II

Such is the theory of art as pure intuition, in its fundamental

conception. This theory, then, takes its origin from the criticism of

the loftiest of all the other doctrines of Aesthetic, from the criticism

of mystical or romantic Aesthetic, and contains in itself the criticism

and the truth of all the other Aesthetics. It is not here possible to

allow ourselves to illustrate its other aspects, such as would be those

of the identity, which it lays down, between intuition and expression,

between art and language. Suffice it to say, as regards the former, that

he alone who divides the unity of the spirit into soul and body can have

faith in a pure act of the soul, and therefore in an intuition, which

should exist as an intuition, and yet be without its body, expression.

Expression is the actuality of intuition, as action is of will; and in

the same way as will not exercised in action is not will, so an

intuition unexpressed is not an intuition. As regards the second point,

I will mention in passing that, in order to recognize the identity of

art and language, it is needful to study language, not in its

abstraction and in grammatical detail, but in its immediate reality, and

in all its manifestations, spoken and sung, phonic and graphic. And we

should not take at hazard any proposition, and declare it to be

aesthetic; because, if all propositions have an aesthetic side

(precisely because intuition is the elementary form of knowledge and is,

as it were, the garment of the superior and more complex forms), all are

not _purely_ aesthetic, but some are philosophical, historical,

scientific, or mathematical; some, in fact, of these are more than

aesthetic or logical; they are aestheticological. Aristotle, in his

time, distinguished between semantic and apophantic propositions, and

noted, that if all propositions be _semantic_, not all are _apophantic_.

Language is art, not in so far as it is apophantic, but in so far as it

is, generically, semantic. It is necessary to note in it the side by

which it is expressive, and nothing but expressive. It is also well to

observe (though this may seem superfluous) that it is not necessary to

reduce the theory of pure intuition, as has been sometimes done, to a

historical fact or to a psychological concept. Because we recognize in

poetry, as it were, the ingenuousness, the freshness, the barbarity of

the spirit, it is not therefore necessary to limit poetry to youth and

to barbarian peoples. Though we recognize language as the first act of

taking possession of the world achieved by man, we must not imagine that

language is born _ex nihilo_, once only in the course of the ages, and

that later generations merely adopt the ancient instrument, applying it

to a new order of things while lamenting its slight adaptability to the

usage of civilized times. Art, poetry, intuition, and immediate

expression are the moment of barbarity and of ingenuousness, which

perpetually recur in the life of the spirit; they are youth, that is,

not chronological, but ideal. There exist very prosaic barbarians and

very prosaic youths, as there exist poetical spirits of the utmost

refinement and civilization. The mythology of those proud, gigantic

Patagonians, of whom our Vico was wont to discourse, or of those _bons

Hurons_, who were lately a theme of conversation, must be looked upon as

for ever superseded.

But there arises an apparently very serious objection to the Aesthetic

of pure intuition, giving occasion to doubt whether this doctrine, if it

represent progress in respect to the doctrines which have preceded it,

yet is also a complete and definite doctrine as regards the fundamental

concept of art. Should it be submitted to a dialectic, by means of which

it must be surpassed and dissolved into a more lofty point of view? The

doctrine of pure intuition makes the value of art to consist of its

power of intuition; in such a manner that just in so far as pure and

concrete intuitions are achieved will art and beauty be achieved. But if

attention be paid to judgments of people of good taste and of critics,

and to what we all say when we are warmly discussing works of art and

manifesting our praise or blame of them, it would seem that what we seek

in art is something quite different, or at least something more than

simple force and intuitive and expressive purity. What pleases and what

is sought in art, what makes beat the heart and enraptures the

admiration, is life, movement, emotion, warmth, the feeling of the

artist. This alone affords the supreme criterion for distinguishing true

from false works of art, those with insight from the failures. Where

there are emotion and feeling, much is forgiven; where they are wanting,

nothing can make up for them. Not only are the most profound thoughts

and the most exquisite culture incapable of saving a work of art which

is looked upon as _cold_, but richness of imagery, ability and certainty

in the reproduction of the real, in description, characterization and

composition, and all other knowledge, only serve to arouse the regret

that so great a price has been paid and such labours endured, in vain.

