nobility and his cruelty. He demanded that men should become Man
before they asked to be loved.
112
_Strindberg_
This writer, despite his genius, earnestness and courage, arouses
in us a feeling of profound disappointment. Nor is the cause very
far to seek. For along with earnestness and courage in a writer we
instinctively look for nobility and joy: if the latter qualities are
absent we feel that the _raison d'être_ of the former is gone, and that
earnestness and courage divorced from nobility and joy are aimless,
wasted, almost inconceivable. And in Strindberg they are so divorced. A
disappointed courage; an ignoble earnestness! These are his pre-eminent
qualities. And with them he essayed tragedy--the form of art in which
nobility and joy are most required! As a consequence, the problems
which he treats are not only treated inadequately; the inadequacy, when
we stop to reflect upon it, absolutely amazes us. His crises are simply
rows. His women, when they are angry, are intellectual fishwives;
and--more disgusting still--so are his men. All his characters,
indeed, intellectual and talented as they are, move on an amazingly low
spiritual plane. The worst in their nature comes to light at the touch
of tragedy, and an air of sordidness surrounds all. Posterity will not
tolerate this "low" tragedy, this tragedy without a _raison d'être,_
this drama of the dregs.
113
_Dostoieffsky_
Dostoieffsky depicted the subconscious as conscious; that was how he
achieved his complex and great effects. For the subconscious is the
sphere of all that is most primeval, mysterious and sublime in man;
the very bed out of which springs the flower of tragedy. But did
Dostoieffsky do well to lay bare that world previously so reverently
hidden, and to bring the reader behind the scenes of tragedy? The
artist will deny it--the artist who always demands as an ingredient
in his highest effects mystery. For how can mystery be retained when
the very realm of mystery, the subconscious, is surveyed and mapped?
In Dostoieffsky's imperishable works the spirit of full tragedy is
perhaps never evoked. What he provides in them, however, is such a
criticism of tragedy as is nowhere else to be found. His genius was for
criticism; the artist in him created these great figures in order that
afterwards the psychologist might dissect them. And so well are they
dissected, even down to the subconsciousness, that, to use a phrase of
the critics, we know them better than the people we meet. Well, that is
precisely what we object to--as lovers of art!
114
_Again_
Not only is Dostoieffsky himself a great psychologist; all his chief
characters are great psychologists as well. Raskolnikoff, for instance,
Porphyrius Petrovitch, Svidragaïloff, Prince Muishkin, walk through
his pages as highly self-conscious figures, and as people who have one
and all looked deeply into the shadowy world of human motives, and
have generalized. The crises in Dostoieffsky's books are, therefore,
of a peculiarly complex kind. It is not only the human passions and
desires that meet one another in a conflict more or less spontaneous;
the whole wealth of psychological observation and generalization of
the conflicting character is thrown into their armoury, and with that,
too, they do battle. The resulting effect is more large, rich and
subtle than anything else in modern fiction, but also, if the truth
must be told, more impure, in the artistic sense, more sophisticated.
Sometimes, so inextricably are passion and "psychology" mingled, that
the crises are more like the duels of psychologists than the conflicts
of human souls. In the end, one turns with relief to the pure tragedy
of the classical writers, the tragedy which is not brought about by
people who act like amateur psychologists.
115
_Tolerance of Artists_
No matter what their conscious theories may be, all artists are
unconsciously aristocratic, and even intolerant in their attitude
to other men. They are more blind than most people to the _raison
d'être_ of the politician, the business man and the philosopher--these
unaccountable beings who will not acknowledge the primacy of Creation
and Beauty. But at last they magnanimously conclude that these exist to
form their audience, _not_ the subject-matter of their art--that is
the modern fallacy!
116
_Climate_
There are natures exquisitely sensitive to their human environment.
This man depresses them, they feel the vitality ebbing out of them
in his presence; that other brings exhilaration, at the touch of his
mind their powers increase and become creative. It is a question of
atmosphere. The first has a wintry, grey soul; the latter carries a
sun--_their_ sun--in his bosom. And these artists require sunlight and
soft air, before the flowers and fruit can hang from their boughs.
