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Title: What Is Art?

Author: graf Leo Tolstoy

Translator: Aylmer Maude

Release date: March 23, 2021 [eBook #64908]

Language: English

Credits: Tim Lindell, David King, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Archives.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT IS ART? ***




                              WHAT IS ART?




                              WHAT IS ART?

                                   BY
                              LEO TOLSTOY

                   TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL MS.,
                        WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
                              AYLMER MAUDE

                                NEW YORK
                        FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
                                  1904




                              Introduction


What thoughtful man has not been perplexed by problems relating to art?

An estimable and charming Russian lady I knew, felt the charm of the
music and ritual of the services of the Russo-Greek Church so strongly
that she wished the peasants, in whom she was interested, to retain
their blind faith, though she herself disbelieved the church doctrines.
“Their lives are so poor and bare—they have so little art, so little
poetry and colour in their lives—let them at least enjoy what they have;
it would be cruel to undeceive them,” said she.

A false and antiquated view of life is supported by means of art, and is
inseparably linked to some manifestations of art which we enjoy and
prize. If the false view of life be destroyed this art will cease to
appear valuable. Is it best to screen the error for the sake of
preserving the art? Or should the art be sacrificed for the sake of
truthfulness?

Again and again in history a dominant church has utilised art to
maintain its sway over men. Reformers (early Christians, Mohammedans,
Puritans, and others) have perceived that art bound people to the old
faith, and they were angry with art. They diligently chipped the noses
from statues and images, and were wroth with ceremonies, decorations,
stained-glass windows, and processions. They were even ready to banish
art altogether, for, besides the superstitions it upheld, they saw that
it depraved and perverted men by dramas, drinking-songs, novels,
pictures, and dances, of a kind that awakened man’s lower nature. Yet
art always reasserted her sway, and to-day we are told by many that art
has nothing to do with morality—that “art should be followed for art’s
sake.”

I went one day, with a lady artist, to the Bodkin Art Gallery in Moscow.
In one of the rooms, on a table, lay a book of coloured pictures, issued
in Paris and supplied, I believe, to private subscribers only. The
pictures were admirably executed, but represented scenes in the private
cabinets of a restaurant. Sexual indulgence was the chief subject of
each picture. Women extravagantly dressed and partly undressed, women
exposing their legs and breasts to men in evening dress; men and women
taking liberties with each other, or dancing the “can-can,” etc., etc.
My companion the artist, a maiden lady of irreproachable conduct and
reputation, began deliberately to look at these pictures. I could not
let my attention dwell on them without ill effects. Such things had a
certain attraction for me, and tended to make me restless and nervous. I
ventured to suggest that the subject-matter of the pictures was
objectionable. But my companion (who prided herself on being an artist)
remarked with conscious superiority, that from an artist’s point of view
the _subject_ was of no consequence. The pictures being very well
executed were artistic, and therefore worthy of attention and study.
Morality had nothing to do with art.

Here again is a problem. One remembers Plato’s advice not to let our
thoughts run upon women, for if we do we shall think clearly about
nothing else, and one knows that to neglect this advice is to lose
tranquillity of mind; but then one does not wish to be considered
narrow, ascetic, or inartistic, nor to lose artistic pleasures which
those around us esteem so highly.

Again, the newspapers last year printed proposals to construct a Wagner
Opera House, to cost, if I recollect rightly, £100,000—about as much as
a hundred labourers may earn by fifteen or twenty years’ hard work. The
writers thought it would be a good thing if such an Opera House were
erected and endowed. But I had a talk lately with a man who, till his
health failed him, had worked as a builder in London. He told me that
when he was younger he had been very fond of theatre-going, but, later,
when he thought things over and considered that in almost every number
of his weekly paper he read of cases of people whose death was hastened
by lack of good food, he felt it was not right that so much labour
should be spent on theatres.

In reply to this view it is urged that food for the mind is as important
as food for the body. The labouring classes work to produce food and
necessaries for themselves and for the cultured, while some of the
cultured class produce plays and operas. It is a division of labour. But
this again invites the rejoinder that, sure enough, the labourers
produce food for themselves and also food that the cultured class accept
and consume, but that the artists seem too often to produce their
spiritual food for the cultured only—at any rate that a singularly small
share seems to reach the country labourers who work to supply the bodily
food! Even were the “division of labour” shown to be a fair one, the
“division of products” seems remarkably one-sided.

