The inaccuracy of all these definitions arises from the fact that

in them all (as also in the metaphysical definitions) the object

considered is the pleasure art may give, and not the purpose it may

serve in the life of man and of humanity.

In order correctly to define art, it is necessary, first of all,

to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure, and to consider it

as one of the conditions of human life. Viewing it in this way, we

cannot fail to observe that art is one of the means of intercourse

between man and man.

Every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain

kind of relationship both with him who produced, or is producing,

the art, and with all those who, simultaneously, previously, or

subsequently, receive the same artistic impression.

Speech, transmitting the thoughts and experiences of men, serves as

a means of union among them, and art acts in a similar manner. The

peculiarity of this latter means of intercourse, distinguishing it

from intercourse by means of words, consists in this, that whereas

by words a man transmits his thoughts to another, by means of art he

transmits his feelings.

The activity of art is based on the fact that a man, receiving

through his sense of hearing or sight another man's expression

of feeling, is capable of experiencing the emotion which moved

the man who expressed it. To take the simplest example: one man

laughs, and another, who hears, becomes merry; or a man weeps, and

another, who hears, feels sorrow. A man is excited or irritated, and

another man, seeing him, comes to a similar state of mind. By his

movements, or by the sounds of his voice, a man expresses courage

and determination, or sadness and calmness, and this state of mind

passes on to others. A man suffers, expressing his sufferings by

groans and spasms, and this suffering transmits itself to other

people; a man expresses his feeling of admiration, devotion, fear,

respect, or love to certain objects, persons, or phenomena, and

others are infected by the same feelings of admiration, devotion,

fear, respect, or love to the same objects, persons, and phenomena.

And it is on this capacity of man to receive another man's

expression of feeling, and experience those feelings himself, that

the activity of art is based.

If a man infects another or others, directly, immediately, by his

appearance, or by the sounds he gives vent to at the very time he

experiences the feeling; if he causes another man to yawn when he

himself cannot help yawning, or to laugh or cry when he himself

is obliged to laugh or cry, or to suffer when he himself is

suffering--that does not amount to art.

Art begins when one person, with the object of joining another

or others to himself in one and the same feeling, expresses that

feeling by certain external indications. To take the simplest

example: a boy, having experienced, let us say, fear on encountering

a wolf, relates that encounter; and, in order to evoke in others

the feeling he has experienced, describes himself, his condition

before the encounter, the surroundings, the wood, his own

light-heartedness, and then the wolf's appearance, its movements,

the distance between himself and the wolf, etc. All this, if only

the boy, when telling the story, again experiences the feelings he

had lived through and infects the hearers and compels them to feel

what the narrator had experienced, is art. If even the boy had not

seen a wolf but had frequently been afraid of one, and if, wishing

to evoke in others the fear he had felt, he invented an encounter

with a wolf, and recounted it so as to make his hearers share the

feelings he experienced when he feared the wolf, that also would be

art. And just in the same way it is art if a man, having experienced

either the fear of suffering or the attraction of enjoyment (whether

in reality or in imagination), expresses these feelings on canvas or

in marble so that others are infected by them. And it is also art if

a man feels or imagines to himself feelings of delight, gladness,

sorrow, despair, courage, or despondency, and the transition from

one to another of these feelings, and expresses these feelings by

sounds, so that the hearers are infected by them, and experience

them as they were experienced by the composer.

The feelings with which the artist infects others may be most

various,--very strong or very weak, very important or very

insignificant, very bad or very good: feelings of love for native

land, self-devotion and submission to fate or to God expressed

in a drama, raptures of lovers described in a novel, feelings of

voluptuousness expressed in a picture, courage expressed in a

triumphal march, merriment evoked by a dance, humor evoked by a

funny story, the feeling of quietness transmitted by an evening

landscape or by a lullaby, or the feeling of admiration evoked by a

beautiful arabesque--it is all art.

If only the spectators or auditors are infected by the feelings

which the author has felt, it is art.

_To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having

evoked it in oneself, then, by means of movements, lines, colors,

sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling

that others may experience the same feeling--this is the activity of

art._

_Art is a human activity, consisting in this, that one man

consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others

feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by

these feelings, and also experience them._

Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some

mysterious Idea of beauty, or God; it is not, as the æsthetical

physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of

stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man's emotions by

external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and,

above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among

men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable

for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of

humanity.

As, thanks to man's capacity to express thoughts by words, every man

may know all that has been done for him in the realms of thought by

all humanity before his day, and can, in the present, thanks to this

capacity to understand the thoughts of others, become a sharer in

their activity, and can himself hand on to his contemporaries and

descendants the thoughts he has assimilated from others, as well as

those which have arisen within himself; so, thanks to man's capacity

to be infected with the feelings of others by means of art, all that

is being lived through by his contemporaries is accessible to him,

as well as the feelings experienced by men thousands of years ago,

and he has also the possibility of transmitting his own feelings to

others.

If people lacked this capacity to receive the thoughts conceived

by the men who preceded them, and to pass on to others their own

thoughts, men would be like wild beasts, or like Kaspar Hauser.[95]

[95] "The foundling of Nuremberg," found in the market-place of

that town on 26th May, 1828, apparently some sixteen years old.

He spoke little, and was almost totally ignorant even of common

objects. He subsequently explained that he had been brought up in

confinement underground, and visited by only one man, whom he saw

but seldom.--TR.

And if men lacked this other capacity of being infected by art,

people might be almost more savage still, and, above all, more

separated from, and more hostile to, one another.

And therefore the activity of art is a most important one, as

important as the activity of speech itself, and as generally

diffused.

We are accustomed to understand art to be only what we hear and see

in theaters, concerts, and exhibitions; together with buildings,

statues, poems, novels.... But all this is but the smallest part of

the art by which we communicate with each other in life. All human

life is filled with works of art of every kind,--from cradle-song,

jest, mimicry, the ornamentation of houses, dress, and utensils, up

to church services, buildings, monuments, and triumphal processions.

It is all artistic activity. So that by art, in the limited sense of

the word, we do not mean all human activity transmitting feelings,

but only that part which we for some reason select from it and to

which we attach special importance.

This special importance has always been given by all men to that

part of this activity which transmits feelings flowing from

their religious perception, and this small part of art they have

specifically called art, attaching to it the full meaning of the

word.

That was how men of old--Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle--looked on

art. Thus did the Hebrew prophets and the ancient Christians regard

art; thus it was, and still is, understood by the Mahommedans,

and thus is it still understood by religious folk among our own

peasantry.

Some teachers of mankind--as Plato in his "Republic," and people

such as the primitive Christians, the strict Mahommedans, and the

Buddhists--have gone so far as to repudiate all art.

People viewing art in this way (in contradiction to the prevalent

view of to-day, which regards any art as good if only it affords

pleasure) considered, and consider, that art (as contrasted with

speech, which need not be listened to) is so highly dangerous in its

power to infect people against their wills, that mankind will lose

far less by banishing all art than by tolerating each and every art.

Evidently such people were wrong in repudiating all art, for they

denied that which cannot be denied,--one of the indispensable means

of communication, without which mankind could not exist. But not

less wrong are the people of civilized European society of our class

and day, in favoring any art if it but serves beauty, _i.e._ gives

people pleasure.

Formerly, people feared lest among the works of art there might

chance to be some causing corruption, and they prohibited art

altogether. Now, they only fear lest they should be deprived of any

enjoyment art can afford, and patronize any art. And I think the

last error is much grosser than the first, and that its consequences

are far more harmful.

CHAPTER VI

But how could it happen that that very art, which in ancient times

was merely tolerated (if tolerated at all), should have come, in our

times, to be invariably considered a good thing if only it affords

pleasure?

It has resulted from the following causes. The estimation of the

value of art (_i.e._ of the feelings it transmits) depends on men's

perception of the meaning of life; depends on what they consider to

be the good and the evil of life. And what is good and what is evil

is defined by what are termed religions.

Humanity unceasingly moves forward from a lower, more partial, and

obscure understanding of life, to one more general and more lucid.

And in this, as in every movement, there are leaders,--those who

have understood the meaning of life more clearly than others,--and

of these advanced men there is always one who has, in his words and

by his life, expressed this meaning more clearly, accessibly, and

strongly than others. This man's expression of the meaning of life,

together with those superstitions, traditions, and ceremonies which

usually form themselves round the memory of such a man, is what

is called a religion. Religions are the exponents of the highest

comprehension of life accessible to the best and foremost men at

a given time in a given society; a comprehension toward which,

inevitably and irresistibly, all the rest of that society must

advance. And therefore only religions have always served, and still

serve, as bases for the valuation of human sentiments. If feelings

bring men nearer the ideal their religion indicates, if they are in

harmony with it and do not contradict it, they are good; if they

estrange men from it and oppose it, they are bad.

If the religion places the meaning of life in worshiping one God

and fulfilling what is regarded as His will, as was the case among

the Jews, then the feelings flowing from love to that God, and

to His law, successfully transmitted through the art of poetry

by the prophets, by the psalms, or by the epic of the book of

Genesis, is good, high art. All opposing that, as, for instance,

the transmission of feelings of devotion to strange gods, or of

feelings incompatible with the law of God, would be considered bad

art. Or if, as was the case among the Greeks, the religion places

the meaning of life in earthly happiness, in beauty and in strength,

then art successfully transmitting the joy and energy of life

would be considered good art, but art which transmitted feelings

of effeminacy or despondency would be bad art. If the meaning of

life is seen in the well-being of one's nation, or in honoring

one's ancestors and continuing the mode of life led by them, as

was the case among the Romans and the Chinese respectively, then

art transmitting feelings of joy at sacrificing one's personal

well-being for the common weal, or at exalting one's ancestors and

maintaining their traditions, would be considered good art, but

art expressing feelings contrary to this would be regarded as bad.

