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* * * * *
MARTIN SECKER'S SERIES OF MODERN MONOGRAPHS
J.M. SYNGE By P.P. Howe
HENRIK IBSEN By R. Ellis Roberts
WALTER PATER By Edward Thomas
THOMAS HARDY By Lascelles Abercrombie
GEORGE GISSING By Frank Swinnerton
WALT WHITMAN By Basil de Sélincourt
WILLIAM MORRIS By John Drinkwater
A.C. SWINBURNE By Edward Thomas
Each volume Demy Octavo, Cloth Gilt, with a Frontispiece in
Photogravure. Price 7s. 6d. net
_The Athenæum_ says: "We congratulate the publisher."
_The Spectator_ says: "Mr. Secker's excellent series of critical
studies."
_The Yorkshire Observer_ says: "Mr. Secker's admirable series."
_The Manchester Courier_ says: "This excellent series."
_The Illustrated London News_ says: "Mr. Martin Secker's series
of critical studies does justice to the publisher's sense of
pleasant format. The volumes are a delight to eye and hand, and
make a welcome addition to the bookshelf."
MARTIN SECKER PUBLISHER
NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI
AUTUMN BOOKS
The Complete Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann. 6 vols. 5s.
net each.
Vie de Bohème: A Patch of Romantic Paris. By Orlo Williams.
15s. net.
The Art of Silhouette. By Desmond Coke. 10s. net.
Walt Whitman: A Critical Study. By Basil de Sélincourt. 7s.
6d. net.
Walter Pater: A Critical Study. By Edward Thomas. 7s. 6d. net.
Speculative Dialogues. By Lascelles Abercrombie. 5s. net.
Dramatic Portraits. By P.P. Howe. 5s. net.
PERSONALITY IN LITERATURE
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
MODERNISM AND ROMANCE
PERSONALITY
IN LITERATURE
BY R.A. SCOTT-JAMES
LONDON: MARTIN SECKER
NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI
_First published 1913_
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH.
CONTENTS
PART ONE: LITERATURE AND ART
PAGE
THE DEGRADATION OF BEAUTY 3
LITERATURE A FINE ART 14
PASSIONS SPIN THE PLOT 42
THE POPULAR TASTE 55
PART TWO: LITERATURE AND MODERN LIFE
TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY 81
PROFESSIONAL POLITICS 96
SPECIALISM IN RELIGION 103
SPECIALISM IN WAR 109
SPECIALISM IN LITERATURE 115
PHILOSOPHY AND JUSTICE 121
PART THREE: LITERATURE AND MEN
BERNARD SHAW 131
H.G. WELLS 151
ARNOLD BENNETT 170
GILBERT CHESTERTON 187
SOME MODERN POETS 196
J.M. SYNGE 222
THE SHRAMANA EKAI KAWAGUCHI 226
FRANCIS THOMPSON 235
PART ONE
LITERATURE AND ART
I
THE DEGRADATION OF BEAUTY
Some time ago I found myself at an exhibition of Post-Impressionist
pictures, under the ægis of an artist who was himself of that
persuasion. Indeed, he was one of the exhibitors, and I was
constrained to express my opinions in the form of questions. We passed
before a picture which to my untutored eyes was formless, meaningless
and ugly. It was by a well-known artist, and my instructor admired it.
He said it was the head of a woman, and he indicated certain hook-like
marks in the painting which to him distinctly suggested the nose, the
mouth and the neck of a woman, reduced to their simplest terms. After
he had fully explained the picture, I asked him if the result was in
any sense beautiful to him.
"Beautiful!" he exclaimed, with something of disdain in his voice.
"Why should it be beautiful? I do not require that a picture should be
beautiful."
He had not finished, but I was relieved by the first part of his
reply. As I cannot hope to appreciate more than a certain number of
things in the world, I am willing, so far as pictures are concerned,
to be limited to beautiful pictures, and to be proved ignorant and
obtuse in regard to all others. For the same reason I have long since
reconciled myself to the fact that there are some branches of science
and natural history which I shall never master. I shall always
endeavour to follow clever writers like Shaw and Brieux whose plays
have, as the former puts it, "a really scientific natural history" for
their basis. But I cannot hope to acquire the whole of knowledge or
reform the whole of the world, and there are books which contain a
great deal of sound knowledge and urgent opinion for which I have no
use. Moreover, I deny Mr. Shaw's right to interfere with my enjoyment
if I turn to literature which teaches nothing and serves no
utilitarian or reforming purpose. It is only when I am in the
scientific frame of mind that I desire accurate natural history, or
when I am in the reforming frame of mind that I desire earnest
exhortations to improve society. In the same way I am only drawn to
the Post-Impressionists when I want, not beautiful pictures, but an
agreeable sense of the impudence and imbecility of professional
craftsmen. But when I am in the mood for literature and art, I demand
something that shall appeal to my sense of beauty; and I refuse to be
shamed into believing that I ought to prefer scientific knowledge, or
ethical suasion, or those particular kinds of ugliness admired by some
Realists and some Post-Impressionists.
