It seems to me it is always in order to protest against the narrow and
dogmatic spirit that so often crops out in current criticism touching this
matter of art. "The boundaries of art are jealously guarded," says a
recent authority, as if art had boundaries like a state or province that
had been accurately surveyed and fixed,--as if art was a fact and not a
spirit.
Now I shall deny at the outset that there are any bounds of art, or that
art is in any sense an "enclosure,"--a province fenced off and set apart
from the rest,--any more than religion is an enclosure, though so many
people would like to make it so. Art is commensurate with the human
spirit. I should even deny that there are any principles of art in the
sense that there are principles of mechanics or of mathematics. Art has
but one principle, one aim,--to produce an impression, a powerful
impression, no matter by what means, or if it be by reversing all the
canons of taste and criticism. Name any principle, so called, and some day
a genius shall be born who will produce his effects in defiance of it, or
by appearing to reverse it. Such a man as Turner seemed, at first sight,
to set at defiance all correct notions of art. The same with Wagner in
music, the same with Whitman in poetry. The new man is impossible till he
appears, and, when he appears, in proportion to his originality and power
does it take the world a longer or shorter time to adjust its critical
standards to him. But it is sure to do so at last. There is nothing final
in art: its principles follow and do not lead the creator; they are
deductions from his work, not its inspiration. We demand of the new man,
of the overthrower of our idols, but one thing,--has he authentic
inspiration and power? If he has not, his pretensions are soon exploded.
If he has, we cannot put him down, any more than we can put down a law of
nature, and we very soon find some principle of art that fits his case. Is
there no room for the new man? But the new man makes room for himself, and
if he be of the first order he largely makes the taste by which he is
appreciated, and the rules of art by which he is to be judged.