In order to write poems a man of literary talent needs only these

qualifications: to acquire the knack, conformably with the requirements

of rhyme and rhythm, of using, instead of the one really suitable word,

ten others meaning approximately the same; to learn how to take any

phrase which, to be clear, has but one natural order of words, and

despite all possible dislocations still to retain some sense in it; and

lastly, to be able, guided by the words required for the rhymes, to

devise some semblance of thoughts, feelings, or descriptions to suit

these words. Having acquired these qualifications, he may unceasingly

produce poems—short or long, religious, amatory or patriotic, according

to the demand.

If a man of literary talent wishes to write a story or novel, he need

only form his style—_i.e._ learn how to describe all that he sees—and

accustom himself to remember or note down details. When he has

accustomed himself to this, he can, according to his inclination or the

demand, unceasingly produce novels or stories—historical, naturalistic,

social, erotic, psychological, or even religious, for which latter kind

a demand and fashion begins to show itself. He can take subjects from

books or from the events of life, and can copy the characters of the

people in his book from his acquaintances.

And such novels and stories, if only they are decked out with well

observed and carefully noted details, preferably erotic ones, will be

considered works of art, even though they may not contain a spark of

feeling experienced.

To produce art in dramatic form, a talented man, in addition to all that

is required for novels and stories, must also learn to furnish his

characters with as many smart and witty sentences as possible, must know

how to utilise theatrical effects, and how to entwine the action of his

characters so that there should not be any long conversations, but as

much bustle and movement on the stage as possible. If the writer is able

to do this, he may produce dramatic works one after another without

stopping, selecting his subjects from the reports of the law courts, or

from the latest society topic, such as hypnotism, heredity, etc., or

from deep antiquity, or even from the realms of fancy.

In the sphere of painting and sculpture it is still easier for the

talented man to produce imitations of art. He need only learn to draw,

paint, and model—especially naked bodies. Thus equipped he can continue

to paint pictures, or model statues, one after another, choosing

subjects according to his bent—mythological, or religious, or fantastic,

or symbolical; or he may depict what is written about in the papers—a

coronation, a strike, the Turko-Grecian war, famine scenes; or,

commonest of all, he may just copy anything he thinks beautiful—from

naked women to copper basins.

For the production of musical art the talented man needs still less of

what constitutes the essence of art, _i.e._ feeling wherewith to infect

others; but, on the other hand, he requires more physical, gymnastic

labour than for any other art, unless it be dancing. To produce works of

musical art, he must first learn to move his fingers on some instrument

as rapidly as those who have reached the highest perfection; next he

must know how in former times polyphonic music was written, must study

what are called counterpoint and fugue; and furthermore, he must learn

orchestration, _i.e._ how to utilise the effects of the instruments. But

once he has learned all this, the composer may unceasingly produce one

work after another; whether programme-music, opera, or song (devising

sounds more or less corresponding to the words), or chamber music,

_i.e._ he may take another man’s themes and work them up into definite

forms by means of counterpoint and fugue; or, what is commonest of all,

he may compose fantastic music, _i.e._ he may take a conjunction of

sounds which happens to come to hand, and pile every sort of

complication and ornamentation on to this chance combination.

Thus, in all realms of art, counterfeits of art are manufactured to a

ready-made, prearranged recipe, and these counterfeits the public of our

upper classes accept for real art.

And this substitution of counterfeits for real works of art was the

third and most important consequence of the separation of the art of the

upper classes from universal art.

Footnote 83:

An apparatus exists by means of which a very sensitive arrow, in

dependence on the tension of a muscle of the arm, will indicate the

physiological action of music on the nerves and muscles.

CHAPTER XII

In our society three conditions co-operate to cause the production of

objects of counterfeit art. They are—(1) the considerable remuneration

of artists for their productions and the professionalisation of artists

which this has produced, (2) art criticism, and (3) schools of art.

While art was as yet undivided, and only religious art was valued and

rewarded while indiscriminate art was left unrewarded, there were no

counterfeits of art, or, if any existed, being exposed to the criticism

of the whole people, they quickly disappeared. But as soon as that

division occurred, and the upper classes acclaimed every kind of art as

good if only it afforded them pleasure, and began to reward such art

more highly than any other social activity, immediately a large number

of people devoted themselves to this activity, and art assumed quite a

different character and became a profession.

And as soon as this occurred, the chief and most precious quality of

art—its sincerity—was at once greatly weakened and eventually quite

destroyed.

The professional artist lives by his art, and has continually to invent

subjects for his works, and does invent them. And it is obvious how

great a difference must exist between works of art produced on the one

hand by men such as the Jewish prophets, the authors of the Psalms,

Francis of Assisi, the authors of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, of

folk-stories, legends, and folk-songs, many of whom not only received no

remuneration for their work, but did not even attach their names to it;

and, on the other hand, works produced by court poets, dramatists and

musicians receiving honours and remuneration; and later on by

professional artists, who lived by the trade, receiving remuneration

from newspaper editors, publishers, impresarios, and in general from

those agents who come between the artists and the town public—the

consumers of art.

Professionalism is the first condition of the diffusion of false,

counterfeit art.

The second condition is the growth, in recent times, of artistic

criticism, _i.e._ the valuation of art not by everybody, and, above all,

not by plain men, but by erudite, that is, by perverted and at the same

time self-confident individuals.

A friend of mine, speaking of the relation of critics to artists,

half-jokingly defined it thus: “Critics are the stupid who discuss the

wise.” However partial, inexact, and rude this definition may be, it is

yet partly true, and is incomparably juster than the definition which

considers critics to be men who can explain works of art.

“Critics explain!” What do they explain?

The artist, if a real artist, has by his work transmitted to others the

feeling he experienced. What is there, then, to explain?

If a work be good as art, then the feeling expressed by the artist—be it

moral or immoral—transmits itself to other people. If transmitted to

others, then they feel it, and all interpretations are superfluous. If

the work does not infect people, no explanation can make it contagious.

An artist’s work cannot be interpreted. Had it been possible to explain

in words what he wished to convey, the artist would have expressed

himself in words. He expressed it by his art, only because the feeling

he experienced could not be otherwise transmitted. The interpretation of

works of art by words only indicates that the interpreter is himself

incapable of feeling the infection of art. And this is actually the

case, for, however strange it may seem to say so, critics have always

been people less susceptible than other men to the contagion of art. For

the most part they are able writers, educated and clever, but with their

capacity of being infected by art quite perverted or atrophied. And

therefore their writings have always largely contributed, and still

contribute, to the perversion of the taste of that public which reads

them and trusts them.

Artistic criticism did not exist—could not and cannot exist—in societies

where art is undivided, and where, consequently, it is appraised by the

religious understanding-of-life common to the whole people. Art

criticism grew, and could grow, only on the art of the upper classes,

who did not acknowledge the religious perception of their time.

Universal art has a definite and indubitable internal

criterion—religious perception; upper-class art lacks this, and

therefore the appreciators of that art are obliged to cling to some

external criterion. And they find it in “the judgments of the

finest-nurtured,” as an English æsthetician has phrased it, that is, in

the authority of the people who are considered educated, nor in this

alone, but also in a tradition of such authorities. This tradition is

extremely misleading, both because the opinions of “the finest-nurtured”

are often mistaken, and also because judgments which were valid once

cease to be so with the lapse of time. But the critics, having no basis

for their judgments, never cease to repeat their traditions. The

classical tragedians were once considered good, and therefore criticism

considers them to be so still. Dante was esteemed a great poet, Raphael

a great painter, Bach a great musician—and the critics, lacking a

standard by which to separate good art from bad, not only consider these

artists great, but regard all their productions as admirable and worthy

of imitation. Nothing has contributed, and still contributes, so much to

the perversion of art as these authorities set up by criticism. A man

produces a work of art, like every true artist expressing in his own

peculiar manner a feeling he has experienced. Most people are infected

by the artist’s feeling; and his work becomes known. Then criticism,

discussing the artist, says that the work is not bad, but all the same

the artist is not a Dante, nor a Shakespear, nor a Goethe, nor a

Raphael, nor what Beethoven was in his last period. And the young artist

sets to work to copy those who are held up for his imitation, and he

produces not only feeble works, but false works, counterfeits of art.

Thus, for instance, our Pushkin writes his short poems, _Evgeniy

Onegin_, _The Gipsies_, and his stories—works all varying in quality,

but all true art. But then, under the influence of false criticism

extolling Shakespear, he writes _Boris Godunoff_, a cold, brain-spun

work, and this production is lauded by the critics, set up as a model,

and imitations of it appear: _Minin_ by Ostrovsky, and _Tsar Boris_ by

Alexée Tolstoy, and such imitations of imitations as crowd all

literatures with insignificant productions. The chief harm done by the

critics is this, that themselves lacking the capacity to be infected by

art (and that is the characteristic of all critics; for did they not

lack this they could not attempt the impossible—the interpretation of

works of art), they pay most attention to, and eulogise, brain-spun,

invented works, and set these up as models worthy of imitation. That is

the reason they so confidently extol, in literature, the Greek

tragedians, Dante, Tasso, Milton, Shakespear, Goethe (almost all he

wrote), and, among recent writers, Zola and Ibsen; in music, Beethoven’s

last period, and Wagner. To justify their praise of these brain-spun,

invented works, they devise entire theories (of which the famous theory

of beauty is one); and not only dull but also talented people compose

works in strict deference to these theories; and often even real

artists, doing violence to their genius, submit to them.

Every false work extolled by the critics serves as a door through which

the hypocrites of art at once crowd in.

It is solely due to the critics, who in our times still praise rude,

savage, and, for us, often meaningless works of the ancient Greeks:

Sophocles, Euripides, Æschylus, and especially Aristophanes; or, of

modern writers, Dante, Tasso, Milton, Shakespear; in painting, all of

Raphael, all of Michael Angelo, including his absurd “Last Judgment”; in

music, the whole of Bach, and the whole of Beethoven, including his last

period,—thanks only to them, have the Ibsens, Maeterlincks, Verlaines,

Mallarmés, Puvis de Chavannes, Klingers, Böcklins, Stucks, Schneiders;

in music, the Wagners, Liszts, Berliozes, Brahmses, and Richard

Strausses, etc., and all that immense mass of good-for-nothing imitators

of these imitators, become possible in our day.

As a good illustration of the harmful influence of criticism, take its

relation to Beethoven. Among his innumerable hasty productions written

to order, there are, notwithstanding their artificiality of form, works

of true art. But he grows deaf, cannot hear, and begins to write

invented, unfinished works, which are consequently often meaningless and

musically unintelligible. I know that musicians can imagine sounds

vividly enough, and can almost hear what they read, but imaginary sounds

can never replace real ones, and every composer must hear his production

in order to perfect it. Beethoven, however, could not hear, could not

perfect his work, and consequently published productions which are

artistic ravings. But criticism, having once acknowledged him to be a

great composer, seizes on just these abnormal works with special gusto,

and searches for extraordinary beauties in them. And, to justify its

laudations (perverting the very meaning of musical art), it attributed

to music the property of describing what it cannot describe. And

imitators appear—an innumerable host of imitators of these abnormal

attempts at artistic productions which Beethoven wrote when he was deaf.