But I was a little disconcerted when my Post-Impressionist artist
concluded with the remark: "I have never yet found anyone who could
tell me what he meant by beauty."
Certainly I had not asked him for an exact definition, or any
definition of Beauty in the abstract. I should have been satisfied if,
for the moment, he had taken it on trust, as most of us take the law
of gravity, the postulates of Euclid, and the evidence of our senses.
I was not dismayed because a single Post-Impressionist thought that
"beautiful" is a word that has no meaning; but because the reply came
so pat upon his lips;--he was repeating, parrot-like, a current view;
he was adopting the fashionable attitude of scorn towards what is
regarded as an ancient tyranny, long since indicted and exploded. This
bland acceptance of the meaninglessness and the inefficacy of beauty
is habitual to most young professionals who wield pen or pencil. They
have learnt it from Mr. Shaw, forgetting that when Mr. Shaw demands
complete freedom for the writer he also demands objective truth; or
they have learnt it from Mr. Roger Fry, forgetting that even Mr. Fry
demands some kind of subjective truth. Every young artist like my
acquaintance at the Grafton Gallery, every young novelist like Mr.
Gilbert Cannan,[1] is encouraged by the intellectuals to accept
formlessness and anarchy as evidence of a magnanimous and enlightened
spirit.
But it is not necessary to expose this falsity in its crude and most
violent forms. For we may find it expressed in an almost academic way,
with philosophical aloofness, a show of nice reasoning, and a kind of
Epicurean sweetness in a Romanes lecture delivered by Mr. Arthur James
Balfour and published under the title _Criticism and Beauty_. It is
worth while to study so responsible a writer, for we may be sure that
he will weigh his words, that he will not over-state his case, or be
led away by passion or fanaticism. And it is assuredly interesting to
examine the argument for anarchy as stated and defended by a
Conservative statesman.
Indeed, it is hard to believe that the author of this essay is the
same Mr. Balfour whom we know as the leader of the Conservative party.
A statesman ostensibly so consistent in upholding order and authority
in the Church, in adhering to time-honoured standards of government,
and in trusting the judgment of men "trained in the tradition of
politics," might have been expected to hold views somewhat similar in
matters of art. We should have expected him to believe in the
existence, not perhaps of artistic canons, but of artistic standards;
to be convinced that in æsthetics there is an æsthetic right and
wrong; to attach weight to the judgment of men of "trained
sensibility." But it is not so. He holds in the most extreme form the
ancient doctrine that _seeming_ is _being_. Art, as such, has for him
nothing to do with truth. He recognises no valid standard of
excellence. The only excellence in a work of art is to afford æsthetic
pleasure, and the pleasure which a boy derives from a blood-curdling
adventure-book or the public from a popular melodrama is, in Mr.
Balfour's view, no less "æsthetic" than the pleasure which another may
derive from contemplating a statue by Michelangelo. There is no
universal standard; no criterion; no excellence in art except such as
each man accepts for himself.
Mr. Balfour does, indeed, make a proper distinction between art as
"technical dexterity" and art as related to the "sublime," the
"beautiful," the "pathetic," the "humorous," the "melodious," and
admits that it is possible to apply an "objective test" to technical
skill--to decide that this line scans, that this rhyme is flawless,
that these bars in music are in such-and-such a key. But he will allow
no objective grounds of excellence to art in the more important sense.
If you say that this poem is beautiful or sublime, you are asserting
what is only true for you, a mere personal preference which others
need not be expected to share. Not only do men of "trained
sensibility" differ from the uncultured, but they differ equally from
one another. He cites the evidence of Greek music to show how widely
the cultured of one nation and epoch may differ from the cultured of
other nations and epochs. Having laid it down as an axiom that our
æsthetic judgments are "for the most part immediate, and, so to speak,
intuitive," and observing that the fastidious differ among themselves,
and that their delight in fine objects is no more intense than the
delight of the vulgar in coarser themes, he proceeds to the conclusion
that there can be no valid right or wrong in taste, no absolute
standard of beauty. He even maintains that art is not based upon any
special faculty for perceiving the true. "I can find no justification
in experience for associating great art with penetrating insight."
Before going further it is necessary to hint at a curious confusion in
which he here involves himself--a surely rather crude confusion
between æsthetic, and moral, right and wrong. Being concerned to
disprove the existence of the former, he for a moment identifies it
with the latter. It is either, as I have taken it, a crude confusion
of thought, or an equivocating device more often used in political
controversy than in the domain of art criticism--that of identifying
the opinion attacked with another of an ignominious character. The
view which he is rejecting is thus set forth. "An artist is deemed to
be more than the maker of beautiful things. He is a seer, a moralist,
a prophet." Surely he must realise that there are many who would most
fervently hold that an artist must be a seer or even a prophet, who
would ridicule the idea that he must be that very different sort of
thing, a moralist. And in the same way, when he has declared
categorically: "I can find no justification in experience for
associating great art with penetrating insight," he almost ludicrously
adds, "or good art with good morals."
