But besides this Christianity, from the time of the wholesale conversion

of nations by order of the authorities, as in the days of Constantine,

Charlemagne, and Vladimir, there appeared another, a Church

Christianity, which was nearer to paganism than to Christ’s teaching.

And this Church Christianity, in accordance with its own teaching,

estimated quite otherwise the feelings of people and the productions of

art which transmitted those feelings.

This Church Christianity not only did not acknowledge the fundamental

and essential positions of true Christianity,—the immediate relationship

of each man to the Father, the consequent brotherhood and equality of

all men, and the substitution of humility and love in place of every

kind of violence—but, on the contrary, having set up a heavenly

hierarchy similar to the pagan mythology, and having introduced the

worship of Christ, of the Virgin, of angels, of apostles, of saints, and

of martyrs, and not only of these divinities themselves, but also of

their images, it made blind faith in the Church and its ordinances the

essential point of its teaching.

However foreign this teaching may have been to true Christianity,

however degraded, not only in comparison with true Christianity, but

even with the life-conception of Romans such as Julian and others; it

was, for all that, to the barbarians who accepted it, a higher doctrine

than their former adoration of gods, heroes, and good and bad spirits.

And therefore this teaching was a religion to them, and on the basis of

that religion the art of the time was assessed. And art transmitting

pious adoration of the Virgin, Jesus, the saints and the angels, a blind

faith in and submission to the Church, fear of torments and hope of

blessedness in a life beyond the grave, was considered good; all art

opposed to this was considered bad.

The teaching on the basis of which this art arose was a perversion of

Christ’s teaching, but the art which sprang up on this perverted

teaching was nevertheless a true art, because it corresponded to the

religious view of life held by the people among whom it arose.

The artists of the Middle Ages, vitalised by the same source of

feeling—religion—as the mass of the people, and transmitting, in

architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry or drama, the feelings

and states of mind they experienced, were true artists; and their

activity, founded on the highest conceptions accessible to their age and

common to the entire people, though, for our times a mean art, was,

nevertheless a true one, shared by the whole community.

And this was the state of things until, in the upper, rich, more

educated classes of European society, doubt arose as to the truth of

that understanding of life which was expressed by Church Christianity.

When, after the Crusades and the maximum development of papal power and

its abuses, people of the rich classes became acquainted with the wisdom

of the classics, and saw, on the one hand, the reasonable lucidity of

the teaching of the ancient sages, and, on the other hand, the

incompatibility of the Church doctrine with the teaching of Christ, they

lost all possibility of continuing to believe the Church teaching.

If, in externals, they still kept to the forms of Church teaching, they

could no longer believe in it, and held to it only by inertia and for

the sake of influencing the masses, who continued to believe blindly in

Church doctrine, and whom the upper classes, for their own advantage,

considered it necessary to support in those beliefs.

So that a time came when Church Christianity ceased to be the general

religious doctrine of all Christian people; some—the masses—continued

blindly to believe in it, but the upper classes—those in whose hands lay

the power and wealth, and therefore the leisure to produce art and the

means to stimulate it—ceased to believe in that teaching.

In respect to religion, the upper circles of the Middle Ages found

themselves in the same position in which the educated Romans were before

Christianity arose, _i.e._ they no longer believed in the religion of

the masses, but had no beliefs to put in place of the worn-out Church

doctrine which for them had lost its meaning.

There was only this difference, that whereas for the Romans who lost

faith in their emperor-gods and household-gods it was impossible to

extract anything further from all the complex mythology they had

borrowed from all the conquered nations, and it was consequently

necessary to find a completely new conception of life, the people of the

Middle Ages, when they doubted the truth of the Church teaching, had no

need to seek a fresh one. That Christian teaching which they professed

in a perverted form as Church doctrine, had mapped out the path of human

progress so far ahead, that they had but to rid themselves of those

perversions which hid the teaching announced by Christ, and to adopt its

real meaning—if not completely, then at least in some greater degree

than that in which the Church had held it.

And this was partially done, not only in the reformations of Wyclif,

Huss, Luther, and Calvin, but by all that current of non-Church

Christianity, represented in earlier times by the Paulicians, the

Bogomili,[61] and, afterwards, by the Waldenses and the other non-Church

Christians who were called heretics. But this could be, and was, done

chiefly by poor people—who did not rule. A few of the rich and strong,

like Francis of Assisi and others, accepted the Christian teaching in

its full significance, even though it undermined their privileged

positions. But most people of the upper classes (though in the depth of

their souls they had lost faith in the Church teaching) could not or

would not act thus, because the essence of that Christian view of life,

which stood ready to be adopted when once they rejected the Church

faith, was a teaching of the brotherhood (and therefore the equality) of

man, and this negatived those privileges on which they lived, in which

they had grown up and been educated, and to which they were accustomed.

Not, in the depth of their hearts, believing in the Church

teaching,—which had outlived its age and had no longer any true meaning

for them,—and not being strong enough to accept true Christianity, men

of these rich, governing classes—popes, kings, dukes, and all the great

ones of the earth—were left without any religion, with but the external

forms of one, which they supported as being profitable and even

necessary for themselves, since these forms screened a teaching which

justified those privileges which they made use of. In reality, these

people believed in nothing, just as the Romans of the first centuries of

our era believed in nothing. But at the same time these were the people

who had the power and the wealth, and these were the people who rewarded

art and directed it.

And, let it be noticed, it was just among these people that there grew

up an art esteemed not according to its success in expressing men’s

religious feelings, but in proportion to its beauty,—in other words,

according to the enjoyment it gave.

No longer able to believe in the Church religion whose falsehood they

had detected, and incapable of accepting true Christian teaching, which

denounced their whole manner of life, these rich and powerful people,

stranded without any religious conception of life, involuntarily

returned to that pagan view of things which places life’s meaning in

personal enjoyment. And then took place among the upper classes what is

called the “Renaissance of science and art,” and which was really not

only a denial of every religion but also an assertion that religion is

unnecessary.

The Church doctrine is so coherent a system that it cannot be altered or

corrected without destroying it altogether. As soon as doubt arose with

regard to the infallibility of the pope (and this doubt was then in the

minds of all educated people), doubt inevitably followed as to the truth

of tradition. But doubt as to the truth of tradition is fatal not only

to popery and Catholicism, but also to the whole Church creed with all

its dogmas: the divinity of Christ, the resurrection, and the Trinity;

and it destroys the authority of the Scriptures, since they were

considered to be inspired only because the tradition of the Church

decided it so.

So that the majority of the highest classes of that age, even the popes

and the ecclesiastics, really believed in nothing at all. In the Church

doctrine these people did not believe, for they saw its insolvency; but

neither could they follow Francis of Assisi, Keltchitsky,[62] and most

of the heretics, in acknowledging the moral, social teaching of Christ,

for that teaching undermined their social position. And so these people

remained without any religious view of life. And, having none, they

could have no standard wherewith to estimate what was good and what was

bad art but that of personal enjoyment. And, having acknowledged their

criterion of what was good to be pleasure, _i.e._, beauty, these people

of the upper classes of European society went back in their

comprehension of art to the gross conception of the primitive Greeks

which Plato had already condemned. And conformably to this understanding

of life a theory of art was formulated.

Footnote 61:

Eastern sects well known in early Church history, who rejected the

Church’s rendering of Christ’s teaching and were cruelly

persecuted.—Trans.

Footnote 62:

Keltchitsky, a Bohemian of the fifteenth century, was the author of a

remarkable book, _The Net of Faith_, directed against Church and

State. It is mentioned in Tolstoy’s _The Kingdom of God is Within

You_.—Trans.

CHAPTER VII

From the time that people of the upper classes lost faith in Church

Christianity, beauty (_i.e._ the pleasure received from art) became

their standard of good and bad art. And, in accordance with that view,

an æsthetic theory naturally sprang up among those upper classes

justifying such a conception,—a theory according to which the aim of art

is to exhibit beauty. The partisans of this æsthetic theory, in

confirmation of its truth, affirmed that it was no invention of their

own, but that it existed in the nature of things, and was recognised

even by the ancient Greeks. But this assertion was quite arbitrary, and

has no foundation other than the fact that among the ancient Greeks, in

consequence of the low grade of their moral ideal (as compared with the

Christian), their conception of the good, τὸ ἀγαθόν, was not yet sharply

divided from their conception of the beautiful, τὸ καλόν.

That highest perfection of goodness (not only not identical with beauty,

but, for the most part, contrasting with it) which was discerned by the

Jews even in the times of Isaiah, and fully expressed by Christianity,

was quite unknown to the Greeks. They supposed that the beautiful must

necessarily also be the good. It is true that their foremost

thinkers—Socrates, Plato, Aristotle—felt that goodness may happen not to

coincide with beauty. Socrates expressly subordinated beauty to

goodness; Plato, to unite the two conceptions, spoke of spiritual

beauty; while Aristotle demanded from art that it should have a moral

influence on people (κάθαρσις). But, notwithstanding all this, they

could not quite dismiss the notion that beauty and goodness coincide.

And consequently, in the language of that period, a compound word

(καλο-κἀγαθία, beauty-goodness), came into use to express that notion.

Evidently the Greek sages began to draw near to that perception of

goodness which is expressed in Buddhism and in Christianity, and they

got entangled in defining the relation between goodness and beauty.

Plato’s reasonings about beauty and goodness are full of contradictions.

And it was just this confusion of ideas that those Europeans of a later

age, who had lost all faith, tried to elevate into a law. They tried to

prove that this union of beauty and goodness is inherent in the very

essence of things; that beauty and goodness must coincide; and that the

word and conception καλο-κἀγαθία (which had a meaning for Greeks but has

none at all for Christians) represents the highest ideal of humanity. On

this misunderstanding the new science of æsthetics was built up. And, to

justify its existence, the teachings of the ancients on art were so

twisted as to make it appear that this invented science of æsthetics had

existed among the Greeks.

In reality, the reasoning of the ancients on art was quite unlike ours.

As Benard, in his book on the æsthetics of Aristotle, quite justly

remarks: “_Pour qui veut y regarder de près, la théorie du beau et celle

de l’art sont tout à fait séparées dans Aristote, comme elles le sont

dans Platon et chez tous leurs successeurs_” (_L’esthétique d’Aristote

et de ses successeurs_, Paris, 1889, p. 28).[63] And indeed the

reasoning of the ancients on art not only does not confirm our science

of æsthetics, but rather contradicts its doctrine of beauty. But

nevertheless all the æsthetic guides, from Schasler to Knight, declare

that the science of the beautiful—æsthetic science—was commenced by the

ancients, by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle; and was continued, they say,

partially by the Epicureans and Stoics: by Seneca and Plutarch, down to

Plotinus. But it is supposed that this science, by some unfortunate

accident, suddenly vanished in the fourth century, and stayed away for

about 1500 years, and only after these 1500 years had passed did it

revive in Germany, A.D. 1750, in Baumgarten’s doctrine.

