_By Walter Langley, British Academy, 1897_]
The chief peculiarity of this feeling is that the recipient of a true
artistic impression is so united to the artist that he feels as if
the work were his own and not someone else’s--as if what it expresses
were just what he had long been wishing to express. A real work of
art destroys, in the consciousness of the recipient, the separation
between himself and the artist, nor that alone, but also between
himself and all whose minds receive this work of art. In this freeing
of our personality from its separation and isolation, in this uniting
of it with others, lies the chief characteristic and the great
attractive force of art.
If a man is infected by the author’s condition of soul, if he feels
this emotion and this union with others, then the object which has
effected this is art; but if there be no such infection, if there be
not this union with the author and with others who are moved by the
same work--then it is not art. And not only is infection a sure sign
of art, but the degree of infectiousness is also the sole measure of
excellence in art.
_The stronger the infection the better is the art_, as art, speaking
now apart from its subject-matter--that is, not considering the
quality of the feelings it transmits.
And the degree of the infectiousness of art depends on three
conditions:--
(1) On the greater or lesser individuality of the feeling
transmitted; (2) on the greater or lesser clearness with which the
feeling is transmitted; (3) on the sincerity of the artist, that is,
on the greater or lesser force with which the artist himself feels
the emotion he transmits.
The more individual the feeling transmitted the more strongly does
it act on the recipient; the more individual the state of soul into
which he is transferred the more pleasure does the recipient obtain
and therefore the more readily and strongly does he join in it.
The clearness of expression assists infection because the recipient
who mingles in consciousness with the author is the better satisfied
the more clearly the feeling is transmitted which as it seems to
him he has long known and felt and for which he has only now found
expression.
But most of all is the degree of infectiousness of art increased by
the degree of sincerity in the artist. As soon as the spectator,
hearer, or reader, feels that the artist is infected by his own
production and writes, sings, or plays, for himself and not merely
to act on others, this mental condition of the artist infects the
recipient; and, contrariwise, as soon as the spectator, reader, or
hearer, feels that the author is not writing, singing, or playing,
for his own satisfaction--does not himself feel what he wishes
to express--but is doing it for him, the recipient, resistance
immediately springs up and the most individual and the newest
feelings and the cleverest technique not only fail to produce any
infection but actually repel.
I have mentioned three conditions of contagion in art, but they may
all be summed up into one, the last, sincerity, that is, that the
artist should be impelled by an inner need to express his feeling.
That condition includes the first; for if the artist is sincere he
will express the feeling as he experienced it. And as each man is
different from everyone else, his feeling will be individual for
everyone else; and the more individual it is--the more the artist
has drawn it from the depths of his nature--the more sympathetic and
sincere will it be. And this same sincerity will impel the artist to
find a clear expression of the feeling which he wishes to transmit.
Therefore this third condition--sincerity--is the most important
of the three. It is always complied with in peasant art, and
this explains why such art always acts so powerfully; but it is a
condition almost entirely absent from our upper-class art, which
is continually produced by artists actuated by personal aims of
covetousness or vanity.
Such are the three conditions which divide art from its counterfeits,
and which also decide the quality of every work of art considered
apart from its subject-matter.
The absence of any one of these conditions excludes a work from the
category of art and relegates it to that of art’s counterfeits. If
the work does not transmit the artist’s peculiarity of feeling and is
therefore not individual, if it is unintelligibly expressed, or if it
has not proceeded from the author’s inner need for expression--it is
not a work of art. If all these conditions are present, even in the
smallest degree, then the work, even if a weak one, is yet a work of
art.
The presence in various degrees of these three conditions:
individuality, clearness, and sincerity, decides the merit of a work
of art, as art, apart from subject-matter. All works of art take rank
of merit according to the degree in which they fulfil the first, the
second, and the third of these conditions. In one the individuality
of the feeling transmitted may predominate; in another, clearness
of expression; in a third, sincerity; while a fourth may have
sincerity and individuality but be deficient in clearness; a fifth,
individuality and clearness, but less sincerity; and so forth, in all
possible degrees and combinations.
Thus is art divided from what is not art, and thus is the quality of
art, as art, decided, independently of its subject-matter, that is to
say, apart from whether the feelings it transmits are good or bad.
But how are we to define good and bad art with reference to its
content or subject-matter?
CHAPTER XVI
_The quality of art, considered according to its
subject-matter. The better the feeling the better the art.
The cultured crowd. The religious perception of our age.
New ideals put fresh demands to art. Art unites. Religious
art. Universal art. Both co-operate to one result. The new
appraisement of art. Bad art. Examples of art. How to test a
work claiming to be art._
How in art are we to decide what is good and what is bad in
subject-matter?
Art, like speech, is a means of communication and therefore of
progress, that is, of the movement of humanity forward towards
perfection. Speech renders accessible to men of the latest
generations all the knowledge discovered by the experience and
reflection both of preceding generations and of the best and
foremost men of their own times; art renders accessible to men
of the latest generations all the feelings experienced by their
predecessors, and those also which are felt by their best and
foremost contemporaries. And as the evolution of knowledge proceeds
by truer and more necessary knowledge dislodging and replacing what
is mistaken and unnecessary, so the evolution of feeling proceeds
through art,--feelings less kind and less needful for the well-being
of mankind being replaced by others kinder and more needful for
that end. That is the purpose of art. And, speaking now of its
subject-matter, the more art fulfils that purpose the better the art,
and the less it fulfils it the worse the art.
And the appraisement of feelings (that is, the acknowledgment of one
set of feelings or another as being more or less good, more or less
necessary for the well-being of mankind) is made by the religious
perception of the age.
In every period of history and in every human society there
exists an understanding of the meaning of life which represents
the highest level to which men of that society have attained,--an
understanding defining the highest good at which that society
aims. This understanding is the religious perception of the given
time and society. And this religious perception is always clearly
expressed by a few advanced men, and more or less vividly perceived
by all the members of the society. Such a religious perception and
its corresponding expression exists always in every society. If it
appears to us that in our society there is no religious perception,
this is not because there really is none but only because we do not
want to see it. And we often wish not to see it because it exposes
the fact that our life is inconsistent with that religious perception.
Religious perception in a society is like the direction of a flowing
river. If the river flows at all, it must have a direction. If a
society lives, there must be a religious perception indicating the
direction in which, more or less consciously, all its members tend.
And so there always has been and is a religious perception in every
society. And it is by the standard of this religious perception that
the feelings transmitted by art have always been estimated. It has
always been only on the basis of this religious perception of their
age that men have chosen, from the endlessly varied spheres of art,
that art which transmitted feelings making religious perception
operative in actual life. And such art has always been highly valued
and encouraged; while art transmitting feelings already outlived,
flowing from the antiquated religious perceptions of a former
age, has always been condemned and despised. All the rest of art,
transmitting those most diverse feelings by means of which people
commune with one another, was not condemned, and was tolerated if
only it did not transmit feelings contrary to religious perception.
Thus for instance among the Greeks, art transmitting the feeling of
beauty, strength, and courage (Hesiod, Homer, Phidias) was chosen,
approved, and encouraged; while art transmitting feelings of rude
sensuality, despondency, and effeminacy, was condemned and despised.
Among the Jews, art transmitting feelings of devotion and submission
to the God of the Hebrews and to His will (the epic of Genesis,
the prophets, the Psalms) was chosen and encouraged, while art
transmitting feelings of idolatry (the golden calf) was condemned and
despised. All the rest of art--stories, songs, dances, ornamentation
of houses, of utensils, and of clothes--which was not contrary to
religious perception, was neither distinguished nor discussed. Thus
in regard to its subject-matter has art been appraised always and
everywhere and thus it should be appraised, for this attitude towards
art proceeds from the fundamental characteristics of human nature and
those characteristics do not change.
I know that according to an opinion current in our times religion
is a superstition which humanity has outgrown, and it is therefore
assumed that no such thing exists as a religious perception common to
us all by which art in our time can be estimated. I know that this is
the opinion current in the pseudo-cultured circles of to-day. People
who do not acknowledge Christianity in its true meaning because it
undermines all their social privileges, and who therefore invent all
kinds of philosophic and esthetic theories to hide from themselves
the meaninglessness and wrongness of their lives, cannot think
otherwise. These people intentionally, or sometimes unintentionally,
confuse the notion of a religious cult with the notion of religious
perception, and think that by denying the cult they get rid of
religious perception. But even the very attacks on religion, and
the attempts to establish an idea of life contrary to the religious
perception of our times, most clearly demonstrate the existence of a
religious perception condemning the lives that are not in harmony
with it.
If humanity progresses, that is, moves forward, there must inevitably
be a guide to the direction of that movement. And religions have
always furnished that guide. All history shows that the progress of
humanity is accomplished no otherwise than under the guidance of
religion. But if the race cannot progress without the guidance of
religion,--and progress is always going on, and consequently also
in our own times,--then there must be a religion of our times. So
that whether it pleases or displeases the so-called cultured people
of to-day, they must admit the existence of religion--not of a
religious cult, Catholic, Protestant, or another, but of religious
perception--which even in our times is the guide always present where
there is any progress. And if a religious perception exists amongst
us, then our art should be appraised on the basis of that religious
perception; and as has been the case always and everywhere art
transmitting feelings flowing from the religious perception of our
time should be chosen from amongst all the indifferent art, should
be acknowledged, highly valued, and encouraged; while art running
counter to that perception should be condemned and despised, and all
the remaining indifferent art should neither be distinguished nor
encouraged.
The religious perception of our time, in its widest and most
practical application, is the consciousness that our well-being,
both material and spiritual, individual and collective, temporal and
eternal, lies in the growth of brotherhood among men--in their loving
harmony with one another. This perception is not only expressed by
Christ and all the best men of past ages, it is not only repeated in
the most varied forms and from most diverse sides by the best men of
our times, but it already serves as a clue to all the complex labour
of humanity, consisting, as this labour does, on the one hand in the
destruction of physical and moral obstacles to the union of men, and
on the other hand in establishing the principles common to all men
which can and should unite them in one universal brotherhood. And
it is on the basis of this perception that we should appraise all
the phenomena of our life, and among the rest our art also; choosing
from all its realms and highly prizing and encouraging whatever
transmits feelings flowing from this religious perception, rejecting
whatever is contrary to it, and not attributing to the rest of art an
importance not properly belonging to it.
The chief mistake made by people of the upper classes at the time
of the so-called Renaissance,--a mistake we still perpetuate,--was
not that they ceased to value and to attach importance to religious
art (people of that period could not attach importance to it
because, like our own upper classes, they could not believe in what
the majority considered to be religion), but their mistake was
that they set up in place of religious art which was lacking, an
insignificant art which aimed only at giving pleasure, that is, they
began to choose, to value, and to encourage, in place of religious
art, something which in any case did not deserve such esteem and
encouragement.
One of the Fathers of the Church said that the great evil is not
that men do not know God, but that they have set up, instead of God,
that which is not God. So also with art. The great misfortune of the
people of the upper classes of our time is not so much that they are
without a religious art, as that, instead of a supreme religious art
chosen from all the rest as being specially important and valuable,
they have chosen a most insignificant and, usually, harmful art,
which aims at pleasing certain people, and which therefore, if only
by its exclusive nature, stands in contradiction to that Christian
principle of universal union which forms the religious perception of
our time. Instead of religious art, an empty and often vicious art
is set up, and this hides from men’s notice the need of that true
religious art which should be present in life in order to improve it.
It is true that art which satisfies the demands of the
religious perception of our time is quite unlike former art,
but, notwithstanding this dissimilarity, to a man who does not
intentionally hide the truth from himself what does form the
religious art of our age is very clear and definite. In former
times, when the highest religious perception united only some people
(who even if they formed a large society were yet but one society
surrounded by others--Jews, or Athenian or Roman citizens), the
feelings transmitted by the art of that time flowed from a desire for
the might, greatness, glory, and prosperity of that society, and the
heroes of art might be people who contributed to that prosperity by
strength, by craft, by fraud, or by cruelty (Ulysses, Jacob, David,
Samson, Hercules, and all the heroes). But the religious perception
of our times does not select any one society of men; on the contrary
it demands the union of all--absolutely of all people without
exception--and above every other virtue it sets brotherly love to all
men. And therefore the feelings transmitted by the art of our time
not only cannot coincide with the feelings transmitted by former art,
but must run counter to them.