If the meaning of life is seen in freeing oneself from the yoke of

animalism, as is the case among the Buddhists, then art successfully

transmitting feelings that elevate the soul and humble the flesh

will be good art, and all that transmits feelings strengthening the

bodily passions will be bad art.

In every age, and in every human society, there exists a religious

sense, common to that whole society, of what is good and what is

bad, and it is this religious conception that decides the value of

the feelings transmitted by art. And therefore, among all nations,

art which transmitted feelings considered to be good by this general

religious sense was recognized as being good and was encouraged;

but art which transmitted feelings considered to be bad by this

general religious conception, was recognized as being bad, and was

rejected. All the rest of the immense field of art by means of which

people communicate one with another, was not esteemed at all, and

was only noticed when it ran counter to the religious conception of

its age, and then merely to be repudiated. Thus it was among all

nations,--Greeks, Jews, Indians, Egyptians, and Chinese,--and so it

was when Christianity appeared.

The Christianity of the first centuries recognized as productions

of good art only legends, lives of saints, sermons, prayers, and

hymn-singing, evoking love of Christ, emotion at His life, desire to

follow His example, renunciation of worldly life, humility, and the

love of others; all productions transmitting feelings of personal

enjoyment they considered to be bad, and therefore rejected: for

instance, tolerating plastic representations only when they were

symbolical, they rejected all the pagan sculptures.

This was so among the Christians of the first centuries, who

accepted Christ's teaching, if not quite in its true form, at least

not in the perverted, paganized form in which it was accepted

subsequently.

But besides this Christianity, from the time of the wholesale

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

Constantine, Charlemagne, and Vladimir, there appeared another, a

Church Christianity, which was nearer to paganism than to Christ's

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

teaching, estimated quite otherwise the feelings of people and the

productions of art which transmitted those feelings.

This Church Christianity not only did not acknowledge the

fundamental and essential positions of true Christianity,--the

immediate relationship of each man to the Father, the consequent

brotherhood and equality of all men, and the substitution of

humility and love in place of every kind of violence,--but, on the

contrary, having set up a heavenly hierarchy similar to the pagan

mythology, and having introduced the worship of Christ, of the

Virgin, of angels, of apostles, of saints, and of martyrs, and not

only of these divinities themselves, but also of their images, it

made blind faith in the Church and its ordinances the essential

point of its teaching.

However foreign this teaching may have been to true Christianity;

however degraded, not only in comparison with true Christianity,

but even with the life-conception of Romans such as Julian and

others,--it was, for all that, to the barbarians who accepted it,

a higher doctrine than their former adoration of gods, heroes, and

good and bad spirits. And therefore this teaching was a religion

to them, and on the basis of that religion the art of the time

was assessed. And art transmitting pious adoration of the Virgin,

Jesus, the saints and the angels, a blind faith in and submission

to the Church, fear of torments and hope of blessedness in a life

beyond the grave, was considered good; all art opposed to this was

considered bad.

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

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

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

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

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

feeling--religion--as the mass of the people, and transmitting,

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

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

and their activity, founded on the highest conceptions accessible

to their age and common to the entire people, though, for our times

a mean art, was, nevertheless a true one, shared by the whole

community.

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

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

of that understanding of life which was expressed by Church

Christianity. When, after the Crusades and the maximum development

of papal power and its abuses, people of the rich classes became

acquainted with the wisdom of the classics, and saw, on the one

hand, the reasonable lucidity of the teaching of the ancient sages,

and, on the other hand, the incompatibility of the Church doctrine

with the teaching of Christ, they lost all possibility of continuing

to believe the Church teaching.

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

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

and for the sake of influencing the masses, who continued to believe

blindly in Church doctrine, and whom the upper classes, for their

own advantage, considered it necessary to support in those beliefs.

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

general religious doctrine of all Christian people; some--the

masses--continued blindly to believe in it, but the upper

classes--those in whose hands lay the power and wealth, and

therefore the leisure to produce art and the means to stimulate

it--ceased to believe in that teaching.

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

themselves in the same position in which the educated Romans were

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

religion of the masses, but had no beliefs to put in place of the

worn-out Church doctrine which for them had lost its meaning.

There was only this difference: that whereas for the Romans,

who lost faith in their emperor-gods and household-gods, it was

impossible to extract anything further from all the complex

mythology they had borrowed from all the conquered nations, and it

was consequently necessary to find a completely new conception of

life, the people of the Middle Ages, when they doubted the truth of

the Church teaching, had no need to seek a fresh one. That Christian

teaching which they professed in a perverted form as Church doctrine

had mapped out the path of human progress so far ahead that they

had but to rid themselves of those perversions which hid the

teaching announced by Christ, and to adopt its real meaning--if not

completely, then at least in some greater degree than that in which

the Church had held it. And this was partially done, not only in the

reformations of Wyclif, Huss, Luther, and Calvin, but by all that

current of non-Church Christianity represented in earlier times by

the Paulicians, the Bogomili,[96] and, afterward, by the Waldenses

and the other non-Church Christians who were called heretics. But

this could be, and was, done chiefly by poor people--who did not

rule. A few of the rich and strong, like Francis of Assisi and

others, accepted the Christian teaching in its full significance,

even though it undermined their privileged positions. But most

people of the upper classes (though in the depth of their souls

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

act thus, because the essence of that Christian view of life, which

stood ready to be adopted when once they rejected the Church faith,

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

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

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

accustomed. Not, in the depth of their hearts, believing in the

Church teaching,--which had outlived its age and had no longer any

true meaning for them,--and not being strong enough to accept true

Christianity, men of these rich, governing classes--popes, kings,

dukes, and all the great ones of the earth--were left without any

religion, with but the external forms of one, which they supported

as being profitable and even necessary for themselves, since these

forms screened a teaching which justified those privileges which

they made use of. In reality, these people believed in nothing, just

as the Romans of the first centuries of our era believed in nothing.

But at the same time these were the people who had the power and the

wealth, and these were the people who rewarded art and directed it.

[96] Eastern sects well known in early Church history, who rejected

the Church's rendering of Christ's teaching, and were cruelly

persecuted.--TR.

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

grew up an art esteemed, not according to its success in expressing

men's religious feelings, but in proportion to its beauty,--in other

words, according to the enjoyment it gave.

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

they had detected, and incapable of accepting true Christian

teaching, which denounced their whole manner of life, these rich and

powerful people, stranded without any religious conception of life,

involuntarily returned to that pagan view of things which places

life's meaning in personal enjoyment. And then took place among the

upper classes what is called the "Renaissance of science and art,"

and which was really not only a denial of every religion, but also

an assertion that religion is unnecessary.

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

altered or corrected without destroying it altogether. As soon

as doubt arose with regard to the infallibility of the Pope (and

this doubt was then in the minds of all educated people), doubt

inevitably followed as to the truth of tradition. But doubt as to

the truth of tradition is fatal not only to popery and Catholicism,

but also to the whole Church creed, with all its dogmas: the

divinity of Christ, the resurrection, and the Trinity; and it

destroys the authority of the Scriptures, since they were considered

to be inspired only because the tradition of the Church decided it

so.

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

popes and the ecclesiastics, really believed in nothing at all.

In the Church doctrine these people did not believe, for they saw

its insolvency; but neither could they follow Francis of Assisi,

Keltchitsky,[97] and most of the heretics, in acknowledging the

moral, social teaching of Christ, for that teaching undermined their

social position. And so these people remained without any religious

view of life. And, having none, they could have no standard

wherewith to estimate what was good and what was bad art but that of

personal enjoyment. And, having acknowledged their criterion of what

was good to be pleasure, _i.e._ beauty, these people of the upper

classes of European society went back in their comprehension of art

to the gross conception of the primitive Greeks which Plato had

already condemned. And conformably to this understanding of life, a

theory of art was formulated.

[97] Keltchitsky, a Bohemian of the fifteenth century, was the

author of a remarkable book, "The Net of Faith," directed against

Church and State. It is mentioned in Tolstoï's "The Kingdom of God

is Within You."--TR.

CHAPTER VII

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

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

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

view, an æsthetic theory naturally sprang up among those upper

classes justifying such a conception,--a theory according to which

the aim of art is to exhibit beauty. The partizans of this æsthetic

theory, in confirmation of its truth, affirmed that it was no

invention of their own, but that it existed in the nature of things,

and was recognized even by the ancient Greeks. But this assertion

was quite arbitrary, and has no foundation other than the fact that

among the ancient Greeks, in consequence of the low grade of their

moral ideal (as compared with the Christian), their conception of

the good, τὸ ἀγαθόν, was not yet sharply divided from their

conception of the beautiful, τὸ καλόν.

That highest perfection of goodness (not only not identical with

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

discerned by the Jews even in the times of Isaiah, and fully

expressed by Christianity, was quite unknown to the Greeks. They

supposed that the beautiful must necessarily also be the good. It is

true that their foremost thinkers--Socrates, Plato, Aristotle--felt

that goodness may happen not to coincide with beauty. Socrates

expressly subordinated beauty to goodness; Plato, to unite the two

conceptions, spoke of spiritual beauty; while Aristotle demanded

from art that it should have a moral influence on people κάθαρσις).

But, notwithstanding all this, they could not quite dismiss the

notion that beauty and goodness coincide.

