INDIVISIBILITY OF EXPRESSION INTO MODES OR GRADES AND CRITIQUE OF
RHETORIC
[Sidenote] _The characteristics of art._
It is customary to give long enumerations of the characteristics of art.
Having reached this point of the treatise, having studied the artistic
function as spiritual activity, as theoretic activity, and as special
theoretic activity (intuitive), we are able to discern that those
various and copious descriptions mean, when they mean anything at all,
nothing but a repetition of what may be called the qualities of the
aesthetic function, generic, specific, and characteristic. To the first
of these are referred, as we have already observed, the characters, or
better, the verbal variants of _unity_, and of _unity_ in _variety_,
those also of _simplicity_, of _originality_, and so on; to the second of
these, the characteristics of _truth_, of _sincerity_, and the like; to
the third, the characteristics of _life_, of _vivacity_, of _animation_,
of _concretion_, of _individuality_, of _characteristicality_. The words
may vary yet more, but they will not contribute anything scientifically
new. The results which we have shown have altogether exhausted the
analysis of expression as such.
[Sidenote] _Inexistence of modes of expression._
But at this point, the question as to whether there be various _modes or
grades_ of expression is still perfectly legitimate. We have
distinguished two grades of activity, each of which is subdivided into
two other grades, and there is certainly, so far, no visible logical
reason why there should not exist two or more modes of the aesthetic,
that is of expression.--The only objection is that these modes do not
exist.
For the present at least, it is a question of simple internal
observation and of self consciousness. One may scrutinize aesthetic
facts as much as one will: no formal differences will ever be found
among them, nor will the aesthetic fact be divisible into a first and a
second degree.
This signifies that a philosophical classification of expressions is not
possible. Single expressive facts are so many individuals, of which the
one cannot be compared with the other, save generically, in so far as
each is expression. To use the language of the schools, expression is a
species which cannot in its turn perform the functions of genus.
Impressions, that is to say contents, vary; every content differs from
every other content, because nothing in life repeats itself; and the
continuous variation of contents follows the irreducible variety of
expressive facts, the aesthetic syntheses of the impressions.
[Sidenote] _Impossibility of translations._
A corollary of this is the impossibility of _translations_, in so far as
they pretend to effect the transference of one expression into another,
like a liquid poured from a vase of a certain shape into a vase of
another shape. We can elaborate logically what we have already
elaborated in aesthetic form only; but we cannot reduce that which has
already possessed its aesthetic form to another form also aesthetic. In
truth, every translation either diminishes and spoils; or it creates a
new expression, by putting the former back into the crucible and mixing
it with other impressions belonging to the pretended translator. In the
former case, the expression always remains one, that of the original,
the translation being more or less deficient, that is to say, not
properly expression: in the other case, there would certainly be two
expressions, but with two different contents. "Ugly faithful ones or
faithless beauties" is a proverb that well expresses the dilemma with
which every translator is faced. In aesthetic translations, such as
those which are word for word or interlinear, or paraphrastic
translations, are to be looked upon as simple commentaries on the
original.
[Sidenote] _Critique of rhetorical categories._
The division of expressions into various classes is known in literature
by the name of theory of _ornament_ or of _rhetorical categories_. But
similar attempts at classification in the other forms of art are not
wanting: suffice it to mention the _realistic and symbolic forms_,
spoken of in painting and sculpture.
The scientific value to be attached in Aesthetic and in aesthetic
criticism to these distinctions of _realistic and symbolic_, of _style
and absence of style_, of _objective and subjective_, of _classic and
romantic_, of _simple and ornate_, of _proper and metaphorical_, of the
fourteen forms of metaphor, of the figures of _word_ and of _sentence_,
and further of _pleonasm_, of _ellipse_, of _inversion_, of
_repetition_, of _synonyms and homonyms_, and so on; is _nil_ or
altogether negative. To none of these terms and distinctions can be
given a satisfactory aesthetic definition. Those that have been
attempted, when they are not obviously erroneous, are words devoid of
sense. A typical example of this is the very common definition of
metaphor as of _another word used in place of the word itself_. Now why
give oneself this trouble? Why take the worse and longer road when you
know the shorter and better road? Perhaps, as is generally said, because
the correct word is in certain cases not so _expressive_ as the
so-called incorrect word or metaphor? But in that case the metaphor
becomes exactly the right word, and the so-called right word, if it were
used, would be _but little expressive_ and therefore most improper.