Christian, truly Christian, art has been so long in establishing
itself, and has not yet established itself, just because the
Christian religious perception was not one of those small steps by
which humanity advances regularly, but was an enormous revolution
which, if it has not already altered, must inevitably alter the
entire life-conception of mankind, and consequently the whole
internal organisation of their life. It is true that the life of
humanity, like that of an individual, moves regularly; but in that
regular movement come, as it were, turning-points which sharply
divide the preceding from the subsequent life. Christianity was
such a turning-point; such at least it must appear to us who live by
the Christian perception of life. Christian perception gave another,
a new, direction to all human feelings, and therefore completely
altered both the content and the significance of art. The Greeks
could make use of Persian art and the Romans could use Greek art, or,
similarly, the Jews could use Egyptian art,--the fundamental ideals
were one and the same. Now the ideal was the greatness and prosperity
of the Persians, now the greatness and prosperity of the Greeks,
now that of the Romans. The same art was transferred into other
conditions and served new nations. But the Christian ideal changed
and reversed everything, so that, as the Gospel puts it, “That which
was exalted among men has become an abomination in the sight of
God.” The ideal is no longer the greatness of Pharaoh or of a Roman
emperor, not the beauty of a Greek nor the wealth of Phœnicia, but
humility, purity, compassion, love. The hero is no longer Dives, but
Lazarus the beggar; not Mary Magdalene in the day of her beauty, but
in the day of her repentance; not those who acquire wealth, but those
who have abandoned it; not those who dwell in palaces, but those
who dwell in catacombs and huts; not those who rule over others,
but those who acknowledge no authority but God’s. And the greatest
work of art is no longer a cathedral of victory[121] with statues of
conquerors, but the representation of a human soul so transformed by
love that a man who is tormented and murdered yet pities and loves
his persecutors.
And the change is so great that men of the Christian world find it
difficult to resist the inertia of the heathen art to which they have
been accustomed all their lives. The subject-matter of Christian
religious art is so new to them, so unlike the subject-matter of
former art, that it seems to them as though Christian art were
a denial of art, and they cling desperately to the old art. But
this old art, having no longer in our day any source in religious
perception, has lost its meaning, and we shall have to abandon it
whether we wish to or not.
The essence of the Christian perception consists in the recognition
by every man of his sonship to God, and of the consequent union of
men with God and with one another, as is said in the Gospel (John
xvii. 21[122]). Therefore the subject-matter of Christian art is such
feeling as can unite men with God and with one another.
The expression _unite men with God and with one another_ may seem
obscure to people accustomed to the misuse of these words which is so
customary, but the words have a perfectly clear meaning nevertheless.
They indicate that the Christian union of man (in contradiction to
the partial, exclusive union of only some men) is that which unites
all without exception.
Art, all art, has this characteristic, that it unites people. Every
art causes those to whom the artist’s feeling is transmitted to
unite in soul with the artist and also with all who receive the same
impression. But non-Christian art, while uniting some people, makes
that very union a cause of separation between these united people
and others; so that union of this kind is often a source not only of
division but even of enmity towards others. Such is all patriotic
art, with its anthems, poems, and monuments; such is all Church
art, that is, the art of certain cults, with their images, statues,
processions, and other local ceremonies. Such art is belated and
non-Christian, uniting the people of one cult, only to separate them
yet more sharply from the members of other cults and even to place
them in relations of hostility to one another. Christian art is such
only as tends to unite all without exception, either by evoking in
them the perception that each man and all men stand in like relation
towards God and towards their neighbour, or by evoking in them
identical feelings, which may even be the very simplest provided
only that they are not repugnant to Christianity and are natural to
everyone without exception.
Good Christian art of our time may be unintelligible to people
because of imperfections in its form or because men are inattentive
to it, but it must be such that all men can experience the feelings
it transmits. It must be the art not of some one group of people, nor
of one class, nor of one nationality, nor of one religious cult; that
is, it must not transmit feelings which are accessible only to a man
educated in a certain way, or only to an aristocrat, or a merchant,
or only to a Russian, or a native of Japan, or a Roman Catholic, or
a Buddhist, and so on, but it must transmit feelings accessible to
everyone. Only art of this kind can be acknowledged in our time to
be good art, worthy of being chosen out from all the rest of art and
encouraged.
Christian art, that is, the art of our time, should be catholic in
the original meaning of the word, that is, universal, and therefore
it should unite all men. And only two kinds of feeling do unite all
men: first, feelings flowing from the perception of our sonship to
God and of the brotherhood of man; and next, the simple feelings
of common life accessible to everyone without exception--such as
feelings of merriment, of pity, of cheerfulness, of tranquillity, and
so forth. Only these two kinds of feelings can now supply material
for art good in its subject-matter.
And the action of these two kinds of art, apparently so dissimilar,
is one and the same. The feelings flowing from the perception of
our sonship to God and of the brotherhood of man--such as a feeling
of sureness in truth, devotion to the will of God, self-sacrifice,
respect for and love of man--evoked by Christian religious
perception; and the simplest feelings--such as a softened or a merry
mood caused by a song or an amusing jest intelligible to everyone,
or by a touching story, or a drawing, or a little doll: both alike
produce one and the same effect, the loving union of man with man.
Sometimes people who are together, if not hostile to one another,
are, at least estranged in mood and feeling, till perhaps a story,
a performance, a picture, or even a building, but oftenest of all
music, unites them all as by an electric flash, and in place of their
former isolation or even enmity they are all conscious of union and
mutual love. Each is glad that another feels what he feels; glad of
the communion established not only between him and all present but
also with all now living who will yet share the same impression;
and, more than that, he feels the mysterious gladness of a communion
which, reaching beyond the grave, unites us with all men of the past
who have been moved by the same feelings and with all men of the
future who will yet be touched by them. And this effect is produced
both by the religious art which transmits feelings of love to God and
one’s neighbour, and by universal art transmitting the very simplest
feelings common to all men.
The art of our time should be appraised differently from former art
chiefly in this, that the art of our time, that is, Christian art
(basing itself on a religious perception which demands the union of
man), excludes from the domain of art good in its subject-matter
everything transmitting exclusive feelings, which do not unite but
divide men. It relegates such work to the category of art bad in its
subject-matter, while on the other hand it includes in the category
of art good in subject-matter a section not formerly admitted as
deserving to be chosen out and respected, namely, universal art
transmitting even the most trifling and simple feelings if only they
are accessible to all men without exception and therefore unite
them. Such art cannot, in our time, but be esteemed good, for it
attains the end which the religious perception of our time, that is,
Christianity, sets before humanity.
Christian art either evokes in men those feelings which, through love
of God and of one’s neighbour, draw them to closer and ever closer
union and make them ready for and capable of such union; or evokes
in them those feelings which show them that they are already united
in the joys and sorrows of life. And therefore the Christian art of
our time can be and is of two kinds: 1) art transmitting feelings
flowing from a religious perception of man’s position in the world in
relation to God and to his neighbour--religious art in the limited
meaning of the term; and 2) art transmitting the simplest feelings of
common life, but such, always, as are accessible to all men in the
whole world--the art of common life--the art of a people--universal
art. Only these two kinds of art can be considered good art in our
time.
The first, religious art,--transmitting both positive feelings of
love to God and one’s neighbour, and negative feelings of indignation
and horror at the violation of love,--manifests itself chiefly in the
form of words, and to some extent also in painting and sculpture: the
second kind, universal art, transmitting feelings accessible to all,
manifests itself in words, in painting, in sculpture, in dances, in
architecture, and, most of all, in music.
If I were asked to give modern examples of each of these kinds of
art, then, as examples of the highest art flowing from love of God
and man (both of the higher, positive and of the lower, negative
kind), in literature I should name _The Robbers_ by Schiller;
Victor Hugo’s _Les Pauvres Gens_ and _Les Misérables_; the novels
and stories of Dickens--_The Tale of Two Cities_, _The Christmas
Carol_, _The Chimes_, and others; _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_; Dostoevski’s
works--especially his _Memoirs from the House of Death_; and _Adam
Bede_ by George Eliot.
[Illustration: “A TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION”
_A drawing by I. N. Kramskóy_]
In modern painting, strange to say, works of this kind, directly
transmitting the Christian feeling of love of God and of one’s
neighbour, are hardly to be found, especially among the works of
the celebrated painters. There are plenty of pictures treating of
the Gospel stories; they however, while depicting historical events
with great wealth of detail, do not, and cannot, transmit religious
feelings not possessed by their painters. There are many pictures
treating of the personal feelings of various people, but of pictures
representing great deeds of self-sacrifice and Christian love there
are very few, and what there are are principally by artists who are
not celebrated, and are for the most part not pictures but merely
sketches. Such for instance is the drawing by Kramskóy (worth many
of his finished pictures), showing a drawing-room with a balcony,
past which troops are marching in triumph on their return from the
war. On the balcony stands a wet-nurse holding a baby, and a boy.
They are admiring the procession of the troops, but the mother,
covering her face with a handkerchief, has fallen back on the sofa
sobbing. Such also is the picture by Walter Langley to which I have
already referred, and such again is a picture by the French artist
Morlon, depicting a lifeboat hastening in a heavy storm to the
relief of a steamer that is being wrecked. Approaching these in kind
are pictures which represent the hard-working peasant with respect
and love. Such are the pictures by Millet, and particularly his
drawing, “The Man with the Hoe,” also pictures in this style by Jules
Breton, Lhermitte, Defregger, and others. As examples of pictures
evoking indignation and horror at the violation of love to God and
man, Gay’s picture “Judgment” may serve, and also Leizen-Mayer’s
“Signing the Death Warrant.” But there are very few of this kind
also. Anxiety about the technique and the beauty of the picture for
the most part obscures the feeling. For instance, Gérôme’s “Pollice
Verso” expresses, not so much horror at what is being perpetrated as
attraction by the beauty of the spectacle.[123]
To give examples, from the modern art of our upper classes, of
art of the second kind, good universal art, or even of the art of
a whole people, is yet more difficult, especially in literature
and music. If there are some works which by their inner contents
might be assigned to this class (such as _Don Quixote_, Molière’s
comedies, _David Copperfield_ and _The Pickwick Papers_ by Dickens,
Gógol’s and Púshkin’s tales, and some things of Maupassant’s),
these works for the most part--from the exceptional nature of the
feelings they transmit, and the superfluity of special details of
time and locality, and above all on account of the poverty of their
subject-matter in comparison with examples of universal ancient art
(such, for instance, as the story of Joseph)--are comprehensible
only to people of their own circle. That Joseph’s brethren, being
jealous of his father’s affection, sell him to the merchants; that
Potiphar’s wife wishes to tempt the youth; that having attained the
highest station he takes pity on his brothers, including Benjamin
the favourite,--these and all the rest are feelings accessible
alike to a Russian peasant, a Chinese, an African, a child or an
old man, educated or uneducated; and it is all written with such
restraint, is so free from any superfluous detail, that the story
may be told to any circle and will be equally comprehensible and
touching to everyone. But not such are the feelings of Don Quixote or
of Molière’s heroes (though Molière is perhaps the most universal,
and therefore the most excellent, artist of modern times), nor of
Pickwick and his friends. These feelings are not common to all men
but very exceptional, and therefore to make them contagious the
authors have surrounded them with abundant details of time and
place. And this abundance of detail makes the stories difficult of
comprehension to all people not living within reach of the conditions
described by the author.
