as the present is the lesson of detachment, almost of indifference.
An artist must trust his material. The stuff in hand is serious,
delicate, self-determined and non-emotional. The organic, inner logic
of the thing done may reach points of complexity, points of climax,
which--except in the outcome--are incomprehensible. They must not be
appreciated in the interim, but only obeyed. In the final review, and
at a distance they are to justify themselves, but not in the making.
The question of whether or not an artist has succeeded, whether or
not he has made something that speaks, is one which it is generally
impossible for the artist himself to answer. He cares too much, and
he stands too near the material. Sometimes a man having immense
experience, and having acquired that sort of indifference which grows
out of a supernal success, can make a just estimate of one of his
own later works; but, in general, the artist must stand mum and bite
his nails if he wishes to find out what there was in him. Let him be
perfectly assured that the truth of the matter will get to him, if
he will only do nothing except desire the truth. Someone will say
something not intended for his ears, which will reveal the whole
matter. This is the hard, heroic course which wisdom dictates to all
artists, except, perhaps, to those very gifted persons who by their
endowment are already among the elect. Most men are obliged to mine in
their endowment and draw it to the surface through years of hard labor.
The pretty good artist has need of the fortitude and self-effacement of
a saint.
Thus much of the creative side of art. Our conceptions of the subject,
however, are colored by the emotional view proper to the grand public.
The receptive function, the enjoying function, the æsthetic sense,
as it is often called, is very generally supposed to be art itself.
Almost all writing on art has been done by men who knew only the
æsthetic side of the matter. Now the enjoyment of art is a very common,
very conscious, very intense experience; and yet it is not a very
serious affair compared to the creation of art. It does not affect the
recipient to any such depths of his nature, as one might expect it
to do, from the vividness of his feelings during the experience. It
leaves in him, as a general rule, no knowledge about the art itself, no
understanding of the rod he has been lashed with, no suspicion of the
intellectual nature of the vehicle.
Æsthetic appreciation gives a man the illusion that he is being
spiritually made over and enlarged; and yet that appreciation is
capable of an absolute divorcement from the intellect. It is--to take
the extreme case--very strong in sleep. Dr. Holmes has recorded, in
his own felicitous way, the experience, common to sensitive people, of
writing down a dream-poem at midnight and discovering in its place at
dawn a few lines of incomprehensible rubbish. The æsthetic sense is
easily intensified by stimulants, by tea, coffee and tobacco. Anything
that excites the heart or stimulates the emotions--praise, happiness,
success, change of scene, any relief from mental tension--is apt to
give a man new, and sudden entry into unexplored worlds of art. He
thinks himself a new man. And yet this man stands, perhaps, in as
great danger of loss as he does in hope of gain. It is not through
receptivity, but through activity, that men are really changed.
How trivial men become who live solely in the appreciation of the fine
arts all of us know. The American who lives abroad is an intensely
receptive being; but he has divorced himself from the struggles of
a normal social existence, from communal life and duty. His love of
the fine arts does not save him, but seems rather to enfeeble him the
more. No European can effect a similar divorce in his own life; for
the European is living at home: his social and political obligations
make a man of him. Besides this, the fine arts are an old story to
the European; and he does not go mad about them, as the American
Indian goes mad about whiskey. The European is immune to the æsthetic;
and neither a fine wainscot nor a beautiful doorknob can have the
same power over him that it may have over that zealous, high-strung,
new discoverer of the old world, the American who begins to realize
what good decoration really means. Let anyone who thinks that this
impoverishment is a purely American disease read the description
of the Stanhope family in Trollope’s “Barchester Towers.” Here is
the beefiest kind of a British county family, reduced to anemia
by residence in Italy. Prolonged exile, and mere receptivity have
withdrawn the energy from the organs of these people.
It will be noticed that in those cases where art is an enfeebling
influence there is always a hiatus between the public and the artist.
Let us consider the case of the folk-song as sung by the peasants of
Suabia. Such songs are written by one peasant and sung by the next.