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

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

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

goodness which is expressed in Buddhism and in Christianity, and

they got entangled in defining the relation between goodness and

beauty. Plato's reasonings about beauty and goodness are full of

contradictions. And it was just this confusion of ideas that those

Europeans of a later age, who had lost all faith, tried to elevate

into a law. They tried to prove that this union of beauty and

goodness is inherent in the very essence of things; that beauty and

goodness must coincide; and that the word and conception καλο-κἀγαθία

(which had a meaning for Greeks, but has none at all for Christians)

represents the highest ideal of humanity. On this misunderstanding

the new science of æsthetics was built up. And, to justify its

existence, the teachings of the ancients on art were so twisted as

to make it appear that this invented science of æsthetics had

existed among the Greeks.

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

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

justly remarks, "_Pour qui veut y regarder de près, la théorie du

beau et celle de l'art sont tout à fait séparées dans Aristote,

comme elles le sont dans Platon et chez tous leurs successeurs_"

("L'Esthétique d'Aristote et de ses Successeurs," Paris, 1889, p.

28).[98] And indeed the reasoning of the ancients on art not only

does not confirm our science of æsthetics, but rather contradicts

its doctrine of beauty. But nevertheless all the æsthetic

guides, from Schasler to Knight, declare that the science of the

beautiful--æsthetic science--was commenced by the ancients, by

Socrates, Plato, Aristotle; and was continued, they say, partially

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

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

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

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

it revive in Germany, 1750 A.D., in Baumgarten's doctrine.

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

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

and in all their successors.

After Plotinus, says Schasler, fifteen centuries passed away during

which there was not the slightest scientific interest felt for the

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

he, have been lost to æsthetics, and have contributed nothing toward

the erection of the learned edifice of this science.[99]

[99] Die Lücke von fünf Jahrhunderten, welche zwischen den

Kunst-philosophischen Betrachtungen des Plato und Aristoteles und

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

man eigentlich nicht sagen, dass in dieser Zwischenzeit überhaupt

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

völliger Mangel an Zusammenhang zwischen den Kunst-anschauungen

des letztgenannten Philosophen und denen der ersteren existire.

Freilich wurde die von Aristoteles begründete Wissenschaft in Nichts

dadurch gefördert; immerhin aber zeigt sich in jener Zwischenzeit

noch ein gewisses Interesse für ästhetische Fragen. Nach Plotin

aber, die wenigen, ihm in der Zeit nahestehenden Philosophen,

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

Betracht und schliessen sich übrigens in ihrer Anschauungsweise an

ihn an,--vergehen nicht fünf, sondern _fünfzehn Jahrhunderte_, in

denen von irgend einer wissenschaftlichen Interesse für die Welt des

Schönen und der Kunst nichts zu spüren ist.

Diese anderthalbtausend Jahre, innerhalb deren der Weltgeist durch

die mannigfachsten Kämpfe hindurch zu einer völlig neuen Gestaltung

des Lebens sich durcharbeitete, sind für die Aesthetik, hinsichtlich

des weiteren Ausbaus dieser Wissenschaft verloren.--MAX SCHASLER.

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

the science of the beautiful, neither did nor could vanish, because

it never existed. Simply, the Greeks (just like everybody else,

always and everywhere) considered art (like everything else) good

only when it served goodness (as they understood goodness), and

bad when it was in opposition to that goodness. And the Greeks

themselves were so little developed morally, that goodness and

beauty seemed to them to coincide. On that obsolete Greek view

of life was erected the science of æsthetics, invented by men

of the eighteenth century, and especially shaped and mounted in

Baumgarten's theory. The Greeks (as any one may see who will read

Benard's admirable book on Aristotle and his successors and Walter's

work on Plato) never had a science of æsthetics.

Æsthetic theories arose about one hundred and fifty years ago among

the wealthy classes of the Christian European world, and arose

simultaneously among different nations,--German, Italian, Dutch,

French, and English. The founder and organizer of it, who gave it a

scientific, theoretic form, was Baumgarten.

With a characteristically German, external exactitude, pedantry,

and symmetry, he devised and expounded this extraordinary theory.

And, notwithstanding its obvious insolidity, nobody else's theory

so pleased the cultured crowd, or was accepted so readily and with

such an absence of criticism. It so suited the people of the upper

classes, that to this day, notwithstanding its entirely fantastic

character and the arbitrary nature of its assertions, it is repeated

by learned and unlearned as though it were something indubitable and

self-evident.

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

more so, theories _habent sua fata_ according to the condition of

error in which that society is living, among whom and for whom the

theories are invented. If a theory justifies the false position

in which a certain part of a society is living, then, however

unfounded or even obviously false the theory may be, it is accepted,

and becomes an article of faith to that section of society. Such,

for instance, was the celebrated and unfounded theory, expounded

by Malthus, of the tendency of that population of the world to

increase in geometrical progression, but of the means of sustenance

to increase only in arithmetical progression, and of the consequent

over-population of the world; such, also, was the theory (an

outgrowth of the Malthusian) of selection and struggle for existence

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

regards the gradual destruction of small private production by large

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

decree of fate. However unfounded such theories are, however

contrary to all that is known and confessed by humanity, and however

obviously immoral they may be, they are accepted with credulity,

pass uncriticized, and are preached, perchance for centuries, until

the conditions are destroyed which they served to justify, or until

their absurdity has become too evident. To this class belongs this

astonishing theory of the Baumgartenian Trinity,--Goodness, Beauty,

and Truth,--according to which it appears that the very best that

can be done by the art of nations after 1900 years of Christian

teaching, is to choose as the ideal of their life the ideal that

was held by a small, semi-savage, slave-holding people who lived

2000 years ago, who imitated the nude human body extremely well, and

erected buildings pleasant to look at. All these incompatibilities

pass completely unnoticed. Learned people write long, cloudy

treatises on beauty as a member of the æsthetic trinity of Beauty,

Truth, and Goodness: _das Schöne_, _das Wahre_, _das Gute_; _le

Beau_, _le Vrai_, _le Bon_, are repeated, with capital letters, by

philosophers, æstheticians, and artists, by private individuals,

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

pronouncing these sacrosanct words, that they speak of something

quite definite and solid--something on which they can base their

opinions. In reality, these words not only have no definite meaning,

but they hinder us in attaching any definite meaning to existing

art; they are wanted only for the purpose of justifying the false

importance we attribute to an art that transmits every kind of

feeling, if only those feelings afford us pleasure.

CHAPTER VIII

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

transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which

men have risen, how could it be that humanity for a certain rather

considerable period of its existence (from the time people ceased

to believe in Church doctrine down to the present day) should exist

without this important activity, and, instead of it, should put up

with an insignificant artistic activity only affording pleasure?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

speaking of our own art, we feel fully convinced, not only that our

art is true art, but even that it is the best and only true art.

But in reality our art is not only not the only art (as the Bible

once was held to be the only book), but it is not even the art of

the whole of Christendom--only of a small section of that part of

humanity. It was correct to speak of a national Jewish, Grecian, or

Egyptian art, and one may speak of a now-existing Chinese, Japanese,

or Indian art shared in by a whole people. Such art, common to a

whole nation, existed in Russia till Peter the First's time, and

existed in the rest of Europe until the thirteenth or fourteenth

century; but since the upper classes of European society, having

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

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

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

the upper classes of the Christian nations lost faith in Church

Christianity, the art of those upper classes has separated itself

from the art of the rest of the people, and there have been two

arts,--the art of the people and genteel art. And therefore the

answer to the question, How it could occur that humanity lived for

a certain period without real art, replacing it by art which served

enjoyment only? is, that not all humanity, nor even any considerable

portion of it, lived without real art, but only the highest

classes of European Christian society, and even they only for a

comparatively short time,--from the commencement of the Renaissance

down to our own day.

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

inevitably, in the corruption of that class which nourished itself

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

all the false and contradictory judgments on art, and particularly

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

arise from the assertion, which has come into common use and is

accepted as an unquestioned truth, but is yet amazingly and palpably

false, the assertion, namely, that the art of our upper classes[100]

is the whole of art, the true, the only, the universal art. And

although this assertion (which is precisely similar to the assertion

made by religious people of the various Churches who consider that

theirs is the only true religion) is quite arbitrary and obviously

unjust, yet it is calmly repeated by all the people of our circle

with full faith in its infallibility.

[100] The contrast made is between the classes and the masses;

between those who do not and those who do earn their bread by

productive manual labor; the middle classes being taken as an

offshoot of the upper classes.--TR.

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

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

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

in our Christian society hardly one per cent of the people make

use of this art which we speak of as being the _whole_ of art;

the remaining ninety-nine per cent live and die, generation after

generation, crushed by toil, and never tasting this art, which,

moreover, is of such a nature that, if they could get it, they would

not understand anything of it. We, according to the current æsthetic

theory, acknowledge art as one of the highest manifestations of

the Idea, God, Beauty, or as the highest spiritual enjoyment;

furthermore, we hold that all people have equal rights, if not to

material, at any rate to spiritual well-being; and yet ninety-nine

per cent of our European population live and die, generation after

generation, crushed by toil, much of which toil is necessary for the

production of our art which they never use, and we, nevertheless,

calmly assert that the art which we produce is the real, true, only

art--all of art!

To the remark that if our art is the true art every one should have

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

present makes use of existing art, the fault lies, not in the art,

but in the false organization of society; that one can imagine to

oneself, in the future, a state of things in which physical labor

will be partly superseded by machinery, partly lightened by its just

distribution, and that labor for the production of art will be taken

in turns; that there is no need for some people always to sit below

the stage moving the decorations, winding up the machinery, working

at the piano or French horn, and setting type and printing books,

but that the people who do all this work might be engaged only a

few hours per day, and in their leisure time might enjoy all the

blessings of art.

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

they do not themselves believe it. They cannot help knowing that

fine art can arise only on the slavery of the masses of the people,

and can continue only as long as that slavery lasts, and they

cannot help knowing that only under conditions of intense labor

for the workers, can specialists--writers, musicians, dancers, and

actors--arrive at that fine degree of perfection to which they

do attain, or produce their refined works of art; and only under

the same conditions can there be a fine public to esteem such

productions. Free the slaves of capital, and it will be impossible

to produce such refined art.