After Plotinus, says Schasler, fifteen centuries passed away during

which there was not the slightest scientific interest felt for the world

of beauty and art. These one and a half thousand years, says he, have

been lost to æsthetics and have contributed nothing towards the erection

of the learned edifice of this science.[64]

In reality nothing of the kind happened. The science of æsthetics, the

science of the beautiful, neither did nor could vanish because it never

existed. Simply, the Greeks (just like everybody else, always and

everywhere) considered art (like everything else) good only when it

served goodness (as they understood goodness), and bad when it was in

opposition to that goodness. And the Greeks themselves were so little

developed morally, that goodness and beauty seemed to them to coincide.

On that obsolete Greek view of life was erected the science of

æsthetics, invented by men of the eighteenth century, and especially

shaped and mounted in Baumgarten’s theory. The Greeks (as anyone may see

who will read Benard’s admirable book on Aristotle and his successors,

and Walter’s work on Plato) never had a science of æsthetics.

Æsthetic theories arose about one hundred and fifty years ago among the

wealthy classes of the Christian European world, and arose

simultaneously among different nations,—German, Italian, Dutch, French,

and English. The founder and organiser of it, who gave it a scientific,

theoretic form, was Baumgarten.

With a characteristically German, external exactitude, pedantry and

symmetry, he devised and expounded this extraordinary theory. And,

notwithstanding its obvious insolidity, nobody else’s theory so pleased

the cultured crowd, or was accepted so readily and with such an absence

of criticism. It so suited the people of the upper classes, that to this

day, notwithstanding its entirely fantastic character and the arbitrary

nature of its assertions, it is repeated by learned and unlearned as

though it were something indubitable and self-evident.

_Habent sua fata libelli pro capite lectoris_, and so, or even more so,

theories _habent sua fata_ according to the condition of error in which

that society is living, among whom and for whom the theories are

invented. If a theory justifies the false position in which a certain

part of a society is living, then, however unfounded or even obviously

false the theory may be, it is accepted, and becomes an article of faith

to that section of society. Such, for instance, was the celebrated and

unfounded theory expounded by Malthus, of the tendency of the population

of the world to increase in geometrical progression, but of the means of

sustenance to increase only in arithmetical progression, and of the

consequent overpopulation of the world; such, also, was the theory (an

outgrowth of the Malthusian) of selection and struggle for existence as

the basis of human progress. Such, again, is Marx’s theory, which

regards the gradual destruction of small private production by large

capitalistic production now going on around us, as an inevitable decree

of fate. However unfounded such theories are, however contrary to all

that is known and confessed by humanity, and however obviously immoral

they may be, they are accepted with credulity, pass uncriticised, and

are preached, perchance for centuries, until the conditions are

destroyed which they served to justify, or until their absurdity has

become too evident. To this class belongs this astonishing theory of the

Baumgartenian Trinity—Goodness, Beauty, and Truth, according to which it

appears that the very best that can be done by the art of nations after

1900 years of Christian teaching, is to choose as the ideal of their

life the ideal that was held by a small, semi-savage, slave-holding

people who lived 2000 years ago, who imitated the nude human body

extremely well, and erected buildings pleasant to look at. All these

incompatibilities pass completely unnoticed. Learned people write long,

cloudy treatises on beauty as a member of the æsthetic trinity of

Beauty, Truth, and Goodness; _das Schöne, das Wahre, das Gute_; _le

Beau, le Vrai, le Bon_, are repeated, with capital letters, by

philosophers, æstheticians and artists, by private individuals, by

novelists and by _feuilletonistes_, and they all think, when pronouncing

these sacrosanct words, that they speak of something quite definite and

solid—something on which they can base their opinions. In reality, these

words not only have no definite meaning, but they hinder us in attaching

any definite meaning to existing art; they are wanted only for the

purpose of justifying the false importance we attribute to an art that

transmits every kind of feeling if only those feelings afford us

pleasure.

Footnote 63:

Any one examining closely may see that the theory of beauty and that

of art are quite separated in Aristotle as they are in Plato and in

all their successors.

Footnote 64:

Die Lücke von fünf Jahrhunderten, welche zwischen den

Kunstphilosophischen Betrachtungen des Plato und Aristoteles und die

des Plotins fällt, kann zwar auffällig erscheinen; dennoch kann man

eigentlich nicht sagen, dass in dieser Zwischenzeit überhaupt von

ästhetischen Dingen nicht die Rede gewesen; oder dass gar ein völliger

Mangel an Zusammenhang zwischen den Kunst-anscliauungen des

letztgenannten Philosophen und denen der ersteren existire. Freilich

wurde die von Aristoteles begründete Wissenschaft in Nichts dadurch

gefördert; immerhin aber zeigt sich in jener Zwischenzeit noch ein

gewisses Interesse für ästhetische Fragen. Nach Plotin aber, die

wenigen, ihm in der Zeit nahestehenden Philosophen, wie Longin,

Augustin, u. s. f. kommen, wie wir gesehen, kaum in Betracht und

schliessen sich übrigens in ihrer Anschauungsweise an ihn an,—vergehen

nicht fünf, sondern _fünfzehn Jahrhunderte_, in denen von irgend einer

wissenschaftlichen Interesse für die Welt des Schönen und der Kunst

nichts zu spüren ist.

Diese anderthalbtausend Jahre, innerhalb deren der Weltgeist durch die

mannigfachsten Kämpfe hindurch zu einer völlig neuen Gestaltung des

Lebens sich durcharbeitete, sind für die Aesthetik, hinsichtlich des

weiteren Ausbaus dieser Wissenschaft verloren.—Max Schasler.

CHAPTER VIII

But if art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission

to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen, how

could it be that humanity for a certain rather considerable period of

its existence (from the time people ceased to believe in Church doctrine

down to the present day) should exist without this important activity,

and, instead of it, should put up with an insignificant artistic

activity only affording pleasure?

In order to answer this question, it is necessary, first of all, to

correct the current error people make in attributing to our art the

significance of true, universal art. We are so accustomed, not only

naïvely to consider the Circassian family the best stock of people, but

also the Anglo-Saxon race the best race if we are Englishmen or

Americans, or the Teutonic if we are Germans, or the Gallo-Latin if we

are French, or the Slavonic if we are Russians, that when speaking of

our own art we feel fully convinced, not only that our art is true art,

but even that it is the best and only true art. But in reality our art

is not only not the only art (as the Bible once was held to be the only

book), but it is not even the art of the whole of Christendom,—only of a

small section of that part of humanity. It was correct to speak of a

national Jewish, Grecian, or Egyptian art, and one may speak of a

now-existing Chinese, Japanese, or Indian art shared in by a whole

people. Such art, common to a whole nation, existed in Russia till Peter

the First’s time, and existed in the rest of Europe until the thirteenth

or fourteenth century; but since the upper classes of European society,

having lost faith in the Church teaching, did not accept real

Christianity but remained without any faith, one can no longer speak of

an art of the Christian nations in the sense of the whole of art. Since

the upper classes of the Christian nations lost faith in Church

Christianity, the art of those upper classes has separated itself from

the art of the rest of the people, and there have been two arts—the art

of the people and genteel art. And therefore the answer to the question

how it could occur that humanity lived for a certain period without real

art, replacing it by art which served enjoyment only, is, that not all

humanity, nor even any considerable portion of it, lived without real

art, but only the highest classes of European Christian society, and

even they only for a comparatively short time—from the commencement of

the Renaissance down to our own day.

And the consequence of this absence of true art showed itself,

inevitably, in the corruption of that class which nourished itself on

the false art. All the confused, unintelligible theories of art, all the

false and contradictory judgments on art, and particularly the

self-confident stagnation of our art in its false path, all arise from

the assertion, which has come into common use and is accepted as an

unquestioned truth, but is yet amazingly and palpably false, the

assertion, namely, that the art of our upper classes[65] is the whole of

art, the true, the only, the universal art. And although this assertion

(which is precisely similar to the assertion made by religious people of

the various Churches who consider that theirs is the only true religion)

is quite arbitrary and obviously unjust, yet it is calmly repeated by

all the people of our circle with full faith in its infallibility.

The art we have is the whole of art, the real, the only art, and yet

two-thirds of the human race (all the peoples of Asia and Africa) live

and die knowing nothing of this sole and supreme art. And even in our

Christian society hardly one per cent. of the people make use of this

art which we speak of as being the _whole_ of art; the remaining

ninety-nine per cent. live and die, generation after generation, crushed

by toil and never tasting this art, which moreover is of such a nature

that, if they could get it, they would not understand anything of it.

We, according to the current æsthetic theory, acknowledge art either as

one of the highest manifestations of the Idea, God, Beauty, or as the

highest spiritual enjoyment; furthermore, we hold that all people have

equal rights, if not to material, at any rate to spiritual well-being;

and yet ninety-nine per cent. of our European population live and die,

generation after generation, crushed by toil, much of which toil is

necessary for the production of our art which they never use, and we,

nevertheless, calmly assert that the art which we produce is the real,

true, only art—all of art!

To the remark that if our art is the true art everyone should have the

benefit of it, the usual reply is that if not everybody at present makes

use of existing art, the fault lies, not in the art, but in the false

organisation of society; that one can imagine to oneself, in the future,

a state of things in which physical labour will be partly superseded by

machinery, partly lightened by its just distribution, and that labour

for the production of art will be taken in turns; that there is no need

for some people always to sit below the stage moving the decorations,

winding up the machinery, working at the piano or French horn, and

setting type and printing books, but that the people who do all this

work might be engaged only a few hours per day, and in their leisure

time might enjoy all the blessings of art.

That is what the defenders of our exclusive art say. But I think they do

not themselves believe it. They cannot help knowing that fine art can

arise only on the slavery of the masses of the people, and can continue

only as long as that slavery lasts, and they cannot help knowing that

only under conditions of intense labour for the workers, can

specialists—writers, musicians, dancers, and actors—arrive at that fine

degree of perfection to which they do attain, or produce their refined

works of art; and only under the same conditions can there be a fine

public to esteem such productions. Free the slaves of capital, and it

will be impossible to produce such refined art.