The author and the singer and the hearer are all one. To the audience
the song is life and emotion, social intercourse, love, friendship,
the landscape, philosophy, prayer, natural happiness. You can hardly
differentiate, in this case, between the artist and the public: both
are unconscious. But if you take that song and sing it in a London
drawing-room, or on a ranch in Colorado, it will perform a very
different function in the audience. To these foreigners the song is a
pleasing opiate. They hold it like a warm animal to their breast. The
Oxford pundit who raves over a Greek coin, the cold-hearted business
magnate in New York who enjoys the opera--these people live in so
remote a relation to the human causes, impulses, and conditions behind
the arts they love, that their enjoyment is exotic: it is more purely
receptive, more remote from personal experience than the enjoyment of
any living and native art could be.
A certain sickness follows the indulgence in art that is remote from
the admirer’s environment. This slightly morbid side of æstheticism
has been caricatured to the heart’s content. The dilettante and the
critic are well-known types. To a superficial view these men seem like
enemies of the living artist. They are always standing ready to eat
up his works as soon as they shall be born. Goethe thought criticism
and satire the two natural enemies to all liberty, and to all poetry
proceeding from a spontaneous impulse. And surely the massive authority
of learned critics who know everything, and are yet ignorant of the
first principles of their subject, hangs like an avalanche above the
head of every young creator. We cannot, however, to-day proceed as if
we were early Greeks, stepping forward in roseate unconsciousness. The
critics and their hurdy-gurdy are a part of our life, and have been so
for centuries.
The brighter side of the matter is that the æsthetic person, even
when morbid, is often engaged in introducing new and valuable arts to
his countrymen. The dilettante who brings home china and violins and
Japanese bronzes is the precursor of the domestic artist.
We must now return to the two functions of art, and endeavor to bring
them into some sort of common focus. We cannot hope to understand or to
reconcile them perfectly. We cannot hope to know what art is. Art is
life, and any expression of art becomes a new form of life. A merchant
in Boston in 1850 travels in Italy, and brings home a Murillo. Some
years later a highly educated dilettante discovers the Murillo in
Boston, and writes his dithyrambs about it. Some years later still,
there arises a young painter, who perhaps does not paint very well, and
yet he is nearer to the mystery than the other two. All these men are
parts of the same movement, and are essential to each other; though
the contempt they feel for each other might conceal this from us, as
it does from themselves. All of them are held together by an invisible
attraction and are servants of the same force. This force it is which,
in the future, may weld together a few enthusiasts into a sort of
secret society, or may even single out some one man, and see and speak
through him. Then, as the force passes, it will leave itself reflected
in pictures, which remain as the record of its flight.
Transcriber’s Note:
Hyphenation has been retained as published in the original publication.
Page 7
free-masonary of artistic craft _changed to_
freemasonry of artistic craft
Page 9
of old metapor _changed to_
of old metaphor
Page 15
prevailed under the the old monarchy _changed to_
prevailed under the old monarchy
Page 22
the whole race, we fear, way relapse _changed to_
the whole race, we fear, may relapse
Page 27
university training, Nothing else _changed to_
university training. Nothing else
Page 33
in the community that the department _changed to_
in the community than the department
Page 59
canot escape them _changed to_
cannot escape them
Page 65
stated and solved those proplems _changed to_
stated and solved those problems
Page 89
DR. HOWE _changed to_
DR. HOWE.
Page 101
was immediately propared for him _changed to_
was immediately prepared for him
Page 112
New paragraph added before
“The distress of the mother was now painful
Page 115
feature of her contenance _changed to_
feature of her countenance
Page 123
“We must have done with expediency; _changed to_
We must have done with expediency;
Page 125
Tow Sawyer _changed to_
Tom Sawyer
Page 143
only deeds of physical prowness _changed to_
only deeds of physical prowess
Page 169
But noboby seems to have laughed _changed to_
But nobody seems to have laughed
Page 219
early school may he imagined _changed to_
early school may be imagined
Page 225
To my mind the insolation of _changed to_
To my mind the isolation of
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institutions a boy’s school is _changed to_
institutions a boys’ school is