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

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

art) may be accessible to the whole people, another consideration

presents itself showing that fashionable art cannot be the whole

of art, viz., the fact that it is completely unintelligible to the

people. Formerly men wrote poems in Latin, but now their artistic

productions are as unintelligible to the common folk as if they were

written in Sanscrit. The usual reply to this is, that if the people

do not now understand this art of ours, it only proves that they are

undeveloped, and that this has been so at each fresh step forward

made by art. First it was not understood, but afterward people got

accustomed to it.

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

when everybody is as well educated as we are--the people of the

upper classes--who produce this art," say the defenders of our

art. But this assertion is evidently even more unjust than the

former; for we know that the majority of the productions of the

art of the upper classes, such as various odes, poems, dramas,

cantatas, pastorals, pictures, etc., which delighted the people of

the upper classes when they were produced, never were afterward

either understood or valued by the great masses of mankind, but have

remained, what they were at first, a mere pastime for rich people

of their time, for whom alone they ever were of any importance. It

is also often urged, in proof of the assertion that the people will

some day understand our art, that some productions of so-called

"classical" poetry, music, or painting, which formerly did not

please the masses, do--now that they have been offered to them

from all sides--begin to please these same masses; but this only

shows that the crowd, especially the half-spoilt town crowd, can

easily (its taste having been perverted) be accustomed to any

sort of art. Moreover, this art is not produced by these masses,

nor even chosen by them, but is energetically thrust upon them

in those public places in which art is accessible to the people.

For the great majority of working-people, our art, besides being

inaccessible on account of its costliness, is strange in its very

nature, transmitting, as it does, the feelings of people far removed

from those conditions of laborious life which are natural to the

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

rich classes is incomprehensible, as a pleasure, to a working-man,

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

quite contrary to that which it evokes in an idle and satiated man.

Such feelings as form the chief subjects of present-day art--say,

for instance, honor,[101] patriotism, and amorousness--evoke in a

working-man only bewilderment and contempt, or indignation. So that

even if a possibility were given to the laboring classes, in their

free time, to see, to read, and to hear all that forms the flower of

contemporary art (as is done to some extent, in towns, by means of

picture galleries, popular concerts, and libraries), the working-man

(to the extent to which he is a laborer, and has not begun to pass

into the ranks of those perverted by idleness) would be able to make

nothing of our fine art, and if he did understand it, that which

he understood would not elevate his soul, but would certainly, in

most cases, pervert it. To thoughtful and sincere people there can,

therefore, be no doubt that the art of our upper classes never can

be the art of the whole people. But if art is an important matter, a

spiritual blessing, essential for all men ("like religion," as the

devotees of art are fond of saying), then it should be accessible

to every one. And if, as in our day, it is not accessible to all

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

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

thing.

[101] Dueling is still customary among the higher circles in Russia,

as in other continental countries.--TR.

The dilemma is inevitable, and therefore clever and immoral people

avoid it by denying one side of it, viz., denying that the common

people have a right to art. These people simply and boldly speak

out (what lies at the heart of the matter), and say that the

participators in and utilizers of what, in their esteem, is highly

beautiful art, _i.e._ art furnishing the greatest enjoyment, can

only be "schöne Geister," "the elect," as the romanticists called

them, the "Uebermenschen," as they are called by the followers of

Nietzsche; the remaining vulgar herd, incapable of experiencing

these pleasures, must serve the exalted pleasures of this superior

breed of people. The people who express these views at least do not

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

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

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

engaged on it in our society.

CHAPTER IX

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

effect--that instead of an artistic activity aiming at transmitting

the highest feelings to which humanity has attained,--those flowing

from religious perception,--we have an activity which aims at

affording the greatest enjoyment to a certain class of society. And

of all the immense domain of art, that part has been fenced off, and

is alone called art, which affords enjoyment to the people of this

particular circle.

Apart from the moral effects on European society of such a

selection from the whole sphere of art of what did not deserve

such a valuation, and the acknowledgment of it as important art,

this perversion of art has weakened art itself, and well-nigh

destroyed it. The first great result was that art was deprived of

the infinite, varied, and profound religious subject-matter proper

to it. The second result was that having only a small circle of

people in view, it lost its beauty of form and became affected and

obscure; and the third and chief result was that it ceased to be

either natural or even sincere, and became thoroughly artificial and

brain-spun.

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

because only that is a true work of art which transmits fresh

feelings not before experienced by man. As thought-product is only

then real thought-product when it transmits new conceptions and

thoughts, and does not merely repeat what was known before, so also

an art-product is only then a genuine art-product when it brings a

new feeling (however insignificant) into the current of human life.

This explains why children and youths are so strongly impressed by

those works of art which first transmit to them feelings they had

not before experienced.

The same powerful impression is made on people by feelings which

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

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

upper classes has deprived itself by estimating feelings, not in

conformity with religious perception, but according to the degree

of enjoyment they afford. There is nothing older and more hackneyed

than enjoyment, and there is nothing fresher than the feelings

springing from the religious consciousness of each age. It could

not be otherwise: man's enjoyment has limits established by his

nature, but the movement forward of humanity, that which is voiced

by religious perception, has no limits. At every forward step taken

by humanity--and such steps are taken in consequence of the greater

and greater elucidation of religious perception--men experience new

and fresh feelings. And therefore only on the basis of religious

perception (which shows the highest level of life-comprehension

reached by the men of a certain period) can fresh emotion, never

before felt by man, arise. From the religious perception of the

ancient Greeks flowed the really new, important, and endlessly

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

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

single God,--from that perception flowed all those new and important

emotions expressed by the prophets. It was the same for the poets

of the Middle Ages, who if they believed in a heavenly hierarchy,

believed also in the Catholic commune; and it is the same for a

man of to-day who has grasped the religious conception of true

Christianity,--the brotherhood of man.

The variety of fresh feelings flowing from religious perception

is endless, and they are all new; for religious perception is

nothing else than the first indication of that which is coming into

existence, viz., the new relation of man to the world around him.

But the feelings flowing from the desire for enjoyment are, on

the contrary, not only limited, but were long ago experienced and

expressed. And therefore the lack of belief of the upper classes of

Europe has left them with an art fed on the poorest subject-matter.

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

further increased by the fact that, ceasing to be religious, it

ceased also to be popular, and this again diminished the range of

feelings which it transmitted. For the range of feelings experienced

by the powerful and the rich, who have no experience of labor

for the support of life, is far poorer, more limited, and more

insignificant than the range of feelings natural to working-people.

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

the contrary of this. I remember how Gontchareff, the author,

a very clever and educated man, but a thorough townsman and an

æsthetician, said to me that after Tourgenieff's "Memoirs of a

Sportsman" there was nothing left to write about in peasant life.

It was all used up. The life of working-people seemed to him so

simple that Tourgenieff's peasant stories had used up all there

was to describe. The life of our wealthy people, with their

love-affairs and dissatisfaction with themselves, seemed to him

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

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

is discontented through idleness, and another because people don't

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

end of variety. And this opinion--that the life of working-people is

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

full of interest--is shared by very many people in our society. The

life of a laboring man, with its endlessly varied forms of labor,

and the dangers connected with this labor on sea and underground;

his migrations, the intercourse with his employers, overseers, and

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

his struggles with nature and with wild beasts, the associations

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

the field, the garden, the orchard; his intercourse with wife and

children, not only as with people near and dear to him, but as

with co-workers and helpers in labor, replacing him in time of

need; his concern in all economic questions, not as matters of

display or discussion, but as problems of life for himself and his

family; his pride in self-suppression and service to others, his

pleasures of refreshment; and with all these interests permeated

by a religious attitude toward these occurrences--all this to us,

who have not these interests and possess no religious perception,

seems monotonous in comparison with those small enjoyments and

insignificant cares of our life,--a life, not of labor nor of

production, but of consumption and destruction of that which others

have produced for us. We think the feelings experienced by people of

our day and our class are very important and varied; but in reality

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

very insignificant and simple feelings,--the feeling of pride, the

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

These three feelings, with their outgrowths, form almost the only

subject-matter of the art of the rich classes.

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

exclusive art of the upper classes from universal art, its chief

subject-matter was the feeling of pride. It was so at the time of

the Renaissance and after it, when the chief subject of works of art

was the laudation of the strong,--popes, kings, and dukes: odes and

madrigals were written in their honor, and they were extolled in

cantatas and hymns; their portraits were painted, and their statues

carved, in various adulatory ways. Next, the element of sexual

desire began more and more to enter into art, and (with very few

exceptions, and in novels and dramas almost without exception) it

has now become an essential feature of every art-product of the rich

classes.

The third feeling transmitted by the art of the rich--that of

discontent with life--appeared yet later in modern art. This

feeling, which, at the commencement of the present century,

was expressed only by exceptional men: by Byron, by Leopardi,

and afterward by Heine, has latterly become fashionable, and

is expressed by most ordinary and empty people. Most justly

does the French critic Doumic characterize the works of the new

writers: "_C'est la lassitude de vivre, le mépris de l'époque

présente, le regret d'un autre temps aperçu à travers l'illusion

de l'art, le goût du paradoxe, le besoin de se singulariser, une

aspiration de raffinés vers la simplicité, l'adoration enfantine du

merveilleux, la séduction maladive de la rêverie, l'ébranlement des

nerfs,--surtout l'appel exaspéré de la sensualité_" ("Les Jeunes,"

René Doumic).[102] And, as a matter of fact, of these three feelings

it is sensuality, the lowest (accessible not only to all men, but

even to all animals), which forms the chief subject-matter of works

of art of recent times.