Similar observations of elementary good sense can be made regarding the
other categories, as, for example, the generic one of the ornate. One
can ask oneself how an ornament can be joined to expression. Externally?
In that case it must always remain separate. Internally? In that case,
either it does not assist expression and mars it; or it does form part
of it and is not ornament, but a constituent element of expression,
indistinguishable from the whole.
It is not necessary to dwell upon the harm done by these distinctions.
Rhetoric has often been declaimed against, but although there has been
rebellion against its consequences, its principles have been carefully
preserved, perhaps in order to show proof of philosophic coherence.
Rhetoric has contributed, if not to make dominant in literary
production, at least to justify theoretically, that particular mode of
writing ill which is called fine writing or writing according to
rhetoric.
[Sidenote] _Empirical sense of the rhetorical categories._
The terms above mentioned would never have gone beyond the schools,
where we all of us learned them (certain of never finding the
opportunity of using them in strictly aesthetic discussions, or even of
doing so jocosely and with a comic intention), save when occasionally
employed in one of the following significations: as _verbal variants _of
the aesthetic concept; as indications of the _anti-aesthetic_, or,
finally (and this is their most important use), in a sense which is no
longer aesthetic and literary, _but merely logical_.
[Sidenote] _Use of these categories as synonyms of the aesthetic
fact._
Expressions are not divisible into classes, but some are successful,
others half-successful, others failures. There are perfect and
imperfect, complete and deficient expressions. The terms already cited,
then, sometimes indicate the successful expression, sometimes the
various forms of the failures. But they are employed in the most
inconstant and capricious manner, for it often happens that the same
word serves, now to proclaim the perfect, now to condemn the imperfect.
An instance of this is found when someone, criticizing two pictures--the
one without inspiration, in which the author has copied natural objects
without intelligence; the other inspired, but without obvious likeness
to existing objects--calls the first _realistic_, the second _symbolic_.
Others, on the contrary, pronounce the word _realistic_ about a strongly
felt picture representing a scene of ordinary life, while they talk of
_symbolic_ in reference to another picture representing but a cold
allegory. It is evident that in the first case symbolic means artistic,
and realistic inartistic, while in the second, realistic is synonymous
with artistic and symbolic with inartistic. How, then, can we be
astonished when some hotly maintain that the true art form is the
symbolic, and that the realistic is inartistic; others, that the
realistic is the artistic, and the symbolic the inartistic? We cannot
but grant that both are right, since each makes use of the same words in
senses so diverse.
The great disputes about the _classic_ and the _romantic_ are frequently
based upon such equivokes. Sometimes the former was understood as the
artistically perfect, and the second as lacking balance and imperfect;
at others, the classic was cold and artificial, the romantic sincere,
warm, efficacious, and truly expressive. Thus it was always possible to
take the side of the classic against the romantic, or of the romantic
against the classic.
The same thing happens as regards the word _style_. Sometimes it is
affirmed that every writer should have style. Here style is synonymous
with form or expression. Sometimes the form of a code of laws or of a
mathematical work is said to be devoid of style. Here the error of
admitting diverse modes of expression is again committed, of admitting
an ornate and a naked form of expression, because, since style is form,
the code and the mathematical treatise must also, strictly speaking,
have each its style. At other times, one hears the critics blaming
someone for "having too much style" or for "writing a style." Here it is
clear that style signifies, not the form, nor a mode of it, but improper
and pretentious expression, which is one form of the inartistic.
[Sidenote] _Their use to indicate various aesthetic imperfections._
Passing to the second, not altogether insignificant, use of these words
and distinctions, we sometimes find in the examination of a literary
composition such remarks as follow: here is a pleonasm, here an ellipse,
there a metaphor, here again a synonym or an equivoke. This means that
in one place is an error consisting of using a larger number of words
than is necessary (pleonasm); that in another the error arises from too
few having been used (ellipse), elsewhere from the use of an unsuitable
word (metaphor), or from the use of two words which seem to express two
different things, where they really express the same thing (synonym); or
that, on the contrary, it arises from having employed one which seems to
express the same thing where it expresses two different things
(equivoke). This pejorative and pathological use of the terms is,
however, more uncommon than the preceding.
