Truth and Revelation Theories
Oh never rudely will I blame his faith
In the might of stars and angels! ’Tis not merely
The human being’s pride that peoples space
With life and mystical predominance;
Since likewise for the stricken heart of Love
This visible nature, and this common world
Is all too narrow . . . .
Coleridge, _Piccolomini_.
Knowledge, it is recognised, is good, and since the experiences
which we have been discussing may readily be supposed to give
knowledge, there is a strong tradition in criticism which seeks
to derive their value from the worth of knowledge. But not all
knowledge is equally valuable: the kind of information which
we can acquire indefinitely by steady perusal of Whitaker or
of an Encyclopædia is of negligible value. Therefore a special
kind of knowledge has been alleged.
The problem which ensues is for many people the most interesting
part of critical theory. That so many capital-letter words—such
as Real, Ideal, Essential, Necessary, Ultimate, Absolute, Fundamental,
Profound, and many others—tend to appear in Truth doctrines is
evidence of the interest. This heavy artillery is more than anything
else a mode of emphasis, analogous to italics, underlining and
solemn tones of utterance. It serves to impress upon the reader
that he would do well to become serious and attentive, and like
all such devices it tends to lose its effect unless cunningly
employed.
We may most conveniently begin by considering a range of representative
doctrines chosen from the writings of famous critics with a view
to illustrating chiefly their differences. Some, it is true,
will hardly repay investigation. It is far too easy to write,
with Carlyle “All real art is the disimprisonment of the soul
of fact[85]” or “The infinite is made to blend itself with the
finite; to stand visible, and, as it were, attainable there.
Of this sort are all true works of art; in this (if we know a
work of art from the daub of artifice) we discern eternity looking
through time, the God-like rendered visible[86]”.
All the difficulty begins when this has been written, and what
has been said is of no assistance towards its elucidation. Nor
is Pater, for all his praise of clarity and accuracy, of much
better quality. “Truth! there can be no merit, no craft at all,
without that. And, further, all beauty is in the long run only
fineness of truth or what we call expression, the finer accommodation
of speech to that vision within”[87]. It would perhaps be difficult,
outside Croce,[88] to find a more unmistakable confusion between
value and communicative efficacy. But the _Essay_ is a veritable
museum of critical blunders.
The extracts which follow are arranged approximately in order
of obscurity. They rise from the most matter of fact to the most
mystical uses of truth-notions in criticism. All might be taken
as glosses upon the phrase ‘Truth to Nature’; they serve to show
what different things may be meant by what is apparently simple
language.
We may begin with Aristotle. He makes three remarks which bear
upon the matter. The first is in connection with the antithesis
between Tragedy and History.
“Poetry is a more philosophical and a more serious thing than
History: for Poetry is chiefly conversant about general (universal)
truth, History about particular. In what manner, for example,
any person of a certain character would speak or act, probably
or necessarily—this is universal; and this is the object of Poetry.
But what Alcibiades did, or what happened to him—this is particular
truth.” (_Poetics_, IX).
His second remark is made in connection with the requisites of
Tragic Character:—
“The third requisite (in addition to goodness in a special sense,
appropriateness, and consistency) of Character is that it have
_verisimilitude_[89]”. (_Poetics_, XV).
Aristotle’s third observation is in the same chapter:—
“The poet when he imitates passionate or indolent men and such,
should preserve the type and yet ennoble it[90]”.
Wordsworth’s interpretation carries us a definite stage nearer
to the mystical:—
“Aristotle, I have been told, has said that poetry is the most
philosophic of all writing. It is so. Its object is truth—not
individual and local, but general and operative. Not standing
upon external testimony, but carried alive into the heart by
passion: truth which is its own testimony; which gives competence
and confidence to the tribunal to which it appeals, and receives
them from the same tribunal[91]”.
Wordsworth remains still on the hither side of the gap, as does
Goethe in suggesting that “The beautiful is the manifestation
of secret laws of nature which, but for this disclosure, had
been for ever concealed from us[92]”. But Coleridge, from whom
Wordsworth probably heard about Aristotle, takes the step into
mysticism unhesitatingly:—
“If the artist copies the mere nature, the _natura naturata_,
what idle rivalry!—if he proceeds only from a given form which
is supposed to answer to the notion of beauty—what an emptiness,
what an unreality, there always is in his productions. Believe
me, you must master the essence, the _natura naturans_,
which presupposes a bond between nature in the higher sense and
the soul of man[93]”.
But Coleridge held many mystical views, not always easy to reconcile
with one another. In the same Essay he continues:—
“In the objects of nature are presented as in a mirror all the
possible elements, steps and processes of intellect antecedent
to consciousness, and therefore to the full development of the
intelligential act; and man’s mind is the very focus of all the
rays of intellect which are scattered throughout the images of
nature. Now so to place these images, totalised and fitted to
the limits of the human mind, as to elicit from and to superinduce
upon the forms themselves the moral reflections to which they
approximate, to make the external internal, the internal external,
to make nature thought and thought nature—this is the mystery
of genius in the Fine Arts.”