[Illustration: “DER SALONTIROLER”
_A Society Huntsman_
_By Franz Defregger_]
The author of the novel of Joseph did not need to describe in detail,
as would be done nowadays, the blood-stained coat of Joseph, the
dwelling and dress of Jacob, the pose and attire of Potiphar’s wife,
and how adjusting the bracelet on her left arm she said, “Come to
me,” and so on, because the content of feeling in this novel is so
strong that all details except the most essential--such as that
Joseph went out into another room to weep--are superfluous and would
only hinder the transmission of emotion. And therefore this novel is
accessible to all men, touches people of all nations and classes,
young and old, and has lasted to our times, and will yet last for
thousands of years to come. But strip the best novels of our time of
their details, and what will remain?
It is therefore impossible in modern literature to indicate works
fully satisfying the demands of universality. Such works as exist are
to a great extent spoilt by what is usually called “realism,” but
would be better termed “provincialism,” in art.
In music the same occurs as in verbal art and for similar reasons. In
consequence of the poorness of the feeling they contain, the melodies
of the modern composers are amazingly empty and insignificant. And
to strengthen the impression produced by these empty melodies, the
new musicians pile complex modulations on to each trivial melody not
only in their own national manner, but also in the way characteristic
of their own exclusive circle and particular musical school.
Melody--every melody--is free and may be understood of all men;
but as soon as it is bound up with a particular harmony, it ceases
to be accessible except to people trained to such harmony, and it
becomes strange, not only to common men of another nationality, but
to all who do not belong to the circle whose members have accustomed
themselves to certain forms of harmonisation. So that music, like
poetry, travels in a vicious circle. Trivial and exclusive melodies,
in order to make them attractive, are laden with harmonic, rhythmic,
and orchestral complications and thus become yet more exclusive, and
far from being universal are not even national, that is, they are not
comprehensible to the whole people but only to some people.
In music, besides marches and dances by various composers which
satisfy the demands of universal art, one can indicate very few works
of this class: Bach’s famous violin _aria_, Chopin’s nocturne in E
flat major, and perhaps a dozen bits (not whole pieces, but parts)
selected from the works of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, and
Chopin.[124]
Although in painting the same thing is repeated as in poetry and in
music--namely, in order to make them more interesting, works weak in
conception are surrounded by minutely studied accessories of time and
place which give them a temporary and local interest but make them
less universal--still in painting more than in the other spheres of
art may be found works satisfying the demands of universal Christian
art; that is to say, there are more works expressing feelings in
which all men may participate.
In the arts of painting and sculpture, all pictures and statues in
so-called genre style, representations of animals, landscapes and
caricatures with subjects comprehensible to everyone, and also all
kinds of ornaments, are universal in subject-matter. Such productions
in painting and sculpture are very numerous (for instance, china
dolls), but for the most part such objects (for instance, ornaments
of all kinds) are either not considered to be art or are considered
to be art of a low quality. In reality all such objects, if only they
transmit a true feeling experienced by the artist and comprehensible
to everyone (however insignificant it may seem to us to be), are
works of real, good, Christian art.
I fear it will here be urged against me, that having denied that
the conception of beauty can supply a standard for works of art, I
contradict myself by acknowledging ornaments to be works of good
art. The reproach is unjust, for the subject-matter of all kinds
of ornamentation consists not in the beauty but in the feeling (of
admiration at, and delight in, the combination of lines and colours)
which the artist has experienced, and with which he infects the
spectator. Art remains what it was and what it must be: nothing but
the infection by one man of another or of others with the feelings
experienced by the infector. Among those feelings is the feeling of
delight at what pleases the sight. Objects pleasing the sight may be
such as please a small or a large number of people, or such as please
all men. And ornaments for the most part are of the latter kind. A
landscape representing a very unusual view, or a genre picture of a
special subject, may not please everyone, but ornaments, from Yakútsk
ornaments to Greek ones, are intelligible to everyone and evoke a
similar feeling of admiration in all, and therefore this despised
kind of art should in Christian society be esteemed far above
exceptional pretentious pictures and sculptures.
So that there are only two kinds of good Christian art: all the rest
of art not comprised in these two divisions should be acknowledged
to be bad art, deserving, not to be encouraged but to be driven
out, denied, and despised, as being art not uniting but dividing
people. Such in literary art are all novels and poems which transmit
ecclesiastical or patriotic feelings and also exclusive feelings
pertaining only to the class of the idle rich: such as aristocratic
honour, satiety, spleen, pessimism, and refined and vicious feelings
flowing from sex-love--quite incomprehensible to the great majority
of mankind.
In painting, we must similarly place in the class of bad art all
ecclesiastical, patriotic, and exclusive pictures; all pictures
representing the amusements and allurements of a rich and idle life;
all so-called symbolic pictures, in which the very meaning of the
symbol is comprehensible only to the people of a certain circle;
and above all pictures with voluptuous subjects--all that odious
female nudity which fills all the exhibitions and galleries. And to
this class belongs almost all the chamber and opera music of our
times,--beginning especially with Beethoven (Schumann, Berlioz,
Liszt, Wagner),--by its subject-matter devoted to the expression of
feelings accessible only to people who have developed in themselves
an unhealthy nervous irritation evoked by this exclusive, artificial,
and complex music.
“What! the _Ninth Symphony_ not a good work of art!” I hear exclaimed
by indignant voices.
And I reply: Most certainly it is not. All that I have written I
have written with the sole purpose of finding a clear and reasonable
criterion by which to judge the merits of works of art. And this
criterion, coinciding with the indications of plain and sane sense,
indubitably shows me that that symphony of Beethoven’s is not a
good work of art. Of course, to people educated in the worship of
certain productions and of their authors, to people whose taste
has been perverted just by being educated in such a worship, the
acknowledgment that such a celebrated work is bad is amazing and
strange. But how are we to escape the indications of reason and
common sense?
Beethoven’s _Ninth Symphony_ is considered a great work of art. To
verify its claim to be such I must first ask myself whether this work
transmits the highest religious feeling? I reply in the negative,
for music in itself cannot transmit those feelings; and therefore I
ask myself next, Since this work does not belong to the highest kind
of religious art, has it the other characteristic of the good art of
our time,--the quality of uniting all men in one common feeling: does
it rank as Christian universal art? And again I have no option but
to reply in the negative; for not only do I not see how the feelings
transmitted by this work could unite people not specially trained
to submit themselves to its complex hypnotism, but I am unable to
imagine to myself a crowd of normal people who could understand
anything of this long, confused, and artificial production, except
short snatches which are lost in a sea of what is incomprehensible.
And therefore, whether I like it or not, I am compelled to conclude
that this work belongs to the rank of bad art. It is curious to note
in this connection, that attached to the end of this very symphony
is a poem of Schiller’s which (though somewhat obscurely) expresses
this very thought, namely, that feeling (Schiller speaks only of
the feeling of gladness) unites people and evokes love in them. But
though this poem is sung at the end of the symphony, the music does
not accord with the thought expressed in the verses; for the music
is exclusive and does not unite all men, but unites only a few,
dividing them off from the rest of mankind.
And just in this same way, in all branches of art, many and many
works considered great by the upper classes of our society will have
to be judged. By this one sure criterion we shall have to judge the
celebrated _Divine Comedy_ and _Jerusalem Delivered_, and a great
part of Shakespeare’s and Goethe’s work, and in painting every
representation of miracles, including Raphael’s Transfiguration, etc.
Whatever the work may be and however it may have been extolled,
we have first to ask whether this work is one of real art or a
counterfeit. Having acknowledged, on the basis of the indication of
its infectiousness even to a small class of people, that a certain
production belongs to the realm of art, it is necessary, on this
basis to decide the next question, Does this work belong to the
category of bad exclusive art, opposed to religious perception, or
to Christian art, uniting people? And having acknowledged a work to
belong to real Christian art, we must then, according to whether it
transmits the feelings flowing from love to God and man or merely the
simple feelings uniting all men, assign it a place in the ranks of
religious art or in those of universal art.
Only on the basis of such verification shall we find it possible to
select, from the whole mass of what in our society claims to be art,
those works which form real, important, necessary spiritual food,
and to separate them from all the harmful and useless art and from
the counterfeits of art which surround us. Only on the basis of such
verification shall we be able to rid ourselves of the pernicious
results of harmful art and avail ourselves of that beneficient action
which is the purpose of true and good art, and which is indispensable
for the spiritual life of man and of humanity.
CHAPTER XVII
_Results of absence of true art. Results of perversion of art:
labour and lives spent on what is useless and harmful. The
abnormal life of the rich. Perplexity of children and plain
folk. Confusion of right and wrong. Nietzsche and Redbeard.
Superstition, Patriotism, and Sensuality._
Art is one of two organs of human progress. By words man interchanges
thoughts, by the forms of art he interchanges feelings, and this with
all men not only of the present time but also of the past and the
future. It is natural to human beings to employ both these organs of
intercommunication and therefore the perversion of either of them
must cause evil results to the society in which it occurs. And these
results will be of two kinds: first, the absence in that society
of the work which should be performed by the organ, and secondly,
the harmful activity of the perverted organ. And just these results
have shown themselves in our society. The organ of art has been
perverted, and therefore the upper classes of society have to a great
extent been deprived of the effect that it should have produced. The
diffusion in our society of enormous quantities, on the one hand,
of those counterfeits of art which only serve to amuse and corrupt
people, and on the other hand, of works of insignificant exclusive
art, mistaken for the highest art, have perverted most men’s capacity
to be infected by true works of art, and have thus deprived them of
the possibility of experiencing the highest feelings to which mankind
has attained, which can only be transmitted from man to man by art.
All the best that has been done in art by man remains strange to
people who lack the capacity to be infected by art, and is replaced
either by spurious counterfeits of art or by insignificant art,
which they mistake for real art. People of our time and of our
society are delighted with Baudelaires, Verlaines, Moréases, Ibsens,
and Maeterlincks, in poetry; with Monets, Manets, Puvis de Chavannes,
Burne-Joneses, Stucks, and Böcklins in painting; with Wagners,
Liszts, Richard Strausses, in music; and they are no longer capable
of comprehending either the highest or the simplest art.
In the upper classes, in consequence of this loss of capacity to be
infected by works of art, people grow up, are educated and live,
lacking the fertilising, improving influence of art, and therefore
not only do not advance towards perfection, do not become kinder,
but, on the contrary, possessing highly-developed external means of
civilization, they yet tend to become continually more savage, more
coarse, and more cruel.
Such is the result of the absence from our society of the activity
of that essential organ--art. But the consequences of the perverted
activity of that organ are yet more harmful. And they are numerous.
[Illustration: “THE ANGELS AT THE TOMB OF CHRIST”
_By E. Manet_
_An example of a sort of picture Tolstoy disliked_]
The first consequence, plain for all to see, is the enormous
expenditure of the labour of working people on things which are not
only useless but, for the most part, are harmful; and more than that,
the waste of priceless human lives on this unnecessary and harmful
business. It is terrible to consider with what intensity and amid
what privations, millions of people--who lack time and opportunity to
attend to what they and their families urgently require--labour for
ten, twelve or fourteen hours on end, and even at night, setting the
type for pseudo-artistic books which spread vice among mankind, or
working for theatres, concerts, exhibitions, and picture galleries,
which for the most part also serve vice; but it is yet more terrible
to reflect that lively, kindly children, capable of all that is good,
are devoted from their early years to such tasks as these: that for
six, eight, or ten hours a day, and for ten or fifteen years, some
of them should play scales and exercises; others should twist
their limbs, walk on their toes, and lift their legs above their
heads; a third set should sing solfeggios; a fourth set, showing
themselves off in all manner of ways, should recite verses; a fifth
set should draw from busts or from nude models and paint studies; a
sixth set should write compositions according to the rules of certain
periods; and that in these occupations, unworthy of a human being,
which are often continued long after full maturity, they should
waste their physical and mental strength and lose all perception
of the meaning of life. It is often said that it is horrible and
pitiful to see little acrobats putting their legs over their necks,
but it is not less pitiful to see children of ten giving concerts,
and it is still worse to see schoolboys of ten who as a preparation
for literary work have learnt by heart the exceptions to the Latin
grammar. These people not only grow physically and mentally deformed
but also morally deformed, and become incapable of doing anything
really needed by man. Occupying in society the rôle of amusers of
the rich, they lose their sense of human dignity and develop in
themselves such a passion for public applause that they are always
a prey to an inflated and unsatisfied vanity which grows in them to
diseased dimensions, and they expend their mental strength in efforts
to obtain satisfaction for this passion. And what is most tragic of
all is that these people, who for the sake of art are spoilt for
life, not only do not render service to this art, but on the contrary
inflict the greatest harm on it. They are taught in academies,
schools, and conservatoires, how to counterfeit art, and by learning
this they so pervert themselves that they quite lose the capacity to
produce works of real art, and become purveyors of that counterfeit,
or trivial, or depraved, art which floods our society. This is the
first obvious consequence of the perversion of the organ of art.