Then Wagner appears, who at first in critical articles praises just

Beethoven’s last period, and connects this music with Schopenhauer’s

mystical theory that music is the expression of Will—not of separate

manifestations of will objectivised on various planes, but of its very

essence—which is in itself as absurd as this music of Beethoven. And

afterwards he composes music of his own on this theory, in conjunction

with another still more erroneous system of the union of all the arts.

After Wagner yet new imitators appear, diverging yet further from art:

Brahms, Richard Strauss, and others.

Such are the results of criticism. But the third condition of the

perversion of art, namely, art schools, is almost more harmful still.

As soon as art became, not art for the whole people but for a rich

class, it became a profession; as soon as it became a profession,

methods were devised to teach it; people who chose this profession of

art began to learn these methods, and thus professional schools sprang

up: classes of rhetoric or literature in the public schools, academies

for painting, conservatoires for music, schools for dramatic art.

In these schools art is taught! But art is the transmission to others of

a special feeling experienced by the artist. How can this be taught in

schools?

No school can evoke feeling in a man, and still less can it teach him

how to manifest it in the one particular manner natural to him alone.

But the essence of art lies in these things.

The one thing these schools can teach is how to transmit feelings

experienced by other artists in the way those other artists transmitted

them. And this is just what the professional schools do teach; and such

instruction not only does not assist the spread of true art, but, on the

contrary, by diffusing counterfeits of art, does more than anything else

to deprive people of the capacity to understand true art.

In literary art people are taught how, without having anything they wish

to say, to write a many-paged composition on a theme about which they

have never thought, and, moreover, to write it so that it should

resemble the work of an author admitted to be celebrated. This is taught

in schools.

In painting the chief training consists in learning to draw and paint

from copies and models, the naked body chiefly (the very thing that is

never seen, and which a man occupied with real art hardly ever has to

depict), and to draw and paint as former masters drew and painted. The

composition of pictures is taught by giving out themes similar to those

which have been treated by former acknowledged celebrities.

So also in dramatic schools, the pupils are taught to recite monologues

just as tragedians, considered celebrated, declaimed them.

It is the same in music. The whole theory of music is nothing but a

disconnected repetition of those methods which the acknowledged? masters

of composition made use of.

I have elsewhere quoted the profound remark of the Russian artist

Bruloff on art, but I cannot here refrain from repeating it, because

nothing better illustrates what can and what can not be taught in the

schools. Once when correcting a pupil’s study, Bruloff just touched it

in a few places, and the poor dead study immediately became animated.

“Why, you only touched it a _wee bit_, and it is quite another thing!”

said one of the pupils. “Art begins where the _wee bit_ begins,” replied

Bruloff, indicating by these words just what is most characteristic of

art. The remark is true of all the arts, but its justice is particularly

noticeable in the performance of music. That musical execution should be

artistic, should be art, _i.e._ should infect, three chief conditions

must be observed,—there are many others needed for musical perfection;

the transition from one sound to another must be interrupted or

continuous; the sound must increase or diminish steadily; it must be

blended with one and not with another sound; the sound must have this or

that timbre, and much besides,—but take the three chief conditions: the

pitch, the time, and the strength of the sound. Musical execution is

only then art, only then infects, when the sound is neither higher nor

lower than it should be, that is, when exactly the infinitely small

centre of the required note is taken; when that note is continued

exactly as long as is needed; and when the strength of the sound is

neither more nor less than is required. The slightest deviation of pitch

in either direction, the slightest increase or decrease in time, or the

slightest strengthening or weakening of the sound beyond what is needed,

destroys the perfection and, consequently, the infectiousness of the

work. So that the feeling of infection by the art of music, which seems

so simple and so easily obtained, is a thing we receive only when the

performer finds those infinitely minute degrees which are necessary to

perfection in music. It is the same in all arts: a wee bit lighter, a

wee bit darker, a wee bit higher, lower, to the right or the left—in

painting; a wee bit weaker or stronger in intonation, or a wee bit

sooner or later—in dramatic art; a wee bit omitted, over-emphasised, or

exaggerated—in poetry, and there is no contagion. Infection is only

obtained when an artist finds those infinitely minute degrees of which a

work of art consists, and only to the extent to which he finds them. And

it is quite impossible to teach people by external means to find these

minute degrees: they can only be found when a man yields to his feeling.

No instruction can make a dancer catch just the tact of the music, or a

singer or a fiddler take exactly the infinitely minute centre of his

note, or a sketcher draw of all possible lines the only right one, or a

poet find the only meet arrangement of the only suitable words. All this

is found only by feeling. And therefore schools may teach what is

necessary in order to produce something resembling art, but not art

itself.

The teaching of the schools stops there where the _wee bit_

begins—consequently where art begins.

Accustoming people to something resembling art, disaccustoms them to the

comprehension of real art. And that is how it comes about that none are

more dull to art than those who have passed through the professional

schools and been most successful in them. Professional schools produce

an hypocrisy of art precisely akin to that hypocrisy of religion which

is produced by theological colleges for training priests, pastors, and

religious teachers generally. As it is impossible in a school to train a

man so as to make a religious teacher of him, so it is impossible to

teach a man how to become an artist.

Art schools are thus doubly destructive of art: first, in that they

destroy the capacity to produce real art in those who have the

misfortune to enter them and go through a 7 or 8 years’ course;

secondly, in that they generate enormous quantities of that counterfeit

art which perverts the taste of the masses and overflows our world. In

order that born artists may know the methods of the various arts

elaborated by former artists, there should exist in all elementary

schools such classes for drawing and music (singing) that, after passing

through them, every talented scholar may, by using existing models

accessible to all, be able to perfect himself in his art independently.

These three conditions—the professionalisation of artists, art

criticism, and art schools—have had this effect that most people in our

times are quite unable even to understand what art is, and accept as art

the grossest counterfeits of it.

CHAPTER XIII

To what an extent people of our circle and time have lost the capacity

to receive real art, and have become accustomed to accept as art things

that have nothing in common with it, is best seen from the works of

Richard Wagner, which have latterly come to be more and more esteemed,

not only by the Germans but also by the French and the English, as the

very highest art, revealing new horizons to us.

The peculiarity of Wagner’s music, as is known, consists in this, that

he considered that music should serve poetry, expressing all the shades

of a poetical work.

The union of the drama with music, devised in the fifteenth century in

Italy for the revival of what they imagined to have been the ancient

Greek drama with music, is an artificial form which had, and has,

success only among the upper classes, and that only when gifted

composers, such as Mozart, Weber, Rossini, and others, drawing

inspiration from a dramatic subject, yielded freely to the inspiration

and subordinated the text to the music, so that in their operas the

important thing to the audience was merely the music on a certain text,

and not the text at all, which latter, even when it was utterly absurd,

as, for instance, in the _Magic Flute_, still did not prevent the music

from producing an artistic impression.

Wagner wishes to correct the opera by letting music submit to the

demands of poetry and unite with it. But each art has its own definite

realm, which is not identical with the realm of other arts, but merely

comes in contact with them; and therefore, if the manifestation of, I

will not say several, but even of two arts—the dramatic and the

musical—be united in one complete production, then the demands of the

one art will make it impossible to fulfil the demands of the other, as

has always occurred in the ordinary operas, where the dramatic art has

submitted to, or rather yielded place to, the musical. Wagner wishes

that musical art should submit to dramatic art, and that both should

appear in full strength. But this is impossible, for every work of art,

if it be a true one, is an expression of intimate feelings of the

artist, which are quite exceptional, and not like anything else. Such is

a musical production, and such is a dramatic work, if they be true art.

And therefore, in order that a production in the one branch of art

should coincide with a production in the other branch, it is necessary

that the impossible should happen: that two works from different realms

of art should be absolutely exceptional, unlike anything that existed

before, and yet should coincide, and be exactly alike.

And this cannot be, just as there cannot be two men, or even two leaves

on a tree, exactly alike. Still less can two works from different realms

of art, the musical and the literary, be absolutely alike. If they

coincide, then either one is a work of art and the other a counterfeit,

or both are counterfeits. Two live leaves cannot be exactly alike, but

two artificial leaves may be. And so it is with works of art. They can

only coincide completely when neither the one nor the other is art, but

only cunningly devised semblances of it.

If poetry and music may be joined, as occurs in hymns, songs, and

_romances_—(though even in these the music does not follow the changes

of each verse of the text, as Wagner wants to, but the song and the

music merely produce a coincident effect on the mind)—this occurs only

because lyrical poetry and music have, to some extent, one and the same

aim: to produce a mental condition, and the conditions produced by

lyrical poetry and by music can, more or less, coincide. But even in

these conjunctions the centre of gravity always lies in one of the two

productions, so that it is one of them that produces the artistic

impression while the other remains unregarded. And still less is it

possible for such union to exist between epic or dramatic poetry and

music.

Moreover, one of the chief conditions of artistic creation is the

complete freedom of the artist from every kind of preconceived demand.

And the necessity of adjusting his musical work to a work from another

realm of art is a preconceived demand of such a kind as to destroy all

possibility of creative power; and therefore works of this kind,

adjusted to one another, are, and must be, as has always happened, not

works of art but only imitations of art, like the music of a melodrama,

signatures to pictures, illustrations, and librettos to operas.

And such are Wagner’s productions. And a confirmation of this is to be

seen in the fact that Wagner’s new music lacks the chief characteristic

of every true work of art, namely, such entirety and completeness that

the smallest alteration in its form would disturb the meaning of the

whole work. In a true work of art—poem, drama, picture, song, or

symphony—it is impossible to extract one line, one scene, one figure, or

one bar from its place and put it in another, without infringing the

significance of the whole work; just as it is impossible, without

infringing the life of an organic being, to extract an organ from one

place and insert it in another. But in the music of Wagner’s last

period, with the exception of certain parts of little importance which

have an independent musical meaning, it is possible to make all kinds of

transpositions, putting what was in front behind, and _vice, versâ_,

without altering the musical sense. And the reason why these

transpositions do not alter the sense of Wagner’s music is because the

sense lies in the words and not in the music.

The musical score of Wagner’s later operas is like what the result would

be should one of those versifiers—of whom there are now many, with

tongues so broken that they can write verses on any theme to any rhymes

in any rhythm, which sound as if they had a meaning—conceive the idea of

illustrating by his verses some symphony or sonata of Beethoven, or some

ballade of Chopin, in the following manner. To the first bars, of one

character, he writes verses corresponding in his opinion to those first

bars. Next come some bars of a different character, and he also writes

verses corresponding in his opinion to them, but with no internal

connection with the first verses, and, moreover, without rhymes and

without rhythm. Such a production, without the music, would be exactly

parallel in poetry to what Wagner’s operas are in music, if heard

without the words.

But Wagner is not only a musician, he is also a poet, or both together;

and therefore, to judge of Wagner, one must know his poetry also—that

same poetry which the music has to subserve. The chief poetical

production of Wagner is _The Nibelung’s Ring_. This work has attained

such enormous importance in our time, and has such influence on all that

now professes to be art, that it is necessary for everyone to-day to

have some idea of it. I have carefully read through the four booklets

which contain this work, and have drawn up a brief summary of it, which

I give in Appendix III. I would strongly advise the reader (if he has

not perused the poem itself, which would be the best thing to do) at

least to read my account of it, so as to have an idea of this

extraordinary work. It is a model work of counterfeit art, so gross as

to be even ridiculous.

But we are told that it is impossible to judge of Wagner’s works without

seeing them on the stage. The Second Day of this drama, which, as I was

told, is the best part of the whole work, was given in Moscow last

winter, and I went to see the performance.