But even were we to admit the inadmissible, and say that means may be

found by which art (that art which among us is considered to be art) may

be accessible to the whole people, another consideration presents itself

showing that fashionable art cannot be the whole of art, viz. the fact

that it is completely unintelligible to the people. Formerly men wrote

poems in Latin, but now their artistic productions are as unintelligible

to the common folk as if they were written in Sanskrit. The usual reply

to this is, that if the people do not now understand this art of ours,

it only proves that they are undeveloped, and that this has been so at

each fresh step forward made by art. First it was not understood, but

afterwards people got accustomed to it.

“It will be the same with our present art; it will be understood when

everybody is as well educated as are we—the people of the upper

classes—who produce this art,” say the defenders of our art. But this

assertion is evidently even more unjust than the former; for we know

that the majority of the productions of the art of the upper classes,

such as various odes, poems, dramas, cantatas, pastorals, pictures,

etc., which delighted the people of the upper classes when they were

produced, never were afterwards either understood or valued by the great

masses of mankind, but have remained, what they were at first, a mere

pastime for rich people of their time, for whom alone they ever were of

any importance. It is also often urged in proof of the assertion that

the people will some day understand our art, that some productions of

so-called “classical” poetry, music, or painting, which formerly did not

please the masses, do—now that they have been offered to them from all

sides—begin to please these same masses; but this only shows that the

crowd, especially the half-spoilt town crowd, can easily (its taste

having been perverted) be accustomed to any sort of art. Moreover, this

art is not produced by these masses, nor even chosen by them, but is

energetically thrust upon them in those public places in which art is

accessible to the people. For the great majority of working people, our

art, besides being inaccessible on account of its costliness, is strange

in its very nature, transmitting as it does the feelings of people far

removed from those conditions of laborious life which are natural to the

great body of humanity. That which is enjoyment to a man of the rich

classes, is incomprehensible, as a pleasure, to a working man, and

evokes in him either no feeling at all, or only a feeling quite contrary

to that which it evokes in an idle and satiated man. Such feelings as

form the chief subjects of present-day art—say, for instance,

honour,[66] patriotism and amorousness, evoke in a working man only

bewilderment and contempt, or indignation. So that even if a possibility

were given to the labouring classes, in their free time, to see, to

read, and to hear all that forms the flower of contemporary art (as is

done to some extent in towns, by means of picture galleries, popular

concerts, and libraries), the working man (to the extent to which he is

a labourer, and has not begun to pass into the ranks of those perverted

by idleness) would be able to make nothing of our fine art, and if he

did understand it, that which he understood would not elevate his soul,

but would certainly, in most cases, pervert it. To thoughtful and

sincere people there can therefore be no doubt that the art of our upper

classes never can be the art of the whole people. But if art is an

important matter, a spiritual blessing, essential for all men (“like

religion,” as the devotees of art are fond of saying), then it should be

accessible to everyone. And if, as in our day, it is not accessible to

all men, then one of two things: either art is not the vital matter it

is represented to be, or that art which we call art is not the real

thing.

The dilemma is inevitable, and therefore clever and immoral people avoid

it by denying one side of it, viz. denying that the common people have a

right to art. These people simply and boldly speak out (what lies at the

heart of the matter), and say that the participators in and utilisers of

what in their esteem is highly beautiful art, _i.e._ art furnishing the

greatest enjoyment, can only be “schöne Geister,” “the elect,” as the

romanticists called them, the “Uebermenschen,” as they are called by the

followers of Nietzsche; the remaining vulgar herd, incapable of

experiencing these pleasures, must serve the exalted pleasures of this

superior breed of people. The people who express these views at least do

not pretend and do not try to combine the incombinable, but frankly

admit, what is the case, that our art is an art of the upper classes

only. So, essentially, art has been, and is, understood by everyone

engaged on it in our society.

Footnote 65:

The contrast made is between the classes and the masses: between those

who do not and those who do earn their bread by productive manual

labour; the middle classes being taken as an offshoot of the upper

classes.—Trans.

Footnote 66:

Duelling is still customary among the higher circles in Russia, as in

other Continental countries.—Trans.

CHAPTER IX

The unbelief of the upper classes of the European world had this effect,

that instead of an artistic activity aiming at transmitting the highest

feelings to which humanity has attained,—those flowing from religious

perception,—we have an activity which aims at affording the greatest

enjoyment to a certain class of society. And of all the immense domain

of art, that part has been fenced off, and is alone called art, which

affords enjoyment to the people of this particular circle.

Apart from the moral effects on European society of such a selection

from the whole sphere of art of what did not deserve such a valuation,

and the acknowledgment of it as important art, this perversion of art

has weakened art itself, and well-nigh destroyed it. The first great

result was that art was deprived of the infinite, varied, and profound

religious subject-matter proper to it. The second result was that having

only a small circle of people in view, it lost its beauty of form and

became affected and obscure; and the third and chief result was that it

ceased to be either natural or even sincere, and became thoroughly

artificial and brain-spun.

The first result—the impoverishment of subject-matter—followed because

only that is a true work of art which transmits fresh feelings not

before experienced by man. As thought-product is only then real

thought-product when it transmits new conceptions and thoughts, and does

not merely repeat what was known before, so also an art-product is only

then a genuine art-product when it brings a new feeling (however

insignificant) into the current of human life. This explains why

children and youths are so strongly impressed by those works of art

which first transmit to them feelings they had not before experienced.

The same powerful impression is made on people by feelings which are

quite new, and have never before been expressed by man. And it is the

source from which such feelings flow of which the art of the upper

classes has deprived itself by estimating feelings, not in conformity

with religious perception, but according to the degree of enjoyment they

afford. There is nothing older and more hackneyed than enjoyment, and

there is nothing fresher than the feelings springing from the religious

consciousness of each age. It could not be otherwise: man’s enjoyment

has limits established by his nature, but the movement forward of

humanity, that which is voiced by religious perception, has no limits.

At every forward step taken by humanity—and such steps are taken in

consequence of the greater and greater elucidation of religious

perception—men experience new and fresh feelings. And therefore only on

the basis of religious perception (which shows the highest level of

life-comprehension reached by the men of a certain period) can fresh

emotion, never before felt by man, arise. From the religious perception

of the ancient Greeks flowed the really new, important, and endlessly

varied feelings expressed by Homer and the tragic writers. It was the

same among the Jews, who attained the religious conception of a single

God,—from that perception flowed all those new and important emotions

expressed by the prophets. It was the same for the poets of the Middle

Ages, who, if they believed in a heavenly hierarchy, believed also in

the Catholic commune; and it is the same for a man of to-day who has

grasped the religious conception of true Christianity—the brotherhood of

man.

The variety of fresh feelings flowing from religious perception is

endless, and they are all new, for religious perception is nothing else

than the first indication of that which is coming into existence, viz.

the new relation of man to the world around him. But the feelings

flowing from the desire for enjoyment are, on the contrary, not only

limited, but were long ago experienced and expressed. And therefore the

lack of belief of the upper classes of Europe has left them with an art

fed on the poorest subject-matter.

The impoverishment of the subject-matter of upper-class art was further

increased by the fact that, ceasing to be religious, it ceased also to

be popular, and this again diminished the range of feelings which it

transmitted. For the range of feelings experienced by the powerful and

the rich, who have no experience of labour for the support of life, is

far poorer, more limited, and more insignificant than the range of

feelings natural to working people.

People of our circle, æstheticians, usually think and say just the

contrary of this. I remember how Gontchareff, the author, a very clever

and educated man but a thorough townsman and an æsthetician, said to me

that after Tourgenieff’s _Memoirs of a Sportsman_ there was nothing left

to write about in peasant life. It was all used up. The life of working

people seemed to him so simple that Tourgenieff’s peasant stories had

used up all there was to describe. The life of our wealthy people, with

their love affairs and dissatisfaction with themselves, seemed to him

full of inexhaustible subject-matter. One hero kissed his lady on her

palm, another on her elbow, and a third somewhere else. One man is

discontented through idleness, and another because people don’t love

him. And Gontchareff thought that in this sphere there is no end of

variety. And this opinion—that the life of working people is poor in

subject-matter, but that our life, the life of the idle, is full of

interest—is shared by very many people in our society. The life of a

labouring man, with its endlessly varied forms of labour, and the

dangers connected with this labour on sea and underground; his

migrations, the intercourse with his employers, overseers, and

companions and with men of other religions and other nationalities; his

struggles with nature and with wild beasts, the associations with

domestic animals, the work in the forest, on the steppe, in the field,

the garden, the orchard; his intercourse with wife and children, not

only as with people near and dear to him, but as with co-workers and

helpers in labour, replacing him in time of need; his concern in all

economic questions, not as matters of display or discussion, but as

problems of life for himself and his family; his pride in

self-suppression and service to others, his pleasures of refreshment;

and with all these interests permeated by a religious attitude towards

these occurrences—all this to us, who have not these interests and

possess no religious perception, seems monotonous in comparison with

those small enjoyments and insignificant cares of our life,—a life, not

of labour nor of production, but of consumption and destruction of that

which others have produced for us. We think the feelings experienced by

people of our day and our class are very important and varied; but in

reality almost all the feelings of people of our class amount to but

three very insignificant and simple feelings—the feeling of pride, the

feeling of sexual desire, and the feeling of weariness of life. These

three feelings, with their outgrowths, form almost the only

subject-matter of the art of the rich classes.

At first, at the very beginning of the separation of the exclusive art

of the upper classes from universal art, its chief subject-matter was

the feeling of pride. It was so at the time of the Renaissance and after

it, when the chief subject of works of art was the laudation of the

strong—popes, kings, and dukes: odes and madrigals were written in their

honour, and they were extolled in cantatas and hymns; their portraits

were painted, and their statues carved, in various adulatory ways. Next,

the element of sexual desire began more and more to enter into art, and

(with very few exceptions, and in novels and dramas almost without

exception) it has now become an essential feature of every art product

of the rich classes.

The third feeling transmitted by the art of the rich—that of discontent

with life—appeared yet later in modern art. This feeling, which, at the

commencement of the present century, was expressed only by exceptional

men; by Byron, by Leopardi, and afterwards by Heine, has latterly become

fashionable and is expressed by most ordinary and empty people. Most

justly does the French critic Doumic characterise the works of the new

writers—“_c’est la lassitude de vivre, le mépris de l’époque présente,

le regret d’un autre temps aperçu à travers l’illusion de l’art, le goût

du paradoxe, le besoin de se singulariser, une aspiration de raffinés

vers la simplicité, l’adoration enfantine du merveilleux, la séduction

maladive de la rêverie, l’ébranlement des nerfs,—surtout l’appel

exaspéré de la sensualité_” (_Les Jeunes_, René Doumic).[67] And, as a

matter of fact, of these three feelings it is sensuality, the lowest

(accessible not only to all men but even to all animals) which forms the

chief subject-matter of works of art of recent times.