The second consequence is that the productions of amusement-art,
which are prepared in such terrific quantities by the armies of
professional artists, enable the rich people of our times to live
the lives they do, lives not only unnatural, but in contradiction to
the humane principles these people themselves profess. To live as
do the idle rich people, especially the women, far from nature and
from animals, in artificial conditions, with muscles atrophied or
misdeveloped by gymnastics, and with enfeebled vital energy, would be
impossible were it not for what is called art--for this occupation
and amusement which hides from them the meaninglessness of their
lives and saves them from the dulness that oppresses them. Take from
all these people the theatres, concerts, exhibitions, piano-playing,
songs, and novels, with which they now fill their time in full
confidence that occupation with these things is a very refined,
esthetic, and therefore good occupation; take from the patrons of art
who buy pictures, assist musicians, and are acquainted with writers,
their rôle of protectors of that important matter art, and they will
not be able to continue such a life, but will all be eaten up by
ennui and spleen, and will become conscious of the meaninglessness
and wrongfulness of their present mode of life. Only occupation
with what among them is considered art renders it possible for them
to continue to live on, infringing all natural conditions, without
perceiving the emptiness and cruelty of their lives. And this support
afforded to the false manner of life pursued by the rich is the
second consequence, and a serious one, of the perversion of art.
The third consequence of the perversion of art is the perplexity
produced in the minds of children and plain folk. Among people not
perverted by the false theories of our society, among workers and
children, there exists a very definite conception of why people
should be respected and praised. In the minds of peasants and
children the ground for praise or eulogy can only be either physical
strength: Hercules, the heroes and conquerors; or moral, spiritual,
strength: Sakya Muni giving up a beautiful wife and a kingdom to save
mankind, Christ going to the cross for the truth he professed, and
all the martyrs and the saints. Both are understood by peasants and
children. They understand that physical strength must be respected,
for it compels respect; and the moral strength of goodness an
unperverted man cannot fail to respect, because his whole spiritual
being draws him towards it. But these people, children and peasants,
suddenly perceive that besides those praised, respected, and rewarded
for physical or moral strength, there are others who are praised
extolled and rewarded much more than the heroes of strength and
virtue, merely because they sing well, compose verses, or dance. They
see that singers, composers, painters, ballet-dancers, earn millions
of roubles and receive more honour than the saints do: and peasants
and children are perplexed.
When fifty years had elapsed after Púshkin’s death and, simultaneously,
the cheap editions of his works began to circulate among the people
and a monument was erected to him in Moscow, I received more than a
dozen letters from different peasants asking why Púshkin was raised
to such dignity? And only the other day a literate[125] man from
Sarátov called on me who had evidently gone out of his mind over this
very question. He was on his way to Moscow to expose the clergy for
having taken part in raising a monument to Mr. Púshkin.
Indeed, one need only imagine to oneself what the state of mind of
such a man of the people must be when he learns from such rumours and
newspapers as reach him, that the clergy, Government officials, and
all the best people in Russia, are triumphantly unveiling a statue
to a great man, the benefactor, the pride of Russia--Púshkin, of
whom till then he had never heard. On all sides he reads or hears
about this, and he naturally supposes that if such honours are
rendered to anyone, then without doubt he must have done something
extraordinary--either some feat of strength or of goodness. He tries
to learn who Púshkin was, and having discovered that Púshkin was
neither a hero nor a general but a private person and a writer, he
comes to the conclusion that Púshkin must have been a holy man and a
teacher of goodness, and he hastens to read or to hear his life and
works. But what must be his perplexity when he learns that Púshkin
was a man of more than easy morals, who was killed in a duel when
attempting to murder another man, and that all his service consisted
in writing verses about love, which were often very indecent.
That a hero, or Alexander the Great, or Genghis Khan, or Napoleon,
was great, he understands, because any one of them could have crushed
him and a thousand like him; that Buddha, Socrates, and Christ, were
great he also understands, for he knows and feels that he and all men
should be such as they were; but why a man should be great because he
wrote verses about the love of women he cannot make out.
A similar perplexity must trouble the brain of a Breton or Normandy
peasant who hears that a monument, “_une statue_” (as to the
Madonna), is being erected to Baudelaire, and reads, or is told, what
the contents of his _Fleurs du Mal_ are; or, more amazing still, to
Verlaine, when he learns the story of that man’s wretched, vicious
life, and reads his verses. And what confusion it must cause in
the brains of peasants when they learn that some Patti or Taglioni
is paid £10,000 for a season, or that a painter gets as much for
a picture, or that authors of novels describing love-scenes have
received even more than that.
And it is the same with children. I remember how I passed through
this stage of amazement and stupefaction and only reconciled myself
to this exaltation of artists to the level of heroes and saints by
lowering in my own estimation the importance of moral excellence and
by attributing a false, unnatural meaning to works of art. And a
similar confusion must occur in the soul of each child and each man
of the people when he learns of the strange honours and rewards that
are lavished on artists. This is the third consequence of the false
relation in which our society stands towards art.
The fourth consequence is that people of the upper classes, more and
more frequently encountering the contradictions between beauty and
goodness, put the ideal of beauty first, thus freeing themselves from
the demands of morality. These people, reversing the rôles, instead
of admitting, as is really the case, that the art they serve is an
antiquated affair, allege that morality is an antiquated affair which
can have no importance for people situated on that high plane of
development which they opine that they occupy.
This result of the false relation to art showed itself in our society
long ago; but recently, with its prophet Nietzsche and his adherents,
and with the decadents and certain English esthetes who coincide with
him, it is being expressed with especial impudence. The Decadents,
and esthetes of the type at one time represented by Oscar Wilde,
select as a theme for their productions the denial of morality and
the laudation of vice.
This art has partly generated and partly coincides with a similar
philosophic theory. I recently received from America a book entitled
_The Survival of the Fittest: Philosophy of Power_, 1896, by Ragner
Redbeard, Chicago. The substance of this book, as it is expressed
in the editor’s preface, is that to measure right by the false
philosophy of the Hebrew prophets and weepful Messiahs is madness.
Right is not the offspring of doctrine, but of power. All laws,
commandments, or doctrines as to not doing to another what you
do not wish done to you, have no inherent authority whatever, but
receive it only from the club, the gallows, and the sword. A man
truly free is under no obligation to obey any injunction, human or
divine. Obedience is the sign of the degenerate. Disobedience is the
stamp of the hero. Men should not be bound by moral rules invented by
their foes. The whole world is a slippery battlefield. Ideal justice
demands that the vanquished should be exploited, emasculated, and
scorned. The free and brave may seize the world. And therefore there
should be eternal war for life, for land, for love, for women, for
power, and for gold. (Something similar was said a few years ago by
the celebrated and refined academician, de Vogüé.) The earth with its
treasures is booty for the bold.
The author has evidently by himself, independently of Nietzsche, come
to the same conclusions which are professed by the new artists.
Expressed in the form of a doctrine these positions startle us.
In reality they are implied in the ideal of art serving beauty.
The art of our upper classes has educated people in this ideal of
the superman,--which is in reality the old ideal of Nero, Sténka
Rázin,[126] Genghis Khan, Robert Macaire,[127] or Napoleon, and all
their accomplices, assistants, and adulators,--and it supports this
ideal with all its might.
It is this supplanting of the ideal of what is right by the ideal
of what is beautiful, that is, of what is pleasant, that is the
fourth consequence and a terrible one of the perversion of art in our
society. It is fearful to think of what would befall humanity were
such art to spread among the masses of the people. And it already
begins to spread.
Finally, the fifth and chief result is that the art which flourishes
in the upper classes of European society has a directly vitiating
influence, infecting people with the worst feelings and with those
most harmful to humanity--superstition, patriotism, and, above all,
sensuality.
Look carefully into the causes of the ignorance of the masses and
you may see that the chief cause does not at all lie in the lack of
schools and libraries, as we are accustomed to suppose, but in those
superstitions, both ecclesiastical and patriotic, with which the
people are saturated and which are unceasingly generated by all the
methods of art. Church superstitions are supported and produced by
the poetry of prayers, hymns, paintings, by the sculpture of images
and of statues, by singing, by organs, by music, by architecture, and
even by dramatic art in religious ceremonies. Patriotic superstitions
are supported and produced by verses and stories (which are supplied
even in schools), by music, by songs, by triumphal processions, by
royal meetings, by martial pictures, and by monuments.
Were it not for this continual activity in all departments of art,
perpetuating the ecclesiastical and patriotic intoxication and
embitterment of the people, the masses would long ere this have
attained to true enlightenment.
But it is not only in Church matters and patriotic matters that art
depraves; it is art in our time that serves as the chief cause of
the perversion of people in the most important question of social
life--in their sexual relations. We nearly all know by our own
experience, and those who are fathers and mothers know in the case
of their grown-up children also, what fearful mental and physical
suffering, what useless waste of strength, people suffer merely as a
consequence of dissoluteness in sexual desire.
Since the world began, since the Trojan war which sprang from that
same sexual dissoluteness, down to and including the suicides and
murders of lovers described in almost every newspaper, a great
proportion of the sufferings of the human race have come from this
source.
And what is art doing? All art, real and counterfeit, with very few
exceptions, is devoted to describing, depicting, and inflaming,
sexual love in every shape and form. If one remembers all those
novels and their lust-kindling descriptions of love, from the most
refined to the grossest, with which the literature of our society
overflows; if one only remembers all those pictures and statues
representing women’s naked bodies, and all sorts of abominations,
which are reproduced in illustrations and advertisements; if one only
remembers all the filthy operas and operettas, songs and ballads,
with which our world teems, involuntarily it seems as if existing art
had but one definite aim--to disseminate vice as widely as possible.
Such are the most direct though not all the consequences of that
perversion of art which has occurred in our society. So that what in
our society is called art not only does not conduce to the progress
of mankind, but more than almost anything else hinders the attainment
of goodness in our lives.
And therefore the question which involuntarily presents itself to
every man free from artistic activity and not bound to existing art
by self-interest, the question asked by me at the beginning of this
work: Is it just that to what we call art, to a something possessed
by but a small section of society, should be offered up such
sacrifices of human labour, of human lives, and of goodness, as are
now being offered up? receives the natural reply: No; it is unjust,
and these things should not be! Such is also the answer of sound
sense and unperverted moral feeling. Not only should these things not
be, not only should no sacrifices be offered up to what among us is
called art, but, on the contrary, the efforts of those who wish to
live rightly should be directed towards the destruction of this art,
for it is one of the most cruel of the evils that harass our section
of humanity. So that were the question put: Would it be preferable
for our Christian world to be deprived of _all_ that is now esteemed
to be art, and together with the false to lose _all_ that is good in
it? I think that every reasonable and moral man would again decide
the question as Plato decided it for his _Republic_, and as all the
early Church-Christian and Mahommedan teachers of mankind decided it,
that is, would say, Rather let there be no art at all than continue
the depraving art, or simulation of art, which now exists. Happily no
one has to face this question and no one need adopt either solution.
All that man can do, and that we--the so-called educated people
who are so placed that we have the possibility of understanding
the meaning of the phenomena of our life--can and should do, is to
understand the error we are involved in, and not harden our hearts in
it, out seek for a way of escape.