When I arrived the enormous theatre was already filled from top to

bottom. There were Grand-Dukes, and the flower of the aristocracy, of

the merchant class, of the learned, and of the middle-class official

public. Most of them held the libretto, fathoming its meaning.

Musicians—some of them elderly, grey-haired men—followed the music,

score in hand. Evidently the performance of this work was an event of

importance.

I was rather late, but I was told that the short prelude, with which the

act begins, was of little importance, and that it did not matter having

missed it. When I arrived, an actor sat on the stage amid decorations

intended to represent a cave, and before something which was meant to

represent a smith’s forge. He was dressed in trico-tights, with a cloak

of skins, wore a wig and an artificial beard, and with white, weak,

genteel hands (his easy movements, and especially the shape of his

stomach and his lack of muscle revealed the actor) beat an impossible

sword with an unnatural hammer in a way in which no one ever uses a

hammer; and at the same time, opening his mouth in a strange way, he

sang something incomprehensible. The music of various instruments

accompanied the strange sounds which he emitted. From the libretto one

was able to gather that the actor had to represent a powerful gnome, who

lived in the cave, and who was forging a sword for Siegfried, whom he

had reared. One could tell he was a gnome by the fact that the actor

walked all the time bending the knees of his trico-covered legs. This

gnome, still opening his mouth in the same strange way, long continued

to sing or shout. The music meanwhile runs over something strange, like

beginnings which are not continued and do not get finished. From the

libretto one could learn that the gnome is telling himself about a ring

which a giant had obtained, and which the gnome wishes to procure

through Siegfried’s aid, while Siegfried wants a good sword, on the

forging of which the gnome is occupied. After this conversation or

singing to himself has gone on rather a long time, other sounds are

heard in the orchestra, also like something beginning and not finishing,

and another actor appears, with a horn slung over his shoulder, and

accompanied by a man running on all fours dressed up as a bear, whom he

sets at the smith-gnome. The latter runs away without unbending the

knees of his trico-covered legs. This actor with the horn represented

the hero, Siegfried. The sounds which were emitted in the orchestra on

the entrance of this actor were intended to represent Siegfried’s

character and are called Siegfried’s _leit-motiv_. And these sounds are

repeated each time Siegfried appears. There is one fixed combination of

sounds, or _leit-motiv_, for each character, and this _leit-motiv_ is

repeated every time the person whom it represents appears; and when

anyone is mentioned the _motiv_ is heard which relates to that person.

Moreover, each article also has its own _leit-motiv_ or chord. There is

a _motiv_ of the ring, a _motiv_ of the helmet, a _motiv_ of the apple,

a _motiv_ of fire, spear, sword, water, etc.; and as soon as the ring,

helmet, or apple is mentioned, the _motiv_ or chord of the ring, helmet,

or apple is heard. The actor with the horn opens his mouth as

unnaturally as the gnome, and long continues in a chanting voice to

shout some words, and in a similar chant Mime (that is the gnome’s name)

answers something or other to him. The meaning of this conversation can

only be discovered from the libretto; and it is that Siegfried was

brought up by the gnome, and therefore, for some reason, hates him and

always wishes to kill him. The gnome has forged a sword for Siegfried,

but Siegfried is dissatisfied with it. From a ten-page conversation (by

the libretto), lasting half an hour and conducted with the same strange

openings of the mouth and chantings, it appears that Siegfried’s mother

gave birth to him in the wood, and that concerning his father all that

is known is that he had a sword which was broken, the pieces of which

are in Mime’s possession, and that Siegfried does not know fear and

wishes to go out of the wood. Mime, however, does not want to let him

go. During the conversation the music never omits, at the mention of

father, sword, etc., to sound the _motive_ of these people and things.

After these conversations fresh sounds are heard—those of the god

Wotan—and a wanderer appears. This wanderer is the god Wotan. Also

dressed up in a wig, and also in tights, this god Wotan, standing in a

stupid pose with a spear, thinks proper to recount what Mime must have

known before, but what it is necessary to tell the audience. He does not

tell it simply, but in the form of riddles which he orders himself to

guess, staking his head (one does not know why) that he will guess

right. Moreover, whenever the wanderer strikes his spear on the ground,

fire comes out of the ground, and in the orchestra the sounds of spear

and of fire are heard. The orchestra accompanies the conversation, and

the _motive_ of the people and things spoken of are always artfully

intermingled. Besides this the music expresses feelings in the most

naïve manner: the terrible by sounds in the bass, the frivolous by rapid

touches in the treble, etc.

The riddles have no meaning except to tell the audience what the

_nibelungs_ are, what the giants are, what the gods are, and what has

happened before. This conversation also is chanted with strangely opened

mouths and continues for eight libretto pages, and correspondingly long

on the stage. After this the wanderer departs, and Siegfried returns and

talks with Mime for thirteen pages more. There is not a single melody

the whole of this time, but merely intertwinings of the _leit-motive_ of

the people and things mentioned. The conversation tells that Mime wishes

to teach Siegfried fear, and that Siegfried does not know what fear is.

Having finished this conversation, Siegfried seizes one of the pieces of

what is meant to represent the broken sword, saws it up, puts it on what

is meant to represent the forge, melts it, and then forges it and sings:

Heiho! heiho! heiho! Ho! ho! Aha! oho! aha! Heiaho! heiaho! heiaho! Ho!

ho! Hahei! hoho! hahei! and Act I. finishes.

As far as the question I had come to the theatre to decide was

concerned, my mind was fully made up, as surely as on the question of

the merits of my lady acquaintance’s novel when she read me the scene

between the loose-haired maiden in the white dress and the hero with two

white dogs and a hat with a feather _à la Guillaume Tell_.

From an author who could compose such spurious scenes, outraging all

æsthetic feeling, as those which I had witnessed, there was nothing to

be hoped; it may safely be decided that all that such an author can

write will be bad, because he evidently does not know what a true work

of art is. I wished to leave, but the friends I was with asked me to

remain, declaring that one could not form an opinion by that one act,

and that the second would be better. So I stopped for the second act.

Act II., night. Afterwards dawn. In general the whole piece is crammed

with lights, clouds, moonlight, darkness, magic fires, thunder, etc.

The scene represents a wood, and in the wood there is a cave. At the

entrance of the cave sits a third actor in tights, representing another

gnome. It dawns. Enter the god Wotan, again with a spear, and again in

the guise of a wanderer. Again his sounds, together with fresh sounds of

the deepest bass that can be produced. These latter indicate that the

dragon is speaking. Wotan awakens the dragon. The same bass sounds are

repeated, growing yet deeper and deeper. First the dragon says, “I want

to sleep,” but afterwards he crawls out of the cave. The dragon is

represented by two men; it is dressed in a green, scaly skin, waves a

tail at one end, while at the other it opens a kind of crocodile’s jaw

that is fastened on, and from which flames appear. The dragon (who is

meant to be dreadful, and may appear so to five-year-old children)

speaks some words in a terribly bass voice. This is all so stupid, so

like what is done in a booth at a fair, that it is surprising that

people over seven years of age can witness it seriously; yet thousands

of quasi-cultured people sit and attentively hear and see it, and are

delighted.

Siegfried, with his horn, reappears, as does Mime also. In the orchestra

the sounds denoting them are emitted, and they talk about whether

Siegfried does or does not know what fear is. Mime goes away, and a

scene commences which is intended to be most poetical. Siegfried, in his

tights, lies down in a would-be beautiful pose, and alternately keeps

silent and talks to himself. He ponders, listens to the song of birds,

and wishes to imitate them. For this purpose he cuts a reed with his

sword and makes a pipe. The dawn grows brighter and brighter; the birds

sing. Siegfried tries to imitate the birds. In the orchestra is heard

the imitation of birds, alternating with sounds corresponding to the

words he speaks. But Siegfried does not succeed with his pipe-playing,

so he plays on his horn instead. This scene is unendurable. Of music,

_i.e._ of art serving as a means to transmit a state of mind experienced

by the author, there is not even a suggestion. There is something that

is absolutely unintelligible musically. In a musical sense a hope is

continually experienced, followed by disappointment, as if a musical

thought were commenced only to be broken off. If there are something

like musical commencements, these commencements are so short, so

encumbered with complications of harmony and orchestration and with

effects of contrast, are so obscure and unfinished, and what is

happening on the stage meanwhile is so abominably false, that it is

difficult even to perceive these musical snatches, let alone to be

infected by them. Above all, from the very beginning to the very end,

and in each note, the author’s purpose is so audible and visible, that

one sees and hears neither Siegfried nor the birds, but only a limited,

self-opinionated German of bad taste and bad style, who has a most false

conception of poetry, and who, in the rudest and most primitive manner,

wishes to transmit to me these false and mistaken conceptions of his.

Everyone knows the feeling of distrust and resistance which is always

evoked by an author’s evident predetermination. A narrator need only say

in advance, Prepare to cry or to laugh, and you are sure neither to cry

nor to laugh. But when you see that an author prescribes emotion at what

is not touching but only laughable or disgusting, and when you see,

moreover, that the author is fully assured that he has captivated you, a

painfully tormenting feeling results, similar to what one would feel if

an old, deformed woman put on a ball-dress and smilingly coquetted

before you, confident of your approbation. This impression was

strengthened by the fact that around me I saw a crowd of three thousand

people, who not only patiently witnessed all this absurd nonsense, but

even considered it their duty to be delighted with it.

I somehow managed to sit out the next scene also, in which the monster

appears, to the accompaniment of his bass notes intermingled with the

_motiv_ of Siegfried; but after the fight with the monster, and all the

roars, fires, and sword-wavings, I could stand no more of it, and

escaped from the theatre with a feeling of repulsion which, even now, I

cannot forget.

Listening to this opera, I involuntarily thought of a respected, wise,

educated country labourer,—one, for instance, of those wise and truly

religious men whom I know among the peasants,—and I pictured to myself

the terrible perplexity such a man would be in were he to witness what I

was seeing that evening.

What would he think if he knew of all the labour spent on such a

performance, and saw that audience, those great ones of the earth,—old,

bald-headed, grey-bearded men, whom he had been accustomed to

respect,—sit silent and attentive, listening to and looking at all these

stupidities for five hours on end? Not to speak of an adult labourer,

one can hardly imagine even a child of over seven occupying himself with

such a stupid, incoherent fairy tale.

And yet an enormous audience, the cream of the cultured upper classes,

sits out five hours of this insane performance, and goes away imagining

that by paying tribute to this nonsense it has acquired a fresh right to

esteem itself advanced and enlightened.

I speak of the Moscow public. But what is the Moscow public? It is but a

hundredth part of that public which, while considering itself most

highly enlightened, esteems it a merit to have so lost the capacity of

being infected by art, that not only can it witness this stupid sham

without being revolted, but can even take delight in it.

In Bayreuth, where these performances were first given, people who

consider themselves finely cultured assembled from the ends of the

earth, spent, say £100 each, to see this performance, and for four days

running they went to see and hear this nonsensical rubbish, sitting it

out for six hours each day.

But why did people go, and why do they still go to these performances,

and why do they admire them? The question naturally presents itself: How

is the success of Wagner’s works to be explained?