Every artist of this type should go to Italy or France and live there;
or, failing that, create for himself an Italy or France of friends.
Others require the tempest with its lowering skies. But that is easier
to seek; they can generally find it within themselves.
117
_Sensibility_
It may be wisdom for the man of action to smother his griefs, and
follow resolutely his course. But with the artist it is different. He
should not close his heart against sorrow, for sorrow is of use to him;
his task is to transfigure it; thus he makes himself richer. Every
conquest of suffering which is attained by isolating the pang makes the
artist poorer; the part of him so isolated dies: he loses bit by bit
his sensitiveness, and how much does his sensitiveness mean to him! The
artist is more defenceless than other men, and he must be so. For his
sensitiveness should be such that the faintest rose-leaf of emotion
or thought cannot touch his heart without evoking in him infinite
delight or pain; and, at the same time, he should be able to respond to
the great tempests and terrible moods of life. Great strength, great
love, great productiveness, these are required if he is to endure
his sensitiveness; alas, for him, if he have them not! Then he must
suffer and suffer, until he has cut off one by one the sources of his
suffering, until he has mutilated and lamed what is most godlike in
him, and has made himself ordinary at last--or a Schopenhauerian.
118
_The Artist's Enemy_
I waited once beside a lake, created surely to mirror Innocence, so
pure it was. The passage of a butterfly over it or the breath of a
rose-leaf's fall was enough to stir its surface, infinitely delicate
and sensitive. Yet tempests did not affright it, for it laughed and
danced beneath the whip of the fiercest storm. And it could bury, as
in a bottomless tomb, the stones thrown at it by the most spiteful
hands; to these, indeed, it responded with a Puck-like radiating
smile that spread until it broke in soft laughter upon its marge. So
strong and delicate it lay, and yet, it seemed, so defenceless. Yet
what could harm it? Storm, shower, sunshine, and darkness alike but
ministered to it, and even the missiles of its enemies were lost in its
boundless security. It seemed invulnerable. I returned years later,
and looked once, looked and fled. For the lake had grown old, blind
and torpid, so that even the light lay dead in it. Then I noticed that
on every side, almost invisible, there were innumerable black streams
oozing--infection! The tragedy of the artist.
119
_Uniformity_
In the mien of children there is sometimes to be noted a natural
nobility and pride; they walk with the unconscious grace of
conquerors. But this grace and freedom soon disappear, and when the
child has become man there is nothing left of them: his bearing is
as undistinguished as his neighbour's. Nowhere, now, is nobility
of presence and movement to be found, except among children, the
chieftains of half-barbarous peoples, and some animals. The farther
man departs from the animal the less dignified he becomes, and the
more his appearance conforms to a common level: indeed, civilization
seems, on one side, to be a labourious attempt to arrive at the
undistinguished and indistinguishable. Is Man, then, the mediocre
animal par excellence? Only, perhaps, under an egalitarian régime.
Wherever a hierarchy exists in Europe there is more of nobility of
demeanour than elsewhere. Equality and humility are the great fosterers
of the mediocre: and not only, alas! of the mediocre in demeanour. Who
can tell how many proud, graceful and gallant thoughts and emotions
have been killed by shame--the shame which the egalitarians and the
humble have heaped upon them? And how much Art, therefore, has lost?
Certainly, in the minds of children there are many brave, generous and
noble thoughts which are never permitted to come to maturity. Ye must
become as little children----.
120
_Immortality of the Artist_
An artist one day forgot Death, so entirely had he become Life's, rapt
in a world of living contemplation; and, established there, he created
a form. That hour was immortal, and, therefore, the form was immortal.
This is the "timelessness" of true art-work; they are fashioned "in
eternity," as Blake said, and so speak to the eternal in Man.
121
_The Descent of the Artist_
At the beginning of his journey he climbed daringly, leaping from rock
to rock, exuberant, tireless, until he reached what he thought was
his highest peak. Then began his descent, and, lo, immediately great
weariness fell upon him. A friend of his wondered, Is he going downhill
because he is tired? Or is he tired because he is going downhill?