From Boccaccio to Marcel Prévost, all the novels, poems, and verses

invariably transmit the feeling of sexual love in its different forms.

Adultery is not only the favourite, but almost the only theme of all the

novels. A performance is not a performance unless, under some pretence,

women appear with naked busts and limbs. Songs and _romances_—all are

expressions of lust, idealised in various degrees.

A majority of the pictures by French artists represent female nakedness

in various forms. In recent French literature there is hardly a page or

a poem in which nakedness is not described, and in which, relevantly or

irrelevantly, their favourite thought and word _nu_ is not repeated a

couple of times. There is a certain writer, René de Gourmond, who gets

printed, and is considered talented. To get an idea of the new writers,

I read his novel, _Les Chevaux de Diomède_. It is a consecutive and

detailed account of the sexual connections some gentleman had with

various women. Every page contains lust-kindling descriptions. It is the

same in Pierre Louÿs’ book, _Aphrodite_, which met with success; it is

the same in a book I lately chanced upon—Huysmans’ _Certains_, and, with

but few exceptions, it is the same in all the French novels. They are

all the productions of people suffering from erotic mania. And these

people are evidently convinced that as their whole life, in consequence

of their diseased condition, is concentrated on amplifying various

sexual abominations, therefore the life of all the world is similarly

concentrated. And these people, suffering from erotic mania, are

imitated throughout the whole artistic world of Europe and America.

Thus in consequence of the lack of belief and the exceptional manner of

life of the wealthy classes, the art of those classes became

impoverished in its subject-matter, and has sunk to the transmission of

the feelings of pride, discontent with life, and, above all, of sexual

desire.

Footnote 67:

It is the weariness of life, contempt for the present epoch, regret

for another age seen through the illusion of art, a taste for paradox,

a desire to be singular, a sentimental aspiration after simplicity, an

infantine adoration of the marvellous, a sickly tendency towards

reverie, a shattered condition of nerves, and, above all, the

exasperated demand of sensuality.

CHAPTER X

In consequence of their unbelief the art of the upper classes became

poor in subject-matter. But besides that, becoming continually more and

more exclusive, it became at the same time continually more and more

involved, affected, and obscure.

When a universal artist (such as were some of the Grecian artists or the

Jewish prophets) composed his work, he naturally strove to say what he

had to say in such a manner that his production should be intelligible

to all men. But when an artist composed for a small circle of people

placed in exceptional conditions, or even for a single individual and

his courtiers,—for popes, cardinals, kings, dukes, queens, or for a

king’s mistress,—he naturally only aimed at influencing these people,

who were well known to him, and lived in exceptional conditions familiar

to him. And this was an easier task, and the artist was involuntarily

drawn to express himself by allusions comprehensible only to the

initiated, and obscure to everyone else. In the first place, more could

be said in this way; and secondly, there is (for the initiated) even a

certain charm in the cloudiness of such a manner of expression. This

method, which showed itself both in euphemism and in mythological and

historical allusions, came more and more into use, until it has,

apparently, at last reached its utmost limits in the so-called art of

the Decadents. It has come, finally, to this: that not only is haziness,

mysteriousness, obscurity, and exclusiveness (shutting out the masses)

elevated to the rank of a merit and a condition of poetic art, but even

incorrectness, indefiniteness, and lack of eloquence are held in esteem.

Théophile Gautier, in his preface to the celebrated _Fleurs du Mal_,

says that Baudelaire, as far as possible, banished from poetry

eloquence, passion, and truth too strictly copied (“_l’éloquence, la

passion, et la vérité calquée trop exactement_”).

And Baudelaire not only expressed this, but maintained his thesis in his

verses, and yet more strikingly in the prose of his _Petits Poèmes en

Prose_, the meanings of which have to be guessed like a rebus, and

remain for the most part undiscovered.

The poet Verlaine (who followed next after Baudelaire, and was also

esteemed great) even wrote an “_Art poétique_,” in which he advises this

style of composition:—

_De la musique avant toute chose,

Et pour cela préfère l’Impair

Plus vague et plus soluble dans l’air,

Sans rien en lui qui pèse ou qui pose._

_Il faut aussi que tu n’ailles point

Choisir tes mots sans quelque méprise:

Rien de plus cher que la chanson grise

Où l’Indécis au Précis se joint._

And again:—

_De la musique encore et toujours!

Que ton vers soit la chose envolée

Qu’on sent qui fuit d’une âme en allée

Vers d’autres cieux à d’autres amours._

_Que ton vers soit la bonne aventure

Éparse au vent crispé du matin,

Qui va fleurant la menthe et le thym ...

Et tout le reste est littérature._[68]

After these two comes Mallarmé, considered the most important of the

young poets, and he plainly says that the charm of poetry lies in our

having to guess its meaning—that in poetry there should always be a

puzzle:—

_Je pense qu’il faut qu’il n’y ait qu’allusion_, says he. _La

contemplation des objets, l’image s’envolant des rêveries suscitées par

eux, sont le chant: les Parnassiens, eux, prennent la chose entièrement

et la montrent; par là ils manquent de mystère; ils retirent aux esprits

cette joie délicieuse de croire qu’ils créent. Nommer un objet, c’est

supprimer les trois quarts de la jouissance du poème, qui est faite du

bonheur de deviner peu à peu: le suggérer, voilà le rêve. C’est le

parfait usage de ce mystère qui constitue le symbole: évoquer petit à

petit un objet pour montrer un état d’âme, ou, inversement, choisir un

objet et en dégager un état d’âme, par une sèrie de déchiffrements._

... _Si un être d’une intelligence moyenne, et d’une préparation

littéraire insuffisante, ouvre par hasard un livre ainsi fait et prétend

en jouir, il y a malentendu, il faut remettre les choses à leur place.

Il doit y avoir toujours énigme en poèsie, et c’est le but de la

littérature, il n’y en a pas d’autre,—d’évoquer les objets._—“_Enquête

sur l’évolution littéraire_,” Jules Huret, pp. 60, 61.[69]

Thus is obscurity elevated into a dogma among the new poets. As the

French critic Doumic (who has not yet accepted the dogma) quite

correctly says:—

“_Il serait temps aussi d’en finir avec cette fameuse ‘théorie de

l’obscurité’ que la nouvelle école a élevée, en effet, à la hauteur d’un

dogme._”—_Les Jeunes_, par René Doumic.[70]

But it is not French writers only who think thus. The poets of all other

countries think and act in the same way: German, and Scandinavian, and

Italian, and Russian, and English. So also do the artists of the new

period in all branches of art: in painting, in sculpture, and in music.

Relying on Nietzsche and Wagner, the artists of the new age conclude

that it is unnecessary for them to be intelligible to the vulgar crowd;

it is enough for them to evoke poetic emotion in “the finest nurtured,”

to borrow a phrase from an English æsthetician.

In order that what I am saying may not seem to be mere assertion, I will

quote at least a few examples from the French poets who have led this

movement. The name of these poets is legion. I have taken French

writers, because they, more decidedly than any others, indicate the new

direction of art, and are imitated by most European writers.

Besides those whose names are already considered famous, such as

Baudelaire and Verlaine, here are the names of a few of them: Jean

Moréas, Charles Morice, Henri de Régnier, Charles Vignier, Adrien

Remacle, René Ghil, Maurice Maeterlinck, G. Albert Aurier, Rémy de

Gourmont, Saint-Pol-Roux-le-Magnifique, Georges Rodenbach, le comte

Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac. These are Symbolists and Decadents. Next

we have the “Magi”: Joséphin Péladan, Paul Adam, Jules Bois, M. Papus,

and others.

Besides these, there are yet one hundred and forty-one others, whom

Doumic mentions in the book referred to above.

Here are some examples from the work of those of them who are considered

to be the best, beginning with that most celebrated man, acknowledged to

be a great artist worthy of a monument—Baudelaire. This is a poem from

his celebrated _Fleurs du Mal_:—

No. XXIV.

_Je t’adore à l’égal de la voûte nocturne,

O vase de tristesse, ô grande taciturne,

Et t’aime d’autant plus, belle, que tu me fuis,

Et que tu me parais, ornement de mes nuits,

Plus ironiquement accumuler les lieues

Qui séparent mes bras des immensités bleues._

_Je m’avance à l’attaque, et je grimpe aux assauts,

Comme après un cadavre un chœur de vermisseaux,

Et je chéris, ô bête implacable et cruelle,

Jusqu’à cette froideur par où tu m’es plus belle!_[71]

And this is another by the same writer:—

No. XXXVI.

_DUELLUM._

_Deux guerriers ont couru l’un sur l’autre; leurs armes

Ont éclaboussé l’air de lueurs et de sang.

Ces jeux, ces cliquetis du fer sont les vacarmes

D’une jeunesse en proie à l’amour vagissant._

_Les glaives sont brisés! comme notre jeunesse,

Ma chère! Mais les dents, les ongles acérés,

Vengent bientôt l’épée et la dague traîtresse.

O fureur des cœurs mûrs par l’amour ulcérés!_

_Dans le ravin hanté des chats-pards et des onces

Nos héros, s’étreignant méchamment, ont roulé,

Et leur peau fleurira l’aridité des ronces._

_Ce gouffre, c’est l’enfer, de nos amis peuplé!

Roulons-y sans remords, amazone inhumaine,

Afin d’éterniser l’ardeur de notre haine!_[72]

To be exact, I should mention that the collection contains verses less

comprehensible than these, but not one poem which is plain and can be

understood without a certain effort—an effort seldom rewarded, for the

feelings which the poet transmits are evil and very low ones. And these

feelings are always, and purposely, expressed by him with eccentricity

and lack of clearness. This premeditated obscurity is especially

noticeable in his prose, where the author could, if he liked, speak

plainly.

Take, for instance, the first piece from his _Petits Poèmes_:—

_L’ÉTRANGER._

_Qui aimes-tu le mieux, homme énigmatique, dis? ton père, ta mère,

ta sœur, ou ton frère?_

_Je n’ai ni père, ni mère, ni sœur, ni frère._

_Tes amis?_

_Vous vous servez là d’une parole dont le sens m’est resté jusqu’ à

ce jour inconnu._

_Ta patrie?_

_J’ignore sous quelle latitude elle est située._

_La beauté?_

_Je l’aimerais volontiers, déesse et immortelle._

_L’or?_

_Je le hais comme vous haïssez Dieu._

_Et qu ’aimes-tu donc, extraordinaire étranger?_

_J’aime les nuages ... les nuages qui passent ... là bas, ... les

merveilleux nuages!_

The piece called _La Soupe et les Nuages_ is probably intended to

express the unintelligibility of the poet even to her whom he loves.