It is this confusion of the aim of the artist with the aims of other
expounders--the moralist, the philosopher, the theologian--that
vitiates his argument against the insight of the great artists. Why
does he deny them this "penetrating insight?" Because they have
cherished opposite convictions about fundamental matters. "Optimism
and pessimism; materialism and spiritualism; theism, pantheism,
atheism, morality and immorality; religion and irreligion; lofty
resignation and passionate revolt--each and all have inspired or
helped to inspire the creators of artistic beauty." The _non
sequitur_ of this argument lies in the fact that he only shows that
artists have differed in respect of what is not essential to art. If
he had shown that some artists have created the beautiful, and others
have created the ugly, he would have produced evidence fatal to his
opponents. As it is he has denied perception of the beautiful to
artists because they differ in respect of that which has no necessary
connection with beauty.
But to leave this technical, though not wholly unreal, disputation.
There is this merit in Mr. Balfour's essay: that it states in its most
extreme form a view for which there is something to be said and which
has been gaining in favour in modern times. It is a reaction against
the view which became established in the course of the last century.
It was the habit of the eighteenth century to judge poetry by its form
alone; the nineteenth judged it by the spirit which inspired it, by
that which, as De Quincey puts it, was "incarnated" in a work of art.
William Blake literally believed that there was a real world of the
imagination which was opened up to the artist in his visions, and that
was why he said: "Learn to see _through_, not _with_, the eye."
Coleridge, too, asserted the primacy of Reason and imagination; and
for Wordsworth poetry was "Reason in her most exalted form," just as
for Keats "Beauty is truth, truth Beauty." Even so logical and prosaic
a thinker as John Stuart Mill recognised that supremacy of the artist
to which he himself could not attain; the artist, as he said in a
letter to Carlyle, perceives truth immediately, by intuition, and it
was his own humble function to translate the truths discerned by the
artist into logic. "Is not the distinction between mysticism, the
mysticism which is of truth, and mere dreamery, or the institution of
imaginations for realities, exactly this, that mysticism may be
translated into logic?" Logic, for Mill, was only the hand-servant of
that art which is concerned, not with "imaginations" only, but with
realities. And it was in the same spirit that Matthew Arnold laid down
his decisive verdict that literature is a criticism of life, that it
may be subjected to a "universal" estimate, and that the standard is
"the best that has been said and thought in the world."
But in recent years there has been a revolt against the idea of
standards or authority in art. Art has always been conceived as
something which affords pleasure; but now it is conceived as that
which affords pleasure to anyone. The democracy, now that it has
become literate, claims the right of private judgment, equality for
its members even in matters of art. And in a sense it is right.
Nothing should be or can be acclaimed as beautiful unless it appears
beautiful to the spectator. There is no criterion of beauty outside
the perception of beauty. For each man, that only is beautiful which
affords him the experience of beauty; and whatever does afford him
that experience has given him the æsthetic pleasure which is the true
pleasure of art. But there are many pleasurable thrills which have
nothing to do with beauty or with art. That is why Mr. Balfour surely
is wrong when he suggests that the youthful delight in blood-curdling
adventures is an "enjoyment of what is Art, and nothing but Art." But
I agree that we are confronted with an antinomy which seems hard
enough to overcome--on the one hand art is only good because some
people have judged or felt it to be good; on the other hand all
sincere critics are convinced that some works are absolutely good,
that their excellence is beyond reasonable challenge, and that those
who do not perceive this excellence are lacking in fineness of
perception.
The anarchistic side of the paradox is put in its crudest form by Mr.
Balfour. It has been put in perhaps its finest and truest form by Mr.
Henry James:
Art is the one corner of human life in which we may take our
ease. To justify our presence there the only thing demanded of
us is that we shall have felt the representational impulse. In
other connections our impulses are conditioned and embarrassed;
we are allowed to have only so many as are consistent with those
of our neighbours; with their convenience and well-being, with
their convictions and prejudices, their rules and regulations.
Art means an escape from all this. Wherever her shining standard
floats the need for apology and compromise is over; there it is
enough simply that we please or are pleased. There the tree is
judged only by its fruits. If these are sweet the tree is
justified--and not less so the consumer.... Differences here are
not iniquity and righteousness; they are simply variations of
temperament, kinds of curiosity. We are not under theological
government.
It is true; in art, at least, we are "not under theological
government," and that was a maxim worth asserting at a time when the
_dicta_ of Matthew Arnold and Ruskin were being converted into
shibboleths. It is necessary for happiness no less than for honesty
that we should realise that poetry, music, and pictures are personal
things; that what they are worth to us is their sole measure of value.