[Sidenote] _Their use in a sense transcending aesthetic, in the
service of science._
Finally, when rhetorical terminology possesses no aesthetic
signification similar or analogous to those passed in review, and yet
one is aware that it is not void of meaning and designates something
that deserves to be noted, it is then used in the service of logic and
of science. If it be granted that a concept used in a scientific sense
by a given writer is expressed with a definite term, it is natural that
other words formed by that writer as used to signify the same concept,
or incidentally made use of by him, become, _in respect to_ the
vocabulary fixed upon by him as true, metaphors, synecdoches, synonyms,
elliptic forms, and the like. We, too, in the course of this treatise,
have several times made use of, and intend again to make use of such
terms, in order to make clear the sense of the words we employ, or may
find employed. But this proceeding, which is of value in the
disquisitions of scientific and intellectual criticism, has none
whatever in aesthetic criticism. For science there exist appropriate
words and metaphors. The same concept may be psychologically formed in
various circumstances and therefore be expressed with various
intuitions. When the scientific terminology of a given writer has been
established, and one of these modes has been fixed as correct, then all
other uses of it become improper or tropical. But in the aesthetic fact
exist only appropriate words. The same intuition can only be expressed
in one way, precisely because it is an intuition and not a concept.
[Sidenote] _Rhetoric in the schools._
Some, while they admit the aesthetic insufficiency of the rhetorical
categories, yet make a reserve as regards their utility and the service
they are supposed to render, especially in schools of literature. We
confess that we fail to understand how error and confusion can educate
the mind to logical clearness, or aid the teaching of a science which
they disturb and obscure. Perhaps it may be desired to say that they can
aid memory and learning as empirical classes, as was admitted above for
literary and artistic styles. But there is another purpose for which the
rhetorical categories should certainly continue to be admitted to the
schools: to be criticized there. We cannot simply forget the errors of
the past, and truth cannot be kept alive, save by making it fight
against error. Unless a notion of the rhetorical categories be given,
accompanied by a suitable criticism of these, there is a risk of their
springing up again. For they are already springing up with certain
philologists, disguised as most recent _psychological_ discoveries.
[Sidenote] _The resemblances of expressions._
It would seem as though we wished to deny all bond of likeness among
themselves between expressions and works of art. The likenesses exist,
and owing to them, works of art can be arranged in this or that group.
But they are likenesses such as are observed among individuals, and can
never be rendered with abstract definitions. That is to say, these
likenesses have nothing to do with identification, subordination,
co-ordination, and the other relations of concepts. They consist wholly
in what is called a _family likeness_, and are connected with those
historical conditions existing at the birth of the various works, or in
an affinity of soul between the artists.
[Sidenote] _The relative possibility of translations._
It is in these resemblances that lies the _relative_ possibility of
translations. This does not consist of the reproduction of the same
original expressions (which it would be vain to attempt), but in the
measure that expressions are given, more or less nearly resembling
those. The translation that passes for good is an approximation which
has original value as a work of art and can stand by itself.
X
AESTHETIC FEELINGS AND THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE UGLY AND THE
BEAUTIFUL
Passing on to the study of more complex concepts, where the aesthetic
activity is found in conjunction with other orders of facts, and showing
the mode of this union or complication, we find ourselves at once face
to face with the concept of _feeling_ and with the feelings which are
called _aesthetic_.
[Sidenote] _Various significances of the word feeling._
The word "feeling" is one of the richest in meanings. We have already
had occasion to meet with it once, among those used to designate the
spirit in its passivity, the matter or content of art, and also as
synonym of _impressions_. Once again (and then the meaning was
altogether different), we have met with it as designating the
_non-logical_ and _non-historical_ character of the aesthetic fact, that
is to say pure intuition, a form of truth which defines no concept and
states no fact.
