[Sidenote] _Historical criticism in literature and art. Its
importance._
This brief exposition of the method by which is obtained reintegration
of the original conditions in which the work of art was produced, and by
which reproduction and judgment are made possible, shows how important
is the function fulfilled by historical research concerning artistic and
literary works; that is to say, by what is usually called _historical
criticism_, or method, in literature and art.
Without tradition and historical criticism, the enjoyment of all or
nearly all works of art produced by humanity, would be irrevocably lost:
we should be little more than animals, immersed in the present alone, or
in the most recent past. Only fools despise and laugh at him who
reconstitutes an authentic text, explains the sense of words and
customs, investigates the conditions in which an artist lived, and
accomplishes all those labours which revive the qualities and the
original colouring of works of art.
Sometimes the depreciatory or negative judgment refers to the presumed
or proved uselessness of many researches, made to recover the correct
meaning of artistic works. But, it must be observed, in the first place,
that historical research does not only fulfil the task of helping to
reproduce and judge artistic works: the biography of a writer or of an
artist, for example, and the study of the costume of a period, also
possess their own interest, foreign to the history of art, but not
foreign to other forms of history. If allusion be made to those
researches which do not appear to have interest of any kind, nor to
fulfil any purpose, it must be replied that the historical student must
often reconcile himself to the useful, but little glorious, office of a
cataloguer of facts. These facts remain for the time being formless,
incoherent, and insignificant, but they are preserves, or mines, for the
historian of the future and for whomsoever may afterwards want them for
any purpose. In the same way, books which nobody asks for are placed on
the shelves and are noted in the catalogues, because they may be asked
for at some time or other. Certainly, in the same way that an
intelligent librarian gives the preference to the acquisition and to the
cataloguing of those books which he foresees may be of more or better
service, so do intelligent students possess the instinct as to what is
or may more probably be useful from among the mass of facts which they
are investigating. Others, on the other hand, less well-endowed, less
intelligent, or more hasty in producing, accumulate useless selections,
rejections and erasures, and lose themselves in refinements and gossipy
discussions. But this appertains to the economy of research, and is not
our affair. At the most, it is the affair of the master who selects the
subjects, of the publisher who pays for the printing, and of the critic
who is called upon to praise or to blame the students for their
researches.
On the other hand, it is evident, that historical research, directed to
illuminate a work of art by placing us in a position to judge it, does
not alone suffice to bring it to birth in our spirit: taste, and an
imagination trained and awakened, are likewise presupposed. The greatest
historical erudition may accompany a taste in part gross or defective, a
lumbering imagination, or, as it is generally phrased, a cold, hard
heart, closed to art. Which is the lesser evil?--great erudition and
defective taste, or natural good taste and great ignorance? The question
has often been asked, and perhaps it will be best to deny its
possibility, because one cannot tell which of two evils is the less, or
what exactly that means. The merely learned man never succeeds in
entering into communication with the great spirits, and keeps wandering
for ever about the outer courts, the staircases, and the antechambers of
their palaces; but the gifted ignoramus either passes by masterpieces
which are to him inaccessible, or instead of understanding the works of
art, as they really are, he invents others, with his imagination. Now,
the labour of the former may at least serve to enlighten others; but the
ingenuity of the latter remains altogether sterile. How, then, can we
fail to prefer the conscientious learned man to the inconclusive man of
talent, who is not really talented, if he resign himself, and in so far
as he resigns himself, to come to no conclusion?
[Sidenote] _Literary and artistic history. Its distinction from
historical criticism and from artistic judgement._
It is necessary to distinguish accurately _the history, of art and
literature_ from those historical labours which make use of works of
art, but for extraneous purposes (such as biography, civil, religious,
and political history, etc.), and also from historical erudition, whose
object is preparation for the Aesthetic synthesis of reproduction.
The difference between the first of these is obvious. The history of art
and literature has the works of art themselves for principal subject;
the other branches of study call upon and interrogate works of art, but
only as witnesses, from which to discover the truth of facts which are
not aesthetic. The second difference to which we have referred may seem
less profound. However, it is very great. Erudition devoted to rendering
clear again the understanding of works of art, aims simply at making
appear a certain internal fact, an aesthetic reproduction. Artistic and
literary history, on the other hand, does not appear until such
reproduction has been obtained. It demands, therefore, further labour.