We do not ask of an artist instruction as to real facts and thoughts,

nor that he should astonish us with the richness of his imagination, but

that he should have a _personality_, in contact with which the soul of

the hearer or spectator may be heated. A personality of any sort is

asked for in this case; its moral significance is excluded: let it be

sad or glad, enthusiastic or distrustful, sentimental or sarcastic,

benignant or malign, but it must be a soul. Art criticism would seem to

consist altogether in determining if there be a personality in the work

of art, and of what sort. A work that is a failure is an incoherent

work; that is to say, a work in which no single personality appears, but

a number of disaggregated and jostling personalities, that is, really,

none. There is no further correct significance than this in the

researches that are made as to the verisimilitude, the truth, the logic,

the necessity, of a work of art.

It is true that many protests have been made by artists, critics, and

philosophers by profession, against the characteristic of _personality_.

It has been maintained that the bad artist leaves traces of his

personality in the work of art, whereas the great artist cancels them

all. It has been further maintained that the artist should portray the

reality of life, and that he should not disturb it with the opinions,

judgments, and personal feelings of the author, and that the artist

should give the tears of things and not his own tears. Hence

_impersonality_, not personality, has been proclaimed to be the

characteristic of art, that is to say, the very opposite. However, it

will not be difficult to show that what is really meant by this opposing

formula is the same as in the first case. The theory of impersonality

really coincides with that of personality in every point. The opposition

of the artists, critics, and philosophers above mentioned, was directed

against the invasion by the empirical and volitional personality of the

artist of the spontaneous and ideal personality which constitutes the

subject of the work of art. For instance, artists who do not succeed in

representing the force of piety or of love of country, add to their

colourless imaginings declamation or theatrical effects, thinking thus

to arouse such feelings. In like manner certain orators and actors

introduce into a work of art an emotion extraneous to the work of art

itself. Within these limits, the opposition of the upholders of the

theory of impersonality was most reasonable. On the other hand, there

has also been exhibited an altogether irrational opposition to

personality in the work of art. Such is the lack of comprehension and

intolerance evinced by certain souls for others differently constituted

(of calm for agitated souls, for example).

Here we find at bottom the claim of one sort of personality to deny that

of another. Finally, it has been possible to demonstrate from among the

examples given of impersonal art, in the romances and dramas called

naturalistic, that in so far and to the extent that these are complete

artistic works, they possess personality. This holds good even when this

personality lies in a wandering or perplexity of thought regarding the

value to be given to life, or in blind faith in the natural sciences and

in modern sociology.

Where every trace of personality was really absent, and its place taken

by the pedantic quest for human documents, the description of certain

social classes and the generic or individual process of certain

maladies, there the work of art was absent. A work of science of more or

less superficiality, and without the necessary proofs and control,

filled its place. There is no upholder of impersonality but experiences

a feeling of fatigue for a work of the utmost exactitude in the

reproduction of reality in its empirical sequence, or of industrious and

apathetic combination of images. He asks himself why such a work was

executed, and recommends the author to adopt some other profession,

since that of artist was not intended for him.

Thus it is without doubt that if pure intuition (and pure expression,

which is the same thing) are indispensable in the work of art, the

personality of the artist is equally indispensable. If (to quote the

celebrated words in our own way) the _classic_ moment of perfect

representation or expression be necessary for the work of art, the

_romantic_ moment of feeling is not less necessary. Poetry, or art in

general, cannot be exclusively _ingenuous_ or _sentimental_; it must be

both ingenuous and sentimental. And if the first or representative

moment be termed _epic_, and the second, which is sentimental,

passionate, and personal, be termed _lyric_, then poetry and art must be

at once epic and lyric, or, if it please you better, _dramatic_. We use

these words here, not at all in their empirical and intellectualist

sense, as employed to designate special classes of works of art,

exclusive of other classes; but in that of elements or moments, which

must of necessity be found united in every work of art, how diverse

soever it may be in other respects.