That success I explain to myself in this way: thanks to his exceptional

position in having at his disposal the resources of a king, Wagner was

able to command all the methods for counterfeiting art which have been

developed by long usage, and, employing these methods with great

ability, he produced a model work of counterfeit art. The reason why I

have selected his work for my illustration is, that in no other

counterfeit of art known to me are all the methods by which art is

counterfeited—namely, borrowings, imitation, effects, and

interestingness—so ably and powerfully united.

From the subject, borrowed from antiquity, to the clouds and the risings

of the sun and moon, Wagner, in this work, has made use of all that is

considered poetical. We have here the sleeping beauty, and nymphs, and

subterranean fires, and gnomes, and battles, and swords, and love, and

incest, and a monster, and singing-birds: the whole arsenal of the

poetical is brought into action.

Moreover, everything is imitative: the decorations are imitated and the

costumes are imitated. All is just as, according to the data supplied by

archæology, they would have been in antiquity. The very sounds are

imitative, for Wagner, who was not destitute of musical talent, invented

just such sounds as imitate the strokes of a hammer, the hissing of

molten iron, the singing of birds, etc.

Furthermore, in this work everything is in the highest degree striking

in its effects and in its peculiarities: its monsters, its magic fires,

and its scenes under water; the darkness in which the audience sit, the

invisibility of the orchestra, and the hitherto unemployed combinations

of harmony.

And besides, it is all interesting. The interest lies not only in the

question who will kill whom, and who will marry whom, and who is whose

son, and what will happen next?—the interest lies also in the relation

of the music to the text. The rolling waves of the Rhine—now how is that

to be expressed in music? An evil gnome appears—how is the music to

express an evil gnome?—and how is it to express the sensuality of this

gnome? How will bravery, fire, or apples be expressed in music? How are

the _leit-motive_ of the people speaking to be interwoven with the

_leit-motive_ of the people and objects about whom they speak? Besides,

the music has a further interest. It diverges from all formerly accepted

laws, and most unexpected and totally new modulations crop up (as is not

only possible but even easy in music having no inner law of its being);

the dissonances are new, and are allowed in a new way—and this, too, is

interesting.

And it is this poeticality, imitativeness, effectfulness, and

interestingness which, thanks to the peculiarities of Wagner’s talent

and to the advantageous position in which he was placed, are in these

productions carried to the highest pitch of perfection, that so act on

the spectator, hypnotising him as one would be hypnotised who should

listen for several consecutive hours to the ravings of a maniac

pronounced with great oratorical power.

People say, “You cannot judge without having seen Wagner performed at

Bayreuth: in the dark, where the orchestra is out of sight concealed

under the stage, and where the performance is brought to the highest

perfection.” And this just proves that we have here no question of art,

but one of hypnotism. It is just what the spiritualists say. To convince

you of the reality of their apparitions, they usually say, “You cannot

judge; you must try it, be present at several séances,” _i.e._ come and

sit silent in the dark for hours together in the same room with

semi-sane people, and repeat this some ten times over, and you shall see

all that we see.

Yes, naturally! Only place yourself in such conditions, and you may see

what you will. But this can be still more quickly attained by getting

drunk or smoking opium. It is the same when listening to an opera of

Wagner’s. Sit in the dark for four days in company with people who are

not quite normal, and, through the auditory nerves, subject your brain

to the strongest action of the sounds best adapted to excite it, and you

will no doubt be reduced to an abnormal condition and be enchanted by

absurdities. But to attain this end you do not even need four days; the

five hours during which one “day” is enacted, as in Moscow, are quite

enough. Nor are five hours needed; even one hour is enough for people

who have no clear conception of what art should be, and who have come to

the conclusion in advance that what they are going to see is excellent,

and that indifference or dissatisfaction with this work will serve as a

proof of their inferiority and lack of culture.

I observed the audience present at this representation. The people who

led the whole audience and gave the tone to it were those who had

previously been hypnotised, and who again succumbed to the hypnotic

influence to which they were accustomed. These hypnotised people, being

in an abnormal condition, were perfectly enraptured. Moreover, all the

art critics, who lack the capacity to be infected by art and therefore

always especially prize works like Wagner’s opera where it is all an

affair of the intellect, also, with much profundity, expressed their

approval of a work affording such ample material for ratiocination. And

following these two groups went that large city crowd (indifferent to

art, with their capacity to be infected by it perverted and partly

atrophied), headed by the princes, millionaires, and art patrons, who,

like sorry harriers, keep close to those who most loudly and decidedly

express their opinion.

“Oh yes, certainly! What poetry! Marvellous! Especially the birds!”

“Yes, yes! I am quite vanquished!” exclaim these people, repeating in

various tones what they have just heard from men whose opinion appears

to them authoritative.

If some people do feel insulted by the absurdity and spuriousness of the

whole thing, they are timidly silent, as sober men are timid and silent

when surrounded by tipsy ones.

And thus, thanks to the masterly skill with which it counterfeits art

while having nothing in common with it, a meaningless, coarse, spurious

production finds acceptance all over the world, costs millions of

roubles to produce, and assists more and more to pervert the taste of

people of the upper classes and their conception of what is art.

CHAPTER XIV

I know that most men—not only those considered clever, but even those

who are very clever and capable of understanding most difficult

scientific, mathematical or philosophic problems—can very seldom discern

even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as to oblige them

to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much

difficulty—conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught

to others, and on which they have built their lives. And therefore I

have little hope that what I adduce as to the perversion of art and

taste in our society will be accepted or even seriously considered.

Nevertheless, I must state fully the inevitable conclusion to which my

investigation into the question of art has brought me. This

investigation has brought me to the conviction that almost all that our

society considers to be art, good art, and the whole of art, far from

being real and good art, and the whole of art, is not even art at all,

but only a counterfeit of it. This position, I know, will seem very

strange and paradoxical; but if we once acknowledge art to be a human

activity by means of which some people transmit their feelings to others

(and not a service of Beauty, nor a manifestation of the Idea, and so

forth), we shall inevitably have to admit this further conclusion also.

If it is true that art is an activity by means of which one man having

experienced a feeling intentionally transmits it to others, then we have

inevitably to admit further, that of all that among us is termed the art

of the upper classes—of all those novels, stories, dramas, comedies,

pictures, sculptures, symphonies, operas, operettas, ballets, etc.,

which profess to be works of art—scarcely one in a hundred thousand

proceeds from an emotion felt by its author, all the rest being but

manufactured counterfeits of art in which borrowing, imitating, effects,

and interestingness replace the contagion of feeling. That the

proportion of real productions of art is to the counterfeits as one to

some hundreds of thousands or even more, may be seen by the following

calculation. I have read somewhere that the artist painters in Paris

alone number 30,000; there will probably be as many in England, as many

in Germany, and as many in Russia, Italy, and the smaller states

combined. So that in all there will be in Europe, say, 120,000 painters;

and there are probably as many musicians and as many literary artists.

If these 360,000 individuals produce three works a year each (and many

of them produce ten or more), then each year yields over a million

so-called works of art. How many, then, must have been produced in the

last ten years, and how many in the whole time since upper-class art

broke off from the art of the whole people? Evidently millions. Yet who

of all the connoisseurs of art has received impressions from all these

pseudo works of art? Not to mention all the labouring classes who have

no conception of these productions, even people of the upper classes

cannot know one in a thousand of them all, and cannot remember those

they have known. These works all appear under the guise of art, produce

no impression on anyone (except when they serve as pastimes for the idle

crowd of rich people), and vanish utterly.

In reply to this it is usually said that without this enormous number of

unsuccessful attempts we should not have the real works of art. But such

reasoning is as though a baker, in reply to a reproach that his bread

was bad, were to say that if it were not for the hundreds of spoiled

loaves there would not be any well-baked ones. It is true that where

there is gold there is also much sand; but that can not serve as a

reason for talking a lot of nonsense in order to say something wise.

We are surrounded by productions considered artistic. Thousands of

verses, thousands of poems, thousands of novels, thousands of dramas,

thousands of pictures, thousands of musical pieces, follow one after

another. All the verses describe love, or nature, or the author’s state

of mind, and in all of them rhyme and rhythm are observed. All the

dramas and comedies are splendidly mounted and are performed by

admirably trained actors. All the novels are divided into chapters; all

of them describe love, contain effective situations, and correctly

describe the details of life. All the symphonies contain _allegro_,

_andante_, _scherzo_, and _finale_; all consist of modulations and

chords, and are played by highly-trained musicians. All the pictures, in

gold frames, saliently depict faces and sundry accessories. But among

these productions in the various branches of art there is in each branch

one among hundreds of thousands, not only somewhat better than the rest,

but differing from them as a diamond differs from paste. The one is

priceless, the others not only have no value but are worse than

valueless, for they deceive and pervert taste. And yet, externally, they

are, to a man of perverted or atrophied artistic perception, precisely

alike.

In our society the difficulty of recognising real works of art is

further increased by the fact that the external quality of the work in

false productions is not only no worse, but often better, than in real

ones; the counterfeit is often more effective than the real, and its

subject more interesting. How is one to discriminate? How is one to find

a production in no way distinguished in externals from hundreds of

thousands of others intentionally made to imitate it precisely?

For a country peasant of unperverted taste this is as easy as it is for

an animal of unspoilt scent to follow the trace he needs among a

thousand others in wood or forest. The animal unerringly finds what he

needs. So also the man, if only his natural qualities have not been

perverted, will, without fail, select from among thousands of objects

the real work of art he requires—that infecting him with the feeling

experienced by the artist. But it is not so with those whose taste has

been perverted by their education and life. The receptive feeling for

art of these people is atrophied, and in valuing artistic productions

they must be guided by discussion and study, which discussion and study

completely confuse them. So that most people in our society are quite

unable to distinguish a work of art from the grossest counterfeit.

People sit for whole hours in concert-rooms and theatres listening to

the new composers, consider it a duty to read the novels of the famous

modern novelists and to look at pictures representing either something

incomprehensible or just the very things they see much better in real

life; and, above all, they consider it incumbent on them to be

enraptured by all this, imagining it all to be art, while at the same

time they will pass real works of art by, not only without attention,

but even with contempt, merely because, in their circle, these works are

not included in the list of works of art.

A few days ago I was returning home from a walk feeling depressed, as

occurs sometimes. On nearing the house I heard the loud singing of a

large choir of peasant women. They were welcoming my daughter,

celebrating her return home after her marriage. In this singing, with

its cries and clanging of scythes, such a definite feeling of joy,

cheerfulness, and energy was expressed, that, without noticing how it

infected me, I continued my way towards the house in a better mood, and

reached home smiling and quite in good spirits. That same evening, a

visitor, an admirable musician, famed for his execution of classical

music, and particularly of Beethoven, played us Beethoven’s sonata, Opus

101. For the benefit of those who might otherwise attribute my judgment

of that sonata of Beethoven to non-comprehension of it, I should mention

that whatever other people understand of that sonata and of other

productions of Beethoven’s later period, I, being very susceptible to

music, equally understood. For a long time I used to atune myself so as

to delight in those shapeless improvisations which form the

subject-matter of the works of Beethoven’s later period, but I had only

to consider the question of art seriously, and to compare the impression

I received from Beethoven’s later works with those pleasant, clear, and

strong musical impressions which are transmitted, for instance, by the

melodies of Bach (his arias), Haydn, Mozart, Chopin (when his melodies

are not overloaded with complications and ornamention), and of Beethoven

himself in his earlier period, and above all, with the impressions

produced by folk-songs,—Italian, Norwegian, or Russian,—by the Hungarian

_tzardas_, and other such simple, clear, and powerful music, and the

obscure, almost unhealthy excitement from Beethoven’s later pieces that

I had artificially evoked in myself was immediately destroyed.