Like all other history, its object is to record precisely such facts as
have really taken place, that is, artistic and literary facts. A man
who, after having acquired the requisite historical erudition,
reproduces in himself and tastes a work of art, may remain simply a man
of taste, or express at the most his own feeling, with an exclamation of
beautiful or ugly. This does not suffice for the making of a historian
of literature and art. There is further need that the simple act of
reproduction be followed in him by a second internal operation. What is
this new operation? It is, in its turn, an expression: the expression of
the reproduction; the historical description, exposition, or
representation. There is this difference, then, between the man of taste
and the historian: the first merely reproduces in his spirit the work of
art; the second, after having reproduced it, represents it historically,
thus applying to it those categories by which, as we know, history is
differentiated from pure art. Artistic and literary history is,
therefore, _a historical work of art founded upon one or more works of
art_.
The denomination of artistic or literary critic is used in various
senses: sometimes it is applied to the student who devotes his services
to literature; sometimes to the historian who reveals the works of art
of the past in their reality; more often to both. By critic is sometimes
understood, in a more restricted sense, he who judges and describes
contemporary literary works; and by historian, he who is occupied with
less recent works. These are but linguistic usages and empirical
distinctions, which may be neglected; because the true difference lies
_between the learned man, the man of taste, and the historian of art_.
These words designate, as it were, three successive stages of work, of
which each is relatively independent of the one that follows, but not of
that which precedes. As we have seen, a man may be simply learned, yet
possess little capacity for understanding works of art; he may indeed be
both learned and possess taste, yet be unable to write a page of
artistic and literary history. But the true and complete historian,
while containing in himself, as necessary pre-requisites, both the
learned man and the man of taste, must add to their qualities the gift
of historical comprehension and representation.
[Sidenote] _The method of artistic and literary history._
The method of artistic and literary history presents problems and
difficulties, some common to all historical method, others peculiar to
it, because they derive from the concept of art itself.
[Sidenote] _Critique of the problem of the origin of art._
History is wont to be divided into the history of man, the history or
nature, and the mixed history of both the preceding. Without examining
here the question of the solidity of this division, it is clear that
artistic and literary history belongs in any case to the first, since it
concerns a spiritual activity, that is to say, an activity proper to
man. And since this activity is its subject, the absurdity of
propounding the historical _problem of the origin of art_ becomes at
once evident. We should note that by this formula many different things
have in turn been included on many different occasions. _Origin_ has
often meant _nature_ or _disposition_ of the artistic fact, and here was
a real scientific or philosophic problem, the very problem, in fact,
which our treatise has tried to solve. At other times, by origin has
been understood the ideal genesis, the search for the reason of art, the
deduction of the artistic fact from a first principle containing in
itself both spirit and nature. This is also a philosophical problem, and
it is complementary to the preceding, indeed it coincides with it,
though it has sometimes been strangely interpreted and solved by means
of an arbitrary and semi-fantastic metaphysic. But when it has been
sought to discover further exactly in what way the artistic function was
_historically formed_, this has resulted in the absurdity to which we
have referred. If expression be the first form of consciousness, how can
the historical origin be sought of what is _presupposed_ not to be a
product of nature and of human history? How can we find the historical
genesis of that which is a category, by means of which every historical
genesis and fact are understood? The absurdity has arisen from the
comparison with human institutions, which have, in fact, been formed in
the course of history, and which have disappeared or may disappear in
its course. There exists between the aesthetic fact and a human
institution (such as monogamic marriage or the fief) a difference to
some extent comparable with that between simple and compound bodies in
chemistry. It is impossible to indicate the formation of the former,
otherwise they would not be simple, and if this be discovered, they
cease to be simple and become compound.
The problem of the origin of art, historically understood, is only
justified when it is proposed to seek, not for the formation of the
function, but where and when art has appeared for the first time
(appeared, that is to say, in a striking manner), at what point or in
what region of the globe, and at what point or epoch of its history;
when, that is to say, not the origin of art, but its most antique or
primitive history, is the object of research. This problem forms one
with that of the appearance of human civilization on the earth. Data for
its solution are certainly wanting, but there yet remains the abstract
possibility, and certainly attempts and hypotheses for its solution
abound.
[Sidenote] _History and the criterion of progress._
Every form of human history has the concept of _progress_ for
foundation. But by progress must not be understood the imaginary and
metaphysical _law of progress_, which should lead the generations of man
with irresistible force to some unknown destiny, according to a
providential plan which we can logically divine and understand. A
supposed law of this sort is the negation of history itself, of that
accidentality, that empiricity, that contingency, which distinguish the
concrete fact from the abstraction. And for the same reason, progress
has nothing to do with the so-called _law of evolution_. If evolution
mean the concrete fact of reality which evolves (that is, which is
reality), it is not a law. If, on the other hand, it be a law, it
becomes confounded with the law of progress in the sense just described.
The progress of which we speak here, is nothing but the _concept of
human activity itself_, which, working upon the material supplied to it
by nature, conquers obstacles and bends nature to its own ends.