[Sidenote] _Feeling as activity._
But feeling is not here understood in either of these two senses, nor in
the others in which it has nevertheless been used to designate other
_cognoscitive_ forms of spirit. Its meaning here is that of a special
activity, of non-cognoscitive nature, but possessing its two poles,
positive and negative, in _pleasure_ and _pain_. This activity has
always greatly embarrassed philosophers, who have attempted either to
deny it as an activity, or to attribute it to _nature_ and to exclude it
from spirit. Both solutions bristle with difficulties, and these are of
such a kind that the solutions prove themselves finally unacceptable to
anyone who examines them with care. For of what could a non-spiritual
activity consist, an _activity of nature_, when we have no other
knowledge of activity save as spiritual, and of spirituality save as
activity? Nature is, in this case, by definition, the merely passive,
inert, mechanical and material. On the other hand, the negation of the
character of activity to feeling is energetically disproved by those
very poles of pleasure and of pain which appear in it and manifest
activity in its concreteness, and, we will say, all aquiver.
[Sidenote] _Identification of feeling with economic activity._
This critical conclusion ought to place us in the greatest
embarrassment, for in the sketch of the system of the spirit given
above, we have left no room for the new activity, of which we are now
obliged to recognize the existence. But activity of feeling, if it be
activity, is not specially new. It has already had its place assigned to
it in the system which we have sketched, where, however, it has been
indicated under another name, as _economic_ activity. What is called the
activity of feeling is nothing but that more elementary and fundamental
practical activity, which we have distinguished from ethical activity,
and made to consist of the appetite and desire for some individual end,
without any moral determination.
[Sidenote] _Critique of hedonism._
If feeling has been sometimes considered as organic or natural activity,
this has happened precisely because it does not coincide either with
logical, aesthetic, or ethical activity. Looked at from the standpoint
of these three (which were the only ones admitted), it has seemed to lie
_outside_ the true and real spirit, the spirit in its aristocracy, and
to be almost a determination of nature and of the soul, in so far as it
is nature. Thus the thesis, several times maintained, that the aesthetic
activity, like the ethical and intellectual activities, is not feeling,
becomes at once completely proved. This thesis was inexpugnable, when
sensation had already been reduced confusedly and implicitly to economic
volition. The view which has been refuted is known by the name of
_hedonism_. For hedonism, all the various forms of the spirit are
reduced to one, which thus itself also loses its own distinctive
character and becomes something turbid and mysterious, like "the shades
in which all cows are black." Having effected this reduction and
mutilation, the hedonists naturally do not succeed in seeing anything
else in any activity but pleasure and pain. They find no substantial
difference between the pleasure of art and that of an easy digestion,
between the pleasure of a good action and that of breathing the fresh
air with wide-expanded lungs.
[Sidenote] _Feeling as a concomitant to every form of activity._
But if the activity of feeling in the sense here defined must not be
substituted for all the other forms of spiritual activity, we have not
said that it cannot _accompany_ them. Indeed it accompanies them of
necessity, because they are all in close relation, both with one another
and with the elementary volitional form. Therefore each of them has for
concomitants individual volitions and volitional pleasures and pains
which are known as feeling. But we must not confound what is
concomitant, with the principal fact, and take the one for the other.
The discovery of the truth, or the satisfaction of a moral duty
fulfilled, produces in us a joy which makes our whole being vibrate,
for, by attaining to those forms of spiritual activity, it attains at
the same time that to which it was _practically_ tending, as to its end,
during the effort. Nevertheless, economic or hedonistic satisfaction,
ethical satisfaction, aesthetic satisfaction, intellectual satisfaction,
remain always distinct, even when in union.
Thus is solved at the same time the much-debated question, which has
seemed, not wrongly, a matter of life or death for aesthetic science,
namely, whether the feeling and the pleasure precede or follow, are
cause or effect of the aesthetic fact. We must enlarge this question, to
include the relation between the various spiritual forms, and solve it
in the sense that in the unity of the spirit one cannot talk of cause
and effect and of what comes first and what follows it in time.