And here it must be mentioned that Mr. Balfour puts forth two hints
which are inconclusive enough, but which do dimly suggest a truer way
of escape than that to which his argument leads. He notes, first of
all, that art is disinterested; that it is not a means, but an end in
itself. And, secondly, we feel towards beautiful things as we feel
towards persons; if they are congenial we may like or love them,
though we can assign no ground for our preference.
If the analogy were pursued it might lead to something like a solution
of the difficulty. For all fine art is beautiful expression; it is
self-expression; it is the expression of something which the artist
perceives. If it strikes an answering chord in us we are satisfied;
and that fact of response means a community of perception, of æsthetic
knowledge, between the artist and the recipient, something perhaps
which is dragged from the depths of our duller natures but which burst
forth in expression from the artist with his quicker and more apt
perception. But let it be noted that there could be no such response
or sympathy conveyed from one to another by a symbol unless there were
some real bond, some existent principle possessed in common. Art is
communicative, but not surely a communication of nothing. It
communicates something which is not the less real because it is
intangible and mysterious. If it inexplicably affords us--as it
does--an experience which some persons describe as transcendent, then
that quality in it, which we call the "sublime" or the "beautiful,"
has at least to this extent a definite reality, that it affords us
unique experiences. It is this question which I shall examine in the
following chapter.
Some men have not been so made that they can respond to the beauty
which is summoned by art, just as some men, born blind, are not
touched by the light of the sun. But it is of no moment to say that
tastes differ. Men may differ about their friends, but they do not
differ about friendship. They may have different codes of honour, but
a sense of honour is the same thing for a savage as it is for a
bishop. And so not all things are called beautiful by the same men,
but beauty is the same for all.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See Preface to _Round the Corner_. (Martin Secker.)
II
LITERATURE A FINE ART
There are many people of my acquaintance who think it almost indecent
to talk of literature as a fine art. They have the same distaste for
the word "art" as others have for the name of God. It has indeed been
misused in certain æsthetic circles and discussed almost unctuously,
so that it is often associated with long hair and cant, and seems
nonsensical if not disreputable to plain and honest men. I remember an
Oxford don, chiefly noted for his cricket and his knowledge of Homer,
and in later life for his dyspepsia, abusing a distinguished Austrian
critic who visited the University--"These foreigners are always
talking about Art!" Foreigners and long-haired æsthetes were one and
the same thing to my atrabilious instructor. The latter was an exact
man. No wonder he detested a word which is used so vaguely and in so
many contrary senses; which is sometimes applied to a poem or a novel
as if its "art" were an ornamental thing _separate_ from the poem or
the novel; or as if it were a mere synonym for style or adherence to
some technical formula.
Yet we cannot very well get on without the word, and we certainly
cannot avoid its connotation. No man in his senses can deny that there
is such a thing as the "art of literature," though it may seem absurd
to talk about it. No one, however healthy in his tastes, would refuse
to distinguish the statement "This is a very good book"--which may
mean only that it is instructive, or useful for certain purposes--from
the statement "This, anyhow, is literature"--which means something
quite specific, namely, that this is a work of art. The very word
would become less offensive if we could be a little less vague about
it, if we could make up our minds what it is that it does mean or that
we wish it to mean. We all of us distinguish between good and bad in
literature, even if we regard our own judgments as fallible. We are
all disposed to mistrust the opinions of our contemporaries, though we
have a childlike faith in the verdict of posterity. Well, what is it
that will satisfy posterity, and that ought, _a fortiori_, to satisfy
us? What is it, in the domain of the delightful, as opposed to the
merely knowable, which has value for the future, and therefore should
have more value for the present? And what is it--an even more
important question--which may have this kind of value for us, whether
posterity choose to value it or not? That is the main point. We want
to find what that quality is, in literature or any of the fine arts,
which makes it a matter of so great consideration to us. What do we
expect and demand from it, if it is to be something of real moment?
That is one side of the question. And putting the question from the
other side--What sort of process is implied in the writing of
literature, and what is the sanction of the writer? It seems we are
compelled to form some provisional theory of art before we can make
the most modest pretensions to discuss literature. For such a theory
is implied in every literary discussion, in every review of a book,
and in every appreciative or antagonistic reading of a book. I myself
have written hundreds of reviews of books, and I certainly do not
think it more presumptuous to set down what it is that I require, or
believe that I require, in creative literature, and what that
requirement presupposes in the artist, than to have written those
hundreds of reviews.