CHAPTER XVIII
_The purpose of human life is the brotherly union of man. Art
must be guided by this perception._
The cause of the lie into which the art of our society has fallen was
that people of the upper classes, having ceased to believe in the
Church teaching (called Christian), did not resolve to accept true
Christian teaching in its real and fundamental principles of sonship
to God and brotherhood to man, but continued to live on without any
belief, endeavouring to make up for the absence of belief--some by
hypocrisy, pretending still to believe in the nonsense of the Church
creeds; others by boldly asserting their disbelief; others by refined
agnosticism; and others, again, by returning to the Greek worship of
beauty, proclaiming egotism to be right, and elevating it to the rank
of a religious doctrine.
The cause of the malady was the non-acceptance of Christ’s teaching
in its real, that is, its full, meaning. And the only cure lies in
acknowledging that teaching in its full meaning. Such acknowledgement
in our time is not only possible but inevitable. Already to-day a
man standing on the height of the knowledge of our age, whether he
be nominally a Catholic or a Protestant, cannot say that he really
believes in the dogmas of the Church: in God being a Trinity, in
Christ being God, in the Scheme of Redemption, and so forth; nor can
he satisfy himself by proclaiming his unbelief or scepticism, nor by
relapsing into the worship of beauty and egotism. Above all he can no
longer say that we do not know the real meaning of Christ’s teaching.
That meaning has not only become accessible to all men of our times,
but the whole life of man to-day is permeated by the spirit of that
teaching and consciously or unconsciously is guided by it.
However differently in form people belonging to our Christian world
may define the destiny of man: whether they see it in human progress
(in whatever sense of the words), in the union of all men in a
socialistic realm, or in the establishment of a commune; whether
they look forward to the union of mankind under the guidance of one
universal Church, or to the federation of the world--however various
in form their definitions of the destination of human life may be,
all men in our times already admit that the highest well-being
attainable by men is to be reached by their union with one another.
However people of our upper classes (feeling that their ascendency
can only be maintained as long as they separate themselves--the rich
and learned--from the labourers, the poor, and the unlearned) may
seek to devise new conceptions of life by which their privileges
may be perpetuated--now the ideal of returning to antiquity, now
mysticism, now Hellenism, now the cult of the superior person
(supermanism)--they have, willingly or unwillingly, to admit the
truth which is becoming clear upon all sides voluntarily and
involuntarily, namely, that our welfare lies only in the union and
brotherhood of man.
Unconsciously this truth is confirmed by the construction of
means of communication,--telegraphs, telephones, the press, and
the ever-increasing attainability of material well-being for
everyone--and consciously it is affirmed by the destruction of
superstitions which divide men, by the diffusion of the truths of
knowledge, and by the expression of the ideal of the brotherhood of
man in the best works of art of our time.
Art is a spiritual organ of human life which cannot be destroyed,
and therefore, notwithstanding all the efforts made by people of the
upper classes to conceal the religious ideal by which humanity lives,
that ideal is more and more clearly recognised by man, and even in
our perverted society is more and more often partially expressed by
science and by art. During the present century works of the higher
kind of religious art, permeated by a truly Christian spirit, have
appeared more and more frequently both in literature and in painting,
as also works of the universal art of common life accessible to all.
So that even art knows the true ideal of our times and tends towards
it. On the one hand, the best works of art of our time transmit
religious feelings urging towards the union and the brotherhood
of man (such are the works of Dickens, Hugo, Dostoevski; and, in
painting, of Millet, Bastien Lepage, Jules Breton, Lhermitte, and
others); on the other hand, they strive towards the transmission,
not of feelings which are natural to people of the upper classes
only, but of such feelings as may unite everyone without exception.
There are as yet few such works, but the need of them is already
acknowledged. In recent times we also meet more and more frequently
with attempts at publications, pictures, concerts, and theatres, for
the people. All this is still very far from accomplishing what should
be done, but already the direction in which good art instinctively
presses forward to regain the path natural to it can be discerned.
The religious perception of our time--which consists in acknowledging
that the aim of life (both collective and individual) is the union
of mankind--is already so sufficiently distinct that people have
now only to reject the false theory of beauty, according to which
enjoyment is considered to be the purpose of art, and religious
perception will naturally take its place as the guide of the art of
our time.
And as soon as this religious perception which already unconsciously
directs the life of man is consciously acknowledged, then immediately
and naturally the division of art into art for the lower and art
for the upper classes will disappear. There will be one common,
brotherly, universal art; and then first, that art will naturally
be rejected which transmits feelings incompatible with the religious
perception of our time--feelings which do not unite, but divide
men--and later that insignificant, exclusive art will be rejected to
which an unmerited importance is now attributed.
And as soon as this occurs, art will immediately cease to be, what it
has been in recent times, a means of making people coarser and more
vicious, and it will become what it always used to be and should be,
a means by which humanity progresses towards unity and blessedness.
Strange as the comparison may sound, what has happened to the art of
our circle and time is what happens to a woman who sells her womanly
attractiveness, intended for maternity, for the pleasure of those who
desire such pleasures.
The art of our time and of our circle has become a prostitute. And
this comparison holds good even in minute details. Like her it is not
limited to certain times, like her it is always adorned, like her it
is always saleable, and like her it is enticing and ruinous.
A real work of art can only arise in the soul of an artist
occasionally, as the fruit of the life he has lived, just as a child
is conceived by its mother. But counterfeit art is produced by
artisans and handicraftsmen continually, if only consumers can be
found.
Real art, like the wife of an affectionate husband, needs no
ornaments. But counterfeit art, like a prostitute, must always be
decked out.
The cause of the production of real art is the artist’s inner need
to express a feeling that has accumulated, just as for a mother the
cause of sexual conception was love. The cause of counterfeit art, as
of prostitution, is gain.
The consequence of true art is the introduction of a new feeling into
the intercourse of life, as the consequence of a wife’s love is the
birth of a new man into life.
The consequences of counterfeit art are the perversion of man,
pleasure which never satisfies, and the weakening of man’s spiritual
strength.
And this is what people of our day and of our circle should
understand, in order to avoid the filthy torrent of depraved and
prostituted art with which we are deluged.
CHAPTER XIX
_The art of the future not the possession of a select
minority, but a means towards perfection and unity._
People talk of the art of the future, meaning by art of the future
some especially refined new art which they imagine will be developed
out of that exclusive art of one class which is now considered
the highest art. But no such new art of the future can or will be
found. Our exclusive art, that of the upper classes of Christendom,
has found its way into a blind alley. The direction in which it
has been going leads nowhere. Having once let go of that which is
most essential for art (namely, the guidance given by religious
perception), that art has become ever more and more exclusive and
therefore ever more and more perverted, until finally it has come to
nothing. The art of the future, that which is really coming, will
not be a development of present-day art but will arise on completely
other and new foundations having nothing in common with those by
which our present art of the upper classes is guided.
Art of the future, that is to say, such part of art as shall be
chosen from among all the art diffused among mankind, will consist,
not in transmitting feelings accessible only to members of the rich
classes as is the case to-day, but in transmitting feelings that
embody the highest religious perception of our times. Only those
productions will be considered art which transmit feelings drawing
men together in brotherly union, or such universal feelings as can
unite all men. Only such art will be chosen, tolerated, approved,
and diffused. But art transmitting feelings flowing from antiquated,
worn-out religious teaching,--ecclesiastical art, patriotic art,
voluptuous art, transmitting feelings of superstitious fear, of
pride, of vanity, of ecstatic admiration of national heroes,--art
exciting exclusive love of one’s own people, or sensuality, will be
considered bad, harmful art, and will be censured and despised by
public opinion. All the rest of art, transmitting feelings accessible
only to a section of people, will be considered unimportant and will
be neither blamed nor praised. And the appraisement of art in general
will devolve, not as is now the case on a separate class of rich
people, but on the whole people; so that for a work to be thought
good, and to be approved and diffused, it will have to satisfy the
demands, not of a few people living under similar and often unnatural
conditions but of all those great masses of people who undergo the
natural conditions of laborious life.
Nor will the artists producing the art be, as now, merely a few
people selected from a small section of the nation, members of the
upper classes or their hangers-on, but they will consist of all those
gifted members of the whole people who prove capable of, and have a
leaning towards, artistic activity.
Artistic activity will then be accessible to all men. It will become
accessible to the whole people because (in the first place) in the
art of the future not only will that complex technique which deforms
the productions of the art of to-day and requires so great an effort
and expenditure of time not be demanded, but on the contrary the
demand will be for clearness, simplicity, and brevity--conditions
brought about not by mechanical methods but through the education
of taste. And secondly, artistic activity will become accessible to
all men of the people because, instead of the present professional
schools which only some can enter, all will learn music and graphic
art (singing and drawing) equally with letters, in the elementary
schools, in such a way that every man, having received the first
principles of drawing and music and feeling a capacity for, and a
call to, one or other of the arts, will be able to perfect himself in
it.
People think that if there are no special art-schools the technique
of art will deteriorate. Undoubtedly if by technique we understand
those _complexities_ of art which are now considered an excellence,
it will deteriorate; but if by technique is understood clearness,
beauty, simplicity, and compression, in works of art, then even
if the elements of drawing and music were not to be taught in the
national schools, the technique will not only not deteriorate but, as
is shown by all peasant art, will be a hundred times better. It will
be improved because all the artists of genius now hidden among the
masses will become producers of art and supply models of excellence
which (as has always been the case) will be the best schools of
technique for their successors. For every true artist even now learns
his technique chiefly, not in the schools, but in life, from the
examples of the great masters; then--when art will be produced by the
best artists of the whole nation and there will be more such examples
and they will be more accessible--such part of school training as
the future artist will lose will be a hundredfold compensated for by
the training he will receive from the numerous examples of good art
diffused in society.
Such will be one difference between present and future art. Another
difference will be that art will not be produced by professional
artists receiving payment for their work and engaged on nothing else
besides their art. The art of the future will be produced by all the
members of the community who feel the need of such activity, but they
will occupy themselves with art only when they feel such need.
In our society people think that an artist will work better and
produce more if he has a secured maintenance. And this opinion would
prove once more quite clearly, were such proof yet needed, that what
among us is considered art is not art but only a counterfeit. It is
quite true that for the production of boots or loaves division of
labour is very advantageous, and that the bootmaker or baker who need
not prepare his own dinner or fetch his own fuel will make more boots
or loaves than if he had to busy himself with these matters. But art
is not a handicraft; it is the transmission of feeling the artist has
experienced. And sound feeling can only be engendered in a man when
he is living in all respects a life natural and proper to man. And
therefore security of maintenance is a condition most harmful to an
artist’s true productiveness, since it removes him from the condition
natural to all men--that of struggle with nature for the maintenance
of both his own life and that of others--and thus deprives him of the
opportunity and the possibility of experiencing the most important
and most natural feelings of man. There is no position more injurious
to an artist’s productiveness than that position of complete security
and luxury in which artists usually live in our society.
The artist of the future will live the common life of man, earning
his subsistence by some kind of labour. The fruits of that highest
spiritual strength which passes through him he will try to share with
the greatest possible number of people, for in such transmission
to others of the feelings that have arisen in him he will find
his happiness and reward. The artist of the future will be unable
to understand how an artist, whose chief delight is in the wide
diffusion of his works, could give them only in exchange for a
certain payment.
Until the dealers are driven out, the temple of art will not be a
temple. But the art of the future will drive them out.
And therefore the subject-matter of the art of the future, as I
imagine it to myself, will be totally unlike that of to-day. It
will consist, not in the expression of exclusive feelings: pride,
spleen, satiety, and all possible forms of voluptuousness, available
and interesting only to people who have freed themselves by force
from the labour natural to human beings; but it will consist in the
expression of feelings flowing from the religious perception of our
times, or open to all men without exception and experienced by a man
living a life natural to all men.