122
_Apropos the Cynic_
He wrote with an assumption of extreme heartlessness, and the public
said, "How tender his heart must be when he hides it under _such_ a
disguise!" But what he was hiding all the time was his lack of heart.
123
_Artist and Philosopher_
In all ages the philosophers have _pardoned_ the artists their lack of
depth, on account of their divine love of the beautiful. In our time,
however, this only reason for pardoning them has disappeared, and they
are now entirely deserving of condemnation. For the realists abjure
equally thought--interpretation, and beauty--selection. To be an eye,
with a fountain pen attached to it; that is their aim, successfully
attained, alas! A single eye and not a single thought: the definition
of the realist.
124
_An Evil_
Art is at the present day far too easy for comprehension, far too
obvious. Our immediate task should be to make it _difficult,_ and the
concern of a dedicated few. Thus only shall we win back reverence for
it. When it is reverenced, however, it will then be time to extend its
sway; but not until then. Art must be approached with reverence, or
not at all. A democratic familiarity with it--such as exists among the
middle classes, _not_ among the working classes, in whom reverence is
not yet dead--is an abomination.
125
_Modern Art Themes_
How sordid are the themes which modern art has chosen for itself!
The loss of money or of position, poverty, social entanglements--the
little accidents which a thinker laughs at! Are modern artists as
bourgeois as this? A coterie of shop-keepers? Tragic art has no
concern with the accidental: that is the sphere of comedy. Tragedy
should move inevitably once it has begun to revolve; it is beyond
fashion, universal, essential; Fate, not Circumstance, is its theme.
The presence of the accidental in a tragedy is sufficient to condemn
it. For it is the inevitable, the "Fate" in Tragedy, that makes of it
a heroic and _joyful_ thing. It cannot be improvised like Comedy. It
demands in its creator a sense of the eternal, just as Comedy, on the
other hand, demands an exquisite appreciation of temporal fashion.
Tragedy is the greater art; Comedy, perhaps, the more difficult.
Our modern tragedies, however, are mainly about accidents, and very
mean accidents; they are improvised misfortunes and their effect is
depressing.
126
_The Illusionists_
How shallow are most artists! How childish! How subject to illusion!
This novelist at the end of his novels leaves his characters in a
Utopia, from which all sorrow and trial have been banished, a condition
absolutely unreal, contemptible and absurd. And all his readers admire
without thinking, and call the author profound! He is not profound,
but shallow and commonplace. Except for his gift of mimicry, which he
calls Art, he is just an average man. And, moreover, he is tired: the
"happy ending" is his exhaustion speaking through his art, his will
to stagnation and surrender. Works of art should only end tragically,
or enigmatically, as in "A Doll's House," or at the gateway of a new
ideal, as in "An Enemy of the People."
127
_Majorities and Art_
When it is said that in modern society poetic tragedy is out of season
and cannot _succeed,_ an assumption is made which on literary grounds
can never be admitted. It is that majorities count in literature as in
politics; that "Brand" was a failure and "A Doll's House" a success.
But from another point of view, "Brand" was the success, "A Doll's
House" the failure. And the whole "problem" drama a failure with it,
and all the realistic schools, as well--a failure! This is _certainly_
how the future historian of literature will regard it. Our era with its
depressing "masterpieces" will be called the barren era, because the
grand _exception,_ great art, has not bloomed in it, because even our
critics have judged contemporary art by a criterion of success instead
of the eternal spiritual criterion: their championship of "problem" art
proves it! In the meantime, then, realism is considered "the thing,"
and people speak pityingly of poetic tragedy. Only those forms of art
which can "survive" in the struggle for existence are counted good--so
deeply, so unwisely have we drunk at the Darwinian spring!