Once again: how is it that often when a new work is produced, neither
the critics, the artists, the publishers, nor the public, seem to know
whether it is valuable or worthless? Some of the most famous books in
English literature could hardly find a publisher, or were savagely
derided by leading critics; while other works once acclaimed as
masterpieces are now laughed at or utterly forgotten. A play which
nobody now reads was once passed off as a newly-discovered masterpiece
of Shakespear’s, and was produced at a leading London theatre. Are the
critics playing blind-man’s buff? Are they relying on each other? Is
each following his own whim and fancy? Or do they possess a criterion
which they never reveal to those outside the profession?

Such are a few of the many problems relating to art which present
themselves to us all, and it is the purpose of this book to enable us to
reach such a comprehension of art, and of the position art should occupy
in our lives, as will enable us to answer such questions.

The task is one of enormous difficulty. Under the cloak of “art,” so
much selfish amusement and self-indulgence tries to justify itself, and
so many mercenary interests are concerned in preventing the light from
shining in upon the subject, that the clamour raised by this book can
only be compared to that raised by the silversmiths of Ephesus when they
shouted, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” for about the space of two
hours.

Elaborate theories blocked the path with subtle sophistries or ponderous
pseudo-erudition. Merely to master these, and expose them, was by itself
a colossal labour, but necessary in order to clear the road for a
statement of any fresh view. To have accomplished this work of exposure
in a few chapters is a wonderful achievement. To have done it without
making the book intolerably dry is more wonderful still. In Chapter III.
(where a rapid summary of some sixty æsthetic writers is given) even
Tolstoy’s powers fail to make the subject interesting, except to the
specialist, and he has to plead with his readers “not to be overcome by
dulness, but to read these extracts through.”

Among the writers mentioned, English readers miss the names of John
Ruskin and William Morris, especially as so much that Tolstoy says, is
in accord with their views.

Of Ruskin, Tolstoy has a very high opinion. I have heard him say, “I
don’t know why you English make such a fuss about Gladstone—you have a
much greater man in Ruskin.” As a stylist, too, Tolstoy speaks of him
with high commendation. Ruskin, however, though he has written on art
with profound insight, and has said many things with which Tolstoy fully
agrees, has, I think, nowhere so systematised and summarised his view
that it can be readily quoted in the concise way which has enabled
Tolstoy to indicate his points of essential agreement with Home, Véron,
and Kant. Even the attempt to summarise Kant’s æsthetic philosophy in a
dozen lines will hardly be of much service except to readers who have
already some acquaintance with the subject. For those to whom the
difference between “subjective” and “objective” perceptions is fresh, a
dozen pages would be none too much. And to summarise Ruskin would be
perhaps more difficult than to condense Kant.

As to William Morris, we are reminded of his dictum that art is the
workman’s expression of joy in his work, by Tolstoy’s “As soon as the
author is not producing art for his own satisfaction,—does not himself
feel what he wishes to express,—a resistance immediately springs up” (p.
154); and again, “In such transmission to others of the feelings that
have arisen in him, he (the artist) will find his happiness” (p. 195).
Tolstoy sweeps over a far wider range of thought, but he and Morris are
not opposed. Morris was emphasising part of what Tolstoy is implying.

But to return to the difficulties of Tolstoy’s task. There is one, not
yet mentioned, lurking in the hearts of most of us. We have enjoyed
works of “art.” We have been interested by the information conveyed in a
novel, or we have been thrilled by an unexpected “effect”; have admired
the exactitude with which real life has been reproduced, or have had our
feelings touched by allusions to, or reproductions of, works—old German
legends, Greek myths, or Hebrew poetry—which moved us long ago, as they
moved generations before us. And we thought all this was “art.” Not
clearly understanding what art is, and wherein its importance lies, we
were not only attached to these things, but attributed importance to
them, calling them “artistic” and “beautiful,” without well knowing what
we meant by those words.