Even when Coleridge is most ‘the God-intoxicated man’ his remarks
to a careful reader suggest that if they could be decoded, as
it were, they would provide at the least a basis for interesting
speculation. Many adumbrations of this mystical view might be
quoted. “There is a communication between mystery and mystery,
between the unknown soul and the unknown reality; at one particular
point in the texture of life the hidden truth seems to break
through the veil”, writes Mr Middleton Murry in an Essay[94]
which as an emotive utterance disguised to resemble an argument
is of interest. How this feeling of insight arises we have seen
in the foregoing chapter; the sense of immediate revelation of
which he treats as “the primary stuff out of which literature
is created” is certainly characteristic of the greater kinds
of art. And there must be few who have not by one arrangement
or another contrived from these visionary moments a philosophy
which, for a time, has seemed to them unshakable because for
a time emotionally satisfying. But emotional satisfaction gained
at the cost of intellectual bondage is unstable. When it does
not induce a partial stupor it breaks down. The freely inquiring
mind has a fatal way of overthrowing all immediate and mystical
intuitions which, instead of being duly subordinate, insist on
giving it orders.
For the inquiring mind is simply the human being’s way of finding
a place and function for all its experiences and activities,
a place and function compatible with the rest of its experience.
When the mystical insight is understood, and its claims fitly
directed, although it may seem to those who still misunderstand
it to have lost all the attributes for which they have sought
to retain it, and to be no longer either mystical or an insight,
it does not lose but gains in value. But this further adjustment
is often very difficult to make.
These Revelation Doctrines, when we know what they are really
about, come nearer, we shall see, to supplying an explanation
of the value of the arts than any of the other traditional accounts.
But the process of translation is no easy matter. They are not
what they seem, these utterances apparently about Truth. In interpreting
them we shall find ourselves forced to consider language from
an angle and with a closeness which are not usual, and to do
so, certain very powerful resistances and deeply ingrained habits
of the mind have first to be broken down.
[85] _Shooting Niagara_.
[86] _Sartor Resartus_.
[87] _Essay on Style_.
[88] A discussion of Croce’s doctrines might seem advisable at
some point. But all that is strictly necessary has already been
said in _The Foundations of Æsthetics_. It may be repeated
here in the vigorous terms of Giovanni Papini (_Four and Twenty
Minds_): “If you disregard critical trivialities and didactic
accessories, the entire æsthetic system of Croce amounts merely
to a hunt for pseudonyms of the word ‘art’, and may indeed be
stated briefly and accurately in this formula: art = intuition
= expression = feeling = imagination = fancy = lyricism = beauty.
And you must be careful not to take these words with the shadings
and distinctions which they have in ordinary or scientific language.
Not a bit of it. Every word is merely a different series of syllables
signifying absolutely and completely the same thing.” When you
are not careful the amalgam of confusions and contradictions
which ensues is very remarkable. It is interesting to notice
that Croce’s appeal has been exclusively to those unfamiliar
with the subject, to the man of letters and the dilettante. He
has been ignored by serious students of the mind. How many of
those for example who have been impressed by his dicta as to
expression and language have been aware of how the problem has
been discussed before, or have ever heard of the ‘imageless thought’
controversy? Upon the ways in which Croce’s strategy has inveigled
the guileless into supposing him to be saying something, Papini
is excellent. ‘The Barabbas of art, the Thug of philosophy, the
Apache of culture’—Papini so describes himself—has here rendered
a notable service to those who have been depressed by the vogue
of ‘Expressionism’.
[89] _ὅμοιον_. This word is variously translated ‘resemblance’
(Twining), and ‘truth to life’? (Butcher). Its usual meaning
in the _Poetics_ is ‘the quality of _being like ourselves_’,
‘_average_ humanity’.
[90] Cf. Eastlake, _Literature of the Fine Arts_.
“The elephant with his objectionable legs and inexpressive hide
may still be supposed to be a very normal specimen and may accordingly
be a fit object for artistic imitation.”
[91] Preface to _Lyrical Ballads_.
[92] Compare Thomas Rymer, _A Short View of Tragedy_.
“A little preparation and forecast might do well now and then.
For his Desdemona’s Marriage, he might have helped out the probability
by figuring how that some way or other a Blackamoor woman had
been her nurse and suckled her; or that once upon a time some
_Virtuoso_ had transfused into her veins the Blood of a
Black Sheep.” We may take it such are not the secret laws of
nature to which Goethe was alluding.
[93] _On Poesy or Art_.
[94] ‘Literature and Religion’ in _The Necessity of Art_,
published by The Student Christian Movement, p. 155.