I begin, then, from the side of our actual requirements, and I lay it
down as a self-evident proposition, that if we mean anything at all by
creative literature, or literature regarded as a fine art, we must
mean something which provides us with an addition to experience, an
experience _sui generis_. We demand that it should be something which
will occupy us and engage our faculties, something not to be
approached carelessly and indolently, but with energy and alertness of
the mind; not because it is abstruse or difficult, but because we are
demanding something which will give full play to the spirit, which
will come profoundly in contact with us when we are in fullest
possession of ourselves, which will not merely stir us, but stir us to
activity.
That I would take as an axiom. If we are going to regard fiction, for
example, as a fine art, the artistic novel will be a book which we
approach not for mere distraction, but for activity, mental and
spiritual, for the opportunity it affords of putting forth energy, of
giving full play to the vitality, of going through a vital experience.
Just as the keen golfer delights in the skilful use of eye and limb,
and is exhilarated by the difficulties and the physical exertion of
the game, so the keen reader of a book enjoys the strenuous mental
exercise it affords him. To some extent the mind is more elastic than
the body. Even when it is tired it can sometimes be whipped into
energy by thought, or reading, or talk, whereas the body in its
corresponding state cannot so readily respond with accuracy and
effectiveness. But the mind too--Heaven knows--may be dulled to fine
issues; and it is only when it is in well-balanced activity that it
can do full justice to a work of art; and that is no work of art which
the jaded intelligence can wholly grasp. Anyone who enjoys pictures,
and does not care to look at them perfunctorily or in a "sightseeing"
spirit, knows well that he can only appreciate a picture when he
allows eyes and imagination to concentrate upon it, so that he
_perceives_ as well as sees it, and derives a complex impression from
it akin to that which the artist felt at the moment when he conceived
it. And in the same way with every work of art worthy of the name,
whether it be a picture, a statue, a poem, a play or a novel, it is
part of its excellence to call forth _activity_ in the mind which
apprehends it.
But we must note that it not only calls forth activity, but
_disinterested_ activity--and by that I mean an activity of the kind
which is especially called forth in the fine arts, and not that which
science, or religion, or ethics might call forth without the aid of
the arts. To preserve the analogy of golf, it may happen--and
generally does happen--that the playing of golf makes the limbs more
elastic and promotes general health. But to take an interest in golf
is not the same thing as to take an interest in the health-producing
results of golf. The true golfer is he who plays golf for its own sake
and without any ulterior end, without thought of consequences,
although consequences of some kind are inevitable. In the same way the
activity called forth in all art, both in the artist at the time of
creation and in the man who is appreciating it, is disinterested; he
is, in proportion as he is an artist or an appreciator of art,
concerned at the moment in nothing but the subject-matter of the
artist, and the treatment; in making or receiving a certain effect,
without thought of the possible practical consequences which may
follow through some inference drawn from the work or some
psychological result attending upon it. This is not a re-statement of
the much-abused theory of "Art for Art's sake," for that theory has
always tended to minimise the importance of subject-matter, and to
represent Beauty as something aloof from the rest of life, instead of
being inseparable from the warp and woof of things social, moral,
intellectual, religious, and physical. When I say that the activity of
the artist is disinterested, I do not mean that he may not be
concerned with any conceivable theme under the sun, but that his
business is to provide us with an experience, and that any end he may
have beyond making that experience vivid and complete is an alien end,
destroying his singleness of purpose, wholly disruptive of his art
and destructive to its energy.
And here we must abandon the analogy of a game of skill, for whereas
golf-balls have no interest except as things to be knocked about, the
objects with which poet, dramatist or novelist deals are ideas,
persons, associated things, having character and interest of their
own. The experience he is to provide is primarily a spiritual
experience, an affair of the mind and the emotions. And being, as it
must clearly be, an experience _sui generis_, it is obviously not
derived from a mere reproduction of life; for life cannot be
reproduced excepting in life itself, whereas art claims no more than
to be an imitation, or an envisagement, of nature, and its life is its
own. What we demand of it is that it should put into its picture
something that is and is not in nature--something, in other words,
that is only there for those who choose to see it, but which the
artist makes clearer, awakening the perceptions to that aspect of
truth which he has in view. In a book called _The Ascending Effort_,
Mr. George Bourne urged that the art of life consists in the
realisation of "choice ideas"; meaning by "choice ideas" those which
are refined out of the commonplace and the meagre; the ideas which are
apprehended most actively, with all the mind and all the perceptions;
the ideas which admit of relation to all other ideas, which come into
some sort of harmony with such schemes of life as we have made. If
this is true of the art of life, _a fortiori_ is it true of the fine
arts from which the analogy is drawn. In other words, the artist's aim
is not to reproduce the facts which make up the mass of our ordinary
and undigested life, but to substitute for the dishevelled commonplace
the "choiceness" of an ordered interpretation. Only in this way can
art give us an experience _sui generis_; only by the refinement and
re-energising of the treatment can it give us emotions vivid enough to
compete in some measure with the vividness of nature.