Such conception of progress, that is to say, of human activity applied
to a given material, is the _point of view_ of the historian of
humanity. No one but a mere collector of stray facts, a simple seeker,
or an incoherent chronicler, can put together the smallest narrative of
human deeds, unless he have a definite point of view, that is to say, an
intimate personal conviction regarding the conception of the facts which
he has undertaken to relate. The historical work of art cannot be
achieved among the confused and discordant mass of crude facts, save by
means of this point of view, which makes it possible to carve a definite
figure from that rough and incoherent mass. The historian of a practical
action should know what is economy and what morality; the historian of
mathematics, what are mathematics; the historian of botany, what is
botany; the historian of philosophy, what is philosophy. But if he do
not really know these things, he must at least have the illusion of
knowing them; otherwise he will never be able to delude himself that he
is writing history.
We cannot delay here to demonstrate the necessity and the inevitability
of this subjective criterion in every narrative of human affairs. We
will merely say that this criterion is compatible with the utmost
objectivity, impartiality, and scrupulosity in dealing with data, and
indeed forms a constitutive element of such subjective criterion. It
suffices to read any book of history to discover at once the point of
view of the author, if he be a historian worthy of the name and know his
own business. There exist liberal and reactionary, rationalist and
catholic historians, who deal with political or social history; for the
history of philosophy there are metaphysical, empirical, sceptical,
idealist, and spiritualist historians. Absolutely historical historians
do not and cannot exist. Can it be said that Thucydides and Polybius,
Livy and Tacitus, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, Giannone and Voltaire,
were without moral and political views; and, in our time, Guizot or
Thiers, Macaulay or Balbo, Ranke or Mommsen? And in the history of
philosophy, from Hegel, who was the first to raise it to a great
elevation, to Ritter, Zeller, Cousin, Lewes, and our Spaventa, was there
one who did not possess his conception of progress and criterion of
judgment? Is there one single work of any value in the history of
Aesthetic, which has not been written from this or that point of view,
with this or that bias (Hegelian or Herbartian), from a sensualist or
from an eclectic point of view, and so on? If the historian is to escape
from the inevitable necessity of taking a side, he must become a
political and scientific eunuch; and history is not the business of
eunuchs. They would at most be of use in compiling those great tomes of
not useless erudition, _elumbis atque fracta_, which are called, not
without reason, monkish.
If, then, the concept of progress, the point of view, the criterion, be
inevitable, the best to be done is not to try and escape from them, but
to obtain the best possible. Everyone strives for this end, when he
forms his own convictions, seriously and laboriously. Historians who
profess to wish to interrogate the facts, without adding anything of
their own to them, are not to be believed. This, at the most, is the
result of ingenuousness and illusion on their part: they will always add
what they have of personal, if they be truly historians, though it be
without knowing it, or they will believe that they have escaped doing
so, only because they have referred to it by innuendo, which is the most
insinuating and penetrative of methods.
[Sidenote] _Non-existence of a unique line of progress in artistic
and literary history._
Artistic and literary history cannot dispense with the criterion of
progress any more easily than other history. We cannot show what a given
work of art is, save by proceeding from a conception of art, in order to
fix the artistic problem which the author of such work of art had to
solve, and by determining whether or no he have solved it, or by how
much and in what way he has failed to do so. But it is important to note
that the criterion of progress assumes a different form in artistic and
literary history to that which it assumes (or is believed to assume) in
the history of science.
The whole history of knowledge can be represented by one single line of
progress and regress. Science is the universal, and its problems are
arranged in one single vast system, or complex problem. All thinkers
weary themselves over the same problem as to the nature of reality and
of knowledge: contemplative Indians and Greek philosophers, Christians
and Mohammedans, bare heads and heads with turbans, wigged heads and
heads with the black berretta (as Heine said); and future generations
will weary themselves with it, as ours has done. It would take too long
to inquire here if this be true or not of science. But it is certainly
not true of art; art is intuition, and intuition is individuality, and
individuality is never repeated. To conceive of the history of the
artistic production of the human race as developed along a single line
of progress and regress, would therefore be altogether erroneous.
At the most, and working to some extent with generalizations and
abstractions, it may be admitted that the history of aesthetic products
shows progressive cycles, but each cycle has its own problem, and is
progressive only in respect to that problem. When many are at work on
the same subject, without succeeding in giving to it the suitable form,
yet drawing always more nearly to it, there is said to be progress. When
he who gives to it definite form appears, the cycle is said to be
complete, progress ended. A typical example of this would be the
progress in the elaboration of the mode of using the subject-matter of
chivalry, during the Italian Renaissance, from Pulci to Ariosto. (If
this instance be made use of, excessive simplification of it must be
excused.) Nothing but repetition and imitation could be the result of
employing that same material after Ariosto. The result was repetition or
imitation, diminution or exaggeration, a spoiling of what had already
been achieved; in sum, decadence. The Ariostesque epigoni prove this.