To people of our circle who do not know and cannot or will not
understand the feelings which will form the subject-matter of the art
of the future, such subject-matter appears very poor in comparison
with those subtleties of exclusive art with which they are now
occupied. “What is there fresh to be said about the Christian feeling
of love to one’s fellow-man?” “The feelings common to everyone are so
insignificant and monotonous,” think they. And yet in our time the
really fresh feelings can only be religious, Christian feelings, and
such as are open and accessible to all. The feelings flowing from the
religious perception of our times, Christian feelings, are infinitely
new and varied, only not in the sense some people imagine,--not
because they can be evoked by depicting Christ and Gospel episodes or
by repeating in new forms the Christian truths of unity, brotherhood,
equality, and love,--but because all the oldest, commonest, and most
hackneyed phenomena of life evoke the newest, most unexpected and
poignant emotions as soon as a man regards them from the Christian
point of view.
What can be older than the relations between married couples, of
parents to children, of children to parents; the relations of men
to their fellow-countrymen and to foreigners, to an invasion, to
defence, to property, to the land, or to animals? But as soon as a
man regards these matters from the Christian point of view, endlessly
varied, fresh, complex, and strong emotions immediately arise.
And in the same way, that realm of subject-matter for the art of the
future which relates to the simplest feelings of common life open
to all will not be narrowed but widened. In our former art only the
expression of feelings natural to people of a certain exceptional
position was considered worthy of being transmitted by art, and even
then only on condition that these feelings were transmitted in a
most refined manner, incomprehensible to the majority of men; all
the immense realm of folk-art and children’s art--jests, proverbs,
riddles, songs, dances, children’s games, and mimicry--was not
esteemed a domain worthy of art.
The artist of the future will understand that to compose a
fairy-tale, a touching little song, a lullaby or an entertaining
riddle, an amusing jest, or to draw a sketch which will delight
dozens of generations or millions of children and adults, is
incomparably more important and more fruitful than to compose a novel
or a symphony, or paint a picture, which will divert some members of
the wealthy classes for a short time and then for ever be forgotten.
The region of this art of the simple feelings accessible to all is
enormous and it is as yet almost untouched.
The art of the future therefore will not be poorer but infinitely
richer in subject-matter. And the form of the art of the future will
also not be inferior to the present forms but infinitely superior.
Superior, not in the sense of having a refined and complex technique,
but in the sense of the capacity briefly, simply, and clearly to
transmit, without any superfluities, the feeling the artist has
experienced and wishes to transmit.
I remember once speaking to a famous astronomer who had given public
lectures on the spectrum analysis of the stars of the Milky Way,
and saying it would be a good thing if, with his knowledge and
masterly delivery, he would give a lecture merely on the formation
and movements of the earth, for certainly there were many people
at his lectures on the spectrum analysis of the stars of the Milky
Way, especially among the women, who did not well know why night
follows day and summer follows winter. The wise astronomer smiled as
he answered, “Yes, it would be a good thing, but it would be very
difficult. To lecture on the spectrum analysis of the Milky Way is
far easier.”
And so it is in art. To write a rhymed poem dealing with the times
of Cleopatra, or paint a picture of Nero burning Rome, or compose
a symphony in the manner of Brahms or Richard Strauss, or an opera
like Wagner’s, is far easier than to tell a simple story without any
unnecessary details yet so that it shall transmit the feelings of
the narrator, or to draw a pencil-sketch which should touch or amuse
the beholder, or to compose four bars of clear and simple melody
without any accompaniment, which should convey an impression and be
remembered by those who hear it.
“It is impossible to us, with our culture, to return to a primitive
state,” say the artists of our time. “It is impossible for us now
to write such stories as that of Joseph or the Odyssey, to produce
such statues as the Venus of Milo, or to compose such music as the
folk-songs.”
And indeed for the artists of our society and day it is impossible,
but not for the future artist who will be free from all the
perversion of technical improvements hiding the absence of
subject-matter, and who, not being a professional artist, and
receiving no payment for his activity, will only produce art when he
feels impelled to do so by an irresistible inner impulse.
The art of the future will thus be completely distinct, both in
subject-matter and in form, from what is now called art. The only
subject-matter of the art of the future will be either feelings
drawing men towards union, or such as already unite them; and the
forms of art will be such as will be open to everyone. And therefore
the ideal of excellence in the future will not be exclusiveness
of feeling, accessible only to some, but, on the contrary, its
universality. And not bulkiness, obscurity, and complexity of form,
which are now valued, but, on the contrary, brevity, clearness, and
simplicity of expression. Only when art has attained to that, will
it neither divert nor deprave men as it does now, calling on them to
expend their best strength on it, but be what it should be--a vehicle
wherewith to transmit religious, Christian perception from the realm
of reason and intellect into that of feeling, and really drawing
people in actual life nearer to the perfection and unity indicated to
them by their religious perception.
CHAPTER XX
_The connection between science and art. The mendacious
sciences; the trivial sciences. Science should deal with the
great problems of human life, and serve as a basis for art._
CONCLUSION
I have accomplished, to the best of my ability, this work which has
occupied me for fifteen years, on a subject near to me--that of art.
By saying that this subject has occupied me for fifteen years, I do
not mean that I have been writing this book fifteen years, but only
that I began to write on art fifteen years ago, thinking that when
once I undertook the task I should be able to accomplish it without
a break. It proved however that my views on the matter then were so
far from clear that I could not arrange them in a way that satisfied
me. From that time I have never ceased to think on the subject, and
I have recommenced writing on it six or seven times; but each time,
after writing a considerable part of it, I have found myself unable
to bring the work to a satisfactory conclusion and have had to put
it aside. Now I have finished it; and however badly I may have
performed the task, my hope is that my fundamental thought on the
false direction the art of our society has taken and is following, on
the reasons of this, and on the real destination of art, is correct,
and that therefore my work will not be without avail. But that this
should come to pass, and that art should really abandon its false
path and take the new direction, it is necessary that another equally
important spiritual human activity--science--in intimate dependence
on which art always rests, should abandon the false path which it
too, like art, is following.
Science and art are as closely bound together as the lungs and the
heart, so that if the one organ is vitiated the other cannot act
rightly.
True science investigates and brings to human perception such
truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society
consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region
of perception to the region of emotion. If therefore the path chosen
by science be false so also will be the path taken by art. Science
and art are like a certain kind of barge with kedge-anchors which
used to ply on our rivers. Science, like the boats which took the
anchors upstream and made them secure, gives direction to the forward
movement; while art, like the windlass worked on the barge to draw
it towards the anchor, causes the actual progression. And thus a
false activity of science inevitably causes a correspondingly false
activity of art.
As art in general is the transmission of every kind of feeling,
but in the limited sense of the word we call nothing art unless
it transmits feelings acknowledged by us to be important, so also
science in general is the transmission of all possible knowledge, but
in the limited sense of the word we give the name of science to that
which transmits knowledge admitted by us to be important.
And the degree of importance, both of the feelings transmitted by
art and of the information transmitted by science, is decided by the
religious perception of the given time and society, that is, by the
common understanding of the purpose of their lives possessed by the
people of that time or society.
What most of all contributes to the fulfilment of that purpose will
be studied most; what contributes less will be studied less; what
does not contribute at all to the fulfilment of the purpose of human
life will be entirely neglected or, if studied, such study will not
be accounted science. So it always has been and so it should be now,
for such is the nature of human knowledge and of human life. But the
science of the upper classes of our time, which not only does not
acknowledge any religion, but considers every religion to be mere
superstition, could not and cannot make such distinctions.
Scientists of our day affirm that they study _everything_
impartially; but as everything is too much, is in fact an infinite
number of objects, and it is impossible to study all alike, this is
only said in theory, while in practice not everything is studied,
and study is applied far from impartially--only that being studied
which, on the one hand, is most wanted by, and on the other hand, is
pleasantest to, those people who occupy themselves with science. And
what the members of the upper classes who are occupying themselves
with science most want is the maintenance of the system under which
those classes retain their privileges; and what is pleasantest are
such things as satisfy idle curiosity, do not demand great mental
effort, and can be practically applied.
And therefore one side of science, including theology and philosophy
adapted to the existing order, as also history and political economy
of the same sort, are chiefly occupied in proving that the existing
order is the very one which ought to endure; that it has come into
existence and continues to exist by the operation of immutable
laws not amenable to human will, and that all efforts to change
it are therefore harmful and wrong. The other part, experimental
science--including mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, physics,
botany, and all the natural sciences--is exclusively occupied with
things that have no direct relation to the purpose of human life:
with what is curious, and with things of which practical application
advantageous to people of the upper classes can be made. And to
justify that selection of objects of study which (in conformity with
their own position) the men of science of our times have made, they
have devised a theory of science for science’s sake, quite similar
to the theory of art for art’s sake.
As by the theory of art for art’s sake it appears that occupation
with all those things that please us--is art, so, by the theory of
science for science’s sake, the study of that which interests us--is
science.
So that one side of science, instead of studying how people should
live in order to fulfil their mission in life, demonstrates the
righteousness and immutability of the bad and false arrangements
of life which exist around us; while the other part, experimental
science, occupies itself with questions of simple curiosity or with
technical improvements.
The first of these divisions of science is harmful, not only because
it confuses people’s perceptions and gives false decisions, but also
by its mere existence, occupying the ground which should belong to
true science. It does this harm, that every man, in order to approach
the study of the most important questions of life, must first refute
these erections of lies which have for ages been piled around each of
the most essential questions of human life, and which are propped up
by all the strength of human ingenuity.
The second division--the one of which modern science is so
particularly proud, and which is considered by many people to be the
only real science--is harmful in that it diverts attention from the
really important subjects to insignificant subjects, and is also
directly harmful in that, under the evil system of society which the
first division of science justifies and supports, a great part of the
technical gains of science are turned not to the advantage but to the
injury of mankind.
Indeed, it is only to those who are devoting their lives to such
study that it seems as if all the inventions which are made in the
sphere of natural science were very important and useful things.
And to these people it seems so only when they do not look around
them and do not see what is really important. They only need tear
themselves away from the psychological microscope under which they
examine the objects of their study, and look about them, in order to
see how insignificant is all that has afforded them such naïve pride,
all that knowledge not only of geometry of n-dimensions, spectrum
analysis of the Milky Way, form of atoms, dimensions of human skulls
of the Stone Age, and similar trifles, but even our knowledge of
micro-organisms, X-rays, and so forth, in comparison with such
knowledge as we have thrown aside and handed over to the perversions
of the professors of theology, jurisprudence, political economy,
financial science, etc. We need only look around us to perceive that
the activity proper to real science is not the study of whatever
happens to interest us, but the study of how man’s life should be
established,--the study of those questions of religion, morality,
and social life, without the solution of which all our knowledge of
nature will be harmful or insignificant.
We are highly delighted and very proud that our science renders it
possible to utilise the energy of a waterfall and make it work in
factories, or that we have pierced tunnels through mountains, and so
forth. But the pity of it is that we make the force of the waterfall
labour, not for the benefit of the workmen but to enrich capitalists
who produce articles of luxury or weapons of man-destroying war. The
same dynamite with which we blast the mountains to pierce tunnels, we
use for wars, which latter we not only do not intend to abstain from
but consider inevitable, and unceasingly prepare for.
If we are now able to inoculate preventatively with diphtheritic
microbes, to find a needle in a body by means of X-rays, to
straighten a hunchback, cure syphilis, and perform wonderful
operations, we should not be proud of these acquisitions (even were
they all established beyond dispute) if we fully understood the true
purpose of real science. If but one-tenth of the efforts now spent
on objects of pure curiosity or of merely practical application
were expended on real science organising the life of man, more than
half the people now sick would not have the illnesses from which
a small minority of them get cured in hospitals. There would be
no poor-blooded and deformed children growing up in factories, no
death-rates, as now, of 50 per cent. among children, no deterioration
of whole generations, no prostitution, no syphilis, and no murdering
of hundreds of thousands in wars, nor those horrors of folly and of
misery which our present science considers a necessary condition of
human life.
We have so perverted the conception of science that it seems strange
to men of our day to allude to sciences which should prevent the
mortality of children, prostitution, syphilis, the deterioration
of whole generations, and the wholesale murder of men. It seems
to us that science is only then real science when a man in a
laboratory pours liquids from one jar into another, or analyses
the spectrum, or cuts up frogs and porpoises, or weaves in a
specialised scientific jargon an obscure network of conventional
phrases--theological, philosophical, historical, juridical, or
politico-economical--semi-intelligible to the man himself and
intended to demonstrate that what now is, is what should be.