[102] It is the weariness of life, contempt for the present epoch,

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

for paradox, a desire to be singular, a sentimental aspiration

after simplicity, an infantine adoration of the marvelous, a sickly

tendency toward reverie, a shattered condition of nerves, and, above

all, the exasperated demand of sensuality.

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

invariably transmit the feeling of sexual love in its different

forms. Adultery is not only the favorite, but almost the only theme

of all the novels. A performance is not a performance unless, under

some pretense, women appear with naked busts and limbs. Songs and

_romances_--all are expressions of lust, idealized in various

degrees.

A majority of the pictures by French artists represent female

nakedness in various forms. In recent French literature there is

hardly a page or a poem in which nakedness is not described, and

in which, relevantly or irrelevantly, their favorite thought and

word _nu_ is not repeated a couple of times. There is a certain

writer, René de Gourmond, who gets printed, and is considered

talented. To get an idea of the new writers, I read his novel,

"Les Chevaux de Diomède." It is a consecutive and detailed account

of the sexual connections some gentleman had with various women.

Every page contains lust-kindling descriptions. It is the same in

Pierre Lou s' book, "Aphrodite," which met with success; it is the

same in a book I lately chanced upon, Huysmans' "Certains," and,

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

They are all the productions of people suffering from erotic mania.

And these people are evidently convinced that as their whole life,

in consequence of their diseased condition, is concentrated on

amplifying various sexual abominations, therefore the life of all

the world is similarly concentrated. And these people, suffering

from erotic mania, are imitated throughout the whole artistic world

of Europe and America.

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

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

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

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

sexual desire.

CHAPTER X

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

became poor in subject-matter. But besides that, becoming

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

continually more and more involved, affected, and obscure.

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

or the Jewish prophets) composed his work, he naturally strove to

say what he had to say in such a manner that his production should

be intelligible to all men. But when an artist composed for a small

circle of people placed in exceptional conditions, or even for a

single individual and his courtiers,--for popes, cardinals, kings,

dukes, queens, or for a king's mistress,--he naturally only aimed

at influencing these people, who were well known to him, and lived

in exceptional conditions familiar to him. And this was an easier

task, and the artist was involuntarily drawn to express himself

by allusions comprehensible only to the initiated, and obscure to

every one else. In the first place, more could be said in this way;

and secondly, there is (for the initiated) even a certain charm in

the cloudiness of such a manner of expression. This method, which

showed itself both in euphemism and in mythological and historical

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

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

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

mysteriousness, obscurity, and exclusiveness (shutting out the

masses) elevated to the rank of a merit and a condition of poetic

art, but even incorrectness, indefiniteness, and lack of eloquence

are held in esteem.

Théophile Gautier, in his preface to the celebrated "Fleurs du Mal,"

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

eloquence, passion, and truth too strictly copied ("_l'éloquence, la

passion, et la vérité calquée trop exactement_").

And Baudelaire not only expressed this, but maintained his thesis

in his verses, and yet more strikingly in the prose of his "Petits

Poèmes en Prose," the meanings of which have to be guessed like a

rebus, and remain for the most part undiscovered.

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

esteemed great) even wrote an "Art Poétique," in which he advises

this style of composition:--

_De la musique avant toute chose,

Et pour cela préfère l'Impair

Plus vague et plus soluble dans l'air,

Sans rien en lui qui pèse ou qui pose._

_Il faut aussi que tu n'ailles point

Choisir tes mots sans quelque méprise:

Rien de plus cher que la chanson grise

Où l'Indécis au Précis se joint._

And again:--

_De la musique encore et toujours!

Que ton vers soit la chose envolée

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

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

_Que ton vers soit la bonne aventure

Eparse au vent crispé du matin,

Qui va fleurant la menthe et le thym....

Et tout le reste est littérature._[103]

[103]

Music, music before all things

The eccentric still prefer,

Vague in air, and nothing weighty,

Soluble. Yet do not err,

Choosing words; still do it lightly,

Do it too with some contempt;

Dearest is the song that's tipsy,

Clearness, dimness not exempt.

* * * *

Music always, now and ever

Be thy verse the thing that flies

From a soul that's gone, escaping,

Gone to other loves and skies.

Gone to other loves and regions,

Following fortunes that allure,

Mint and thyme and morning crispness....

All the rest's mere literature.

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

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

our having to guess its meaning--that in poetry there should always

be a puzzle:--

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

contemplation des objets, l'image s'envolant des rêveries suscitées

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

entièrement et la montrent; par là ils manquent de mystère; ils

retirent aux esprits cette joie délicieuse de croire qu'ils créent._

Nommer un objet, c'est supprimer les trois quarts de la jouissance

du poème, qui est faite du bonheur de deviner peu à peu: le

suggérer, voilà le rêve. _C'est le par fait usage de ce mystère qui

constitue le symbole: évoquer petit à petit un objet pour montrer un

état d'âme, ou, inversement, choisir un objet et en dégager un état

d'âme, par une sèrie de déchiffrements._

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

littéraire insuffisante, ouvre par hasard un livre ainsi fait et

prétend en jouir, il y a malentendu, il faut remettre les choses à

leur place._ Il doit y avoir toujours énigme en poèsie, _et c'est

le but de la littérature, il n'y en a pas d'autre,--d'évoquer les

objets_.--"Enquête sur l'Évolution Littéraire," Jules Huret, pp. 60,

61.[104]

[104] I think there should be nothing but allusions. The

contemplation of objects, the flying image of reveries evoked by

them, are the song. The Parnassiens state the thing completely, and

show it, and thereby lack mystery; they deprive the mind of that

delicious joy of imagining that it creates. To _name an object is to

take three-quarters from the enjoyment of the poem, which consists

in the happiness of guessing little by little: to suggest, that is

the dream_. It is the perfect use of this mystery that constitutes

the symbol: little by little, to evoke an object in order to show a

state of the soul; or, inversely, to choose an object, and from it

to disengage a state of the soul by a series of decipherings.

.... If a being of mediocre intelligence and insufficient literary

preparation chance to open a book made in this way and pretends to

enjoy it, there is a misunderstanding--things must be returned to

their places. _There should always be an enigma in poetry_, and the

aim of literature--it has no other--is to evoke objects.

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

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

correctly says:--

"_Il serait temps aussi d'en finir avec cette fameuse 'théorie de

l'obscurite' que la nouvelle école a élevée, en effet, à la hauteur

d'un dogme._"--"Les Jeunes, par René Doumic."[105]

[105] It were time also to have done with this famous "theory of

obscurity," which the new school have practically raised to the

height of a dogma.

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

all other countries think and act in the same way: German, and

Scandinavian, and Italian, and Russian, and English. So also do

the artists of the new period in all branches of art: in painting,

in sculpture, and in music. Relying on Nietzsche and Wagner, the

artists of the new age conclude that it is unnecessary for them to

be intelligible to the vulgar crowd; it is enough for them to evoke

poetic emotion in "the finest nurtured," to borrow a phrase from an

English æsthetician.

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

I will quote at least a few examples from the French poets who

have led this movement. The name of these poets is legion. I have

taken French writers, because they, more decidedly than any others,

indicate the new direction of art, and are imitated by most European

writers.

Besides those whose names are already considered famous, such as

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

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

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

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

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

Next we have the "Magi": Joséphin Péladan, Paul Adam, Jules Bois, M.

Papus, and others.

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

Doumic mentions in the book referred to above.

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

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

acknowledged to be a great artist worthy of a monument--Baudelaire.

This is a poem from his celebrated "Fleurs du Mal":--

No. XXIV

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

O vase de tristesse, ô grande taciturne,

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

Et que tu me parais, ornement de mes nuits,

Plus ironiquement accumuler les lieues

Qui séparent mes bras des immensités bleues._

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

Comme après un cadavre un chœur de vermisseaux,

Et je chéris, ô bête implacable et cruelle,

Jusqu'à cette froideur par où tu m'es plus belle!_[106]

[106] For translation, see Appendix IV.

And this is another by the same writer:--

No. XXXVI

_DUELLUM_

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

Ont éclaboussé l'air de lueurs et de sang.

Ces jeux, ces cliquetis du fer sont les vacarmes

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

_Les glaives sont brisés! comme notre jeunesse,

Ma chère! Mais les dents, les ongles acérés,

Vengent bientôt l'épée et la dague traîtresse.

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

_Dans le ravin hanté des chats-pards et des onces

Nos héros, s'étreignant méchamment, ont roulé,

Et leur peau fleurira l'aridité des ronces._

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

Roulons-y sans remords, amazone inhumaine,

Afin d'éterniser l'ardeur de notre haine!_[107]

[107] For translation, see Appendix IV.

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

less comprehensible than these, but not one poem which is plain

and can be understood without a certain effort--an effort seldom

rewarded; for the feelings which the poet transmits are evil and

very low ones. And these feelings are always, and purposely,

expressed by him with eccentricity and lack of clearness. This

premeditated obscurity is especially noticeable in his prose, where

the author could, if he liked, speak plainly.

Take, for instance, the first piece from his "Petits Poèmes":--

_L'ETRANGER_

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

mère, ta sœur, ou ton frère?_

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

_Tes amis?_

_Vous vous servez là d'une parole dont le sens m'est restê

jusqu'à ce jour inconnu._

_Ta patrie?_

_J'ignore sous quelle latitude elle est située._

_La beauté?_

_Je l'aimerais volontiers, desse et immortelle._

_L'or?_

_Je le hais comme vous haïssez Dieu._

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

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

les merveilleux nuages!_[108]

The piece called "La Soupe et les Nuages" is probably intended to

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

This is the piece in question:--

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

fenêtre ouverte de la salle à manger je contemplais les

mouvantes architectures que Dieu fait avec les vapeurs, les

merveilleuses constructions de l'impalpable. Et je me disais,

à travers ma contemplation: "Toutes ces fantasmagories sont

presque aussi belles que les yeux de ma belle bien-aimée, la

petite folle monstrueuse aux yeux verts."_

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

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

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

bien-aimée, qui me disait, "Allez-vous bientôt manger votre

soupe, s.... b.... de marchand de nuages?"_[108]

[108] For translation, see Appendix IV.