On the completion of the performance (though it was noticeable that

everyone had become dull) those present, in the accepted manner, warmly

praised Beethoven’s profound production, and did not forget to add that

formerly they had not been able to understand that last period of his,

but that they now saw that he was really then at his very best. And when

I ventured to compare the impression made on me by the singing of the

peasant women—an impression which had been shared by all who heard

it—with the effect of this sonata, the admirers of Beethoven only smiled

contemptuously, not considering it necessary to reply to such strange

remarks.

But, for all that, the song of the peasant women was real art,

transmitting a definite and strong feeling; while the 101st sonata of

Beethoven was only an unsuccessful attempt at art, containing no

definite feeling and therefore not infectious.

For my work on art I have this winter read diligently, though with great

effort, the celebrated novels and stories, praised by all Europe,

written by Zola, Bourget, Huysmans, and Kipling. At the same time I

chanced on a story in a child’s magazine, and by a quite unknown writer,

which told of the Easter preparations in a poor widow’s family. The

story tells how the mother managed with difficulty to obtain some

wheat-flour, which she poured on the table ready to knead. She then went

out to procure some yeast, telling the children not to leave the hut,

and to take care of the flour. When the mother had gone, some other

children ran shouting near the window, calling those in the hut to come

to play. The children forgot their mother’s warning, ran into the

street, and were soon engrossed in the game. The mother, on her return

with the yeast, finds a hen on the table throwing the last of the flour

to her chickens, who were busily picking it out of the dust of the

earthen floor. The mother, in despair, scolds the children, who cry

bitterly. And the mother begins to feel pity for them—but the white

flour has all gone. So to mend matters she decides to make the Easter

cake with sifted rye-flour, brushing it over with white of egg and

surrounding it with eggs. “Rye-bread which we bake is akin to any cake,”

says the mother, using a rhyming proverb to console the children for not

having an Easter cake made with white flour. And the children, quickly

passing from despair to rapture, repeat the proverb and await the Easter

cake more merrily even than before.

Well! the reading of the novels and stories by Zola, Bourget, Huysmans,

Kipling, and others, handling the most harrowing subjects, did not touch

me for one moment, and I was provoked with the authors all the while, as

one is provoked with a man who considers you so naïve that he does not

even conceal the trick by which he intends to take you in. From the

first lines you see the intention with which the book is written, and

the details all become superfluous, and one feels dull. Above all, one

knows that the author had no other feeling all the time than a desire to

write a story or a novel, and so one receives no artistic impression. On

the other hand, I could not tear myself away from the unknown author’s

tale of the children and the chickens, because I was at once infected by

the feeling which the author had evidently experienced, re-evoked in

himself, and transmitted.

Vasnetsoff is one of our Russian painters. He has painted ecclesiastical

pictures in Kieff Cathedral, and everyone praises him as the founder of

some new, elevated kind of Christian art. He worked at those pictures

for ten years, was paid tens of thousands of roubles for them, and they

are all simply bad imitations of imitations of imitations, destitute of

any spark of feeling. And this same Vasnetsoff drew a picture for

Tourgenieff’s story “The Quail” (in which it is told how, in his son’s

presence, a father killed a quail and felt pity for it), showing the boy

asleep with pouting upper lip, and above him, as a dream, the quail. And

this picture is a true work of art.

In the English Academy of 1897 two pictures were exhibited together; one

of which, by J. C. Dolman, was the temptation of St. Anthony. The Saint

is on his knees praying. Behind him stands a naked woman and animals of

some kind. It is apparent that the naked woman pleased the artist very

much, but that Anthony did not concern him at all; and that, so far from

the temptation being terrible to him (the artist) it is highly

agreeable. And therefore if there be any art in this picture, it is very

nasty and false. Next in the same book of academy pictures comes a

picture by Langley, showing a stray beggar boy, who has evidently been

called in by a woman who has taken pity on him. The boy, pitifully

drawing his bare feet under the bench, is eating; the woman is looking

on, probably considering whether he will not want some more; and a girl

of about seven, leaning on her arm, is carefully and seriously looking

on, not taking her eyes from the hungry boy, and evidently understanding

for the first time what poverty is, and what inequality among people is,

and asking herself why she has everything provided for her while this

boy goes bare-foot and hungry? She feels sorry and yet pleased. And she

loves both the boy and goodness.... And one feels that the artist loved

this girl, and that she too loves. And this picture, by an artist who, I

think, is not very widely known, is an admirable and true work of art.

I remember seeing a performance of _Hamlet_ by Rossi. Both the tragedy

itself and the performer who took the chief part are considered by our

critics to represent the climax of supreme dramatic art. And yet, both

from the subject-matter of the drama and from the performance, I

experienced all the time that peculiar suffering which is caused by

false imitations of works of art. And I lately read of a theatrical

performance among the savage tribe the Voguls. A spectator describes the

play. A big Vogul and a little one, both dressed in reindeer skins,

represent a reindeer-doe and its young. A third Vogul, with a bow,

represents a huntsman on snow-shoes, and a fourth imitates with his

voice a bird that warns the reindeer of their danger. The play is that

the huntsman follows the track that the doe with its young one has

travelled. The deer run off the scene and again reappear. (Such

performances take place in a small tent-house.) The huntsman gains more

and more on the pursued. The little deer is tired, and presses against

its mother. The doe stops to draw breath. The hunter comes up with them

and draws his bow. But just then the bird sounds its note, warning the

deer of their danger. They escape. Again there is a chase, and again the

hunter gains on them, catches them and lets fly his arrow. The arrow

strikes the young deer. Unable to run, the little one presses against

its mother. The mother licks its wound. The hunter draws another arrow.

The audience, as the eye-witness describes them, are paralysed with

suspense; deep groans and even weeping is heard among them. And, from

the mere description, I felt that this was a true work of art.

What I am saying will be considered irrational paradox, at which one can

only be amazed; but for all that I must say what I think, namely, that

people of our circle, of whom some compose verses, stories, novels,

operas, symphonies, and sonatas, paint all kinds of pictures and make

statues, while others hear and look at these things, and again others

appraise and criticise it all, discuss, condemn, triumph, and raise

monuments to one another generation after generation,—that all these

people, with very few exceptions, artists, and public, and critics, have

never (except in childhood and earliest youth, before hearing any

discussions on art), experienced that simple feeling familiar to the

plainest man and even to a child, that sense of infection with another’s

feeling,—compelling us to joy in another’s gladness, to sorrow at

another’s grief, and to mingle souls with another,—which is the very

essence of art. And therefore these people not only cannot distinguish

true works of art from counterfeits, but continually mistake for real

art the worst and most artificial, while they do not even perceive works

of real art, because the counterfeits are always more ornate, while true

art is modest.

CHAPTER XV

Art, in our society, has been so perverted that not only has bad art

come to be considered good, but even the very perception of what art

really is has been lost. In order to be able to speak about the art of

our society, it is, therefore, first of all necessary to distinguish art

from counterfeit art.

There is one indubitable indication distinguishing real art from its

counterfeit, namely, the infectiousness of art. If a man, without

exercising effort and without altering his standpoint, on reading,

hearing, or seeing another man’s work, experiences a mental condition

which unites him with that man and with other people who also partake of

that work of art, then the object evoking that condition is a work of

art. And however poetical, realistic, effectful, or interesting a work

may be, it is not a work of art if it does not evoke that feeling (quite

distinct from all other feelings) of joy, and of spiritual union with

another (the author) and with others (those who are also infected by

it).

It is true that this indication is an _internal_ one, and that there are

people who have forgotten what the action of real art is, who expect

something else from art (in our society the great majority are in this

state), and that therefore such people may mistake for this æsthetic

feeling the feeling of divertisement and a certain excitement which they

receive from counterfeits of art. But though it is impossible to

undeceive these people, just as it is impossible to convince a man

suffering from “Daltonism” that green is not red, yet, for all that,

this indication remains perfectly definite to those whose feeling for

art is neither perverted nor atrophied, and it clearly distinguishes the

feeling produced by art from all other feelings.

The chief peculiarity of this feeling is that the receiver of a true

artistic impression is so united to the artist that he feels as if the

work were his own and not someone else’s,—as if what it expresses were

just what he had long been wishing to express. A real work of art

destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between

himself and the artist, nor that alone, but also between himself and all

whose minds receive this work of art. In this freeing of our personality

from its separation and isolation, in this uniting of it with others,

lies the chief characteristic and the great attractive force of art.

If a man is infected by the author’s condition of soul, if he feels this

emotion and this union with others, then the object which has effected

this is art; but if there be no such infection, if there be not this

union with the author and with others who are moved by the same

work—then it is not art. And not only is infection a sure sign of art,

but the degree of infectiousness is also the sole measure of excellence

in art.

_The stronger the infection the better is the art, as art_, speaking now

apart from its subject-matter, _i.e._ not considering the quality of the

feelings it transmits.

And the degree of the infectiousness of art depends on three

conditions:—

(1) On the greater or lesser individuality of the feeling transmitted;

(2) on the greater or lesser clearness with which the feeling is

transmitted; (3) on the sincerity of the artist, _i.e._ on the greater

or lesser force with which the artist himself feels the emotion he

transmits.

The more individual the feeling transmitted the more strongly does it

act on the receiver; the more individual the state of soul into which he

is transferred the more pleasure does the receiver obtain, and therefore

the more readily and strongly does he join in it.

The clearness of expression assists infection, because the receiver, who

mingles in consciousness with the author, is the better satisfied the

more clearly the feeling is transmitted, which, as it seems to him, he

has long known and felt, and for which he has only now found expression.

But most of all is the degree of infectiousness of art increased by

the degree of sincerity in the artist. As soon as the spectator,

hearer, or reader feels that the artist is infected by his own

production, and writes, sings, or plays for himself and not merely to

act on others, this mental condition of the artist infects the

receiver; and, contrariwise, as soon as the spectator, reader, or

hearer feels that the author is not writing, singing, or playing for

his own satisfaction,—does not himself feel what he wishes to

express,—but is doing it for him, the receiver, a resistance

immediately springs up, and the most individual and the newest

feelings and the cleverest technique not only fail to produce any

infection but actually repel.

I have mentioned three conditions of contagiousness in art, but they may

all be summed up into one, the last, sincerity, _i.e._ that the artist

should be impelled by an inner need to express his feeling. That

condition includes the first; for if the artist is sincere he will

express the feeling as he experienced it. And as each man is different

from everyone else, his feeling will be individual for everyone else;

and the more individual it is,—the more the artist has drawn it from the

depths of his nature,—the more sympathetic and sincere will it be. And

this same sincerity will impel the artist to find a clear expression of

the feeling which he wishes to transmit.

Therefore this third condition—sincerity—is the most important of the

three. It is always complied with in peasant art, and this explains why

such art always acts so powerfully; but it is a condition almost

entirely absent from our upper-class art, which is continually produced

by artists actuated by personal aims of covetousness or vanity.

Such are the three conditions which divide art from its counterfeits,

and which also decide the quality of every work of art apart from its

subject-matter.