128
_The Decay of Man_
The aim of Art was once to enrich existence by the creation of gods
and demi-gods; it is now to duplicate existence by the portrayal of
men. Art has become imitation, Realism has triumphed. And how much has
materialism had to do with this! In an age lacking a vivid ideal of
Man, men become interesting. The eyes of the artist, no longer having
an ideal to feed upon, are turned towards the actual, and imitation
succeeds creation. Every one busies himself in the study of men, and
Art becomes half a science, the artists actually collecting their data,
as if they were professors of psychology! Theories glorifying men are
born, and the cult of the average man arises, which is nothing but
the exaltation of men at the expense of Man. In due time all ideals
perish, only an inspiration towards averageness remains, and equality
is everywhere enthroned. Art has no longer a heaven to fly to, there
to create loftier heavens. In despair, she descends to earth and the
ordinary, and for her salvation _must_ find the ordinary interesting,
must _make_ the ordinary interesting. Realism arises when ideals of Man
decay: it is the egalitarianism of Art.
129
_A New Valuation_
But why do ideals of Man decay--why _did_ the ideal of Man decay?
Because there were no longer examples to inspire the artists in
the creation of their grand, superhuman figures. Suspicion, envy,
equality--call it what you will--had become strong: the great man could
no longer fight it and remain great. By the radicals the genius was
regarded as an insult to the remainder of mankind. And how ordinary
he was, this genius, compared with the grand figures of the time of
the Renaissance; that time when men were weighed and valued, when
elevation and inequality were acknowledged and acted upon, and Man
became greater in stature, with Art his Will to Greatness! Well,
we must weigh men again; we must deny equality; we must affirm
aristocracy--in everything but commerce and production, where democracy
is really a return to the aristocratic tradition. And, you artists, you
must turn from men to Man, from Realism to Myth. And if you can find
in your age no example to inspire you to the creation of a great ideal
of Man, then become your own examples! Man must be born again, if you
would enter into your heaven.
130
_The Man and the Hour_
A. Let people say about aristocracy what they will, it remains
true that Man generally is equal to the event. Events are the true
stepping-stones on which Man rises to higher things. B. Ah! you are
not speaking of Man, but of men, of the many. The great man, however,
does not require an event to call his greatness forth. He is his own
event--and also that of others!
131
_The Lover to the Artists_
Love idealizes the object. If you would create an ideal Art, must you
not, then, learn to love? And that you are Realists--does it not prove
that you have not Love?
132
_Origin of the Tragic_
Here is yet another guess at the origin of the tragic:
A man is told of some calamity, altogether unexpected, the engulfing
of a vessel by the sea, an avalanche which wipes out a town, or a fire
in which a family of little ones perish, leaving the father and mother
unharmed and disconsolate; and at once the very grandest feelings
awaken within him, he finds himself enlarged spiritually, and life
itself is enriched for him--the people in the vessel and in the town,
the children and the parents of the children, are raised to a little
more than human elevation by the favouritism of calamity. Next day he
hears that the news was false, and immediately, along with the feeling
of relief, he experiences an unmistakable disappointment and loss;
for all those grand emotions and the contemplation of life in that
greater aspect are snatched from him! Perhaps in primitive times, when
the means of disseminating news were more untrustworthy than they are
today, disappointments of this kind would occur very often; and one day
some rude poet, having noted the elevation which calamity brings, would
in luxurious imagination _invent_ a calamity, in order to experience
_at will_ this enlargement of the soul. But a tale of calamity, being
invented, would inevitably please the poet's hearers, both for the
feelings it aroused and the grand image of Man it represented. So much
for the origin and persistence--not the meaning--of the tragic.
133
_Tragedy and Comedy_
Tragedy is the aristocratic form of art. In it the stature of Man is
made larger. The great tragic figures are superhuman, unapproachable:
we do not sorrow with them, but for them, with an impersonal pity and
admiration. And that is because Man, and not men, is represented by
them: idealization and myth are, therefore, proper to their delineation.
But Comedy is democratic. Its subject is men, the human-all-too-human,
the unrepresentative: it belittles men in a jolly egalitarianism. This
static fraternity, this acceptance of men as they are, is resented by
the aristocratic natures, who would make Man nobler; but to the average
men it is flattering, for it proclaims that the great are absurd even
as they, it unites men in a brotherhood of absurdity. Thus, all comedy
is an involuntary satire, all tragedy an involuntary idealization of
men.