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

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

but some of the pieces are absolutely incomprehensible--at least to

me. "Le Galant Tireur" is a piece I was quite unable to understand.

_LE GALANT TIREUR_

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

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

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

pas l'occupation la plus ordinaire et la plus légitime de

chacun?--Et il offrit galamment la main à sa chère, délicieuse

et exécrable femme, à cette mystérieuse femme à laquelle il

doit tant de plaisirs, tant de douleurs, et peut-être aussi une

grande partie de son génie._

_Plusieurs balles frappèrent loin du but proposè, l'une d'elles

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

riait follement, se moquant de la maladresse de son époux,

celui-ci se tourna brusquement vers elle, et lui dit: "Observez

cette poupée, là-bas, à droite, qui porte le nez en l'air et qui

a la mine si hautaine. Eh bien! cher ange_, je me figure que

c'est vous." _Et il ferma les yeux et il lâcha la détente. La

poupée fut nettement décapitée._

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

femme, son inévitable et impitoyable Muse, et lui baisant

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

je vous remercie de mon adresse!"_[109]

[109] For translation, see Appendix IV.

The productions of another celebrity, Verlaine, are not less

affected and unintelligible. This, for instance, is the first poem

in the section called "Ariettes Oubliés."

"_Le vent dans la plaine

Suspend son haleine._"--FAVART.

_C'est l'extase langoureuse,

C'est la fatigue amoureuse,

C'est tous les frissons des bois

Parmi l'étreinte des brises,

C'est, vers les ramures grises,

Le chœur des petites voix._

_O le frêle et frais murmure!

Cela gazouille et susurre,

Cela ressemble au cri doux

Que l'herbe agitée expire....

Tu dirais, sous l'eau qui vire,

Le roulis sourd des cailloux._

_Cette âme qui se lamente

En cette plainte dormante

C'est la nôtre, n'est-ce pas?_

_La mienne, dis, et la tienne,

Dont s'exhale l'humble antienne

Par ce tiède soir, tout bas?_[110]

[110] For translation, see Appendix IV.

What "_chœur des petites voix_"? and what "_cri doux que l'herbe

agitée expire_"? and what it all means, remains altogether

unintelligible to me.

And here is another "Ariette":--

_VIII_

_Dans l'interminable

Ennui de la plaine,

La neige incertaine

Luit comme du sable._

_Le ciel est de cuivre,

Sans lueur aucune.

On croirait voir vivre

Et mourir la lune._

_Comme des nuées

Flottent gris les chênes

Des forêts prochaines

Parmi les buées._

_Le ciel est de cuivre,

Sans lueur aucune.

On croirait voir vivre

Et mourir la lune._

_Corneille poussive

Et vous, les loups maigres,

Par ces bises aigres

Quoi donc vous arrive?_

_Dans l'interminable

Ennui de la plaine,_

_La neige incertaine

Luit comme du sable._[111]

[111] For translation, see Appendix IV.

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

how can snow shine like sand? The whole thing is not merely

unintelligible, but, under pretense of conveying an impression, it

passes off a string of incorrect comparisons and words.

Besides these artificial and obscure poems there are others which

are intelligible, but which make up for it by being altogether

bad, both in form and in subject. Such are all the poems under the

heading "La Sagesse." The chief place in these verses is occupied by

a very poor expression of the most commonplace Roman Catholic and

patriotic sentiments. For instance, one meets with verses such as

this:--

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

Siège de la sagesse et source de pardons,

Mère de France aussi_ de qui nous attendons

Inébranlablement l'honneur de la patrie.[112]

[112]

I do not wish to think any more, except about my mother Mary,

Seat of wisdom and source of pardon,

Also Mother of France, _from whom we

Steadfastly expect the honor of our country_.

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

the amazing celebrity of these two versifiers, Baudelaire and

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

who had Chénier, Musset, Lamartine, and, above all, Hugo,--and

among whom quite recently flourished the so-called Parnassiens:

Leconte de Lisle, Sully-Prudhomme, etc.,--could attribute such

importance to these two versifiers, who were far from skilful in

form and most contemptible and commonplace in subject-matter, is

to me incomprehensible. The conception of life of one of them,

Baudelaire, consisted in elevating gross egotism into a theory, and

replacing morality by a cloudy conception of beauty, and especially

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

for a woman's face painted rather than showing its natural color,

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

real trees and real water.

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

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

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

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

and both overflowed with artificiality, forced originality and

self-assurance. So that in their least bad productions one sees more

of M. Baudelaire or M. Verlaine than of what they were describing.

But these two indifferent versifiers form a school, and lead

hundreds of followers after them.

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

of the society in which these versifiers lived is not a serious,

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

amusements grow wearisome by repetition. And, in order to make

wearisome amusement again tolerable, it is necessary to find some

means to freshen it up. When, at cards, ombre grows stale, whist

is introduced; when whist grows stale, écarté is substituted; when

écarté grows stale, some other novelty is invented, and so on. The

substance of the matter remains the same, only its form is changed.

And so it is with this kind of art. The subject-matter of the art of

the upper classes growing continually more and more limited, it has

come at last to this, that to the artists of these exclusive classes

it seems as if everything has already been said, and that to find

anything new to say is impossible. And therefore, to freshen up this

art, they look out for fresh forms.

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

moreover, with hitherto unused pornographic details, and--the

critics and the public of the upper classes hail them as great

writers.

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

Verlaine only, but of all the Decadents.

For instance, there are poems by Mallarmé and Maeterlinck which have

no meaning, and yet for all that, or perhaps on that very account,

are printed by tens of thousands, not only in various publications,

but even in collections of the best works of the younger poets.

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

_A la nue accablante tu

Basse de basalte et de laves

A même les échos esclaves

Par une trompe sans vertu._

_Quel sépulcral naufrage (tu

Le soir, écume, mais y baves)

Suprême une entre les épaves

Abolit le mât dévêtu._

_Ou cela que furibond faute

De quelque perdition haute

Tout l'abîme vain éployé

Dans le si blanc cheveu qui traîne

Avarement aura noyé

Le flanc enfant d'une sirène._[113]

("Pan," 1895, No. 1.)

[113] This sonnet seems too unintelligible for translation.--TR.

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

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

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

this prose called "Divagations." It is impossible to understand any

of it. And that is evidently what the author intended.

And here is a song by Maeterlinck, another celebrated author of

to-day:--

_Quand il est sorti,

(J'entendis la porte)_

_Quand il est sorti

Elle avait souri ...._

_Mais quand il entra

(J'entendis la lampe)

Mais quand il entra

Une autre était là ...._

_Et j'ai vu la mort,

(J'entendis son âme)

Et j'ai vu la mort

Qui l'attend encore ...._

_On est venu dire,

(Mon enfant j'ai peur)

On est venu dire

Qu'il allait partir ...._

_Ma lampe allumée,

(Mon enfant j'ai peur)

Ma lampe allumée

Me suis approchée ...._

_A la première porte,

(Mon enfant j'ai peur)

A la première porte,

La flamme a tremblé ...._

_A la seconde porte,

(Mon enfant j'ai peur)

A la seconde porte,

La flamme a parlé ...._

_A la troisième porte,

(Mon enfant j'ai peur)

A la troisième porte,

La lumière est morte ...._

_Et s'il revenait un jour

Que faut-il lui dire?_

_Dites-lui qu'on l'attendit

Jusqu'à s'en mourir ...._

_Et s'il demande où vous êtes

Que faut-il répondre?

Donnez-lui mon anneau d'or

Sans rien lui répondre ...._

_Et s'il m'interroge alors

Sur la dernière heure?

Dites lui que j'ai souri

De peur qu'il ne pleure ...._

_Et s'il m'interroge encore

Sans me reconnaître?

Parlez-lui comme une sœur,

Il souffre peut-être ...._

_Et s'il veut savoir pourquoi

La salle est déserte?

Montrez lui la lampe éteinte

Et la porte ouverte ...._[114]

("Pan," 1895, No. 2.)

[114] For translation, see Appendix IV.

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

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

I cite in Appendix II. of the celebrated and esteemed young

poets--Griffin, Verhaeren, Moréas, and Montesquiou. It is important

to do so in order to form a clear conception of the present position

of art, and not to suppose, as many do, that Decadentism is an

accidental and transitory phenomenon. To avoid the reproach of

having selected the worst verses, I have copied out of each volume

the poem which happened to stand on page 28.

All the other productions of these poets are equally unintelligible,

or can only be understood with great difficulty, and then not

fully. All the productions of those hundreds of poets, of whom I

have named a few, are the same in kind. And among the Germans,

Swedes, Norwegians, Italians, and us Russians, similar verses are

printed. And such productions are printed and made up into book

form, if not by the million, then by the hundred thousand (some of

these works sell in tens of thousands). For type-setting, paging,

printing, and binding these books, millions and millions of working

days are spent--not less, I think, than went to build the great

pyramid. And this is not all. The same is going on in all the other

arts: millions and millions of working days are being spent on the

production of equally incomprehensible works in painting, in music,

and in the drama.