This is the piece in question:—

_Ma petite folle bien-aimée me donnait à dîner, et par la fenêtre

ouverte de la salle à manger je contemplais les mouvantes

architectures que Dieu fait avec les vapeurs, les merveilleuses

constructions de l’impalpable. Et je me disais, à travers ma

contemplation: “Toutes ces fantasmagories sont presque aussi belles

que les yeux de ma belle bien-aimée, la petite folle monstrueuse aux

yeux verts.”_

_Et tout à coup je reçus un violent coup de poing dans le dos, et

j’entendis une voix rauque et charmante, une voix hystérique et

comme enrouée par l’eau-de-vie, la voix de ma chère petite

bien-aimée, qui me disait, “Allez-vous bientôt manger votre soupe, s

... b ... de marchand de nuages?”_[73]

However artificial these two pieces may be, it is still possible, with

some effort, to guess at what the author meant them to express, but some

of the pieces are absolutely incomprehensible—at least to me. _Le Galant

Tireur_ is a piece I was quite unable to understand.

_LE GALANT TIREUR._

_Comme la voiture traversait le bois, il la fit arrêter dans le

voisinage d’un tir, disant qu’il lui serait agréable de tirer

quelques balles pour tuer le Temps. Tuer ce monstre-là, n’est-ce pas

l’occupation la plus ordinaire et la plus légitime de chacun?—Et il

offrit galamment la main à sa chère, délicieuse et exécrable femme,

à cette mystérieuse femme à laquelle il doit tant de plaisirs, tant

de douleurs, et peut-être aussi une grande partie de son génie._

_Plusieurs balles frappèrent loin du but proposé, l’une d’elles

s’enfonça même dans le plafond; et comme la charmante créature riait

follement, se moquant de la maladresse de son époux, celui-ci se

tourna brusquement vers elle, et lui dit: “Observez cette poupée,

là-bas, à droite, qui porte le nez en l’air et qui a la mine si

hautaine. Eh bien! cher ange, je me figure que c’est vous.” Et il

ferma les yeux et il lâcha la détente. La poupée fut nettement

décapitée._

_Alors s’ inclinant vers sa chère, sa délicieuse, son exécrable

femme, son inévitable et impitoyable Muse, et lui baisant

respectueusement la main, il ajouta: “Ah! mon cher ange, combien je

vous remercie de mon adresse!”_[74]

The productions of another celebrity, Verlaine, are not less affected

and unintelligible. This, for instance, is the first poem in the section

called _Ariettes Oubliées_.

“_Le vent dans la plaine

Suspend son haleine_.”—FAVART.

_C’est l’extase langoureuse,

C’est la fatigue amoureuse,

C’est tous les frissons des bois

Parmi l’étreinte des brises,

C’est, vers les ramures grises,

Le chœur des petites voix._

_O le frêle et frais murmure!

Cela gazouille et susurre,

Cela ressemble au cri doux

Que l’herbe agitée expire ...

Tu dirais, sous l’eau qui vire,

Le roulis sourd des cailloux._

_Cette âme qui se lamente

En cette plainte dormante

C’est la nôtre, n’est-ce pas?

La mienne, dis, et la tienne,

Dont s’exhale l’humble antienne

Par ce tiède soir, tout has?_[75]

What “_chœur des petites voix_”? and what “_cri doux que l’herbe agitée

expire_”? and what it all means, remains altogether unintelligible to

me.

And here is another _Ariette_:—

_VIII._

_Dans l’interminable

Ennui de la plaine,

La neige incertaine

Luit comme du sable._

_Le ciel est de cuivre,

Sans lueur aucune.

On croirait voir vivre

Et mourir la lune._

_Comme des nuées

Flottent gris les chênes

Des forêts prochaines

Parmi les buées._

_Le ciel est de cuivre,

Sans lueur aucune.

On croirait voir vivre

Et mourir la lune._

_Corneille poussive

Et vous, les loups maigres,

Par ces bises aigres

Quoi donc vous arrive?_

_Dans l’interminable

Ennui de la plaine,

La neige incertaine

Luit comme du sable._[76]

How does the moon seem to live and die in a copper heaven? And how can

snow shine like sand? The whole thing is not merely unintelligible, but,

under pretence of conveying an impression, it passes off a string of

incorrect comparisons and words.

Besides these artificial and obscure poems, there are others which are

intelligible, but which make up for it by being altogether bad, both in

form and in subject. Such are all the poems under the heading _La

Sagesse_. The chief place in these verses is occupied by a very poor

expression of the most commonplace Roman Catholic and patriotic

sentiments. For instance, one meets with verses such as this:—

_Je ne veux plus penser qu’ à ma mère Marie,

Siège de la sagesse et source de pardons,

Mère de France aussi de qui nous attendons

Inébranlablement l’honneur de la patrie._[77]

Before citing examples from other poets, I must pause to note the

amazing celebrity of these two versifiers, Baudelaire and Verlaine, who

are now accepted as being great poets. How the French, who had Chénier,

Musset, Lamartine, and, above all, Hugo,—and among whom quite recently

flourished the so-called Parnassiens: Leconte de Lisle, Sully-Prudhomme,

etc.,—could attribute such importance to these two versifiers, who were

far from skilful in form and most contemptible and commonplace in

subject-matter, is to me incomprehensible. The conception-of-life of one

of them, Baudelaire, consisted in elevating gross egotism into a theory,

and replacing morality by a cloudy conception of beauty, and especially

artificial beauty. Baudelaire had a preference, which he expressed, for

a woman’s face painted rather than showing its natural colour, and for

metal trees and a theatrical imitation of water rather than real trees

and real water.

The life-conception of the other, Verlaine, consisted in weak

profligacy, confession of his moral impotence, and, as an antidote to

that impotence, in the grossest Roman Catholic idolatry. Both, moreover,

were quite lacking in naïveté, sincerity, and simplicity, and both

overflowed with artificiality, forced originality, and self-assurance.

So that in their least bad productions one sees more of M. Baudelaire or

M. Verlaine than of what they were describing. But these two indifferent

versifiers form a school, and lead hundreds of followers after them.

There is only one explanation of this fact: it is that the art of the

society in which these versifiers lived is not a serious, important

matter of life, but is a mere amusement. And all amusements grow

wearisome by repetition. And, in order to make wearisome amusement again

tolerable, it is necessary to find some means to freshen it up. When, at

cards, ombre grows stale, whist is introduced; when whist grows stale,

écarté is substituted; when écarté grows stale, some other novelty is

invented, and so on. The substance of the matter remains the same, only

its form is changed. And so it is with this kind of art. The

subject-matter of the art of the upper classes growing continually more

and more limited, it has come at last to this, that to the artists of

these exclusive classes it seems as if everything has already been said,

and that to find anything new to say is impossible. And therefore, to

freshen up this art, they look out for fresh forms.

Baudelaire and Verlaine invent such a new form, furbish it up, moreover,

with hitherto unused pornographic details, and—the critics and the

public of the upper classes hail them as great writers.

This is the only explanation of the success, not of Baudelaire and

Verlaine only, but of all the Decadents.

For instance, there are poems by Mallarmé and Maeterlinck which have no

meaning, and yet for all that, or perhaps on that very account, are

printed by tens of thousands, not only in various publications, but even

in collections of the best works of the younger poets.

This, for example, is a sonnet by Mallarmé:—

_A la nue accablante tu

Basse de basalte et de laves

A même les échos esclaves

Par une trompe sans vertu._

_Quel sépulcral naufrage (tu

Le soir, écume, mais y baves)

Suprême une entre les épaves

Abolit le mât dévêtu._

_Ou cela que furibond faute

De quelque perdition haute

Tout l’abîme vain éployé_

_Dans le si blanc cheveu qui traîne

Avarement aura noyé

Le flanc enfant d’une sirène._[78]

(“Pan,” 1895, No. 1.)

This poem is not exceptional in its incomprehensibility. I have read

several poems by Mallarmé, and they also had no meaning whatever. I give

a sample of his prose in Appendix I. There is a whole volume of this

prose, called “_Divagations_.” It is impossible to understand any of it.

And that is evidently what the author intended.

And here is a song by Maeterlinck, another celebrated author of to-day:—

_Quand il est sorti,

(J’entendis la porte)

Quand il est sorti

Elle avait souri ..._

_Mais quand il entra

(J’entendis la lampe)

Mais quand il entra

Une autre était là ..._

_Et j’ai vu la mort,

(J’entendis son âme)

Et j’ai vu la mort

Qui l’attend encore ..._

_On est venu dire,

(Mon enfant j’ai peur)

On est venu dire

Qu’il allait partir ..._

_Ma lampe allumée,

(Mon enfant j’ai peur)

Ma lampe allumée

Me suis approchée ..._

_A la première porte,

(Mon enfant j’ai peur)

A la première porte,

La flamme a tremblé ..._

_A la seconde porte,

(Mon enfant j’ai peur)

A la seconde porte,

La flamme a parlé ..._

_A la troisième porte,

(Mon enfant j’ai peur)

A la troisième porte,

La lumière est morte ..._

_Et s’il revenait un jour

Que faut-il lui dire?

Dites-lui qu’on l’attendit

Jusqu’à s’en mourir ..._

_Et s’il demande où vous êtes

Que faut-il répondre?

Donnez-lui mon anneau d’or

Sans rien lui répondre ..._

_Et s’il m’interroge alors

Sur la dernière heure?

Dites lui que fai souri

De peur qu’il ne pleure ..._

_Et s’il m’interroge encore

Sans me reconnaître?

Parlez-lui comme une sœur,

Il souffre peut-être ..._

_Et s’il veut savoir pourquoi

La salle est déserte?

Montrez lui la lampe éteinte

Et la porte ouverte ..._[79]

(“Pan,” 1895, No. 2.)

Who went out? Who came in? Who is speaking? Who died?

I beg the reader to be at the pains of reading through the samples I

cite in Appendix II. of the celebrated and esteemed young poets—Griffin,

Verhaeren, Moréas, and Montesquiou. It is important to do so in order to

form a clear conception of the present position of art, and not to

suppose, as many do, that Decadentism is an accidental and transitory

phenomenon. To avoid the reproach of having selected the worst verses, I

have copied out of each volume the poem which happened to stand on page

28.