But science, true science,--such science as would really deserve
the respect which is now claimed by the followers of one (the least
important) part of science,--is not at all of this kind: real science
lies in knowing what we should and what we should not believe, in
knowing how the associated life of man should and should not be
constituted: how to treat sexual relations, how to educate children,
how to use the land, how to cultivate it oneself without oppressing
other people, how to treat foreigners, how to treat animals, and
much more that is important for the life of man.
Such has true science ever been and such it should be. And such
science is springing up in our times; but, on the one hand, such true
science is denied and refuted by all those scientific people who
defend the existing order of society, and, on the other hand, it is
considered empty, unnecessary, unscientific science by those who are
engrossed in experimental science.
For instance, books and sermons appear, demonstrating the
antiquatedness and absurdity of Church dogmas, as well as the
necessity of making clear the reasonable religious perception
suitable to our times, and all the theology that is held to be
real science is only engaged in refuting these works and in
exercising human intelligence again and again upon finding support
and justification for superstitions long since out-lived, which
have now become quite meaningless. Or a sermon appears showing
that land should not be an object of private possession and that
the institution of private property in land is a chief cause of
the poverty of the masses. Apparently science, real science,
should welcome such a sermon and draw further deductions from
this position. But the science of our times does nothing of the
kind: on the contrary, political economy demonstrates the opposite
position, namely, that landed property, like every other form of
property, must be more and more concentrated in the hands of a small
number of owners. Again, in the same way, one would suppose it to
be the business of real science to demonstrate the irrationality,
unprofitableness, and immorality of war and of executions; or the
inhumanity and harmfulness of prostitution; or the absurdity,
harmfulness, and immorality of using narcotics or of eating animals;
or the irrationality, harmfulness, and antiquatedness of patriotism.
And such works exist, but are all considered unscientific; while
works to prove that all these things ought to continue, and works
intended to satisfy an idle thirst for knowledge lacking any relation
to human life, are considered to be scientific.
The deviation of the science of our time from its true purpose is
strikingly illustrated by those ideals which are put forward by
some scientists, and are not denied but admitted by the majority of
scientific men.
These ideals are expressed not only in stupid, fashionable books,
describing the world as it will be a thousand or three thousand years
hence, but also by sociologists who consider themselves serious men
of science. These ideals are that food, instead of being obtained
from the land by agriculture, will be prepared in laboratories
by chemical means, and that human labour will be almost entirely
superseded by the utilisation of natural forces.
Man will not, as now, eat an egg laid by a hen he has kept, or bread
grown on his field, or an apple from a tree he has reared and which
has blossomed and matured in his sight; but he will eat tasty,
nutritious food prepared in laboratories by the conjoint labour of
many people, in which he will share to a small extent. Man will
hardly need to labour, so that all men will be able to yield to
idleness as the upper, ruling classes now yield to it.
Nothing shows more plainly than these ideals to what a degree the
science of our times has deviated from the true path.
The great majority of men in our times lack good and sufficient food
(as well as dwellings and clothes and all the first necessities of
life). And this great majority of men is compelled, to the injury of
its well-being, to labour continually beyond its strength. Both these
evils can easily be removed by abolishing mutual strife, luxury, and
the unrighteous distribution of wealth--in a word by the abolition
of a false and harmful order and the establishment of a reasonable,
human manner of life. But science considers the existing order
of things to be as immutable as the movements of the planets, and
therefore assumes that the purpose of science is, not to elucidate
the falseness of this order and to arrange a new, reasonable way of
life, but, under the existing order of things, to feed everybody
and enable all to be as idle as the ruling classes, living depraved
lives, now are.
And, meanwhile, it is forgotten that nourishment by corn, vegetables,
and fruit, raised from the soil by one’s own labour, is the
pleasantest, healthiest, easiest, and most natural nourishment, and
that the work of using one’s muscles is as necessary a condition of
life as is the oxidation of the blood by breathing.
To invent means whereby people, while continuing our false division
of property and labour, might be well nourished by means of
chemically-prepared food and might make the forces of nature work for
them, is like inventing means to pump oxygen into the lungs of a man
kept in a closed chamber the air of which is bad, when all that is
needed is for the man no longer to be confined in a closed chamber.
In the vegetable and animal kingdoms a laboratory has been arranged
for the production of food such as can be surpassed by no professors,
and to enjoy the fruits of this laboratory and to participate in it
man has only to yield to that ever joyful impulse to labour without
which his life is a torment. And lo and behold! the scientists
of our times, instead of employing all their strength to abolish
whatever hinders man from utilising the good things prepared for
him, acknowledge the conditions under which man is deprived of these
blessings to be unalterable; and instead of arranging the life of man
so that he may work joyfully and be fed from the soil, they devise
methods which will cause him to become an artificial abortion. It is
like not helping a man out of confinement into the fresh air, but
devising means, instead, to pump into him the necessary quantity
of oxygen, and arranging so that he may live in a stifling cellar
instead of living at home.
Such false ideals could not exist if science were not on a false path.
And yet the feelings transmitted by art grow up on the bases supplied
by science.
But what feelings can such misdirected science evoke? One side of
this science evokes antiquated feelings which humanity has exhausted,
and which in our times are bad and exclusive. The other side,
occupied with the study of subjects unrelated to the conduct of human
life, by its very nature cannot serve as a basis for art.
So that art in our times, to be art, must either open up its own
road independently of science, or must take direction from the
unrecognised science which is denounced by the orthodox section of
science. And this is what art, when it even partially fulfils its
mission, is doing.
It is to be hoped that the work I have tried to perform concerning
art will be performed also for science: that the falseness of the
theory of science for science’s sake will be demonstrated; that
the necessity of acknowledging Christian teaching in its true
meaning will be clearly shown, and on the basis of that teaching
a reappraisement be made of the knowledge we possess and of which
we are so proud; that the secondariness and insignificance of
experimental science, and the primacy and importance of religious,
moral, and social knowledge, will be established; and that such
knowledge will not, as now, be left to the guidance of the
upper classes only, but will form a chief interest of all free,
truth-loving men, such as those who, not in agreement with the upper
classes but in their despite, have always forwarded the real science
of life.
Astronomical, physical, chemical, and biological science, as also
technical and medical science, will be studied only in so far as
they can help to free mankind from religious, juridical, or social
deceptions, or can serve to promote the well-being of all men and not
of any single class.
Only then will science cease to be what it is now--on the one hand
a system of sophistries, needed for the maintenance of the existing
worn-out order of society, and on the other hand a shapeless mass
of miscellaneous knowledge, for the most part good for little or
nothing--and become a shapely and organic whole having a definite and
reasonable purpose comprehensible to all men, namely, the purpose of
bringing to the consciousness of men the truths that flow from the
religious perception of our times.
And only then will art, which is always dependent on science, be what
it might and should be, an organ co-equally important with science
for the life and progress of mankind.
Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is a great
matter. Art is an organ of human life transmitting man’s reasonable
perception into feeling. In our age the common religious perception
of men is the consciousness of the brotherhood of man--we know that
the well-being of man lies in union with his fellow-men. True science
should indicate the various methods of applying this consciousness to
life. Art should transform this perception into feeling.
The task of art is enormous. Through the influence of real art,
aided by science, guided by religion, that peaceful co-operation of
man which is now maintained by external means,--by our law-courts,
police, charitable institutions, factory inspection, and so
forth,--should be obtained by man’s free and joyous activity. Art
should cause violence to be set aside.[128]
And it is only art that can accomplish this.
All that now, independently of the fear of violence and punishment,
makes the social life of man possible (and already this is an
enormous part of the order of our lives)--all this has been brought
about by art. If by art has been inculcated how people should treat
religious objects, their parents, their children, their wives, their
relations, strangers, foreigners; how to conduct themselves towards
their elders, their superiors, towards those who suffer, towards
their enemies, and towards animals; and if this has been obeyed
through generations by millions of people, not only unenforced by
any violence but so that the force of such customs can be shaken in
no way but by means of art: then by art also other customs, more in
accord with the religious perception of our time, may be evoked. If
art has been able to convey the sentiment of reverence for images,
for the Eucharist, and for the king’s person; of shame at betraying a
comrade, devotion to a flag, the necessity of revenge for an insult,
the need to sacrifice one’s labour for the erection and adornment of
churches, the duty of defending one’s honour, or the glory of one’s
native land--then that same art can also evoke reverence for the
dignity of every man and for the life of every animal; can make men
ashamed of luxury, of violence, of revenge, or of using for their
pleasure that of which others are in need; can compel people freely,
gladly, and without noticing it, to sacrifice themselves in the
service of man.
The task for art to accomplish is to make that feeling of brotherhood
and love of one’s neighbour now attained only by the best members
of society, the customary feeling and the instinct of all men. By
evoking under imaginary conditions the feeling of brotherhood and
love, religious art will train men to experience those same feelings
under similar circumstances in actual life; it will lay in the souls
of men the rails along which the actions of those whom art thus
educates will naturally pass. And universal art, by uniting the most
different people in one common feeling, by destroying separation,
will educate people to union, and will show them, not by reason but
by life itself, the joy of universal union reaching beyond the bounds
set by life.
The destiny of art in our time is to transmit, from the realm of
reason to the realm of feeling, the truth that well-being for men
consists in their being united together, and to set up, in place
of the existing reign of force, that kingdom of God--that is, of
love--which we all recognise to be the highest aim of human life.
Possibly in the future, science may reveal to art yet newer and
higher ideals which art may realise; but in our time the destiny of
art is clear and definite. The task of Christian art is to establish
brotherly union among men.
APPENDICES
APPENDIX I
Translations of French poems and prose quoted in Chapter X.[129]
_BAUDELAIRE’S “FLOWERS OF EVIL”_
No. XXIV
I adore thee as much as the vaults of night,
O vessel of grief, taciturnity great,
And I love thee the more because of thy flight.
It seemeth, my night’s beautifier, that you
Still heap up those leagues--yes! ironically heap!--
That divide from my arms the immensity blue.
I advance to attack, I climb to assault,
Like a choir of young worms at a corpse in the vault;
Thy coldness, oh cruel, implacable beast!
Yet heightens thy beauty, on which my eyes feast!
_BAUDELAIRE’S “FLOWERS OF EVIL”_
No. XXXVI
_DUELLUM_
Two warriors come running, to fight they begin,
With gleaming and blood they bespatter the air;
These games, and this clatter of arms, is the din
Of youth that’s a prey to the raging of love.
The rapiers are broken! and so is our youth,
But the dagger’s avenged, dear! and so is the sword,
By the nail that is steeled and the hardened tooth.
Oh! the fury of hearts aged and ulcered by love!
In the ditch, where the ounce and the pard have their lair,
Our heroes have rolled in an angry embrace;
Their skin blooms on brambles that erewhile were bare.
That ravine is a friend-inhabited hell!
Then let us roll in, oh woman inhuman,
To immortalise hatred that nothing can quell!
FROM BAUDELAIRE’S PROSE WORK ENTITLED
‘LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE’
_THE STRANGER_
Whom dost thou love best? say, enigmatical man--thy father, thy
mother, thy sister, or thy brother?
“I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother.”
Thy friends?
“There you use an expression the meaning of which till now remains
unknown to me.”
Thy country?
“I know not in what latitude it is situated.”
Beauty?
“I would gladly love her, goddess and immortal.”
Gold?
“I hate it, as you hate God.”
Then what do you love, extraordinary stranger?
“I love the clouds ... the clouds that pass ... there ... the
marvellous clouds!”
_THE SOUP AND THE CLOUDS_
My beloved little silly was giving me my dinner, and I was
contemplating, through the open window of the dining-room, those
moving architectures which God makes out of vapours, the marvellous
constructions of the impalpable. And I said to myself, amid my
contemplation, All these phantasmagoria are almost as beautiful as
the eyes of my beautiful beloved, the monstrous little silly with the
green eyes.