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

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

of art, written when visiting the Paris exhibitions in 1894:--

"I was to-day at three exhibitions: the Symbolists', the

Impressionists', and the Neo-Impressionists'. I looked at the

pictures conscientiously and carefully, but again felt the same

stupefaction and ultimate indignation. The first exhibition, that of

Camille Pissarro, was comparatively the most comprehensible, though

the pictures were out of drawing, had no subject, and the colorings

were most improbable. The drawing was so indefinite that you were

sometimes unable to make out which way an arm or a head was turned.

The subject was generally '_effets_'--_Effet de brouillard_, _Effet

du soir_, _Soleil couchant_. There were some pictures with figures,

but without subjects.

"In the coloring, bright blue and bright green predominated. And

each picture had its special color, with which the whole picture

was, as it were, splashed. For instance, in 'A Girl Guarding

Geese,' the special color is _vert de gris_, and dots of it were

splashed about everywhere; on the face, the hair, the hands, and the

clothes. In the same gallery--'Durand Ruel'--were other pictures

by Puvis de Chavannes, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Sisley--who are all

Impressionists. One of them, whose name I could not make out,--it

was something like Redon,--had painted a blue face in profile. On

the whole face there is only this blue tone, with white-of-lead.

Pissarro has a water-color all done in dots. In the foreground is a

cow, entirely painted with various-colored dots. The general color

cannot be distinguished, however much one stands back from, or draws

near to, the picture. From there I went to see the Symbolists. I

looked at them long without asking any one for an explanation,

trying to guess the meaning; but it is beyond human comprehension.

One of the first things to catch my eye was a wooden _haut-relief_,

wretchedly executed, representing a woman (naked) who with both

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

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

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

yellow, and the hair is brown.

"Next--a picture: a yellow sea, on which swims something which is

neither a ship nor a heart; on the horizon is a profile with a halo

and yellow hair, which changes into a sea, in which it is lost.

Some of the painters lay on their colors so thickly that the effect

is something between painting and sculpture. A third exhibit was

even less comprehensible: a man's profile; before him a flame and

black stripes--leeches, as I was afterwards told. At last I asked

a gentleman who was there what it meant, and he explained to me

that the _haut-relief_ was a symbol, and that it represented '_La

Terre_.' The heart swimming in a yellow sea was '_Illusion perdue_,'

and the gentleman with the leeches '_Le Mal_.' There were also some

Impressionist pictures: elementary profiles, holding some sort of

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

quite blurred or else marked out with wide black outlines."

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

defined, and we have Böcklin, Stuck, Klinger, Sasha Schneider, and

others.

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

give us an architect who, for some reason, has not fulfilled his

former high intentions, and who consequently climbs on to the roof

of a house he has erected, and tumbles down head foremost; or an

incomprehensible old woman (who exterminates rats), and who, for an

unintelligible reason, takes a poetic child to the sea, and there

drowns him; or some blind men who, sitting on the seashore, for some

reason always repeat one and the same thing; or a bell of some kind,

which flies into a lake, and there rings.

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

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

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

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

or of one of the new composers. You hear the strange, loud sounds,

and admire the gymnastic exercises performed by his fingers; and you

see that the performer wishes to impress upon you that the sounds

he is producing express various poetic strivings of the soul. You

see his intention, but no feeling whatever is transmitted to you

except weariness. The execution lasts long, or at least it seems

very long to you, because you do not receive any clear impression,

and involuntarily you remember the words of Alphonse Karr, "_Plus

ça va vite, plus ça dure longtemps_."[115] And it occurs to you

that perhaps it is all a mystification; perhaps the performer is

trying you--just throwing his hands and fingers wildly about the

keyboard in the hope that you will fall into the trap and praise

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

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

the perspiring and agitated musician rises from the piano evidently

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

[115] The quicker it goes the longer it lasts.

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

Liszt, Wagner, Berlioz, Brahms, and (newest of all) Richard

Strauss, and the numberless other composers of the new school, who

unceasingly produce opera after opera, symphony after symphony,

piece after piece.

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

unintelligible,--in the sphere of novels and short stories.

Read "Là Bas," by Huysmans, or some of Kipling's short stories, or

"L'Annonciateur," by Villiers de l'Isle Adam in his "Contes Cruels,"

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

adopted by the new writers), but absolutely unintelligible both in

form and in substance. Such, again, is the work by E. Morel, "Terre

Promise," now appearing in the _Revue Blanche_, and such are most of

the new novels. The style is very high-flown, the feelings seem to

be most elevated, but you can't make out what is happening, to whom

it is happening, and where it is happening. And such is the bulk of

the young art of our time.

People who grew up in the first half of this century, admiring

Goethe, Schiller, Musset, Hugo, Dickens, Beethoven, Chopin, Raphael,

da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Delaroche, being unable to make head or

tail of this new art, simply attribute its productions to tasteless

insanity, and wish to ignore them. But such an attitude toward

this new art is quite unjustifiable, because, in the first place,

that art is spreading more and more, and has already conquered for

itself a firm position in society, similar to the one occupied by

the Romanticists in the third decade of this century; and, secondly

and chiefly, because, if it is permissible to judge in this way of

the productions of the latest form of art, called by us Decadent

art, merely because we do not understand it, then remember there are

an enormous number of people,--all the laborers, and many of the

non-laboring folk,--who, in just the same way, do not comprehend

those productions of art which we consider admirable: the verses

of our favorite artists--Goethe, Schiller, and Hugo; the novels of

Dickens, the music of Beethoven and Chopin, the pictures of Raphael,

Michael Angelo, da Vinci, etc.

If I have a right to think that great masses of people do not

understand and do not like what I consider undoubtedly good because

they are not sufficiently developed, then I have no right to deny

that perhaps the reason why I cannot understand and cannot like the

new productions of art is merely that I am still insufficiently

developed to understand them. If I have a right to say that I,

and the majority of people who are in sympathy with me, do not

understand the productions of the new art, simply because there is

nothing in it to understand, and because it is bad art, then, with

just the same right, the still larger majority, the whole laboring

mass, who do not understand what I consider admirable art, can say

that what I reckon as good art is bad art, and there is nothing in

it to understand.

I once saw the injustice of such condemnation of the new art

with especial clearness, when, in my presence, a certain poet,

who writes incomprehensible verses, ridiculed incomprehensible

music with gay self-assurance; and, shortly afterwards, a certain

musician, who composes incomprehensible symphonies, laughed at

incomprehensible poetry with equal self-confidence. I have no right,

and no authority, to condemn the new art on the ground that I (a man

educated in the first half of the century) do not understand it; I

can only say that it is incomprehensible to me. The only advantage

the art I acknowledge has over the Decadent art, lies in the fact

that the art I recognize is comprehensible to a somewhat larger

number of people than the present-day art.

The fact that I am accustomed to a certain exclusive art, and

can understand it, but am unable to understand another still

more exclusive art, does not give me a right to conclude that my

art is the real true art, and that the other one, which I do not

understand, is an unreal, a bad art. I can only conclude that art,

becoming ever more and more exclusive, has become more and more

incomprehensible to an ever increasing number of people, and that,

in this its progress toward greater and greater incomprehensibility

(on one level of which I am standing, with the art familiar to me),

it has reached a point where it is understood by a very small number

of the elect, and the number of these chosen people is ever becoming

smaller and smaller.

As soon as ever the art of the upper classes separated itself from

universal art, a conviction arose that art may be art and yet be

incomprehensible to the masses. And as soon as this position was

admitted, it had inevitably to be admitted also that art may be

intelligible only to the very smallest number of the elect, and,

eventually, to two, or to one, of our nearest friends, or to oneself

alone. Which is practically what is being said by modern artists: "I

create and understand myself, and if any one does not understand me,

so much the worse for him."

The assertion that art may be good art, and at the same time

incomprehensible to a great number of people, is extremely unjust,

and its consequences are ruinous to art itself; but at the same time

it is so common and has so eaten into our conceptions, that it is

impossible sufficiently to elucidate all the absurdity of it.

Nothing is more common than to hear it said of reputed works of art,

that they are very good but very difficult to understand. We are

quite used to such assertions, and yet to say that a work of art

is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same

as saying of some kind of food that it is very good, but that most

people can't eat it. The majority of men may not like rotten cheese

or putrefying grouse--dishes esteemed by people with perverted

tastes; but bread and fruit are only good when they please the

majority of men. And it is the same with art. Perverted art may not

please the majority of men, but good art always pleases every one.

It is said that the very best works of art are such that they cannot

be understood by the mass, but are accessible only to the elect who

are prepared to understand these great works. But if the majority of

men do not understand, the knowledge necessary to enable them to

understand should be taught and explained to them. But it turns out

that there is no such knowledge, that the works cannot be explained,

and that those who say the majority do not understand good works of

art, still do not explain those works, but only tell us that, in

order to understand them, one must read, and see, and hear these

same works over and over again. But this is not to explain, it is

only to habituate! And people may habituate themselves to anything,

even to the very worst things. As people may habituate themselves to

bad food, to spirits, tobacco, and opium, just in the same way they

may habituate themselves to bad art--and that is exactly what is

being done.

Moreover, it cannot be said that the majority of people lack the

taste to esteem the highest works of art. The majority always

have understood, and still understand, what we also recognize as

being the very best art: the epic of Genesis, the gospel parables,

folk-legends, fairy-tales, and folk-songs, are understood by all.

How can it be that the majority has suddenly lost its capacity to

understand what is high in our art?