But here is a book that obliges us to clear our minds. It challenges us
to define “art” and “beauty,” and to say why we consider these things,
that pleased us, to be specially important. And as to beauty, we find
that the definition given by æsthetic writers amounts merely to this,
that “Beauty is a kind of pleasure received by us, not having personal
advantage for its object.” But it follows from this, that “beauty” is a
matter of taste, differing among different people, and to attach special
importance to what pleases _me_ (and others who have had the same sort
of training that I have had) is merely to repeat the old, old mistake
which so divides human society; it is like declaring that my race is the
best race, my nation the best nation, my church the best church, and my
family the “best” family. It indicates ignorance and selfishness.

But “truth angers those whom it does not convince;”—people do not wish
to understand these things. It seems, at first, as though Tolstoy were
obliging us to sacrifice something valuable. We do not realise that we
are being helped to select the best art, but we do feel that we are
being deprived of our sense of satisfaction in Rudyard Kipling.

Both the magnitude and the difficulty of the task were therefore very
great, but they have been surmounted in a marvellous manner. Of the
effect this book has had on me personally, I can only say that “whereas
I was blind, now I see.” Though sensitive to some forms of art, I was,
when I took it up, much in the dark on questions of æsthetic philosophy;
when I had done with it, I had grasped the main solution of the problem
so clearly that—though I waded through nearly all that the critics and
reviewers had to say about the book—I never again became perplexed upon
the central issues.

Tolstoy was indeed peculiarly qualified for the task he has
accomplished. It was after many years of work as a writer of fiction,
and when he was already standing in the very foremost rank of European
novelists, that he found himself compelled to face, in deadly earnest,
the deepest problems of human life. He not only could not go on writing
books, but he felt he could not live, unless he found clear guidance, so
that he might walk sure-footedly and know the purpose and meaning of his
life. Not as a mere question of speculative curiosity, but as a matter
of vital necessity, he devoted years to rediscover the truths which
underlie all religion.

To fit him for this task he possessed great knowledge of men and books,
a wide experience of life, a knowledge of languages, and a freedom from
bondage to any authority but that of reason and conscience. He was
pinned to no Thirty-nine Articles, and was in receipt of no retaining
fee which he was not prepared to sacrifice. Another gift, rare among men
of his position, was his wonderful sincerity and (due, I think, to that
sincerity) an amazing power of looking at the phenomena of our complex
and artificial life with the eyes of a little child; going straight to
the real, obvious facts of the case, and brushing aside the sophistries,
the conventionalities, and the “authorities” by which they are obscured.

He commenced the task when he was about fifty years of age, and since
then (_i.e._, during the last twenty years) he has produced nine
philosophical or scientific works of first-rate importance, besides a
great many stories and short articles. These works, in chronological
order, are—

    _My Confession._

    _A Criticism of Dogmatic Theology_, which has never been translated.

    _The Four Gospels Harmonised and Translated_, of which only two
    parts, out of three, have as yet appeared in English.

    _What I Believe_, sometimes called _My Religion_.

    _The Gospel in Brief._

    _What are we to do then?_ sometimes called in English _What to do?_

    _On Life_, which is not an easy work in the original, and has not
    been satisfactorily translated.[1]

    _The Kingdom of God is within you_; and

    _The Christian Teaching_, which appeared after _What is Art?_ though
    it was written before it.

To these scientific works I am inclined to add _The Kreutzer Sonata_,
with the _Sequel_ or _Postscript_ explaining its purpose; for though
_The Kreutzer Sonata_ is a story, the understanding of sexual problems,
dealt with explicitly in the _Sequel_, is an integral part of that
comprehension of life which causes Tolstoy to admire Christ, Buddha, or
Francis of Assisi.

These ten works treat of the meaning of our life; of the problems raised
by the fact that we approve of some things and disapprove of others, and
find ourselves deciding which of two courses to pursue.

Religion, Government, Property, Sex, War, and all the relations in which
man stands to man, to his own consciousness, and to the ultimate source
(which we call God) from whence that consciousness proceeds—are examined
with the utmost frankness.

And all this time the problems of Art: What is Art? What importance is
due to it? How is it related to the rest of life?—were working in his
mind. He was a great artist, often upbraided for having abandoned his
art. He, of all men, was bound to clear his thoughts on this perplexing
subject, and to express them. His whole philosophy of life—the
“religious perception” to which, with such tremendous labour and effort,
he had attained, forbade him to detach art from life, and place it in a
water-tight compartment where it should not act on life or be re-acted
upon by life.