Progress begins with the commencement of a new cycle. Cervantes, with
his more open and conscious irony, is an instance of this. In what did
the general decadence of Italian literature at the end of the sixteenth
century consist? Simply in having nothing more to say, and in repeating
and exaggerating motives already found. If the Italians of this period
had even been able to express their own decadence, they would not have
been altogether failures, but have anticipated the literary movement of
the Renaissance. Where the subject-matter is not the same, a progressive
cycle does not exist. Shakespeare does not represent a progress as
regards Dante, nor Goethe as regards Shakespeare. Dante, however,
represents a progress in respect to the visionaries of the Middle Ages,
Shakespeare to the Elizabethan dramatists, Goethe, with _Werther_ and
the first part of _Faust_, in respect to the writers of the _Sturm und
Drang_. This mode of presenting the history of poetry and art contains,
however, as we have remarked, something of abstract, of merely
practical, and is without rigorous philosophical value. Not only is the
art of savages not inferior, as art, to that of civilized peoples,
provided it be correlative to the impressions of the savage; but every
individual, indeed every moment of the spiritual life of an individual,
has its artistic world; and all those worlds are, artistically,
incomparable with one another.
[Sidenote] _Errors committed in respect to this law._
Many have sinned and continue to sin against this special form of the
criterion of progress in artistic and literary history. Some, for
instance, talk of the infancy of Italian art in Giotto, and of its
maturity in Raphael or in Titian; as though Giotto were not quite
perfect and complete, in respect to his psychic material. He was
certainly incapable of drawing a figure like Raphael, or of colouring it
like Titian; but was Raphael or Titian by any chance capable of creating
the _Matrimonio di San Francesco con la Povertà_, or the _Morte di San
Francesco_? The spirit of Giotto had not felt the attraction of the body
beautiful, which the Renaissance studied and raised to a place of
honour; but the spirits of Raphael and of Titian were no longer curious
of certain movements of ardour and of tenderness, which attracted the
man of the fourteenth century. How, then, can a comparison be made,
where there is no comparative term?
The celebrated divisions of the history of art suffer from the same
defect. They are as follows: an oriental period, representing a
disequilibrium between idea and form, with prevalence of the second; a
classical, representing an equilibrium between idea and form; a
romantic, representing a new disequilibrium between idea and form, with
prevalence of the idea. There are also the divisions into oriental art,
representing imperfection of form; classical, perfection of form;
romantic or modern, perfection of content and of form. Thus classic and
romantic have also received, among their many other meanings, that of
progressive or regressive periods, in respect to the realization of some
indefinite artistic ideal of humanity.
[Sidenote] _Other meanings of the word "progress" in respect to
Aesthetic._
There is no such thing, then, as an _aesthetic_ progress of humanity.
However, by aesthetic progress is sometimes meant, not what the two
words coupled together really signify, but the ever-increasing
accumulation of our historical knowledge, which makes us able to
sympathize with all the artistic products of all peoples and of all
times, or, as is said, to make our taste more catholic. The difference
appears very great, if the eighteenth century, so incapable of escaping
from itself, be compared with our own time, which enjoys alike Hellenic
and Roman art, now better understood, Byzantine, mediaeval, Arabic, and
Renaissance art, the art of the Cinque Cento, baroque art, and the art
of the seventeenth century. Egyptian, Babylonian, Etruscan, and even
prehistoric art, are more profoundly studied every day. Certainly, the
difference between the savage and civilized man does not lie in the
human faculties. The savage has speech, intellect, religion, and
morality, in common with civilized man, and he is a complete man. The
only difference lies in that civilized man penetrates and dominates a
larger portion of the universe with his theoretic and practical
activity. We cannot claim to be more spiritually alert than, for
example, the contemporaries of Pericles; but no one can deny that we are
richer than they--rich with their riches and with those of how many
other peoples and generations besides our own?
By aesthetic progress is also meant, in another sense, which is also
improper, the greater abundance of artistic intuitions and the smaller
number of imperfect or decadent works which one epoch produces in
respect to another. Thus it may be said that there was aesthetic
progress, an artistic awakening, at the end of the thirteenth or of the
fifteenth centuries.
Finally, aesthetic progress is talked of, with an eye to the refinement
and to the psychical complications exhibited in the works of art of the
most civilized peoples, as compared with those of less civilized
peoples, barbarians and savages. But in this case, the progress is that
of the complex conditions of society, not of the artistic activity, to
which the material is indifferent.
These are the most important points concerning the method of artistic
and literary history.