The absence of any one of these conditions excludes a work from the

category of art and relegates it to that of art’s counterfeits. If the

work does not transmit the artist’s peculiarity of feeling, and is

therefore not individual, if it is unintelligibly expressed, or if it

has not proceeded from the author’s inner need for expression—it is not

a work of art. If all these conditions are present, even in the smallest

degree, then the work, even if a weak one, is yet a work of art.

The presence in various degrees of these three conditions:

individuality, clearness, and sincerity, decides the merit of a work of

art, as art, apart from subject-matter. All works of art take rank of

merit according to the degree in which they fulfil the first, the

second, and the third of these conditions. In one the individuality of

the feeling transmitted may predominate; in another, clearness of

expression; in a third, sincerity; while a fourth may have sincerity and

individuality but be deficient in clearness; a fifth, individuality and

clearness, but less sincerity; and so forth, in all possible degrees and

combinations.

Thus is art divided from not art, and thus is the quality of art, as

art, decided, independently of its subject-matter, _i.e._ apart from

whether the feelings it transmits are good or bad.

But how are we to define good and bad art with reference to its

subject-matter?

CHAPTER XVI

How in art are we to decide what is good and what is bad in

subject-matter?

Art, like speech, is a means of communication, and therefore of

progress, _i.e._ of the movement of humanity forward towards perfection.

Speech renders accessible to men of the latest generations all the

knowledge discovered by the experience and reflection, both of preceding

generations and of the best and foremost men of their own times; art

renders accessible to men of the latest generations all the feelings

experienced by their predecessors, and those also which are being felt

by their best and foremost contemporaries. And as the evolution of

knowledge proceeds by truer and more necessary knowledge dislodging and

replacing what is mistaken and unnecessary, so the evolution of feeling

proceeds through art,—feelings less kind and less needful for the

well-being of mankind are replaced by others kinder and more needful for

that end. That is the purpose of art. And, speaking now of its

subject-matter, the more art fulfils that purpose the better the art,

and the less it fulfils it the worse the art.

And the appraisement of feelings (_i.e._ the acknowledgment of these or

those feelings as being more or less good, more or less necessary for

the well-being of mankind) is made by the religious perception of the

age.

In every period of history, and in every human society, there exists an

understanding of the meaning of life which represents the highest level

to which men of that society have attained,—an understanding defining

the highest good at which that society aims. And this understanding is

the religious perception of the given time and society. And this

religious perception is always clearly expressed by some advanced men,

and more or less vividly perceived by all the members of the society.

Such a religious perception and its corresponding expression exists

always in every society. If it appears to us that in our society there

is no religious perception, this is not because there really is none,

but only because we do not want to see it. And we often wish not to see

it because it exposes the fact that our life is inconsistent with that

religious perception.

Religious perception in a society is like the direction of a flowing

river. If the river flows at all, it must have a direction. If a society

lives, there must be a religious perception indicating the direction in

which, more or less consciously, all its members tend.

And so there always has been, and there is, a religious perception in

every society. And it is by the standard of this religious perception

that the feelings transmitted by art have always been estimated. Only on

the basis of this religious perception of their age have men always

chosen from the endlessly varied spheres of art that art which

transmitted feelings making religious perception operative in actual

life. And such art has always been highly valued and encouraged; while

art transmitting feelings already outlived, flowing from the antiquated

religious perceptions of a former age, has always been condemned and

despised. All the rest of art, transmitting those most diverse feelings

by means of which people commune together, was not condemned, and was

tolerated, if only it did not transmit feelings contrary to religious

perception. Thus, for instance, among the Greeks, art transmitting the

feeling of beauty, strength, and courage (Hesiod, Homer, Phidias) was

chosen, approved, and encouraged; while art transmitting feelings of

rude sensuality, despondency, and effeminacy was condemned and despised.

Among the Jews, art transmitting feelings of devotion and submission to

the God of the Hebrews and to His will (the epic of Genesis, the

prophets, the Psalms) was chosen and encouraged, while art transmitting

feelings of idolatry (the golden calf) was condemned and despised. All

the rest of art—stories, songs, dances, ornamentation of houses, of

utensils, and of clothes—which was not contrary to religious perception,

was neither distinguished nor discussed. Thus, in regard to its

subject-matter, has art been appraised always and everywhere, and thus

it should be appraised, for this attitude towards art proceeds from the

fundamental characteristics of human nature, and those characteristics

do not change.

I know that according to an opinion current in our times, religion is a

superstition, which humanity has outgrown, and that it is therefore

assumed that no such thing exists as a religious perception common to us

all by which art, in our time, can be estimated. I know that this is the

opinion current in the pseudo-cultured circles of to-day. People who do

not acknowledge Christianity in its true meaning because it undermines

all their social privileges, and who, therefore, invent all kinds of

philosophic and æsthetic theories to hide from themselves the

meaninglessness and wrongness of their lives, cannot think otherwise.

These people intentionally, or sometimes unintentionally, confusing the

conception of a religious cult with the conception of religious

perception, think that by denying the cult they get rid of religious

perception. But even the very attacks on religion, and the attempts to

establish a life-conception contrary to the religious perception of our

times, most clearly demonstrate the existence of a religious perception

condemning the lives that are not in harmony with it.

If humanity progresses, _i.e._ moves forward, there must inevitably be a

guide to the direction of that movement. And religions have always

furnished that guide. All history shows that the progress of humanity is

accomplished not otherwise than under the guidance of religion. But if

the race cannot progress without the guidance of religion,—and progress

is always going on, and consequently also in our own times,—then there

must be a religion of our times. So that, whether it pleases or

displeases the so-called cultured people of to-day, they must admit the

existence of religion—not of a religious cult, Catholic, Protestant, or

another, but of religious perception—which, even in our times, is the

guide always present where there is any progress. And if a religious

perception exists amongst us, then our art should be appraised on the

basis of that religious perception; and, as has always and everywhere

been the case, art transmitting feelings flowing from the religious

perception of our time should be chosen from all the indifferent art,

should be acknowledged, highly esteemed, and encouraged; while art

running counter to that perception should be condemned and despised, and

all the remaining indifferent art should neither be distinguished nor

encouraged.

The religious perception of our time, in its widest and most practical

application, is the consciousness that our well-being, both material and

spiritual, individual and collective, temporal and eternal, lies in the

growth of brotherhood among all men—in their loving harmony with one

another. This perception is not only expressed by Christ and all the

best men of past ages, it is not only repeated in the most varied forms

and from most diverse sides by the best men of our own times, but it

already serves as a clue to all the complex labour of humanity,

consisting as this labour does, on the one hand, in the destruction of

physical and moral obstacles to the union of men, and, on the other

hand, in establishing the principles common to all men which can and

should unite them into one universal brotherhood. And it is on the basis

of this perception that we should appraise all the phenomena of our

life, and, among the rest, our art also; choosing from all its realms

whatever transmits feelings flowing from this religious perception,

highly prizing and encouraging such art, rejecting whatever is contrary

to this perception, and not attributing to the rest of art an importance

not properly pertaining to it.

The chief mistake made by people of the upper classes of the time of the

so-called Renaissance,—a mistake which we still perpetuate,—was not that

they ceased to value and to attach importance to religious art (people

of that period could not attach importance to it, because, like our own

upper classes, they could not believe in what the majority considered to

be religion), but their mistake was that they set up in place of

religious art which was lacking, an insignificant art which aimed only

at giving pleasure, _i.e._ they began to choose, to value, and to

encourage, in place of religious art, something which, in any case, did

not deserve such esteem and encouragement.

One of the Fathers of the Church said that the great evil is not that

men do not know God, but that they have set up, instead of God, that

which is not God. So also with art. The great misfortune of the people

of the upper classes of our time is not so much that they are without a

religious art, as that, instead of a supreme religious art, chosen from

all the rest as being specially important and valuable, they have chosen

a most insignificant and, usually, harmful art, which aims at pleasing

certain people, and which, therefore, if only by its exclusive nature,

stands in contradiction to that Christian principle of universal union

which forms the religious perception of our time. Instead of religious

art, an empty and often vicious art is set up, and this hides from men’s

notice the need of that true religious art which should be present in

life in order to improve it.

It is true that art which satisfies the demands of the religious

perception of our time is quite unlike former art, but, notwithstanding

this dissimilarity, to a man who does not intentionally hide the truth

from himself, it is very clear and definite what does form the religious

art of our age. In former times, when the highest religious perception

united only some people (who, even if they formed a large society, were

yet but one society surrounded by others—Jews, or Athenian or Roman

citizens), the feelings transmitted by the art of that time flowed from

a desire for the might, greatness, glory, and prosperity of that

society, and the heroes of art might be people who contributed to that

prosperity by strength, by craft, by fraud, or by cruelty (Ulysses,

Jacob, David, Samson, Hercules, and all the heroes). But the religious

perception of our times does not select any one society of men; on the

contrary, it demands the union of all—absolutely of all people without

exception—and above every other virtue it sets brotherly love to all

men. And, therefore, the feelings transmitted by the art of our time not

only cannot coincide with the feelings transmitted by former art, but

must run counter to them.

Christian, truly Christian, art has been so long in establishing itself,

and has not yet established itself, just because the Christian religious

perception was not one of those small steps by which humanity advances

regularly; but was an enormous revolution, which, if it has not already

altered, must inevitably alter the entire life-conception of mankind,

and, consequently, the whole internal organisation of their life. It is

true that the life of humanity, like that of an individual, moves

regularly; but in that regular movement come, as it were,

turning-points, which sharply divide the preceding from the subsequent

life. Christianity was such a turning-point; such, at least, it must

appear to us who live by the Christian perception of life. Christian

perception gave another, a new direction to all human feelings, and

therefore completely altered both the contents and the significance of

art. The Greeks could make use of Persian art and the Romans could use

Greek art, or, similarly, the Jews could use Egyptian art,—the

fundamental ideals were one and the same. Now the ideal was the

greatness and prosperity of the Persians, now the greatness and

prosperity of the Greeks, now that of the Romans. The same art was

transferred into other conditions, and served new nations. But the

Christian ideal changed and reversed everything, so that, as the Gospel

puts it, “That which was exalted among men has become an abomination in

the sight of God.” The ideal is no longer the greatness of Pharaoh or of

a Roman emperor, not the beauty of a Greek nor the wealth of Phœnicia,

but humility, purity, compassion, love. The hero is no longer Dives, but

Lazarus the beggar; not Mary Magdalene in the day of her beauty, but in

the day of her repentance; not those who acquire wealth, but those who

have abandoned it; not those who dwell in palaces, but those who dwell

in catacombs and huts; not those who rule over others, but those who

acknowledge no authority but God’s. And the greatest work of art is no

longer a cathedral of victory[84] with statues of conquerors, but the

representation of a human soul so transformed by love that a man who is

tormented and murdered yet pities and loves his persecutors.

And the change is so great that men of the Christian world find it

difficult to resist the inertia of the heathen art to which they have

been accustomed all their lives. The subject-matter of Christian

religious art is so new to them, so unlike the subject-matter of former

art, that it seems to them as though Christian art were a denial of art,

and they cling desperately to the old art. But this old art, having no

longer, in our day, any source in religious perception, has lost its

meaning, and we shall have to abandon it whether we wish to or not.

The essence of the Christian perception consists in the recognition by

every man of his sonship to God, and of the consequent union of men with

God and with one another, as is said in the Gospel (John xvii. 21[85]).

Therefore the subject-matter of Christian art is such feeling as can

unite men with God and with one another.