And once the relation above exposed is established, the statements,
which it is customary to make, as to the nature of aesthetic, moral,
intellectual, and even, as is sometimes said, economic feelings, must
also fall. In this last case, it is clear that it is a question, not of
two terms, but of one, and the quest of economic feeling can be but that
same one concerning the economic activity. But in the other cases also,
the search can never be directed to the substantive, but to the
adjective: aesthetic, morality, logic, explain the colouring of the
feelings as aesthetic, moral, and intellectual, while feeling, studied
alone, will never explain those refractions.
[Sidenote] _Meaning of certain ordinary distinctions of feelings._
A further consequence is, that we can free ourselves from the
distinction between values or feelings _of value_, and feelings that are
merely hedonistic and _without value_; also from other similar
distinctions, like those between _disinterested_ feelings and
_interested_ feelings, between _objective _feelings and the others that
are not _objective_ but simply _subjective_, between feelings of
_approval_ and others of _mere pleasure_ (_Gefallen_ and _Vergnügen_ of
the Germans). Those distinctions strove hard to save the three spiritual
forms, which have been recognised as the triad of the _True_, the
_Good_, and the _Beautiful_, from confusion with the fourth form, still
unknown, yet insidious through its indeterminateness, and mother of
scandals. For us this triad has finished its task, because we are
capable of reaching the distinction far more directly, by welcoming even
the selfish, subjective, merely pleasurable feelings, among the
respectable forms of the spirit; and where formerly antitheses were
conceived of by ourselves and others, between value and feelings, as
between spirituality and naturality, henceforth we see nothing but
difference between value and value.
[Sidenote] _Value and disvalue: the contraries and their union._
As has already been said, the economic feeling or activity reveals
itself as divided into two poles, positive and negative, pleasure and
pain, which we can now translate into useful, and useless or hurtful.
This bipartition has already been noted above, as a mark of the active
character of feeling, precisely because the same bipartition is found in
all forms of activity. If each of these is a _value_, each has opposed
to it _antivalue or disvalue_. Absence of value is not sufficient to
cause disvalue, but activity and passivity must be struggling between
themselves, without the one getting the better of the other; hence the
contradiction, and the disvalue of the activity that is embarrassed,
contested, or interrupted. Value is activity that unfolds itself freely:
disvalue is its contrary.
We will content ourselves with this definition of the two terms, without
entering into the problem of the relation between value and disvalue,
that is, between the problem of contraries. (Are these to be thought of
dualistically, as two beings or two orders of beings, like Ormuzd and
Ahriman, angels and devils, enemies to one another; or as a unity, which
is also contrariety?) This definition of the two terms will be
sufficient for our purpose, which is to make clear aesthetic activity in
particular, and one of the most obscure and disputed concepts of
Aesthetic which arises at this point: the concept of the _Beautiful_.
[Sidenote] _The Beautiful as the value of expression, or expression
and nothing more._
Aesthetic, intellectual, economic, and ethical values and disvalues are
variously denominated in current speech: _beautiful, true, good, useful,
just_, and so on--these words designate the free development of
spiritual activity, action, scientific research, artistic production,
when they are successful; _ugly, false, bad, useless, unbecoming,
unjust, inexact_ designate embarrassed activity, the product of which is
a failure. In linguistic usage, these denominations are being
continually shifted from one order of facts to another, and from this to
that. _Beautiful_, for instance, is said not only of a successful
expression, but also of a scientific truth, of an action successfully
achieved, and of a moral action: thus we talk of an _intellectual
beauty_, of a _beautiful action_, of a _moral beauty_. Many
philosophers, especially aestheticians, have lost their heads in their
pursuit of these most varied uses: they have entered an inextricable and
impervious verbal labyrinth. For this reason it has hitherto seemed
convenient studiously to avoid the use of the word beautiful to indicate
successful expression. But after all the explanations that have been
given, and all danger of misunderstanding being now dissipated, and
since, on the other hand, we cannot fail to recognize that the
prevailing tendency, alike in current speech and in philosophy, is to
limit the meaning of the vocable _beautiful_ altogether to the aesthetic
value, we may define beauty as _successful expression_, or better, as
_expression_ and nothing more, because expression, when it is not
successful, is not expression.