Now this irrefutable conclusion seems to constitute exactly that

above-mentioned apparently serious objection to the doctrine which

defines art as pure intuition. But if the essence of art be merely

theoretic--and it is _intuibility_--can it, on the other hand, be

practical, that is to say, feeling, personality, and _passionality_? Or,

if it be practical, how can it be theoretic? It will be answered that

feeling is the _content_, intuibility the _form_; but form and content

do not in philosophy constitute a duality, like water and its recipient;

in philosophy content is form, and form is content. Here, on the other

hand, form and content appear to be different from one another; the

content is of one quality, the form of another. Thus art appears to be

the sum of two qualities, or, as Herbart used to say in his time, of

_two values_. Accordingly we have an altogether unmaintainable

Aesthetic, as is clear from recent largely vulgarized doctrines of

Aesthetic as operating with the concept of the _infused personality_.

Here we find, on the one hand, things intuible lying dead and soulless;

on the other, the artist's feeling and personality. The artist is then

supposed to put himself into things, by an act of magic, to make them

live and palpitate, love and adore. But if we start with the

_distinction_, we can never again reach _unity_: the distinction

requires an intellectual act, and what the intellect has divided

intellect or reason alone, not art or imagination, can reunite and

synthetize. Thus the Aesthetic of infusion or transfusion--when it does

not fall into the antiquated hedonistic doctrines of agreeable illusion,

of games, and generally of what affords a pleasurable emotion; or of

moral doctrines, where art is a symbol and an allegory of the good and

the true;--is yet not able, despite its airs of modernity and its

psychology, to escape the fate of the doctrine which makes of art a

semi-imaginative conception of the world, like religion. The process

that it describes is mythological, not aesthetic; it is a making of gods

or of idols. "To make one's gods is an unhappy art," said an old Italian

poet; but if it be not unhappy, certainly it is not poetic and not

aesthetic. The artist does not make the gods, because he has other

things to do. Another reason is that, to tell the truth, he is so

ingenuous and so absorbed in the image that attracts him, that he cannot

perform that act of abstraction and conception, wherein the image must

be surpassed and made the allegory of a universal, though it be of the

crudest description.

This recent theory, then, is of no use. It leads back to the

difficulties arising from the admission of two characteristics of art,

_intuibility_ and _lyricism_, not unified. We must recognize, either

that the duality must be destroyed and proved illusory, _or_ that we

must proceed to a more ample conception of art, in which that of pure

intuibility would remain merely secondary or particular. And to destroy

and prove it illusory must consist in showing that here too form is

content, and that pure intuition is _itself_ lyricism.