All the other productions of these poets are equally unintelligible, or

can only be understood with great difficulty, and then not fully. All

the productions of those hundreds of poets, of whom I have named a few,

are the same in kind. And among the Germans, Swedes, Norwegians,

Italians, and us Russians, similar verses are printed. And such

productions are printed and made up into book form, if not by the

million, then by the hundred thousand (some of these works sell in tens

of thousands). For type-setting, paging, printing, and binding these

books, millions and millions of working days are spent—not less, I

think, than went to build the great pyramid. And this is not all. The

same is going on in all the other arts: millions and millions of working

days are being spent on the production of equally incomprehensible works

in painting, in music, and in the drama.

Painting not only does not lag behind poetry in this matter, but rather

outstrips it. Here is an extract from the diary of an amateur of art,

written when visiting the Paris exhibitions in 1894:—

“I was to-day at three exhibitions: the Symbolists’, the

Impressionists’, and the Neo-Impressionists’. I looked at the pictures

conscientiously and carefully, but again felt the same stupefaction and

ultimate indignation. The first exhibition, that of Camille Pissarro,

was comparatively the most comprehensible, though the pictures were out

of drawing, had no subject, and the colourings were most improbable. The

drawing was so indefinite that you were sometimes unable to make out

which way an arm or a head was turned. The subject was generally,

‘_effets_’—_Effet de brouillard_, _Effet du soir_, _Soleil couchant_.

There were some pictures with figures, but without subjects.

“In the colouring, bright blue and bright green predominated. And each

picture had its special colour, with which the whole picture was, as it

were, splashed. For instance in ‘A Girl guarding Geese’ the special

colour is _vert de gris_, and dots of it were splashed about everywhere:

on the face, the hair, the hands, and the clothes. In the same

gallery—‘Durand Ruel’—were other pictures, by Puvis de Chavannes, Manet,

Monet, Renoir, Sisley—who are all Impressionists. One of them, whose

name I could not make out,—it was something like Redon,—had painted a

blue face in profile. On the whole face there is only this blue tone,

with white-of-lead. Pissarro has a water-colour all done in dots. In the

foreground is a cow entirely painted with various-coloured dots. The

general colour cannot be distinguished, however much one stands back

from, or draws near to, the picture. From there I went to see the

Symbolists. I looked at them long without asking anyone for an

explanation, trying to guess the meaning; but it is beyond human

comprehension. One of the first things to catch my eye was a wooden

_haut-relief_, wretchedly executed, representing a woman (naked) who

with both hands is squeezing from her two breasts streams of blood. The

blood flows down, becoming lilac in colour. Her hair first descends and

then rises again and turns into trees. The figure is all coloured

yellow, and the hair is brown.

“Next—a picture: a yellow sea, on which swims something which is neither

a ship nor a heart; on the horizon is a profile with a halo and yellow

hair, which changes into a sea, in which it is lost. Some of the

painters lay on their colours so thickly that the effect is something

between painting and sculpture. A third exhibit was even less

comprehensible: a man’s profile; before him a flame and black

stripes—leeches, as I was afterwards told. At last I asked a gentleman

who was there what it meant, and he explained to me that the

_haut-relief_ was a symbol, and that it represented ‘_La Terre_.’ The

heart swimming in a yellow sea was ‘_Illusion perdue_,’ and the

gentleman with the leeches was ‘_Le Mal_.’ There were also some

Impressionist pictures: elementary profiles, holding some sort of

flowers in their hands: in monotone, out of drawing, and either quite

blurred or else marked out with wide black outlines.”

This was in 1894; the same tendency is now even more strongly defined,

and we have Böcklin, Stuck, Klinger, Sasha Schneider, and others.

The same thing is taking place in the drama. The play-writers give us an

architect who, for some reason, has not fulfilled his former high

intentions, and who consequently climbs on to the roof of a house he has

erected and tumbles down head foremost; or an incomprehensible old woman

(who exterminates rats), and who, for an unintelligible reason, takes a

poetic child to the sea and there drowns him; or some blind men, who,

sitting on the seashore, for some reason always repeat one and the same

thing; or a bell of some kind, which flies into a lake and there rings.

And the same is happening in music—in that art which, more than any

other, one would have thought, should be intelligible to everybody.

An acquaintance of yours, a musician of repute, sits down to the piano

and plays you what he says is a new composition of his own, or of one of

the new composers. You hear the strange, loud sounds, and admire the

gymnastic exercises performed by his fingers; and you see that the

performer wishes to impress upon you that the sounds he is producing

express various poetic strivings of the soul. You see his intention, but

no feeling whatever is transmitted to you except weariness. The

execution lasts long, or at least it seems very long to you, because you

do not receive any clear impression, and involuntarily you remember the

words of Alphonse Karr, “_Plus ça va vite, plus ça dure longtemps._”[80]

And it occurs to you that perhaps it is all a mystification; perhaps the

performer is trying you—just throwing his hands and fingers wildly about

the key-board in the hope that you will fall into the trap and praise

him, and then he will laugh and confess that he only wanted to see if he

could hoax you. But when at last the piece does finish, and the

perspiring and agitated musician rises from the piano evidently

anticipating praise, you see that it was all done in earnest.

The same thing takes place at all the concerts with pieces by Liszt,

Wagner, Berlioz, Brahms, and (newest of all) Richard Strauss, and the

numberless other composers of the new school, who unceasingly produce

opera after opera, symphony after symphony, piece after piece.

The same is occurring in a domain in which it seemed hard to be

unintelligible—in the sphere of novels and short stories.

Read _Là-Bas_ by Huysmans, or some of Kipling’s short stories, or

_L’annonciateur_ by Villiers de l’Isle Adam in his _Contes Cruels_,

etc., and you will find them not only “abscons” (to use a word adopted

by the new writers), but absolutely unintelligible both in form and in

substance. Such, again, is the work by E. Morel, _Terre Promise_, now

appearing in the _Revue Blanche_, and such are most of the new novels.

The style is very high-flown, the feelings seem to be most elevated, but

you can’t make out what is happening, to whom it is happening, and where

it is happening. And such is the bulk of the young art of our time.

People who grew up in the first half of this century, admiring Goethe,

Schiller, Musset, Hugo, Dickens, Beethoven, Chopin, Raphael, da Vinci,

Michael Angelo, Delaroche, being unable to make head or tail of this new

art, simply attribute its productions to tasteless insanity and wish to

ignore them. But such an attitude towards this new art is quite

unjustifiable, because, in the first place, that art is spreading more

and more, and has already conquered for itself a firm position in

society, similar to the one occupied by the Romanticists in the third

decade of this century; and secondly and chiefly, because, if it is

permissible to judge in this way of the productions of the latest form

of art, called by us Decadent art, merely because we do not understand

it, then remember, there are an enormous number of people,—all the

labourers and many of the non-labouring folk,—who, in just the same way,

do not comprehend those productions of art which we consider admirable:

the verses of our favourite artists—Goethe, Schiller, and Hugo; the

novels of Dickens, the music of Beethoven and Chopin, the pictures of

Raphael, Michael Angelo, da Vinci, etc.

If I have a right to think that great masses of people do not understand

and do not like what I consider undoubtedly good because they are not

sufficiently developed, then I have no right to deny that perhaps the

reason why I cannot understand and cannot like the new productions of

art, is merely that I am still insufficiently developed to understand

them. If I have a right to say that I, and the majority of people who

are in sympathy, with me, do not understand the productions of the new

art simply because there is nothing in it to understand and because it

is bad art, then, with just the same right, the still larger majority,

the whole labouring mass, who do not understand what I consider

admirable art, can say that what I reckon as good art is bad art, and

there is nothing in it to understand.

I once saw the injustice of such condemnation of the new art with

especial clearness, when, in my presence, a certain poet, who writes

incomprehensible verses, ridiculed incomprehensible music with gay

self-assurance; and, shortly afterwards, a certain musician, who

composes incomprehensible symphonies, laughed at incomprehensible poetry

with equal self-confidence. I have no right, and no authority, to

condemn the new art on the ground that I (a man educated in the first

half of the century) do not understand it; I can only say that it is

incomprehensible to me. The only advantage the art I acknowledge has

over the Decadent art, lies in the fact that the art I recognise is

comprehensible to a somewhat larger number of people than the

present-day art.

The fact that I am accustomed to a certain exclusive art, and can

understand it, but am unable to understand another still more exclusive

art, does not give me a right to conclude that my art is the real true

art, and that the other one, which I do not understand, is an unreal, a

bad art. I can only conclude that art, becoming ever more and more

exclusive, has become more and more incomprehensible to an

ever-increasing number of people, and that, in this its progress towards

greater and greater incomprehensibility (on one level of which I am

standing, with the art familiar to me), it has reached a point where it

is understood by a very small number of the elect, and the number of

these chosen people is ever becoming smaller and smaller.

As soon as ever the art of the upper classes separated itself from

universal art, a conviction arose that art may be art and yet be

incomprehensible to the masses. And as soon as this position was

admitted, it had inevitably to be admitted also that art may be

intelligible only to the very smallest number of the elect, and,

eventually, to two, or to one, of our nearest friends, or to oneself

alone. Which is practically what is being said by modern artists:—“I

create and understand myself, and if anyone does not understand me, so

much the worse for him.”

The assertion that art may be good art, and at the same time

incomprehensible to a great number of people, is extremely unjust, and

its consequences are ruinous to art itself; but at the same time it is

so common and has so eaten into our conceptions, that it is impossible

sufficiently to elucidate all the absurdity of it.

Nothing is more common than to hear it said of reputed works of art,

that they are very good but very difficult to understand. We are quite

used to such assertions, and yet to say that a work of art is good, but

incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some

kind of food that it is very good but that most people can’t eat it. The

majority of men may not like rotten cheese or putrefying grouse—dishes

esteemed by people with perverted tastes; but bread and fruit are only

good when they please the majority of men. And it is the same with art.

Perverted art may not please the majority of men, but good art always

pleases everyone.

It is said that the very best works of art are such that they cannot be

understood by the mass, but are accessible only to the elect who are

prepared to understand these great works. But if the majority of men do

not understand, the knowledge necessary to enable them to understand

should be taught and explained to them. But it turns out that there is

no such knowledge, that the works cannot be explained, and that those

who say the majority do not understand good works of art, still do not

explain those works, but only tell us that, in order to understand them,

one must read, and see, and hear these same works over and over again.

But this is not to explain, it is only to habituate! And people may

habituate themselves to anything, even to the very worst things. As

people may habituate themselves to bad food, to spirits, tobacco, and

opium, just in the same way they may habituate themselves to bad art—and

that is exactly what is being done.

Moreover, it cannot be said that the majority of people lack the taste

to esteem the highest works of art. The majority always have understood,

and still understand, what we also recognise as being the very best art:

the epic of Genesis, the Gospel parables, folk-legends, fairy-tales, and

folk-songs are understood by all. How can it be that the majority has

suddenly lost its capacity to understand what is high in our art?

