Tolstoy’s Infection Theory
Beauty is no quality in things themselves; it exists merely in the
mind which contemplates them.—_Hume_.
It is strange that speculations upon the arts should so rarely
have begun from the most obvious fact about them. Mr Roger Fry,
in his interesting Retrospect, records the shock with which Tolstoy’s
insistence upon communication struck contemporary students in
England. “What remained of immense importance was the idea that
a work of art was not the record of beauty already existent
elsewhere, but the expression of an emotion felt by the artist
and conveyed to the spectator.”[58] It will be useful to examine
Tolstoy’s account. He formulates his theory[59] as follows: “Art
becomes more or less infectious in consequence of three conditions:
(i) In consequence of a greater or lesser
peculiarity of the sensation conveyed.
(ii) In consequence of a greater or lesser
clearness of the transmission of this
sensation.
(iii) In consequence of the sincerity of the
artist, that is, of the greater or lesser
force with which the artist himself
experiences the sensation which he is
conveying.”
He adds, in curious contradiction to his other view which we
have already discussed, “Not only is the infectiousness a certain
sign of art, but the degree of the infection is the only standard
of the value of art.”
This contradiction we may perhaps remove or at least mitigate
if we notice that ‘degree of infection’ is a highly ambiguous
phrase. It may be equivalent to—
(i) the number of persons who may be infected,
(ii) the completeness with which the experience is reproduced
in them.
These are the two most relevant senses here, and both are involved
in Tolstoy’s exposition. The first would bring this view into
connection with his doctrine that only so far as art is accessible
to all men is it valuable. The second, however, cannot be reconciled
with that view, but that he held it cannot be doubted. “The more
the sensation to be conveyed is special,” he goes on, “the more
strongly does it act upon the receiver; the more special the
condition of the mind is, to which the reader is transferred,
the more willingly and the more powerfully does he blend with
it.”
This is plainly untrue. What Tolstoy would have said with more
reflection is that some special experiences are interesting and
owe their attraction partly to their strangeness, their unusual
character. But many unusual and special experiences are unattractive
and repellent. Dyspeptics, amateurs of psycho-analysis, fishermen,
and golfers, have very often most remarkable things to recount.
We shun having to listen precisely because they are so special.
Further, many experiences by their very oddness are incommunicable.
Only so far as common interests are aroused does the ease and
completeness of transmission depend upon the rarity and strangeness
of the experience communicated. With this proviso Tolstoy’s remark
is obviously justified. That he should have stressed it is an
indication of his sincerity and candour. So much of his doctrine
is a simple denial that special experiences are a fit subject
for art. A division between experiences which though special
are yet in the main path of humanity and accessible to all men
if they are sufficiently finely developed in normal directions,
and those other special experiences which are due to abnormality,
disease, or eccentric and erratic specialisation, is what he
would have added if his attention had been drawn to the point.
He would have enjoyed classifying the fashionables and intellectuals,
the etiolate cultured classes, among the insane.
The second condition of infectiousness, the greater or less clearness
of the transmission of the sensation, is more important. How
to obtain clear transmission is precisely the problem of communication.
We have seen that it is a matter of the availability of common
experiences, the elicitation of these by a suitable vehicle,
and the control and extrusion of irrelevant elements, so far
as they arise, through the complexity of the vehicle.
The third condition, the sincerity of the artist, is more obscure.
Tolstoy’s own elucidation carries us but a little way. What is
this force with which an experience occurs? Certainly experiences
may be of the utmost intensity without thereby being any more
easy to convey. A lightning flash, for example, which just misses
one upon a summit, is much more difficult to describe than the
same flash seen from the valley. Tolstoy, however, is speaking
of the experience as evoked by the artist in the course of communication,
of the “emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject
of contemplation”, which then “is gradually produced and does
itself exist in the mind”, to quote Wordsworth’s celebrated account
of the source of poetry. He is speaking of the fullness, steadiness
and clearness with which the experience to be communicated develops
in the mind of the communicator at the moment of expression.
Inrushes of emotion, accompanied by scraps and odd bits of imagery,
thought and incipient activity, are not uncommon, and the process
of jotting down what comes to mind at the moment is all that
the would-be poet can achieve.
Round him much embryo, much abortion lay,
Much future ode and abdicated play:
Nonsense precipitate like running lead,
Which slipped through cracks and zigzags of the head.
Opposed to him is the poet who “described in _ideal_ perfection,
brings the whole soul of man into activity. . . .” His is “a
more than usual state of emotion, with more than usual order;
judgment ever awake, and steady self-possession, with enthusiasm
and feeling profound or vehement[60].” As so often, Coleridge
drops the invaluable hint almost inadvertently. The wholeness
of the mind in the creative moment is the essential consideration,
the free participation in the evocation of the experience of
all the impulses, conscious or unconscious, relevant to it, without
suppressions or restrictions. As we have seen, this completeness
or wholeness is the rarest and the most difficult condition required
for supreme communicative ability. How it works we have also
seen, and if this is, as doubtless it must be, what Tolstoy meant
by sincerity, however queer some of his tests for it were, we
have found yet another indication of how great his contribution
to critical theory, under happier circumstances, might have been.
[58] _Vision and Design_, p. 194.
[59] _What is Art_, Sect. XV.
[60] _Biographia Literaria_, Vol. 11, Ch. XIV, p. 12.