Implicitly all great artists must have accepted this general view of
their function, and many in one way or another have explicitly stated
it. "As light to the eye, even such is beauty to the mind," said
Coleridge, whose meaning was philosophically definite, but in no way
at variance with Shakespeare's too hackneyed but ever memorable words:
Spirits are not finely touched,
But to fine issues.
The "fine": the "alight" or "luminous": the "choice"--here are three
ways of qualifying the objects which artists seek to present. Matthew
Arnold was captivated by the simile of light, and having repeated
Amiel's passionate cry for "more light," used "sweetness and light" as
a refrain in all his criticism. Walter Pater, to whom the beauty of
the human form, and therefore of sculpture, was especially appealing,
loved to use such terms as "shapely," "comely," "blythe," "gracious,"
"engaging," to express the fine flavour[2] of a work of art. The
quality may be manifested primarily through the intellect, as with
Meredith; through the senses, as with Swinburne; through the
perceptions, as with Turgeniev, Flaubert and Joseph Conrad; or through
intellect and perceptions acutely balanced, as with Mr. Henry James
(who gives us "curiosity" as the keynote); but in any case it is that
which we require an artist to bring with him--"fineness," "light,"
"choiceness," "comeliness," "graciousness"--when he visualises or
focusses his object. Does not that untranslatable λιπαρὸς αἰθήρ of
Homer--the shining upper air--suggest not only the physical atmosphere
breathed by the gods of Olympus and the great-hearted Odysseus, but
also the poetic atmosphere of the Odyssey itself?
We have, then, added a third term to our generalisation about art. We
now require, as it seems, that it should provide us with an energetic
experience; that it should be disinterested in the sense that it
cannot aim at any competing, alien end; and thirdly, that this
experience should come from objects made beautiful in the sense of
being shown in a certain light, or made alight--in a manner which
demands further inquiry. And here indeed is the difficulty. For we
must endeavour to examine the question from the artist's standpoint,
and seek counsel from him.
It would be no less futile than presumptuous to lay down exact formulæ
as to what the artist ought and ought not to do. No modern critic is
likely to waste his time in framing rules and canons, which can be so
easily handled by the pedant and stand condemned by the first great
man who defies them. Aristotle did it once and for all for the Greek
drama, and when the perspective of life widened and new forms of
literature grew up to compete with drama, his rules were destined
either to shackle literature or to be thrown ruthlessly overboard in
the violent revulsion against Classicism. Shakespeare fortunately was
guiltless of any exact knowledge of Aristotle, and the fact that
Corneille and Racine, who had no French Shakespeare to precede them,
were in bondage to that influential philosopher, had a lasting effect
upon French literature which the mighty influence of Hugo was
insufficient to destroy. But at least the example of these Classicist
writers has proved that literature itself is not only profoundly
affected, but made and unmade, by theories of literature. And
Corneille and Racine bestowed at any rate this immeasurable benefit on
their countrymen: they taught them the lesson of form and technique--a
lesson which they have never forgotten, which is illustrated as much
in fiction as in drama--in Merimée, Flaubert, Maupassant and Anatole
France. Shakespeare, on the contrary, whose influence on English
literature has been supreme since the beginning of the Romantic
movement, provided no obvious model for the student of form. To the
casual reader his very imagination seems to be lawlessness and
extravagance, carrying him tempestuously and recklessly into the mêlée
of poetry. But every careful reader knows that Shakespeare was not so
reckless as he seems; observe how rigidly he conformed to the
conditions prescribed by the Elizabethan theatre and audience; it is
to the credit of his technique that he complied with these exacting
conditions without cramping the finer issues of poetry and drama. And
in the broader sense of the term Shakespeare's form was precisely
proportionate to his genius, though it is seen rather in the
transcendence of his poetry and the management by which his persons
are swept along on their own characters than in those more obvious
elements of form--structure of plot, the subservience of dialogue and
incident to the dramatic purpose, and all the minor probabilities and
proprieties. But it is just the obvious elements which are most
noticeable to those who study form in a superficial way; for those who
imitate Shakespeare, or are influenced by him, his careless freedom
and extravagance often bulk larger than the expression of genius which
made trifles of these defects. A result is that throughout the
nineteenth century Shakespeare has been for English authors not always
an inspiration, but a national pretext for decrying technique.
And yet those who had the insight and the power to restore Shakespeare
in all his fulness to English readers were wholly free from this
ignorance--conspicuously Charles Lamb and S.T. Coleridge. Coleridge
was indeed the first of Englishmen to think out anything like a
complete and satisfactory theory of poetry and the fine arts. The
supreme value of his theory comes from the fact that he was one of the
few who had actually experienced those creative impulses which as a
theorist he endeavoured to account for. He had had the inspiration of
poetry; he had achieved it; and to that extent he had indisputable
evidence before him. If only on the one hand he had extended his
method a little further than he did, and taken into consideration that
formal side of art which is dear to classicism, and on the other hand
been more confident--or shall I say less shy?--when he considered the
origin of the creative imagination, the ideal conceiver and creator of
_Natura Naturata_, then his scheme would have been complete--probably
too complete. On the latter subject, however, he threw out hints which
were broad enough, and did not wholly shun the controversial sphere of
metaphysics. The critic who would avoid the heights and depths of
mysticism would do well to imitate his reserve, and exceed him in
metaphysical diffidence.