Of a speech it may be said that it is admirable, but incomprehensible to

those who do not know the language in which it is delivered. A speech

delivered in Chinese may be excellent, and may yet remain

incomprehensible to me if I do not know Chinese; but what distinguishes

a work of art from all other mental activity is just the fact that its

language is understood by all, and that it infects all without

distinction. The tears and laughter of a Chinese infect me just as the

laughter and tears of a Russian; and it is the same with painting and

music and poetry, when it is translated into a language I understand.

The songs of a Kirghiz or of a Japanese touch me, though in a lesser

degree than they touch a Kirghiz or a Japanese. I am also touched by

Japanese painting, Indian architecture, and Arabian stories. If I am but

little touched by a Japanese song and a Chinese novel, it is not that I

do not understand these productions, but that I know and am accustomed

to higher works of art. It is not because their art is above me. Great

works of art are only great because they are accessible and

comprehensible to everyone. The story of Joseph, translated into the

Chinese language, touches a Chinese. The story of Sakya Muni touches us.

And there are, and must be, buildings, pictures, statues, and music of

similar power. So that, if art fails to move men, it cannot be said that

this is due to the spectators’ or hearers’ lack of understanding; but

the conclusion to be drawn may, and should be, that such art is either

bad art, or is not art at all.

Art is differentiated from activity of the understanding, which demands

preparation and a certain sequence of knowledge (so that one cannot

learn trigonometry before knowing geometry), by the fact that it acts on

people independently of their state of development and education, that

the charm of a picture, of sounds, or of forms, infects any man whatever

his plane of development.

The business of art lies just in this—to make that understood and felt

which, in the form of an argument, might be incomprehensible and

inaccessible. Usually it seems to the recipient of a truly artistic

impression that he knew the thing before but had been unable to express

it.

And such has always been the nature of good, supreme art; the _Iliad_,

the _Odyssey_, the stories of Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, the Hebrew

prophets, the psalms, the Gospel parables, the story of Sakya Muni, and

the hymns of the Vedas: all transmit very elevated feelings, and are

nevertheless quite comprehensible now to us, educated or uneducated, as

they were comprehensible to the men of those times, long ago, who were

even less educated than our labourers. People talk about

incomprehensibility; but if art is the transmission of feelings flowing

from man’s religious perception, how can a feeling be incomprehensible

which is founded on religion, _i.e._ on man’s relation to God? Such art

should be, and has actually, always been, comprehensible to everybody,

because every man’s relation to God is one and the same. And therefore

the churches and the images in them were always comprehensible to

everyone. The hindrance to understanding the best and highest feelings

(as is said in the gospel) does not at all lie in deficiency of

development or learning, but, on the contrary, in false development and

false learning. A good and lofty work of art may be incomprehensible,

but not to simple, unperverted peasant labourers (all that is highest is

understood by them)—it may be, and often is, unintelligible to erudite,

perverted people destitute of religion. And this continually occurs in

our society, in which the highest feelings are simply not understood.

For instance, I know people who consider themselves most refined, and

who say that they do not understand the poetry of love to one’s

neighbour, of self-sacrifice, or of chastity.

So that good, great, universal, religious art may be incomprehensible to

a small circle of spoilt people, but certainly not to any large number

of plain men.

Art cannot be incomprehensible to the great masses only because it is

very good,—as artists of our day are fond of telling us. Rather we are

bound to conclude that this art is unintelligible to the great masses

only because it is very bad art, or even is not art at all. So that the

favourite argument (naïvely accepted by the cultured crowd), that in

order to feel art one has first to understand it (which really only

means habituate oneself to it), is the truest indication that what we

are asked to understand by such a method is either very bad, exclusive

art, or is not art at all.

People say that works of art do not please the people because they are

incapable of understanding them. But if the aim of works of art is to

infect people with the emotion the artist has experienced, how can one

talk about not understanding?

A man of the people reads a book, sees a picture, hears a play or a

symphony, and is touched by no feeling. He is told that this is because

he cannot understand. People promise to let a man see a certain show; he

enters and sees nothing. He is told that this is because his sight is

not prepared for this show. But the man well knows that he sees quite

well, and if he does not see what people promised to show him, he only

concludes (as is quite just) that those who undertook to show him the

spectacle have not fulfilled their engagement. And it is perfectly just

for a man who does feel the influence of some works of art to come to

this conclusion concerning artists who do not, by their works, evoke

feeling in him. To say that the reason a man is not touched by my art is

because he is still too stupid, besides being very self-conceited and

also rude, is to reverse the rôles, and for the sick to send the hale to

bed.

Voltaire said that “_Tous les genres sont bons, hors le genre

ennuyeux_”;[81] but with even more right one may say of art that _Tous

les genres sons bons, hors celui qu’on ne comprend pas_, or _qui ne

produit pas son effet_,[82] for of what value is an article which fails

to do that for which it was intended?

Mark this above all: if only it be admitted that art may be art and yet

be unintelligible to anyone of sound mind, there is no reason why any

circle of perverted people should not compose works tickling their own

perverted feelings and comprehensible to no one but themselves, and call

it “art,” as is actually being done by the so-called Decadents.

The direction art has taken may be compared to placing on a large circle

other circles, smaller and smaller, until a cone is formed, the apex of

which is no longer a circle at all. That is what has happened to the art

of our times.

Footnote 68:

Music, music before all things

The eccentric still prefer,

Vague in air, and nothing weighty,

Soluble. Yet do not err,

Choosing words; still do it lightly,

Do it too with some contempt;

Dearest is the song that’s tipsy,

Clearness, dimness not exempt.

Music always, now and ever

Be thy verse the thing that flies

From a soul that’s gone, escaping,

Gone to other loves and skies.

Gone to other loves and regions,

Following fortunes that allure,

Mint and thyme and morning crispness ...

All the rest’s mere literature.

Footnote 69:

I think there should be nothing but allusions. The contemplation of

objects, the flying image of reveries evoked by them, are the song.

The Parnassiens state the thing completely, and show it, and thereby

lack mystery; they deprive the mind of that delicious joy of imagining

that it creates. To _name an object is to take three-quarters from the

enjoyment of the poem, which consists in the happiness of guessing

little by little: to suggest, that is the dream_. It is the perfect

use of this mystery that constitutes the symbol: little by little, to

evoke an object in order to show a state of the soul; or inversely, to

choose an object, and from it to disengage a state of the soul by a

series of decipherings.

... If a being of mediocre intelligence and insufficient literary

preparation chance to open a book made in this way and pretends to

enjoy it, there is a misunderstanding—things must be returned to their

places. _There should always be an enigma in poetry_, and the aim of

literature—it has no other—is to evoke objects.

Footnote 70:

It were time also to have done with this famous “theory of obscurity,”

which the new school have practically raised to the height of a dogma.

Footnote 71:

For translation, see Appendix IV.

Footnote 72:

For translation, see Appendix IV.

Footnote 73:

For translation, see Appendix IV.

Footnote 74:

For translation, see Appendix IV.

Footnote 75:

For translation, see Appendix IV.

Footnote 76:

For translation, see Appendix IV.

Footnote 77:

I do not wish to think any more, except about my mother Mary,

Seat of wisdom and source of pardon,

Also Mother of France, _from whom we

Steadfastly expect the honour of our country_.

Footnote 78:

This sonnet seems too unintelligible for translation.—Trans.

Footnote 79:

For translation, see Appendix IV.

Footnote 80:

The quicker it goes the longer it lasts.

Footnote 81:

All styles are good except the wearisome style.

Footnote 82:

All styles are good except that which is not understood, _or_ which

fails to produce its effect.

CHAPTER XI

Becoming ever poorer and poorer in subject-matter and more and more

unintelligible in form, the art of the upper classes, in its latest

productions, has even lost all the characteristics of art, and has been

replaced by imitations of art. Not only has upper-class art, in

consequence of its separation from universal art, become poor in

subject-matter and bad in form, _i.e._ ever more and more

unintelligible, it has, in course of time, ceased even to be art at all,

and has been replaced by counterfeits.

This has resulted from the following causes. Universal art arises only

when some one of the people, having experienced a strong emotion, feels

the necessity of transmitting it to others. The art of the rich classes,

on the other hand, arises not from the artist’s inner impulse, but

chiefly because people of the upper classes demand amusement and pay

well for it. They demand from art the transmission of feelings that

please them, and this demand artists try to meet. But it is a very

difficult task, for people of the wealthy classes, spending their lives

in idleness and luxury, desire to be continually diverted by art; and

art, even the lowest, cannot be produced at will, but has to generate

spontaneously in the artist’s inner self. And therefore, to satisfy the

demands of people of the upper classes, artists have had to devise

methods of producing imitations of art. And such methods have been

devised.

These methods are those of (1) borrowing, (2) imitating, (3) striking

(effects), and (4) interesting.

The first method consists in borrowing whole subjects, or merely

separate features, from former works recognised by everyone as being

poetical, and in so re-shaping them, with sundry additions, that they

should have an appearance of novelty.

Such works, evoking in people of a certain class memories of artistic

feelings formerly experienced, produce an impression similar to art,

and, provided only that they conform to other needful conditions, they

pass for art among those who seek for pleasure from art. Subjects

borrowed from previous works of art are usually called poetical

subjects. Objects and people thus borrowed are called poetical objects

and people. Thus, in our circle, all sorts of legends, sagas, and

ancient traditions are considered poetical subjects. Among poetical

people and objects we reckon maidens, warriors, shepherds, hermits,

angels, devils of all sorts, moonlight, thunder, mountains, the sea,

precipices, flowers, long hair, lions, lambs, doves, and nightingales.

In general, all those objects are considered poetical which have been

most frequently used by former artists in their productions.

Some forty years ago a stupid but highly cultured—_ayant beaucoup

d’acquis_—lady (since deceased) asked me to listen to a novel written by

herself. It began with a heroine who, in a poetic white dress, and with

poetically flowing hair, was reading poetry near some water in a poetic

wood. The scene was in Russia, but suddenly from behind the bushes the

hero appears, wearing a hat with a feather _à la Guillaume Tell_ (the

book specially mentioned this) and accompanied by two poetical white

dogs. The authoress deemed all this highly poetical, and it might have

passed muster if only it had not been necessary for the hero to speak.