Tragedy is the supreme affirmation of Life, for it affirms Life even
in its most painful aspects, struggle, suffering, death; so that we
say, "Yes, this, too, is beautiful!" _That_ was the _raison d'être_ of
classical tragedy--and not Nihilism!
Well, in which of these forms, Tragedy or Comedy, may our hopes and
visions of the Future best be expressed? Surely in that which idealizes
Man and says Yea to suffering, Tragedy, the dynamic form of Art.
134
_Super-Art_
In the works of some artists everything is on a slightly superhuman
scale. The figures they create fill us with astonishment; we cannot
understand how such unparalleled creatures came into being. When we
contemplate them, in the works of Michelangelo or of Nietzsche, there
arise unvoluntarily in our souls sublime dreams of what Man may yet
attain. Our thoughts travel into the immeasurable, the undiscovered,
and the future becomes almost an intoxication to us.
In Nietzsche, especially, this attempt to make Art perform the
impossible--this _successful_ attempt to make Art perform the
impossible--is to be noted in every book, almost in every word. For
he strains language to the utmost it can endure; his words seem to be
striving to escape from the bonds of language, seeking to transcend
language. "It is my ambition," he says in "The Twilight of the
Idols," "to say in ten sentences what every one else says in a whole
book--what every one else does _not_ say in a whole book." In the same
way, when in his first book he wrote about Tragedy, he raised it to
an elevation greater than it had ever known before, except, perhaps,
in the works of Æschylus; when, in his essay upon "Schopenhauer as
Educator," he adumbrated his conception of the philosopher, philosophy
seemed to become a task for the understandings of gods; and when,
having criticized the prevailing morality, he set up another, it
seemed to his generation an impossible code for human beings, a code
cruel, over-noble. Finally, when he wrote of Man, it was to create
the Superman. He touched nothing which he did not ennoble. And,
consequently, in Art his chosen form was Myth; he held it beneath the
nobility of great art to create anything less than demi-gods; religion
and art were in him a unity.
In super-art, in these works of Leonardo and Michelangelo, of Æschylus
and Nietzsche, Man is incited again and again to surpass himself, to
become more than "human."
135
_Love Poetry_
Love poetry, so long as it glorifies Love, is supremely worthy of
our reverence. Everything that idealizes and transfigures Love,
making it more desirable and full even of transcendental meaning, is
of unquestionable advantage to mankind; on the other hand, a crudely
physiological statement, even though this may be _formally_ true,
serves neither Love nor Life. It is assuredly not the function of art
to treat Love in this way. On the contrary, amatory poetry by its
idealization allures to Love; this is true even of such of it as is
tragic: we are prepared by it to experience gladly even the suffering
of Love. The only poetry that is noxious is that which bewails
the "vanity" of Love, and that in which a deliberate sterility is
adumbrated. These are decadent.
136
_Literature and Literature_
Literature that is judged by literary standards merely is not of the
highest rank. For the greatest works are themselves the standards by
which literature is judged. How, then, are they to be valued? By a
standard outside of literature, by their consonance with that which is
the _raison d'être_ of literature? In them a far greater problem than
any literary problem faces us, the problem, Why does literature exist?
What is the meaning of literature?
Through whole generations men forget this problem, and literature
becomes to them a specialized form of activity to be pursued for its
own sake, a part of Man's soul, thrown off and become static and
separate, with a sterile life of its own. The more shallow theory and
practice of literature then come into being; Realism and Art for Art's
sake flourish. But the eternal question always returns again, Why does
literature exist? What is its meaning? And, then, the possibility of
another blossoming of literature is not far away.
137
_The Old Poet_
An old poet who had lived in the good days when poets were _makers_--of
moralities and gods, among other things--lately re-visited the earth,
and after a study of the very excellent exercises in literature to be
found in our libraries, delivered himself thus:--
"How has our power decayed! Into litterateurs have we declined who were
creators. Perish all literature that is only literature! Poets live
to create gods; to glorify gods should all their arts of adornment
and idealization be used. But I see here adornment without the object
worthy of adornment; beautification for the sake of beautification; Art
for Art's sake. These artists are only half artists. They have surely
made Art into a game."