Life to him is rational. It has a clear aim and purpose, discernible by
the aid of reason and conscience. And no human activity can be fully
understood or rightly appreciated until the central purpose of life is
perceived.

You cannot piece together a puzzle-map as long as you keep one bit in a
wrong place, but when the pieces all fit together, then you have a
demonstration that they are all in their right places. Tolstoy used that
simile years ago when explaining how the comprehension of the text,
“resist not him that is evil,” enabled him to perceive the
reasonableness of Christ’s teaching, which had long baffled him. So it
is with the problem of Art. Wrongly understood, it will tend to confuse
and perplex your whole comprehension of life. But given the clue
supplied by true “religious perception,” and you can place art so that
it shall fit in with a right understanding of politics, economics,
sex-relationships, science, and all other phases of human activity.

The basis on which this work rests, is a perception of the meaning of
human life. This has been quite lost sight of by some of the reviewers,
who have merely misrepresented what Tolstoy says, and then demonstrated
how very stupid he would have been had he said what they attributed to
him. Leaving his premises and arguments untouched, they dissent from
various conclusions—as though it were all a mere question of taste. They
say that they are very fond of things which Tolstoy ridicules, and that
they can’t understand why he does not like what they like—which is quite
possible, especially if they have not understood the position from which
he starts. But such criticism can lead to nothing. Discussions as to why
one man likes pears and another prefers meat, do not help towards
finding a definition of what is essential in nourishment; and just so,
“the solution of questions of taste in art does not help to make clear
what this particular human activity which we call art really consists
in.”

The object of the following brief summary of a few main points is to
help the reader to avoid pitfalls into which many reviewers have fallen.
It aims at being no more than a bare statement of the positions—for more
than that, the reader must turn to the book itself.

Let it be granted at the outset, that Tolstoy writes for those who have
“ears to hear.” He seldom pauses to safeguard himself against the
captious critic, and cares little for minute verbal accuracy. For
instance, on page 144, he mentions “Paris,” where an English writer
(even one who knew to what an extent Paris is the art centre of France,
and how many artists flock thither from Russia, America, and all ends of
the earth) would have been almost sure to have said “France,” for fear
of being thought to exaggerate. One needs some alertness of mind to
follow Tolstoy in his task of compressing so large a subject into so
small a space. Moreover, he is an emphatic writer who says what he
means, and even, I think, sometimes rather overemphasizes it. With this
much warning let us proceed to a brief summary of Tolstoy’s view of art.

“Art is a human activity,” and consequently does not exist for its own
sake, but is valuable or objectionable in proportion as it is
serviceable or harmful to mankind. The object of this activity is to
transmit to others feeling the artist has experienced. Such
feelings—intentionally re-evoked and successfully transmitted to
others—are the subject-matter of all art. By certain external
signs—movements, lines, colours, sounds, or arrangements of words—an
artist infects other people so that they share his feelings. Thus “art
is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same
feelings.”

Chapters II. to V. contain an examination of various theories which have
taken art to be something other than this, and step by step we are
brought to the conclusion that art is this, and nothing but this.

Having got our definition of art, let us first consider art
independently of its subject-matter, _i.e._, without asking whether the
feelings transmitted are good, bad, or indifferent. Without adequate
expression there is no art, for there is no infection, no transference
to others of the author’s feeling. The test of art is infection. If an
author has moved you so that you feel as he felt, if you are so united
to him in feeling that it seems to you that he has expressed just what
you have long wished to express, the work that has so infected you is a
work of art.

In this sense, it is true that art has nothing to do with morality; for
the test lies in the “infection,” and not in any consideration of the
goodness or badness of the emotions conveyed. Thus the test of art is an
_internal_ one. 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 that moved
the man who expressed it. We all share the same common human nature, and
in this sense, at least, are sons of one Father. To take the simplest
example: a man laughs, and another, who hears, becomes merry; or a man
weeps, and another, who hears, feels sorrow. Note in passing that it
does not amount to art “if a man infects others directly, immediately,
at the very time he experiences the feeling; if he causes another man to
yawn when he himself cannot help yawning,” etc. Art begins when some
one, _with the object of making others share his feeling_, expresses his
feeling by certain external indications.