But as soon as the gentleman in the hat _à la Guillaume Tell_ began to

converse with the maiden in the white dress, it became obvious that the

authoress had nothing to say, but had merely been moved by poetic

memories of other works, and imagined that by ringing the changes on

those memories she could produce an artistic impression. But an artistic

impression, _i.e._ infection, is only received when an author has, in

the manner peculiar to himself, experienced the feeling which he

transmits, and not when he passes on another man’s feeling previously

transmitted to him. Such poetry from poetry cannot infect people, it can

only simulate a work of art, and even that only to people of perverted

æsthetic taste. The lady in question being very stupid and devoid of

talent, it was at once apparent how the case stood; but when such

borrowing is resorted to by people who are erudite and talented and have

cultivated the technique of their art, we get those borrowings from the

Greek, the antique, the Christian or mythological world which have

become so numerous, and which, particularly in our day, continue to

increase and multiply, and are accepted by the public as works of art,

if only the borrowings are well mounted by means of the technique of the

particular art to which they belong.

As a characteristic example of such counterfeits of art in the realm of

poetry, take Rostand’s _Princesse Lointaine_, in which there is not a

spark of art, but which seems very poetical to many people, and probably

also to its author.

The second method of imparting a semblance of art is that which I have

called imitating. The essence of this method consists in supplying

details accompanying the thing described or depicted. In literary art

this method consists in describing, in the minutest details, the

external appearance, the faces, the clothes, the gestures, the tones,

and the habitations of the characters represented, with all the

occurrences met with in life. For instance, in novels and stories, when

one of the characters speaks we are told in what voice he spoke, and

what he was doing at the time. And the things said are not given so that

they should have as much sense as possible, but, as they are in life,

disconnectedly, and with interruptions and omissions. In dramatic art,

besides such imitation of real speech, this method consists in having

all the accessories and all the people just like those in real life. In

painting this method assimilates painting to photography and destroys

the difference between them. And, strange to say, this method is used

also in music: music tries to imitate not only by its rhythm but also by

its very sounds, the sounds which in real life accompany the thing it

wishes to represent.

The third method is by action, often purely physical, on the outer

senses. Work of this kind is said to be “striking,” “effectful.” In all

arts these effects consist chiefly in contrasts; in bringing together

the terrible and the tender, the beautiful and the hideous, the loud and

the soft, darkness and light, the most ordinary and the most

extraordinary. In verbal art, besides effects of contrast, there are

also effects consisting in the description of things that have never

before been described. These are usually pornographic details evoking

sexual desire, or details of suffering and death evoking feelings of

horror, as, for instance, when describing a murder, to give a detailed

medical account of the lacerated tissues, of the swellings, of the

smell, quantity and appearance of the blood. It is the same in painting:

besides all kinds of other contrasts, one is coming into vogue which

consists in giving careful finish to one object and being careless about

all the rest. The chief and usual effects in painting are effects of

light and the depiction of the horrible. In the drama, the most common

effects, besides contrasts, are tempests, thunder, moonlight, scenes at

sea or by the sea-shore, changes of costume, exposure of the female

body, madness, murders, and death generally: the dying person exhibiting

in detail all the phases of agony. In music the most usual effects are a

_crescendo_, passing from the softest and simplest sounds to the loudest

and most complex crash of the full orchestra; a repetition of the same

sounds _arpeggio_ in all the octaves and on various instruments; or that

the harmony, tone, and rhythm be not at all those naturally flowing from

the course of the musical thought, but such as strike one by their

unexpectedness. Besides these, the commonest effects in music are

produced in a purely physical manner by strength of sound, especially in

an orchestra.

Such are some of the most usual effects in the various arts, but there

yet remains one common to them all, namely, to convey by means of one

art what it would be natural to convey by another: for instance, to make

music describe (as is done by the programme music of Wagner and his

followers), or to make painting, the drama, or poetry, induce a frame of

mind (as is aimed at by all the Decadent art).

The fourth method is that of interesting (that is, absorbing the mind)

in connection with works of art. The interest may lie in an intricate

plot—a method till quite recently much employed in English novels and

French plays, but now going out of fashion and being replaced by

authenticity, _i.e._ by detailed description of some historical period

or some branch of contemporary life. For example, in a novel,

interestingness may consist in a description of Egyptian or Roman life,

the life of miners, or that of the clerks in a large shop. The reader

becomes interested and mistakes this interest for an artistic

impression. The interest may also depend on the very method of

expression; a kind of interest that has now come much into use. Both

verse and prose, as well as pictures, plays, and music, are constructed

so that they must be guessed like riddles, and this process of guessing

again affords pleasure and gives a semblance of the feeling received

from art.

It is very often said that a work of art is very good because it is

poetic, or realistic, or striking, or interesting; whereas not only can

neither the first, nor the second, nor the third, nor the fourth of

these attributes supply a standard of excellence in art, but they have

not even anything in common with art.

Poetic—means borrowed. All borrowing merely recalls to the reader,

spectator, or listener some dim recollection of artistic impressions

they have received from previous works of art, and does not infect them

with feeling which the artist has himself experienced. A work founded on

something borrowed, like Goethe’s _Faust_ for instance, may be very well

executed and be full of mind and every beauty, but because it lacks the

chief characteristic of a work of art—completeness, oneness, the

inseparable unity of form and contents expressing the feeling the artist

has experienced—it cannot produce a really artistic impression. In

availing himself of this method, the artist only transmits the feeling

received by him from a previous work of art; therefore every borrowing,

whether it be of whole subjects, or of various scenes, situations, or

descriptions, is but a reflection of art, a simulation of it, but not

art itself. And therefore, to say that a certain production is good

because it is poetic,—_i.e._ resembles a work of art,—is like saying of

a coin that it is good because it resembles real money.

Equally little can imitation, realism, serve, as many people think, as a

measure of the quality of art. Imitation cannot be such a measure, for

the chief characteristic of art is the infection of others with the

feelings the artist has experienced, and infection with a feeling is not

only not identical with description of the accessories of what is

transmitted, but is usually hindered by superfluous details. The

attention of the receiver of the artistic impression is diverted by all

these well-observed details, and they hinder the transmission of feeling

even when it exists.

To value a work of art by the degree of its realism, by the accuracy of

the details reproduced, is as strange as to judge of the nutritive

quality of food by its external appearance. When we appraise a work

according to its realism, we only show that we are talking, not of a

work of art, but of its counterfeit.

Neither does the third method of imitating art—by the use of what is

striking or effectful—coincide with real art any better than the two

former methods, for in effectfulness—the effects of novelty, of the

unexpected, of contrasts, of the horrible—there is no transmission of

feeling, but only an action on the nerves. If an artist were to paint a

bloody wound admirably, the sight of the wound would strike me, but it

would not be art. One prolonged note on a powerful organ will produce a

striking impression, will often even cause tears, but there is no music

in it, because no feeling is transmitted. Yet such physiological effects

are constantly mistaken for art by people of our circle, and this not

only in music, but also in poetry, painting, and the drama. It is said

that art has become refined. On the contrary, thanks to the pursuit of

effectfulness, it has become very coarse. A new piece is brought out and

accepted all over Europe, such, for instance, as _Hannele_, in which

play the author wishes to transmit to the spectators pity for a

persecuted girl. To evoke this feeling in the audience by means of art,

the author should either make one of the characters express this pity in

such a way as to infect everyone, or he should describe the girl’s

feelings correctly. But he cannot, or will not, do this, and chooses

another way, more complicated in stage management but easier for the

author. He makes the girl die on the stage; and, still further to

increase the physiological effect on the spectators, he extinguishes the

lights in the theatre, leaving the audience in the dark, and to the

sound of dismal music he shows how the girl is pursued and beaten by her

drunken father. The girl shrinks—screams—groans—and falls. Angels appear

and carry her away. And the audience, experiencing some excitement while

this is going on, are fully convinced that this is true æsthetic

feeling. But there is nothing æsthetic in such excitement, for there is

no infecting of man by man, but only a mingled feeling of pity for

another, and of self-congratulation that it is not I who am suffering:

it is like what we feel at the sight of an execution, or what the Romans

felt in their circuses.

The substitution of effectfulness for æsthetic feeling is particularly

noticeable in musical art—that art which by its nature has an immediate

physiological action on the nerves. Instead of transmitting by means of

a melody the feelings he has experienced, a composer of the new school

accumulates and complicates sounds, and by now strengthening, now

weakening them, he produces on the audience a physiological effect of a

kind that can be measured by an apparatus invented for the purpose.[83]

And the public mistake this physiological effect for the effect of art.

As to the fourth method—that of interesting—it also is frequently

confounded with art. One often hears it said, not only of a poem, a

novel, or a picture, but even of a musical work, that it is interesting.

What does this mean? To speak of an interesting work of art means either

that we receive from a work of art information new to us, or that the

work is not fully intelligible, and that little by little, and with

effort, we arrive at its meaning, and experience a certain pleasure in

this process of guessing it. In neither case has the interest anything

in common with artistic impression. Art aims at infecting people with

feeling experienced by the artist. But the mental effort necessary to

enable the spectator, listener, or reader to assimilate the new

information contained in the work, or to guess the puzzles propounded,

by distracting him, hinders the infection. And therefore the

interestingness of a work not only has nothing to do with its excellence

as a work of art, but rather hinders than assists artistic impression.

We may, in a work of art, meet with what is poetic, and realistic, and

striking, and interesting, but these things cannot replace the essential

of art—feeling experienced by the artist. Latterly, in upper-class art,

most of the objects given out as being works of art are of the kind

which only resemble art, and are devoid of its essential quality—feeling

experienced by the artist. And, for the diversion of the rich, such

objects are continually being produced in enormous quantities by the

artisans of art.

Many conditions must be fulfilled to enable a man to produce a real work

of art. It is necessary that he should stand on the level of the highest

life-conception of his time, that he should experience feeling and have

the desire and capacity to transmit it, and that he should, moreover,

have a talent for some one of the forms of art. It is very seldom that

all these conditions necessary to the production of true art are

combined. But in order—aided by the customary methods of borrowing,

imitating, introducing effects, and interesting—unceasingly to produce

counterfeits of art which pass for art in our society and are well paid

for, it is only necessary to have a talent for some branch of art; and

this is very often to be met with. By talent I mean ability: in literary

art, the ability to express one’s thoughts and impressions easily and to

notice and remember characteristic details; in the depictive arts, to

distinguish and remember lines, forms, and colours; in music, to

distinguish the intervals, and to remember and transmit the sequence of

sounds. And a man, in our times, if only he possesses such a talent and

selects some specialty, may, after learning the methods of

counterfeiting used in his branch of art,—if he has patience and if his

æsthetic feeling (which would render such productions revolting to him)

be atrophied,—unceasingly, till the end of his life, turn out works

which will pass for art in our society.

To produce such counterfeits, definite rules or recipes exist in each

branch of art. So that the talented man, having assimilated them, may

produce such works _à froid_, cold drawn, without any feeling.