Now, the truth is precisely this: _pure intuition is essentially

lyricism_. All the difficulties concerning this question arise from not

having thoroughly understood that concept, from having failed to

penetrate its true nature and to explore its multiple relations. When we

consider the one attentively, we see the other bursting from its bosom,

or better, the one and the other reveal themselves as one and the same,

and we escape from the desperate trilemma, of either denying the lyrical

and personal character of art, or of asserting that it is adjunctive,

external and accidental, or of excogitating a new doctrine of Aesthetic,

which we do not know where to find. In fact, as has already been

remarked, what can pure intuition mean, but intuition pure of every

abstraction, of every conceptual element, and, for this reason, neither

science, history, nor philosophy? This means that the content of the

pure intuition cannot be either an abstract concept, or a speculative

concept or idea, or a conceptualized, that is historicized,

representation. Nor can it be a so-called perception, which is a

representation intellectually, and so historically, discriminated. But

outside logic in its various forms and blendings, no other psychic

content remains, save that which is called appetites, tendencies,

feelings, and will. These things are all the same and constitute the

practical form of the spirit, in its infinite gradations and in its

dialectic (pleasure and pain). Pure intuition, then, since it does not

produce concepts, must represent the will in its manifestations, that is

to say, it can represent nothing but _states of the soul_. And states of

the soul are passionality, feeling, personality, which are found in

every art and determine its lyrical character. Where this is absent, art

is absent, _precisely because pure intuition is absent_, and we have at

the most, in exchange for it, _that reflex_, philosophical, historical,

or scientific. In the last of these, passion is represented, not

immediately, but mediately, or, to speak exactly, it is no longer

represented, but thought. Thus the origin of language, that is, its true

nature, has several times been placed in _interjection_. Thus, too,

Aristotle, when he wished to give an example of those propositions which

were not _apophantic_, but generically _semantic_ (we should say, not

logical, but purely Aesthetic), and did not predicate the logically true

and false, but nevertheless said something, gave as example invocation

or prayer, _hae enchae_. He added that these propositions do not

appertain to Logic, but to Rhetoric and Poetic. A landscape is a

state of the soul; a great poem may all be contained in an exclamation

of joy, of sorrow, of admiration, or of lament. The more objective is a

work of art, by so much the more is it poetically suggestive.

If this deduction of lyricism from the intimate essence of pure

intuition do not appear easily acceptable, the reason is to be sought in

two very deep-rooted prejudices, of which it is useful to indicate here

the genesis. The first concerns the nature of the _imagination_, and its

likenesses to and differences from _fancy_. Imagination and fancy have

been clearly distinguished thus by certain aestheticians (and among

them, De Sanctis), as also in discussions relating to concrete art: they

have held fancy, not imagination, to be the special faculty of the poet

and the artist. Not only does a new and bizarre combination of images,

which is vulgarly called _invention_, not constitute the artist, but _ne

fait rien à l'affaire_, as Alceste remarked with reference to the length

of time expended upon writing a sonnet. Great artists have often

preferred to treat groups of images, which had already been many times

used as material for works of art. The novelty of these new works has

been solely that of art or form, that is to say, of the new _accent_

which they have known how to give to the old material, of the new way in

which they have _felt_ and therefore _intuified_ it, thus creating _new

images_ upon the old ones. These remarks are all obvious and universally

recognized as true. But if mere imagination as such has been excluded

from art, it has not therefore been excluded from the theoretic spirit.

Hence the disinclination to admit that a pure intuition must of

necessity express a state of the soul, whereas it may also consist, as

they believe, of a pure image, without a content of feeling. If we form

an arbitrary image of any sort, _stans pede in uno_, say of a bullock's

head on a horse's body, would not this be an intuition, a pure

intuition, certainly quite without any content of reflexion? Would one

not attain to a work of art in this way, or at any rate to an artistic

motive? Certainly not. For the image given as an instance, and every

other image that may be produced by the imagination, not only is not a

pure intuition, but it is not a _theoretic_ product of any sort. It is a

product of _choice_, as was observed in the formula used by our

opponents; and choice is external to the world of thought and

contemplation. It may be said that imagination is a practical artifice

or game, played upon that patrimony of images possessed by the soul;

whereas the fancy, the translation of practical into theoretical values,

of states of the soul into images, is the _creation_ of that patrimony

itself.

From this we learn that an image, which is not the expression of a state

of the soul, is not an image, since it is without any theoretical value;