"_Good Sense_ is the _Body_ of poetic genius," said Coleridge,
"_Fancy_ its _Drapery_, _Motion_ its _Life_, and _Imagination_ the
_Soul_ that is everywhere, and in each; and forms all into one
graceful and intelligent whole." It is by that "synthetic and magical
power" which he calls "imagination" that the poet "brings the whole
soul of man into activity," and "diffuses a tone and spirit of unity."
Coleridge's theory of the Fine Arts presupposes his metaphysic; and it
asserts the primacy of the reason. "Of all we see, hear, feel and
touch the substance is and must be in ourselves: and therefore there
is no alternative in reason between the dreary (and, thank Heaven!
almost impossible) belief that everything around us is but a phantom,
or that the life which is in us is in them likewise.... The artist
must imitate that which is within the thing, that which is active
through form and figure, and discourses to us by symbols."
He defines the beautiful as "that in which the _many_, still seen as
many, becomes one," and takes as an instance: "The frost on the
windowpane has by accident crystallised into a striking resemblance of
a tree or a sea-weed. With what pleasure we trace the parts, and their
relation to each other and to the whole." "The beautiful arises from
the perceived harmony of an object, whether sight or sound, with the
inborn and constitutive rules of the judgment and imagination, and it
is always intuitive." It is that which "calls on the soul" (καλόν
quasi καλοῦν). He conceives it to be the function of the human reason
to discover the unifying idea which underlies all the variety of
nature; and thus it is that when manifold objects of sense are reduced
by the imagination to order and unity the soul is satisfied, and its
experience is an experience of what is called the beautiful. It is
with this discovering of order in the seemingly chaotic, in other
words the discovering of beauty, that the creative artist is
concerned. It is his business to inform matter with idea; and matter
symbolically used becomes the expression of the artist's thought just
as for the theologian the world of nature is an expression of the
thought of God. "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." And he goes on significantly: "Dare I add
that the genius must act on the feeling, that body is but a striving
to become mind--that it is mind in its essence?" And in all the
_Biographia Literaria_ there is perhaps no more striking suggestion
than: "Remark the seeming identity of body and mind in infants, and
thence the loveliness of the former."
It should be observed that Coleridge's philosophy presupposes "a bond
between nature in the higher sense and the soul of a man,"
presupposes, that is, that the spirit of the artist "has the same
ground with nature," whose unspoken language he must learn "in its
main radicals." It is only by reason of this bond that external
nature, the manifestation of _Natura naturans_, lends itself to the
artist so that he too may manifest himself. To attain this end the
artist will imitate nature but not copy her. ("What idle rivalry!" he
exclaims. Is not a copy of nature like a wax-work figure, which shocks
because it lacks "the motion and the life which we expected?") The
artist imitates what he perceives to be essential in nature; he takes
the images which life affords him and so disposes of them as to bring
to light the unities which the spirit loves; it is he who brings order
out of disorder, imposing upon matter a form which the imagination has
conceived.
For the purposes of the general critic of art, Coleridge has given us
too much and too little. He gives us too much: for the acceptance of
his theory in its completeness is only possible for those who can also
accept his metaphysic (his artist stands in a special relationship to
that _Natura naturans_ which is a name for God). It is indeed clear to
me that no complete conception of the operations of art can be formed
without a complete metaphysical theory; but both are difficult to
attain. Both lead to speculation, controversy, and a thousand
opportunities of error. And any systematically complete theory of
art, seeking as it must to account for infinity, must, like all
metaphysical systems, fall short of the truth by precisely the
difference between infinite thought and the thought of one man--by the
difference between the Universe and You or Me. Those who are anxious
to learn what can be learnt about the creative process, and to explain
it to themselves, not in terms of abstract thought, but in terms of
the humanly intelligible and appreciable, may be satisfied with a
lower degree of truth, with something more certain though not fully
explained. We may be content if we can hit upon some least common
denominator free from the controversies of metaphysics.