Of a speech it may be said that it is admirable, but

incomprehensible to those who do not know the language in which it

is delivered. A speech delivered in Chinese may be excellent, and

may yet remain incomprehensible to me if I do not know Chinese; but

what distinguishes a work of art from all other mental activity

is just the fact that its language is understood by all, and that

it infects all without distinction. The tears and laughter of a

Chinese infect me just as the laughter and tears of a Russian;

and it is the same with painting and music and poetry, when it is

translated into a language I understand. The songs of a Kirghiz or

of a Japanese touch me, though in a lesser degree than they touch

a Kirghiz or a Japanese. I am also touched by Japanese painting,

Indian architecture, and Arabian stories. If I am but little

touched by a Japanese song and a Chinese novel, it is not that I do

not understand these productions, but that I know and am accustomed

to higher works of art. It is not because their art is above me.

Great works of art are only great because they are accessible

and comprehensible to every one. The story of Joseph, translated

into the Chinese language, touches a Chinese. The story of Sakya

Muni touches us. And there are, and must be, buildings, pictures,

statues, and music of similar power. So that, if art fails to move

men, it cannot be said that this is due to the spectators' or

hearers' lack of understanding; but the conclusion to be drawn may

and should be, that such art is either bad art, or is not art at all.

Art is differentiated from activity of the understanding, which

demands preparation and a certain sequence of knowledge (so that one

cannot learn trigonometry before knowing geometry), by the fact that

it acts on people independently of their state of development and

education, that the charm of a picture, sounds, or of forms, infects

any man whatever his plane of development.

The business of art lies just in this,--to make that understood and

felt which, in the form of an argument, might be incomprehensible

and inaccessible. Usually it seems to the recipient of a truly

artistic impression that he knew the thing before but had been

unable to express it.

And such has always been the nature of good, supreme art; the

"Iliad," the "Odyssey," the stories of Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph,

the Hebrew prophets, the psalms, the gospel parables, the story

of Sakya Muni, and the hymns of the Vedas: all transmit very

elevated feelings, and are nevertheless quite comprehensible now

to us, educated or uneducated, as they were comprehensible to

the men of those times, long ago, who were even less educated

than our laborers. People talk about incomprehensibility; but if

art is the transmission of feelings flowing from man's religious

perception, how can a feeling be incomprehensible which is founded

on religion, _i.e._ on man's relation to God? Such art should be,

and has actually always been, comprehensible to everybody, because

every man's relation to God is one and the same. And therefore

the churches and the images in them were always comprehensible to

every one. The hindrance to understanding the best and highest

feelings (as is said in the gospel) does not at all lie in

deficiency of development or learning, but, on the contrary, in

false development and false learning. A good and lofty work of art

may be incomprehensible, but not to simple, unperverted peasant

laborers (all that is highest is understood by them)--it may be,

and often is, unintelligible to erudite, perverted people destitute

of religion. And this continually occurs in our society, in which

the highest feelings are simply not understood. For instance, I

know people who consider themselves most refined, and who say that

they do not understand the poetry of love to one's neighbor, of

self-sacrifice, or of chastity.

So that good, great, universal, religious art may be

incomprehensible to a small circle of spoilt people, but certainly

not to any large number of plain men.

Art cannot be incomprehensible to the great masses only because it

is very good--as artists of our day are fond of telling us. Rather

we are bound to conclude that this art is unintelligible to the

great masses only because it is very bad art, or even is not art at

all. So that the favorite argument (naïvely accepted by the cultured

crowd), that in order to feel art one has first to understand it

(which really only means habituate oneself to it), is the truest

indication that what we are asked to understand by such a method is

either very bad, exclusive art, or is not art at all.

People say that works of art do not please the people because they

are incapable of understanding them. But if the aim of works of art

is to infect people with the emotion the artist has experienced, how

can one talk about not understanding?

A man of the people reads a book, sees a picture, hears a play or

a symphony, and is touched by no feeling. He is told that this is

because he cannot understand. People promise to let a man see a

certain show; he enters and sees nothing. He is told that this is

because his sight is not prepared for this show. But the man well

knows that he sees quite well, and if he does not see what people

promised to show him, he only concludes (as is quite just) that

those who undertook to show him the spectacle have not fulfilled

their engagement. And it is perfectly just for a man who does feel

the influence of some works of art to come to this conclusion

concerning artists who do not, by their works, evoke feeling in him.

To say that the reason a man is not touched by my art is because

he is still too stupid, besides being very self-conceited and also

rude, is to reverse the rôles, and for the sick to send the hale to

bed.

Voltaire said that "_Tous les genres sont bons, hors le genre

ennuyeux_;"[116] but with even more right one may say of art that

_Tous les genres sont bons, hors celui qu'on ne comprend pas, or

qui ne produit pas son effet_,[117] for of what value is an article

which fails to do that for which it was intended?

[116] All styles are good except the wearisome style.

[117] All styles are good except that which is not understood, or

which fails to produce its effect.

Mark this above all: if only it be admitted that art may be art

and yet be unintelligible to any one of sound mind, there is no

reason why any circle of perverted people should not compose works

tickling their own perverted feelings and comprehensible to no one

but themselves, and call it "art," as is actually being done by the

so-called Decadents.

The direction art has taken may be compared to placing on a large

circle other circles, smaller and smaller, until a cone is formed,

the apex of which is no longer a circle at all. That is what has

happened to the art of our times.

CHAPTER XI

Becoming ever poorer and poorer in subject-matter, and more and

more unintelligible in form, the art of the upper classes, in its

latest productions, has even lost all the characteristics of art,

and has been replaced by imitations of art. Not only has upper-class

art, in consequence of its separation from universal art, become

poor in subject-matter, and bad in form, _i.e._ ever more and more

unintelligible, it has, in course of time, ceased even to be art at

all, and has been replaced by counterfeits.

This has resulted from the following causes: Universal art arises

only when some one of the people, having experienced a strong

emotion, feels the necessity of transmitting it to others. The

art of the rich classes, on the other hand, arises not from the

artist's inner impulse, but chiefly because people of the upper

classes demand amusement and pay well for it. They demand from art

the transmission of feelings that please them, and this demand

artists try to meet. But it is a very difficult task; for people of

the wealthy classes, spending their lives in idleness and luxury,

desire to be continually diverted by art; and art, even the lowest,

cannot be produced at will, but has to generate spontaneously in

the artist's inner self. And therefore, to satisfy the demands of

people of the upper classes, artists have had to devise methods of

producing imitations of art. And such methods have been devised.

These methods are those of (1) borrowing, (2) imitating, (3)

striking (effects), and (4) interesting.

The first method consists in borrowing whole subjects, or merely

separate features, from former works recognized by every one as

being poetical, and in so re-shaping them, with sundry additions,

that they should have an appearance of novelty.

Such works, evoking in people of a certain class memories of

artistic feelings formerly experienced, produce an impression

similar to art, and, provided only that they conform to other

needful conditions, they pass for art among those who seek for

pleasure from art. Subjects borrowed from previous works of art are

usually called poetical subjects. Objects and people thus borrowed

are called poetical objects and people. Thus, in our circle, all

sorts of legends, sagas, and ancient traditions are considered

poetical subjects. Among poetical people and objects we reckon

maidens, warriors, shepherds, hermits, angels, devils of all sorts,

moonlight, thunder, mountains, the sea, precipices, flowers, long

hair, lions, lambs, doves, and nightingales. In general, all those

objects are considered poetical which have been most frequently used

by former artists in their productions.

Some forty years ago a stupid but highly cultured--_ayant beaucoup

d'acquis_--lady (since deceased) asked me to listen to a novel

written by herself. It began with a heroine who, in a poetic white

dress, and with poetically flowing hair, was reading poetry near

some water in a poetic wood. The scene was in Russia, but suddenly

from behind the bushes the hero appears, wearing a hat with a

feather _à la Guillaume Tell_ (the book specially mentioned this)

and accompanied by two poetical white dogs. The authoress deemed

all this highly poetical, and it might have passed muster if only

it had not been necessary for the hero to speak. But as soon as the

gentleman in the hat _à la Guillaume Tell_ began to converse with

the maiden in the white dress, it became obvious that the authoress

had nothing to say, but had merely been moved by poetic memories

of other works, and imagined that by ringing the changes on those

memories she could produce an artistic impression. But an artistic

impression, _i.e._ infection, is only received when an author has,

in the manner peculiar to himself, experienced the feeling which

he transmits, and not when he passes on another man's feeling

previously transmitted to him. Such poetry from poetry cannot infect

people, it can only simulate a work of art, and even that only to

people of perverted æsthetic taste. The lady in question being very

stupid and devoid of talent, it was at once apparent how the case

stood; but when such borrowing is resorted to by people who are

erudite and talented and have cultivated the technique of their art,

we get those borrowings from the Greek, the antique, the Christian

or mythological world which have become so numerous, and which,

particularly in our day, continue to increase and multiply, and are

accepted by the public as works of art, if only the borrowings are

well mounted by means of the technique of the particular art to

which they belong.

As a characteristic example of such counterfeits of art in the realm

of poetry, take Rostand's "Princesse Lointaine," in which there is

not a spark of art, but which seems very poetical to many people,

and probably also to its author.

The second method of imparting a semblance of art is that which

I have called imitating. The essence of this method consists in

supplying details accompanying the thing described or depicted.

In literary art this method consists in describing, in the

minutest details, the external appearance, the faces, the clothes,

the gestures, the tones, and the habitations of the characters

represented, with all the occurrences met with in life. For

instance, in novels and stories, when one of the characters speaks,

we are told in what voice he spoke, and what he was doing at the

time. And the things said are not given so that they should have as

much sense as possible, but, as they are in life, disconnectedly,

and with interruptions and omissions. In dramatic art, besides

such imitation of real speech, this method consists in having all

the accessories and all the people just like those in real life.

In painting, this method assimilates painting to photography, and

destroys the difference between them. And, strange to say, this

method is used also in music: music tries to imitate, not only by

its rhythm but also by its very sounds, the sounds which in real

life accompany the thing it wishes to represent.