always very imperfect, and
several models not being able to compose a single beauty. The true
process of the Greek art was the representation of an ideal beauty which
nature scarcely possessed more in Greece than among us, which it could
not then offer to the artist. We regret that the honorable laureate,
since become a member of the Institute, pretended that this expression
of ideal beauty, if it had been known by the Greeks, would have meant
_visible beauty_, because ideal comes from [Greek: eidos], which
signifies only, according to M. Emeric David, a form seen by the eye.
Plato would have been much surprised at this exclusive interpretation of
the word [Greek: eidos]. M. Quatremere de Quincy confounds his unequal
adversary by two admirable texts, one from the _Timaeus_, where Plato
marks with precision in what the true artist is superior to the ordinary
artist, the other at the commencement of the _Orator_, where Cicero
explains the manner in which great artists work, in referring to the
manner of Phidias, that is to say, the most perfect master of the most
perfect epoch of art.
"The artist,[115] who, with eye fixed upon the immutable being, and
using such a model, reproduces its idea and its excellence, cannot fail
to produce a whole whose beauty is complete, whilst he who fixes his eye
upon what is transitory, with this perishable model will make nothing
beautiful."
"Phidias,[116] that great artist, when he made the form of Jupiter or
Minerva, did not contemplate a model a resemblance of which he would
express; but in the depth of his soul resided a perfect type of beauty,
upon which he fixed his look, which guided his hand and his art."
Is not this process of Phidias precisely that which Raphael describes
in the famous letter to Castiglione, which he declares that he followed
himself for the Galatea?[117] "As," he says, "I am destitute of
beautiful models, I use a certain ideal which I form for myself."
There is another theory which comes back, by a circuit, to imitation: it
is that which makes illusion the end of art. If this theory be true, the
ideal beauty of painting is a _tromp-l'oeil_,[118] and its
master-piece is the grapes of Zeuxis that the birds came and pecked at.
The height of art in a theatrical piece would be to persuade you that
you are in the presence of reality. What is true in this opinion is,
that a work of art is beautiful only on the condition of being
life-like, and, for example, the law of dramatic art is not to put on
the stage pale phantoms of the past, but personages borrowed from
imagination or history, as you like, but animated, endowed with passion,
speaking and acting like men and not like shades. It is human nature
that is to be represented to itself under a magic light that does not
disfigure it, but ennobles it. This magic is the very genius of art. It
lifts us above the miseries that besiege us, and transports us to
regions where we still find ourselves, for we never wish to lose sight
of ourselves, but where we find ourselves transformed to our advantage,
where all the imperfections of reality have given place to a certain
perfection, where the language that we speak is more equal and elevated,
where persons are more beautiful, where the ugly is not admitted, and
all this while duly respecting history, especially without ever going
beyond the imperative conditions of human nature. Has art forgotten
human nature? it has passed beyond its end, it has not attained it; it
has brought forth nothing but chimeras without interest for our soul.
Has it been too human, too real, too nude? it has fallen short of its
end; it has then attained it no better.
Illusion is so little the end of art, that it may be complete and have
no charm. Thus, in the interest of illusion, theatrical men have taken
great pains in these latter times to secure historical accuracy of
costume. This is all very well; but it is not the most important thing.
Had you found, and lent to the actor who plays the part of Brutus, the
very costume that of old the Roman hero wore, it would touch true
connoisseurs very little. This is not all; when the illusion goes too
far, the sentiment of art disappears in order to give place to a
sentiment purely natural, sometimes insupportable. If I believed that
Iphegenia were in fact on the point of being immolated by her father at
a distance of twenty paces from me, I should leave the theatre trembling
with horror. If the Ariadne that I see and hear, were the true Ariadne
who is about to be betrayed by her sister, in that pathetic scene where
the poor woman, who already feels herself less loved, asks who then robs
her of the heart, once so tender, of Theseus, I would do as the young
Englishman did, who cried out, sobbing and trying to spring upon the
stage, "It is Phedre, it is Phedre!" as if he would warn and save
Ariadne.
But, it is said, is it not the aim of the poet to excite pity and
terror? Yes; but at first in a certain measure; then he must mix with
them some other sentiment that tempers them, or makes them serve another
end. If the aim of dramatic art were only to excite in the highest
degree pity and terror, art would be the powerless rival of nature. All
the misfortunes represented on the stage are very feeble in comparison
with those sad spectacles which we may see every day. The first hospital
is fuller of pity and terror than all the theatres in the world. What
should the poet do in the theory that we combat? He should transfer to
the stage the greatest possible reality, and move us powerfully by
shocking our senses with the sight of frightful pains. The great resort
of the pathetic would then be the representation of death, especially
that of the greatest torture. Quite on the contrary, there is an end of
art when sensibility is too much excited. To take, again, an example
that we have already employed, what constitutes the beauty of a
tempest, of a shipwreck? What attracts us to those great scenes of
nature? It is certainly not pity and terror,--these poignant and
lacerating sentiments would much sooner keep us away. An emotion very
different from these is necessary, which triumphs over us, in order to
retain us by the shore; this emotion is the pure sentiment of the
beautiful and the sublime, excited and kept alive by the grandeur of the
spectacle, by the vast extent of the sea, the rolling of the foaming
waves, and the imposing sound of the thunder. But do we think for a
single instant that there are in the midst of the sea the unfortunate
who are suffering, and are, perhaps, about to perish? From that moment
the spectacle becomes to us insupportable. It is so in art. Whatever
sentiment it proposes to excite in us, must always be tempered and
governed by that of the beautiful. If it only produces pity or terror
beyond a certain limit, especially physical pity or terror, it revolts,
and no longer charms; it loses the effect that belongs to it in exchange
for a foreign and vulgar effect.
For this same reason, I cannot accept another theory, which, confounding
the sentiment of the beautiful with the moral and religious sentiment,
puts art in the service of religion and morals, and gives it for its end
to make us better and elevate us to God. There is here an essential
distinction to be made. If all beauty covers a moral beauty, if the
ideal mounts unceasingly towards the infinite, art, which expresses
ideal beauty, purifies the soul in elevating it towards the infinite,
that is to say, towards God. Art, then, produces the perfection of the
soul, but it produces it indirectly. The philosopher who investigates
effects and causes, knows what is the ultimate principle of the
beautiful and its certain, although remote, effects. But the artist is
before all things an artist; what animates him is the sentiment of the
beautiful; what he wishes to make pass into the soul of the spectator is
the same sentiment that fills his own. He confides himself to the virtue
of beauty; he fortifies it with all the power, all the charm of the
ideal; it must then do its own work; the artist has done his when he
has procured for some noble souls the exquisite sentiment of beauty.
This pure and disinterested sentiment is a noble ally of the moral and
religious sentiments; it awakens, preserves, and develops them, but it
is a distinct and special sentiment. So art, which is founded on this
sentiment, which is inspired by it, which expands it, is in its turn an
independent power. It is naturally associated with all that ennobles the
soul, with morals and religion; but it springs only from itself.