Normal human beings possess this faculty to be infected by the
expression of another man’s emotions. For a plain man of unperverted
taste, living in contact with nature, with animals, and with his
fellow-men—say, for “a country peasant of unperverted taste, this is
as easy as it is for an animal of unspoilt scent to follow the trace
he needs.” And he will know indubitably whether a work presented to
him does, or does not, unite him in feeling with the author. But
very many people “of our circle” (upper and middle class society)
live such unnatural lives, in such conventional relations to the
people around them, and in such artificial surroundings, that they
have lost “that simple feeling, that sense of infection with
another’s feeling—compelling us to joy in another’s gladness, to
sorrow in another’s grief, and to mingle souls with another—which is
the essence of art.” Such people, therefore, have no inner test by
which to recognise a work of art; and they will always be mistaking
other things for art, and seeking for external guides, such as the
opinions of “recognised authorities.” Or they will mistake for art
something that produces a merely physiological effect—lulling or
exciting them; or some intellectual puzzle that gives them something
to think about.

But if most people of the “cultured crowd” are impervious to true art,
is it really possible that a common Russian country peasant, for
instance, whose work-days are filled with agricultural labour, and whose
brief leisure is largely taken up by his family life and by his
participation in the affairs of the village commune—is it possible that
_he_ can recognise and be touched by works of art? Certainly it is! Just
as in ancient Greece crowds assembled to hear the poems of Homer, so
to-day in Russia, as in many countries and many ages, the Gospel
parables, and much else of the highest art, are gladly heard by the
common people. And this does not refer to any superstitious use of the
Bible, but to its use as literature.

Not only do normal, labouring country people possess the capacity to be
infected by good art—“the epic of Genesis, folk-legends, fairy-tales,
folk-songs, etc.,” but they themselves produce songs, stories, dances,
decorations, etc., which are works of true art. Take as examples the
works of Burns or Bunyan, and the peasant women’s song mentioned by
Tolstoy in Chapter XIV., or some of those melodies produced by the negro
slaves on the southern plantations, which have touched, and still touch,
many of us with the emotions felt by their unknown and unpaid composers.

The one great quality which makes a work of art truly contagious is its
_sincerity_. If an artist is really actuated by a feeling, and is
strongly impelled to communicate that feeling to other people—not for
money or fame, or anything else, but because he feels he must share
it—then he will not be satisfied till he has found a _clear_ way of
expressing it. And the man who is not borrowing his feelings, but has
drawn what he expresses from the depths of his nature, is sure to be
_original_, for in the same way that no two people have exactly similar
faces or forms, no two people have exactly similar minds or souls.

That in briefest outline is what Tolstoy says about art, considered
apart from its subject-matter. And this is how certain critics have met
it. They say that when Tolstoy says the test of art is _internal_, he
must mean that it is _external_. When he says that country peasants have
in the past appreciated, and do still appreciate, works of the highest
art, he means that the way to detect a work of art is to see what is
apparently most popular among the masses. Go into the streets or
music-halls of the cities in any particular country and year, and
observe what is most frequently sung, shouted, or played on the
barrel-organs. It may happen to be

                            “Tarara-boom-deay,”

or,

                         “We don’t want to fight,
                         But, by Jingo, if we do.”

But whatever it is, you may at once declare these songs to be the
highest musical art, without even pausing to ask to what they owe their
vogue—what actress, or singer, or politician, or wave of patriotic
passion has conduced to their popularity. Nor need you consider whether
that popularity is not merely temporary and local. Tolstoy has said that
works of the highest art are understood by unperverted country
peasants—and here are things which are popular with the mob, _ergo_,
these things must be the highest art.

The critics then proceed to say that such a test is utterly absurd. And
on this point I am able to agree with the critics.

Some of these writers commence their articles by saying that Tolstoy is
a most profound thinker, a great prophet, an intellectual force, etc.
Yet when Tolstoy, in his emphatic way, makes the sweeping remark that
“good art always pleases every one,” the critics do not read on to find
out what he means, but reply: “No! good art does not please every one;
some people are colour-blind, and some are deaf, or have no ear for
music.”