[Sidenote] _The ugly, and the elements of beauty which compose it._
Consequently, the ugly is unsuccessful expression. The paradox is true,
that, in works of art that are failures, the beautiful is present as
_unity_ and the ugly as _multiplicity_. Thus, with regard to works of
art that are more or less failures, we talk of qualities, that is to say
of _those parts of them that are beautiful_. We do not talk thus of
perfect works. It is in fact impossible to enumerate their qualities or
to designate those parts of them that are beautiful. In them there is
complete fusion: they have but one quality. Life circulates in the whole
organism: it is not withdrawn into certain parts.
The qualities of works that are failures may be of various degrees. They
may even be very great. The beautiful does not possess degrees, for
there is no conceiving a more beautiful, that is, an expressive that is
more expressive, an adequate that is more than adequate. Ugliness, on
the other hand, does possess degrees, from the rather ugly (or almost
beautiful) to the extremely ugly. But if the ugly were _complete_, that
is to say, without any element of beauty, it would for that very reason
cease to be ugly, because in it would be absent the contradiction which
is the reason of its existence. The disvalue would become nonvalue;
activity would give place to passivity, with which it is not at war,
save when there effectively is war.
[Sidenote] _Illusions that there exist expressions which are neither
beautiful nor ugly._
And because the distinctive consciousness of the beautiful and of the
ugly is based on the contrasts and contradictions in which aesthetic
activity is developed, it is evident that this consciousness becomes
attenuated to the point of disappearing altogether, as we descend from
the more complicated to the more simple and to the simplest cases of
expression. From this arises the illusion that there are expressions
which are neither beautiful nor ugly, those which are obtained without
sensible effort and appear easy and natural being so considered.
[Sidenote] _True aesthetic feelings and concomitant or accidental
feelings._
The whole mystery of the _beautiful_ and the _ugly_ is reduced to these
henceforth most easy definitions. Should any one object that there exist
perfect aesthetic expressions before which no pleasure is felt, and
others, perhaps even failures, which give him the greatest pleasure, it
is necessary to advise him to pay great attention, as regards the
aesthetic fact, to that only which is truly aesthetic pleasure.
Aesthetic pleasure is sometimes reinforced by pleasures arising from
extraneous facts, which are only casually found united with it. The poet
or any other artist affords an instance of purely aesthetic pleasure,
during the moment in which he sees (or has the intuition of) his work
for the first time; that is to say, when his impressions take form and
his countenance is irradiated with the divine joy of the creator. On the
other hand, a mixed pleasure is experienced by any one who goes to the
theatre, after a day's work, to witness a comedy: when the pleasure of
rest and amusement, and that of laughingly snatching a nail from the
gaping coffin, is accompanied at a certain moment by real aesthetic
pleasure, obtained from the art of the dramatist and of the actors. The
same may be said of the artist who looks upon his labour with pleasure,
when it is finished, experiencing, in addition to the aesthetic
pleasure, that very different one which arises from the thought of
self-love satisfied, or of the economic gain which will come to him from
his work. Examples could be multiplied.
[Sidenote] _Critique of apparent feelings._
A category of _apparent_ aesthetic feelings has been formed in modern
Aesthetic. These have nothing to do with the aesthetic sensations of
pleasure arising from the form, that is to say from the work of art. On
the contrary, they arise from the content of the work of art. It has
been observed that "artistic representations arouse pleasure and pain in
their infinite variety and gradations. We tremble with anxiety, we
rejoice, we fear, we laugh, we weep, we desire, with the personages of a
drama or of a romance, with the figures in a picture, or with the melody
of music. But these feelings are not those that would give occasion to
the real fact outside art; that is to say, they are the same in quality,
but they are quantitively an attenuation. Aesthetic and _apparent_
pleasure and pain are slight, of little depth, and changeable." We have
no need to treat of these _apparent feelings_, for the good reason that
we have already amply discussed them; indeed, we have treated of them
alone. What are ever feelings that become apparent or manifest, but
feelings objectified, intensified, expressed? And it is natural that
they do not trouble and agitate us passionately, as do those of real
life, because those were matter, these are form and activity; those true
and proper feelings, these intuitions and expressions. The formula,
then, of _apparent feelings_ is nothing but a tautology. The best that
can be done is to run the pen through it.