The expression _unite men with God and with one another_ may seem

obscure to people accustomed to the misuse of these words which is so

customary, but the words have a perfectly clear meaning nevertheless.

They indicate that the Christian union of man (in contradiction to the

partial, exclusive union of only some men) is that which unites all

without exception.

Art, all art, has this characteristic, that it unites people. Every art

causes those to whom the artist’s feeling is transmitted to unite in

soul with the artist, and also with all who receive the same impression.

But non-Christian art, while uniting some people together, makes that

very union a cause of separation between these united people and others;

so that union of this kind is often a source, not only of division, but

even of enmity towards others. Such is all patriotic art, with its

anthems, poems, and monuments; such is all Church art, _i.e._ the art of

certain cults, with their images, statues, processions, and other local

ceremonies. Such art is belated and non-Christian art, uniting the

people of one cult only to separate them yet more sharply from the

members of other cults, and even to place them in relations of hostility

to each other. Christian art is only such as tends to unite all without

exception, either by evoking in them the perception that each man and

all men stand in like relation towards God and towards their neighbour,

or by evoking in them identical feelings, which may even be the very

simplest provided only that they are not repugnant to Christianity and

are natural to everyone without exception.

Good Christian art of our time may be unintelligible to people because

of imperfections in its form, or because men are inattentive to it, but

it must be such that all men can experience the feelings it transmits.

It must be the art, not of some one group of people, nor of one class,

nor of one nationality, nor of one religious cult; that is, it must not

transmit feelings which are accessible only to a man educated in a

certain way, or only to an aristocrat, or a merchant, or only to a

Russian, or a native of Japan, or a Roman Catholic, or a Buddhist, etc.,

but it must transmit feelings accessible to everyone. Only art of this

kind can be acknowledged in our time to be good art, worthy of being

chosen out from all the rest of art and encouraged.

Christian art, _i.e._ the art of our time, should be catholic in the

original meaning of the word, _i.e._ universal, and therefore it should

unite all men. And only two kinds of feeling do unite all men: first,

feelings flowing from the perception of our sonship to God and of the

brotherhood of man; and next, the simple feelings of common life,

accessible to everyone without exception—such as the feeling of

merriment, of pity, of cheerfulness, of tranquillity, etc. Only these

two kinds of feelings can now supply material for art good in its

subject-matter.

And the action of these two kinds of art, apparently so dissimilar, is

one and the same. The feelings flowing from perception of our sonship to

God and of the brotherhood of man—such as a feeling of sureness in

truth, devotion to the will of God, self-sacrifice, respect for and love

of man—evoked by Christian religious perception; and the simplest

feelings—such as a softened or a merry mood caused by a song or an

amusing jest intelligible to everyone, or by a touching story, or a

drawing, or a little doll: both alike produce one and the same

effect—the loving union of man with man. Sometimes people who are

together are, if not hostile to one another, at least estranged in mood

and feeling, till perchance a story, a performance, a picture, or even a

building, but oftenest of all music, unites them all as by an electric

flash, and, in place of their former isolation or even enmity, they are

all conscious of union and mutual love. Each is glad that another feels

what he feels; glad of the communion established, not only between him

and all present, but also with all now living who will yet share the

same impression; and more than that, he feels the mysterious gladness of

a communion which, reaching beyond the grave, unites us with all men of

the past who have been moved by the same feelings, and with all men of

the future who will yet be touched by them. And this effect is produced

both by the religious art which transmits feelings of love to God and

one’s neighbour, and by universal art transmitting the very simplest

feelings common to all men.

The art of our time should be appraised differently from former art

chiefly in this, that the art of our time, _i.e._ Christian art (basing

itself on a religious perception which demands the union of man),

excludes from the domain of art good in subject-matter everything

transmitting exclusive feelings, which do not unite but divide men. It

relegates such work to the category of art bad in its subject-matter,

while, on the other hand, it includes in the category of art good in

subject-matter a section not formerly admitted to deserve to be chosen

out and respected, namely, universal art transmitting even the most

trifling and simple feelings if only they are accessible to all men

without exception, and therefore unite them. Such art cannot, in our

time, but be esteemed good, for it attains the end which the religious

perception of our time, _i.e._ Christianity, sets before humanity.

Christian art either evokes in men those feelings which, through love of

God and of one’s neighbour, draw them to greater and ever greater union,

and make them ready for and capable of such union; or evokes in them

those feelings which show them that they are already united in the joys

and sorrows of life. And therefore the Christian art of our time can be

and is of two kinds: (1) art transmitting feelings flowing from a

religious perception of man’s position in the world in relation to God

and to his neighbour—religious art in the limited meaning of the term;

and (2) art transmitting the simplest feelings of common life, but such,

always, as are accessible to all men in the whole world—the art of

common life—the art of a people—universal art. Only these two kinds of

art can be considered good art in our time.

The first, religious art,—transmitting both positive feelings of love to

God and one’s neighbour, and negative feelings of indignation and horror

at the violation of love,—manifests itself chiefly in the form of words,

and to some extent also in painting and sculpture: the second kind

(universal art) transmitting feelings accessible to all, manifests

itself in words, in painting, in sculpture, in dances, in architecture,

and, most of all, in music.

If I were asked to give modern examples of each of these kinds of art,

then, as examples of the highest art, flowing from love of God and man

(both of the higher, positive, and of the lower, negative kind), in

literature I should name _The Robbers_ by Schiller: Victor Hugo’s _Les

Pauvres Gens_ and _Les Misérables_: the novels and stories of

Dickens—_The Tale of Two Cities_, _The Christmas Carol_, _The Chimes_,

and others: _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_: Dostoievsky’s works—especially his

_Memoirs from the House of Death_: and _Adam Bede_ by George Eliot.

In modern painting, strange to say, works of this kind, directly

transmitting the Christian feeling of love of God and of one’s

neighbour, are hardly to be found, especially among the works of the

celebrated painters. There are plenty of pictures treating of the Gospel

stories; they, however, depict historical events with great wealth of

detail, but do not, and cannot, transmit religious feeling not possessed

by their painters. There are many pictures treating of the personal

feelings of various people, but of pictures representing great deeds of

self-sacrifice and of Christian love there are very few, and what there

are are principally by artists who are not celebrated, and are, for the

most part, not pictures but merely sketches. Such, for instance, is the

drawing by Kramskoy (worth many of his finished pictures), showing a

drawing-room with a balcony, past which troops are marching in triumph

on their return from the war. On the balcony stands a wet-nurse holding

a baby and a boy. They are admiring the procession of the troops, but

the mother, covering her face with a handkerchief, has fallen back on

the sofa, sobbing. Such also is the picture by Walter Langley, to which

I have already referred, and such again is a picture by the French

artist Morion, depicting a lifeboat hastening, in a heavy storm, to the

relief of a steamer that is being wrecked. Approaching these in kind are

pictures which represent the hard-working peasant with respect and love.

Such are the pictures by Millet, and, particularly, his drawing, “The

Man with the Hoe,” also pictures in this style by Jules Breton,

L’Hermitte, Defregger, and others. As examples of pictures evoking

indignation and horror at the violation of love to God and man, Gay’s

picture, “Judgment,” may serve, and also Leizen-Mayer’s, “Signing the

Death Warrant.” But there are also very few of this kind. Anxiety about

the technique and the beauty of the picture for the most part obscures

the feeling. For instance, Gérôme’s “Pollice Verso” expresses, not so

much horror at what is being perpetrated as attraction by the beauty of

the spectacle.[86]

To give examples, from the modern art of our upper classes, of art of

the second kind, good universal art or even of the art of a whole

people, is yet more difficult, especially in literary art and music. If

there are some works which by their inner contents might be assigned to

this class (such as _Don Quixote_, Molière’s comedies, _David

Copperfield_ and _The Pickwick Papers_ by Dickens, Gogol’s and Pushkin’s

tales, and some things of Maupassant’s), these works are for the most

part—from the exceptional nature of the feelings they transmit, and the

superfluity of special details of time and locality, and, above all, on

account of the poverty of their subject-matter in comparison with

examples of universal ancient art (such, for instance, as the story of

Joseph)—comprehensible only to people of their own circle. That Joseph’s

brethren, being jealous of his father’s affection, sell him to the

merchants; that Potiphar’s wife wishes to tempt the youth; that having

attained the highest station, he takes pity on his brothers, including

Benjamin the favourite,—these and all the rest are feelings accessible

alike to a Russian peasant, a Chinese, an African, a child, or an old

man, educated or uneducated; and it is all written with such restraint,

is so free from any superfluous detail, that the story may be told to

any circle and will be equally comprehensible and touching to everyone.

But not such are the feelings of Don Quixote or of Molière’s heroes

(though Molière is perhaps the most universal, and therefore the most

excellent, artist of modern times), nor of Pickwick and his friends.

These feelings are not common to all men but very exceptional, and

therefore, to make them infectious, the authors have surrounded them

with abundant details of time and place. And this abundance of detail

makes the stories difficult of comprehension to all people not living

within reach of the conditions described by the author.

The author of the novel of Joseph did not need to describe in detail, as

would be done nowadays, the bloodstained coat of Joseph, the dwelling

and dress of Jacob, the pose and attire of Potiphar’s wife, and how,

adjusting the bracelet on her left arm, she said, “Come to me,” and so

on, because the subject-matter of feelings in this novel is so strong

that all details, except the most essential,—such as that Joseph went

out into another room to weep,—are superfluous, and would only hinder

the transmission of feelings. And therefore this novel is accessible to

all men, touches people of all nations and classes, young and old, and

has lasted to our times, and will yet last for thousands of years to

come. But strip the best novels of our times of their details, and what

will remain?

It is therefore impossible in modern literature to indicate works fully

satisfying the demands of universality. Such works as exist are, to a

great extent, spoilt by what is usually called “realism,” but would be

better termed “provincialism,” in art.

In music the same occurs as in verbal art, and for similar reasons. In

consequence of the poorness of the feeling they contain, the melodies of

the modern composers are amazingly empty and insignificant. And to

strengthen the impression produced by these empty melodies, the new

musicians pile complex modulations on to each trivial melody, not only

in their own national manner, but also in the way characteristic of

their own exclusive circle and particular musical school. Melody—every

melody—is free, and may be understood of all men; but as soon as it is

bound up with a particular harmony, it ceases to be accessible except to

people trained to such harmony, and it becomes strange, not only to

common men of another nationality, but to all who do not belong to the

circle whose members have accustomed themselves to certain forms of

harmonisation. So that music, like poetry, travels in a vicious circle.

Trivial and exclusive melodies, in order to make them attractive, are

laden with harmonic, rhythmic, and orchestral complications, and thus

become yet more exclusive, and far from being universal are not even

national, _i.e._ they are not comprehensible to the whole people but

only to some people.

In music, besides marches and dances by various composers, which satisfy

the demands of universal art, one can indicate very few works of this

class: Bach’s famous violin _aria_, Chopin’s nocturne in E flat major,

and perhaps a dozen bits (not whole pieces, but parts) selected from the

works of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, and Chopin.[87]

Although in painting the same thing is repeated as in poetry and in

music,—namely, that in order to make them more interesting, works weak

in conception are surrounded by minutely studied accessories of time and

place, which give them a temporary and local interest but make them less

universal,—still, in painting, more than in the other spheres of art,

may be found works satisfying the demands of universal Christian art;

that is to say, there are more works expressing feelings in which all

men may participate.