Suddenly I felt the violent blow of a fist on my back, and I heard a
harsh, charming voice, an hysterical voice, as it were hoarse with
brandy, the voice of my dear little well-beloved, saying, Are you
going to eat your soup soon, you d---- b---- of a dealer in clouds?
_THE GALLANT MARKSMAN_
As the carriage was passing through the forest he ordered it to be
stopped near a shooting-gallery, saying that he wished to shoot off
a few bullets to _kill_ Time. To kill this monster, is it not the
most ordinary and the most legitimate occupation of everyone? And
he gallantly offered his arm to his dear, delicious, and execrable
wife--that mysterious woman to whom he owed so much pleasure, so much
pain, and perhaps also a large part of his genius.
Several bullets struck far from the intended mark--one even
penetrated the ceiling; and as the charming creature laughed wildly,
mocking her husband’s awkwardness, he turned abruptly towards her and
said, Look at that doll there on the right with the haughty mien and
her nose in the air; well, dear angel, _I imagine to myself that it
is you_! And he closed his eyes and pulled the trigger. The doll was
neatly decapitated.
Then, bowing towards his dear one, his delightful, execrable wife,
his inevitable, pitiless muse, and kissing her hand respectfully, he
added, Ah! my dear angel, how I thank you for my skill!
_VERLAINE’S FORGOTTEN AIRS_
No. I
“The wind in the plain
Suspends its breath.”--FAVART.
’Tis ecstasy languishing,
Amorous fatigue,
Of woods all the shudderings
Embraced by the breeze,
’Tis the choir of small voices
Towards the grey trees.
Oh the frail and fresh murmuring!
The twitter and buzz,
The soft cry resembling
Breathed forth by the grass....
Oh, the roll of the pebbles
’Neath waters that pass!
Oh, this soul that is groaning
In sleepy complaint!
In us is it moaning?
In me and in you?
Low anthem exhaling
While soft falls the dew.
_VERLAINE’S “FORGOTTEN AIRS”_
No. VIII
In the unending
Dulness of this land,
Uncertain the snow
Is gleaming like sand.
No kind of brightness
In copper-hued sky,
The moon you might see
Now live and now die.
Grey float the oak trees--
Cloudlike they seem--
Of neighbouring forests,
Mists in between.
Wolves hungry and lean,
And famishing crow,
What happens to you
When acrid winds blow?
In the unending
Dulness of this land,
Uncertain the snow
Is gleaming like sand.
_SONG BY MAETERLINCK_
When he went away,
(Then I heard the door)
When he went away,
On her lips a smile there lay....
Back he came to her,
(Then I heard the lamp)
Back he came to her,
Someone else was there....
It was death I met,
(And I heard her soul)
It was death I met,
For her he’s waiting yet....
Someone came to say,
(Child, I am afraid)
Someone came to say
That he would go away....
With my lamp alight,
(Child, I am afraid)
With my lamp alight,
Approached I in affright....
To one door I came,
(Child, I am afraid)
To one door I came,
A shudder shook the flame....
At the second door,
(Child, I am afraid)
At the second door
Words did the flame outpour....
To the third I came,
(Child, I am afraid)
To the third I came,
Then died the little flame....
Should he one day return,
And see you lying dead?
Say I longed for him
When on my dying bed....
If he asks for you,
Say what answer then?
Give him my gold ring
And answer not a thing....
Should he question me
Concerning the last hour?
Say I smiled for fear
That he should shed a tear....
Should he question more
Without knowing me?
Like a sister speak;
Suffering he may be....
Should he question why
Empty is the hall?
Show the gaping door,
The lamp alight no more....
APPENDIX II
This is the first page of Mallarmé’s book _Divagations_, referred to
in Chapter X, page 215.
_LE PHÉNOMÈNE FUTUR_
Un ciel pâle, sur le monde qui finit de décrépitude, va peut-être
partir avec les nuages: les lambeaux de la pourpre usée des couchants
déteignent dans une rivière dormant à l’horizon submergé de rayons
et d’eau. Les arbres s’ennuient, et, sous leur feuillage blanchi
(de la poussière du temps plutôt que celle des chemins) monte la
maison en toile de Montreur de choses Passées: maint réverbère
attend le crépuscule et ravive les visages d’une malheureuse foule,
vaincue par la maladie immortelle et le péché des siècles, d’hommes
près de leurs chétives complices enceintes des fruits misérables
avec lesquels périra la terre. Dans le silence inquiet de tous les
yeux suppliant là-bas le soleil qui, sous l’eau, s’enfonce avec le
désespoir d’un cri, voici le simple boniment: “Nulle enseigne ne
vous régale du spectacle intérieur, car il n’est pas maintenant un
peintre capable d’en donner une ombre triste. J’apporte, vivante (et
préservée à travers les ans par la science souveraine), une Femme
d’autrefois. Quelque folie, originelle et naïve, une extase d’or, je
ne sais quoi! par elle nommé sa chevelure, se ploie avec la grâce des
étoffes autour d’un visage qu’ éclaire la nudité sanglante de ses
lèvres. A la place du vêtement vain, elle a un corps; et les yeux,
semblables aux pierres rares! ne valent pas ce regard qui sort de sa
chair heureuse: des seins levés comme s’ils étaient pleins d’un lait
éternel, la pointe vers le ciel, les jambes lisses qui gardent le sel
de la mer première.” Se rappelant leurs pauvres épouses, chauves,
morbides et pleines d’horreur, les maris se pressent: elles aussi par
curiosité, mélancoliques, veulent voir.
Quand tous auront contemplé la noble créature, vestige de quelque
époque déjà maudite, les uns indifférents, car ils n’auront pas eu la
force de comprendre, mais d’autres navrés et la paupière humide de
larmes résignées, se regarderont; tandis que les poètes de ces temps,
sentant se rallumer leur yeux éteints, s’achemineront vers leur
lampe, le cerveau ivre un instant d’une gloire confuse, hantés du
Rythme et dans l’oubli d’exister à une époque qui survit à la beauté.
_THE FUTURE PHENOMENON_--BY MALLARMÉ
A pale sky, above the world that is ending through decrepitude, about
perhaps to pass away with the clouds: shreds of worn-out purple of
the sunsets wash off their colour in a river sleeping on the horizon,
submerged with rays and water. The trees are weary and, beneath their
whitened foliage (whitened by the dust of time rather than that of
the roads) rises the canvas house of “Showman of Things Past.” Many a
lamp awaits the gloaming and brightens the faces of a miserable crowd
vanquished by the everlasting sickness and the sin of ages, of men
by the sides of their puny accomplices pregnant with the miserable
fruit through which the world will perish. In the anxious silence
of all the eyes there supplicating the sun, which sinks under the
water with the desperation of a cry, this is the plain announcement:
“No sign-board regales you with the spectacle that is inside, for
there is no painter now capable of giving even a sad shadow of it. I
bring, living (and preserved by sovereign science through the years),
a Woman of other days. Some kind of folly, naïve and original, an
ecstasy of gold, I know not what, by her called her hair, clings with
the grace of drapery round a face brightened by the blood-red nudity
of her lips. In place of vain clothing, she has a body; and her
eyes, resembling precious stones! are not worth that look which comes
from her happy flesh: breasts raised as if full of eternal milk, the
points towards the sky; the smooth legs, that keep the salt of the
first sea.” Remembering their poor spouses, bald, morbid, and full of
horrors, the husbands press forward: the women too, from curiosity,
gloomily wish to see.
When all shall have contemplated the noble creature, vestige of
some epoch already damned, they will look at each other, some
indifferently, for they will not have had strength to understand,
but others broken-hearted and with eye-lids wet with tears of
resignation, while the poets of those times, feeling their dim eyes
rekindled, will make their way towards their lamp, their brain for an
instant drunk with confused glory, haunted by Rhythm and forgetful
that they exist at an epoch which has survived Beauty.
APPENDIX III
Poems referred to in Chapter X, page 217.
No. 1
The following verse is by Henri de Régnier, from page 28 a volume of
his poems:--
_L’ACCUEIL_
Si tu veux que ce soir, à l’âtre, je t’accueille--
Jette d’abord la fleur, qui de ta main s’effeuille;
Son cher parfum ferait ma tristesse trop sombre;
Et ne regard pas derrière toi vers l’ombre,
Car je te veux, ayant oublié la forêt
Et-le vent, et l’écho et ce qui parlerait
Voix à ta solitude ou pleur à ta silence!
Et debout, avec ton ombre qui te devance,
Et hautine sur mon seuil, et pâle, et vénue
Comme si j’etais mort ou que tu fusses nue!
Henri de Régnier: _Les jeux rustiques et devins_.
_THE WELCOME_
If you want us to-night by my fireside to greet--
Drop the flower you hold that sheds petals so sweet;
Its dear scent would render my sadness too black;
And do not on the shadows behind you look back,
For I want you, forgetful of forest and wind,
Of echoes and all you’d recall to your mind
Giving voice to your silence, to solitude tears,
At my door, while before you your shadow appears,
And haughty and pale and erect you stand there--
Just as if I were dead, or that naked you were.
No. 2
The following verses are by Vielé-Griffin, from page 28 of a volume
of his poems:--
_OISEAU BLEU COULEUR DU TEMPS_
1.
Sais-tu l’oubli
D’un vain doux rêve,
Oiseau moqueur
De la forêt?
Le jour pâlit,
La nuit se lève,
Et dans mon cœur
L’ombre a pleuré;
2.
O chante-moi
Ta folle gamme,
Car j’ai dormi
Ce jour durant;
Le lâche emoi
Où fut mon âme
Sanglote ennui
Le jour mourant ...
3.
Sais-tu le chant
De sa parole
Et de sa voix,
Toi qui redis
Dans le couchant
Ton air frivole
Comme autrefois
Sous les midis?
4.
O, chante alors
La mélodie
De son amour,
Mon fol espoir,
Parmi les ors
Et l’incendie
Du vain doux jour
Qui meurt ce soir.
FRANCIS VIELÉ-GRIFFIN: _Poèmes et Poésies_.
_BLUE BIRD COLOUR OF THE TIMES_
1.
Canst thou forget
In dreams so vain,
Oh, mocking bird
Of forest deep?
The day doth set,
Night comes again,
My heart has heard
The shadows weep;
2.
Thy tones let flow
In maddening scale,
For I have slept
The livelong day;
Emotions low
In me now wail,
My soul they’ve kept:
Light dies away ...
3.
That music sweet.
Ah, do you know
Her voice and speech?
Your airs so light
You who repeat
In sunset’s glow,
As you sang, each,
At noonday’s height.
4.
Of my desire,
My hope so bold,
Her love--up, sing,
Sing ’neath this light,
This flaming fire,
And all the gold
The eve doth bring
Ere comes the night.
No. 3
And here are some verses by the esteemed young poet Verhaeren, which
I also take from page 28 of his Works:--
_ATTIRANCES_
Lointainement, et si étrangement pareils,
De grands masques d’argent que la brume recule,
Vaguent, au jour tombant, autour des vieux soleils.
Les doux lointaines!--et comme, au fond du crépuscule,
Ils nous fixent le cœur, immensément le cœur,
Avec les yeux défunts de leur visage d’âme.
C’est toujours du silence, à moins, dans la pâleur
Du soir, un jet de feu sondain, un cri de flamme,
Un départ de lumière inattendu vers Dieu.
On se laisse charmer et troubler de mystère,
Et l’on dirait des morts qui taisent un adieu
Trop mystique, pour être écouté par la terre!
Sont-ils le souvenir matériel et clair
Des éphèbes chrétiens couchés aux catacombes
Parmi les lys? Sont-ils leur regard et leur chair?
Ou seul, ce qui survit de merveilleux aux tombes
De ceux qui sont partis, vers leurs rêves, un soir,
Conquérir la folie à l’assaut des nuées?
Lointainement, combien nous les sentons vouloir
Un peu d’amour pour leurs œuvres destituées,
Pour leur errance et leur tristesse aux horizons.