If that is our object, Coleridge has given us too much. But he has
also given us too little. So generalised is his treatment that we are
led to the conclusion that his perfect artist (who cannot exist) ought
to express nothing less than the whole of himself in one single
comprehensive work of art, as the divine Creator is conceived to have
produced one harmonious expression of Himself in the Universe. What he
does not sufficiently discuss is the imperfect artist--the only artist
that has yet been given to the world. It is true the great genius in
letters, or any other kind of art, can never rest content until he has
bodied forth in a multitude of works all of that complex which is his
conception of life. But he works under the conditions of time and
space. His conception of life has been modified before he has had time
to vanquish time. In practice, at any given moment, he is at work upon
a single aspect of life, upon one part only of his general
conception, so that the most immediate task before him is not that of
_unifying_ nature, but of _separating_, of _selecting_; and only when
he has thus separated and selected can he proceed to make a unity
within that restricted sphere of nature--his particular subject. On
this practical question, this problem, not of perfection but of
imperfection, Coleridge is characteristically silent.
But at least we must follow him in his view that the great artist is
engaged in the attempt to body forth, through the symbols which
external nature provides him, his fundamental conceptions about life.
Were this not so, art would not be concerned, as it claims to be, with
what is most important in the world, or at least most important to the
artist. "No man was ever yet a great poet," he insisted, "without
being at the same time a profound philosopher." We may recall the
dictum of Meredith: "If we do not speedily embrace philosophy in
fiction, the Art is doomed to extinction." But there is a great
difference between the two views. A work of art which is broad enough
to embrace philosophy is not the same thing as a work of art which is
embraced by philosophy, and is a complete product of the philosophical
imagination. Meredith extolled the intellect, which works
discursively; Coleridge extolled the reason, which apprehends
intuitively. For Coleridge, the intellect was only the organ by which
rational conceptions and intuitions are logically applied, and adapted
to circumstance. From his point of view we might conclude that the
genius of Meredith missed the greatest effects because, applying his
intellect _discursively_ to life, he so often refused to make it
subservient to any central conception or intuition. However that may
be, it is impossible to resist at least this conclusion, that the
artist in whose work we feel a _background_, whose work suggests more
than it directly is, being capable of arousing numberless feelings and
associations in the mind, so that it stands veritably as a symbol of
the whole of life, is the artist _par excellence_. Much of this effect
may be produced by an _unconscious_ activity which Coleridge
recognised as a part of the activity of genius. Nevertheless, whether
the activity is conscious or unconscious, it cannot do more than
express what arises in, or passes through, the imagination of the
artist; it is his complex conception of life and the significance of
life, his definite individual outlook, which accounts for this
background to a work of art, for this suggestiveness which makes it
appealing and awakening, for these associations which it has cunningly
brought before us. And whether or not we are going to allow that
something less than this can be called art, that the merely shapely
(shapely as if by accident) ought to be included in its category,
nevertheless, it is this which holds the highest place. The answer is
given by all the great authors of the world who have left their
individual stamp upon their art, who created images representative of
life as they conceived it essentially to be.
But I am far from holding that those central conceptions which the
artist embodies through the forms of his art are metaphysical
conceptions. This is where I should disagree with Mr. Lascelles
Abercrombie, who wrote some profoundly interesting chapters on this
subject in a book on Thomas Hardy. Mr. Abercrombie laid it down that
every great artist must have a metaphysic, and that in bringing his
subject-matter under the form conceived by his imagination his
metaphysic is throughout the work consistently represented (of course
implicitly, not explicitly); and he suggested that we may apply a
definite standard of criticism by asking: How far does a work of art
correspond with the artist's philosophical view of life?--this being
for him another way of saying: How far has the artist succeeded in
imposing the desired form upon his material? With the latter mode of
stating the question I should have no quarrel. But the former implies
that the artist has devoted himself to metaphysical studies. Mr.
Abercrombie may have meant only that every work of art presupposes a
metaphysic; but so does everything in the world. The remark would
scarcely have been worth making. So I suppose him to have meant that
every great artist must have subdued his mind to a definite
philosophical interpretation of the Universe, and that in his works he
shows nature and human life as parts of the cosmic scheme definitely
conceived by him. As it happened, the particular novelist whom he was
considering, Mr. Thomas Hardy, exactly answers to this description. So
does Sophocles, so does Milton--authors specially esteemed by Mr.
Abercrombie. Homer, too, might perhaps be accounted for in this way;
for he had at any rate a perfectly definite conception of the relation
of men to the gods of Olympus and to the ghosts who trod the mead of
Asphodel; and to the perfect spontaneity, the unhesitating certainty
with which Homer bodies forth the conviction of pantheism is due much
of the charm and infinite delight of the Epics. Perhaps with ingenuity
one might discover a metaphysic for Shakespeare--and even if we could
not discover it, none the less it may have been there. But how about
Herrick, Robert Burns, or even Mr. Henry James? Are we to equip them
with a metaphysic, or exclude them from the portals of art? Shall we
not gain more by requiring from an artist something, definite indeed,
but less exacting and elusive than a definite scheme of the Universe;
something which would admit, for example, Calverley; which would take
some heed of the simplest of songs, and account for Lewis Carroll in
the same way that we can account for Sophocles or Milton?