and therefore it cannot be an obstacle to the identification of lyricism

and intuition. But the other prejudice is more difficult to eradicate,

because it is bound up with the metaphysical problem itself, on the

various solutions of which depend the various solutions of the aesthetic

problem, and _vice versa_. If art be intuition, would it therefore be

any intuition that one might have of a _physical_ object, appertaining

to _external nature_? If I open my eyes and look at the first object

that they fall upon, a chair or a table, a mountain or a river, shall I

have performed by so doing an aesthetic act? If so, what becomes of the

lyrical character, of which we have asserted the necessity? If not, what

becomes of the intuitive character, of which we have affirmed the equal

necessity and also its identity with the former? Without doubt, the

perception of a physical object, as such, does not constitute an

artistic fact; but precisely for the reason that it is not a pure

intuition, but a judgment of perception, and implies the application of

an abstract concept, which in this case is physical or belonging to

external nature. And with this reflexion and perception, we find

ourselves at once outside the domain of pure intuition. We could have a

pure perception of a physical object in one way only; that is to say, if

physical or external nature were a metaphysical reality, a truly real

reality, and not, as it is, a construction or abstraction of the

intellect. If such were the case, man would have an immediate intuition,

in his first theoretical moment, both of himself and of external nature,

of the spiritual and of the physical, in an equal degree. This

represents the dualistic hypothesis. But just as dualism is incapable of

providing a coherent system of philosophy, so is it incapable of

providing a coherent Aesthetic. If we admit dualism, we must certainly

abandon the doctrine of art as pure intuition; but we must at the same

time abandon all philosophy. But art on its side tacitly protests

against metaphysical dualism. It does so, because, being the most

immediate form of knowledge, it is in contact with activity, not with

passivity; with interiority, not exteriority; with spirit, not with

matter, and never with a double order of reality. Those who affirm the

existence of two forms of intuition--the one external or physical, the

other subjective or aesthetic; the one cold and inanimate, the other

warm and lively; the one imposed from without, the other coming from the

inner soul--attain without doubt to the distinctions and oppositions of

the vulgar (or dualistic) consciousness, but their Aesthetic is vulgar.

The lyrical essence of pure intuition, and of art, helps to make clear

what we have already observed concerning the persistence of the

intuition and of the fancy in the higher grades of the theoretical

spirit, why philosophy, history, and science have always an artistic

side, and why their expression is subject to aesthetic valuation. The

man who ascends from art to thought does not by so doing abandon his

volitional and practical base, and therefore he too finds himself in a

particular _state of the soul_, the representation of which is intuitive

and lyrical, and accompanies of necessity the development of his ideas.

Hence the various styles of thinkers, solemn or jocose, troubled or

gladsome, mysterious and involved, or level and expansive. But it would

not be correct to divide intuition immediately into two classes, the one

of _aesthetic_, the other of _intellectual_ or _logical_ intuitions,

owing to the persistence of the artistic element in logical thought,

because the relation of degrees is not the relation of classes, and

copper is copper, whether it be found alone, or in combination as

bronze.

Further, this close connection of feeling and intuition in pure

intuition throws much light on the reasons which have so often caused

art to be separated from the theoretic and confounded with the practical

activity. The most celebrated of these confusions are those formulated

about the relativity of tastes and of the impossibility of reproducing,

tasting, and correctly judging the art of the past, and in general the

art of others. A life lived, a feeling felt, a volition willed, are

certainly impossible to reproduce, because nothing happens more than

once, and my situation at the present moment is not that of any other

being, nor is it mine of the moment before, nor will be of the moment to

follow. But art remakes ideally, and ideally expresses my momentary

situation. Its image, produced by art, becomes separated from time and

space, and can be again made and again contemplated in its ideal-reality

from every point of time and space. It belongs not to the _world_, but

to the _superworld_; not to the flying moment, but to eternity. Thus

life passes, but art endures.

Finally, we obtain from this relation between the intuition and the

state of the soul the criterion of exact definition of the _sincerity_

required of artists, which is itself also an essential request. It is

essential, precisely because it means that the artist must have a state

of the soul to express, which really amounts to saying, that he must be

an artist. His must be a state of the soul really experienced, not

merely imagined, because imagination, as we know, is not a work of

truth. But, on the other hand, the demand for sincerity does not go

beyond asking for a state of the soul, and that the state of soul

expressed in the work of art be a desire or an action. It is altogether

indifferent to Aesthetic whether the artist have had only an aspiration,

or have realized that aspiration in his empirical life. All that is

quite indifferent in the sphere of art. Here we also find the

confutation of that false conception of sincerity, which maintains that

the artist, in his volitional or practical life, should be at one with

his dream, or with his incubus. Whether or no he have been so, is a

matter that interests his biographer, not his critic; it belongs to

history, which separates and qualifies that which art does not

discriminate, but represents.