In the arts of painting and sculpture, all pictures and statues in

so-called genre style, depictions of animals, landscapes and caricatures

with subjects comprehensible to everyone, and also all kinds of

ornaments, are universal in subject-matter. Such productions in painting

and sculpture are very numerous (_e.g._ china dolls), but for the most

part such objects (for instance, ornaments of all kinds) are either not

considered to be art or are considered to be art of a low quality. In

reality all such objects, if only they transmit a true feeling

experienced by the artist and comprehensible to everyone (however

insignificant it may seem to us to be) are works of real, good,

Christian art.

I fear it will here be urged against me that having denied that the

conception of beauty can supply a standard for works of art, I

contradict myself by acknowledging ornaments to be works of good art.

The reproach is unjust, for the subject-matter of all kinds of

ornamentation consists not in the beauty, but in the feeling (of

admiration of, and delight in, the combination of lines and colours)

which the artist has experienced and with which he infects the

spectator. Art remains what it was and what it must be: nothing but the

infection by one man of another, or of others, with the feelings

experienced by the infector. Among those feelings is the feeling of

delight at what pleases the sight. Objects pleasing the sight may be

such as please a small or a large number of people, or such as please

all men. And ornaments for the most part are of the latter kind. A

landscape representing a very unusual view, or a genre picture of a

special subject, may not please everyone, but ornaments, from Yakutsk

ornaments to Greek ones, are intelligible to everyone and evoke a

similar feeling of admiration in all, and therefore this despised kind

of art should, in Christian society, be esteemed far above exceptional,

pretentious pictures and sculptures.

So that there are only two kinds of good Christian art: all the rest of

art not comprised in these two divisions should be acknowledged to be

bad art, deserving not to be encouraged but to be driven out, denied and

despised, as being art not uniting but dividing people. Such, in

literary art, are all novels and poems which transmit Church or

patriotic feelings, and also exclusive feelings pertaining only to the

class of the idle rich; such as aristocratic honour, satiety, spleen,

pessimism, and refined and vicious feelings flowing from sex-love—quite

incomprehensible to the great majority of mankind.

In painting we must similarly place in the class of bad art all the

Church, patriotic, and exclusive pictures; all the pictures representing

the amusements and allurements of a rich and idle life; all the

so-called symbolic pictures, in which the very meaning of the symbol is

comprehensible only to the people of a certain circle; and, above all,

pictures with voluptuous subjects—all that odious female nudity which

fills all the exhibitions and galleries. And to this class belongs

almost all the chamber and opera music of our times,—beginning

especially from Beethoven (Schumann, Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner),—by its

subject-matter devoted to the expression of feelings accessible only to

people who have developed in themselves an unhealthy, nervous irritation

evoked by this exclusive, artificial, and complex music.

“What! the _Ninth Symphony_ not a good work of art!” I hear exclaimed by

indignant voices.

And I reply: Most certainly it is not. All that I have written I have

written with the sole purpose of finding a clear and reasonable

criterion by which to judge the merits of works of art. And this

criterion, coinciding with the indications of plain and sane sense,

indubitably shows me that that symphony by Beethoven is not a good work

of art. Of course, to people educated in the adoration of certain

productions and of their authors, to people whose taste has been

perverted just by being educated in such adoration, the acknowledgment

that such a celebrated work is bad is amazing and strange. But how are

we to escape the indications of reason and of common sense?

Beethoven’s _Ninth Symphony_ is considered a great work of art. To

verify its claim to be such, I must first ask myself whether this work

transmits the highest religious feeling? I reply in the negative, for

music in itself cannot transmit those feelings; and therefore I ask

myself next, Since this work does not belong to the highest kind of

religious art, has it the other characteristic of the good art of our

time,—the quality of uniting all men in one common feeling: does it rank

as Christian universal art? And again I have no option but to reply in

the negative; for not only do I not see how the feelings transmitted by

this work could unite people not specially trained to submit themselves

to its complex hypnotism, but I am unable to imagine to myself a crowd

of normal people who could understand anything of this long, confused,

and artificial production, except short snatches which are lost in a sea

of what is incomprehensible. And therefore, whether I like it or not, I

am compelled to conclude that this work belongs to the rank of bad art.

It is curious to note in this connection, that attached to the end of

this very symphony is a poem of Schiller’s which (though somewhat

obscurely) expresses this very thought, namely, that feeling (Schiller

speaks only of the feeling of gladness) unites people and evokes love in

them. But though this poem is sung at the end of the symphony, the music

does not accord with the thought expressed in the verses; for the music

is exclusive and does not unite all men, but unites only a few, dividing

them off from the rest of mankind.

And, just in this same way, in all branches of art, many and many works

considered great by the upper classes of our society will have to be

judged. By this one sure criterion we shall have to judge the celebrated

_Divine Comedy_ and _Jerusalem Delivered_, and a great part of

Shakespeare’s and Goethe’s works, and in painting every representation

of miracles, including Raphael’s “Transfiguration,” etc.

Whatever the work may be and however it may have been extolled, we have

first to ask whether this work is one of real art or a counterfeit.

Having acknowledged, on the basis of the indication of its

infectiousness even to a small class of people, that a certain

production belongs to the realm of art, it is necessary, on the basis of

the indication of its accessibility, to decide the next question, Does

this work belong to the category of bad, exclusive art, opposed to

religious perception, or to Christian art, uniting people? And having

acknowledged an article to belong to real Christian art, we must then,

according to whether it transmits the feelings flowing from love to God

and man, or merely the simple feelings uniting all men, assign it a

place in the ranks of religious art or in those of universal art.

Only on the basis of such verification shall we find it possible to

select from the whole mass of what, in our society, claims to be art,

those works which form real, important, necessary spiritual food, and to

separate them from all the harmful and useless art, and from the

counterfeits of art which surround us. Only on the basis of such

verification shall we be able to rid ourselves of the pernicious results

of harmful art, and to avail ourselves of that beneficent action which

is the purpose of true and good art, and which is indispensable for the

spiritual life of man and of humanity.

Footnote 84:

There is in Moscow a magnificent “Cathedral of our Saviour,” erected

to commemorate the defeat of the French in the war of 1812.—Trans.

Footnote 85:

“That they may be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee,

that they also may be in us.”

Footnote 86:

In this picture the spectators in the Roman Amphitheatre are turning

down their thumbs to show that they wish the vanquished gladiator to

be killed.—Trans.

Footnote 87:

While offering as examples of art those that seem to me the best, I

attach no special importance to my selection; for, besides being

insufficiently informed in all branches of art, I belong to the class

of people whose taste has, by false training, been perverted. And

therefore my old, inured habits may cause me to err, and I may mistake

for absolute merit the impression a work produced on me in my youth.

My only purpose in mentioning examples of works of this or that class

is to make my meaning clearer, and to show how, with my present views,

I understand excellence in art in relation to its subject-matter. I

must, moreover, mention that I consign my own artistic productions to

the category of bad art, excepting the story _God sees the Truth_,

which seeks a place in the first class, and _The Prisoner of the

Caucasus_, which belongs to the second.

CHAPTER XVII

Art is one of two organs of human progress. By words man interchanges

thoughts, by the forms of art he interchanges feelings, and this with

all men, not only of the present time, but also of the past and the

future. It is natural to human beings to employ both these organs of

intercommunication, and therefore the perversion of either of them must

cause evil results to the society in which it occurs. And these results

will be of two kinds: first, the absence, in that society, of the work

which should be performed by the organ; and secondly, the harmful

activity of the perverted organ. And just these results have shown

themselves in our society. The organ of art has been perverted, and

therefore the upper classes of society have, to a great extent, been

deprived of the work that it should have performed. The diffusion in our

society of enormous quantities of, on the one hand, those counterfeits

of art which only serve to amuse and corrupt people, and, on the other

hand, of works of insignificant, exclusive art, mistaken for the highest

art, have perverted most men’s capacity to be infected by true works of

art, and have thus deprived them of the possibility of experiencing the

highest feelings to which mankind has attained, and which can only be

transmitted from man to man by art.

All the best that has been done in art by man remains strange to people

who lack the capacity to be infected by art, and is replaced either by

spurious counterfeits of art or by insignificant art, which they mistake

for real art. People of our time and of our society are delighted with

Baudelaires, Verlaines, Moréases, Ibsens, and Maeterlincks in poetry;

with Monets, Manets, Puvis de Chavannes, Burne-Joneses, Stucks, and

Böcklins in painting; with Wagners, Listzs, Richard Strausses, in music;

and they are no longer capable of comprehending either the highest or

the simplest art.

In the upper classes, in consequence of this loss of capacity to be

infected by works of art, people grow up, are educated, and live,

lacking the fertilising, improving influence of art, and therefore not

only do not advance towards perfection, do not become kinder, but, on

the contrary, possessing highly-developed external means of

civilisation, they yet tend to become continually more savage, more

coarse, and more cruel.

Such is the result of the absence from our society of the activity of

that essential organ—art. But the consequences of the perverted activity

of that organ are yet more harmful. And they are numerous.

The first consequence, plain for all to see, is the enormous expenditure

of the labour of working people on things which are not only useless,

but which, for the most part, are harmful; and more than that, the waste

of priceless human lives on this unnecessary and harmful business. It is

terrible to consider with what intensity, and amid what privations,

millions of people—who lack time and opportunity to attend to what they

and their families urgently require—labour for 10, 12, or 14 hours on

end, and even at night, setting the type for pseudo-artistic books which

spread vice among mankind, or working for theatres, concerts,

exhibitions, and picture galleries, which, for the most part, also serve

vice; but it is yet more terrible to reflect that lively, kindly

children, capable of all that is good, are devoted from their early

years to such tasks as these: that for 6, 8, or 10 hours a day, and for

10 or 15 years, some of them should play scales and exercises; others

should twist their limbs, walk on their toes, and lift their legs above

their heads; a third set should sing solfeggios; a fourth set, showing

themselves off in all manner of ways, should pronounce verses; a fifth

set should draw from busts or from nude models and paint studies; a

sixth set should write compositions according to the rules of certain

periods; and that in these occupations, unworthy of a human being, which

are often continued long after full maturity, they should waste their

physical and mental strength and lose all perception of the meaning of

life. It is often said that it is horrible and pitiful to see little

acrobats putting their legs over their necks, but it is not less pitiful

to see children of 10 giving concerts, and it is still worse to see

schoolboys of 10 who, as a preparation for literary work, have learnt by

heart the exceptions to the Latin grammar. These people not only grow

physically and mentally deformed, but also morally deformed, and become

incapable of doing anything really needed by man. Occupying in society

the rôle of amusers of the rich, they lose their sense of human dignity,

and develop in themselves such a passion for public applause that they

are always a prey to an inflated and unsatisfied vanity which grows in

them to diseased dimensions, and they expend their mental strength in

efforts to obtain satisfaction for this passion. And what is most tragic

of all is that these people, who for the sake of art are spoilt for

life, not only do not render service to this art, but, on the contrary,

inflict the greatest harm on it. They are taught in academies, schools,

and conservatoires how to counterfeit art, and by learning this they so

pervert themselves that they quite lose the capacity to produce works of

real art, and become purveyors of that counterfeit, or trivial, or

depraved art which floods our society. This is the first obvious

consequence of the perversion of the organ of art.