It is as though a man strenuously arguing a point were to say, “Every
one knows that two and two make four,” and a boy who did not at all see
what the speaker was driving at, were to reply: “No, our new-born baby
doesn’t know it!” It would distract attention from the subject in hand,
but it would not elucidate matters.

There is, of course, a verbal contradiction between the statements that
“good art always pleases every one” (p. 100), and the remark concerning
“people of our circle,” who, “with very few exceptions, artists and
public and critics, ... cannot distinguish true works of art from
counterfeits, but continually mistake for real art the worst and most
artificial” (p. 151). But I venture to think that any one of
intelligence, and free from prejudice, reading this book carefully, need
not fail to reach the author’s meaning.

A point to be carefully noted is the distinction between science and
art. “Science investigates and brings to human perception such truths
and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider
most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception
to the region of emotion” (p. 102). Science is an “activity of the
understanding which demands preparation and a certain sequence of
knowledge, so that one cannot learn trigonometry before knowing
geometry.” “The business of art,” on the other hand, “lies just in
this—to make that understood and felt which, in the form of an argument,
might be incomprehensible and inaccessible” (p. 102). It “infects any
man whatever his plane of development,” and “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” (pp. 102, 103).
Science and art are frequently blended in one work—_e.g._, in the gospel
elucidation of Christ’s comprehension of life, or, to take a modern
instance, in Henry George’s elucidation of the land question in
_Progress and Poverty_.

The class distinction to which Tolstoy repeatedly alludes needs some
explanation. The position of the lower classes in England and in Russia
is different. In Russia a much larger number of people live on the verge
of starvation; the condition of the factory-hands is much worse than in
England, and there are many glaring cases of brutal cruelty inflicted on
the peasants by the officials, the police, or the military,—but in
Russia a far greater proportion of the population live in the country,
and a peasant usually has his own house, and tills his share of the
communal lands. The “unperverted country peasant” of whom Tolstoy speaks
is a man who perhaps suffers grievous want when there is a bad harvest
in his province, but he is a man accustomed to the experiences of a
natural life, to the management of his own affairs, and to a real voice
in the arrangements of the village commune. The Government interferes,
from time to time, to collect its taxes by force, to take the young men
for soldiers, or to maintain the “rights” of the upper classes; but
otherwise the peasant is free to do what he sees to be necessary and
reasonable. On the other hand, English labourers are, for the most part,
not so poor, they have more legal rights, and they have votes; but a far
larger number of them live in towns and are engaged in unnatural
occupations, while even those that do live in touch with nature are
usually mere wage-earners, tilling other men’s land, and living often in
abject submission to the farmer, the parson, or the lady-bountiful. They
are dependent on an employer for daily bread, and the condition of a
wage-labourer is as unnatural as that of a landlord.

The tyranny of the St. Petersburg bureaucracy is more dramatic, but less
omnipresent—and probably far less fatal to the capacity to enjoy
art—than the tyranny of our respectable, self-satisfied, and
property-loving middle-class. I am therefore afraid that we have no
great number of “unperverted” country labourers to compare with those of
whom Tolstoy speaks—and some of whom I have known personally. But the
truth Tolstoy elucidates lies far too deep in human nature to be
infringed by such differences of local circumstance. Whatever those
circumstances may be, the fact remains that in proportion as a man
approaches towards the condition not only of “earning his subsistence by
some kind of labour,” but of “living on all its sides the life natural
and proper to mankind,” his capacity to appreciate true art tends to
increase. On the other hand, when a class settles down into an
artificial way of life,—loses touch with nature, becomes confused in its
perceptions of what is good and what is bad, and prefers the condition
of a parasite to that of a producer,—its capacity to appreciate true art
must diminish. Having lost all clear perception of the meaning of life,
such people are necessarily left without any criterion which will enable
them to distinguish good from bad art, and they are sure to follow
eagerly after beauty, or “that which pleases them.”

The artists of our society can usually only reach people of the upper
and middle classes. But who is the great artist?—he who delights a
select audience of his own day and class, or he whose works link
generation to generation and race to race in a common bond of feeling?
Surely art should fulfil its purpose as completely as possible. A work
of art that united every one with the author, and with one another,
would be perfect art. Tolstoy, in his emphatic way, speaks of works of
“universal” art, and (though the profound critics hasten to inform us
that no work of art ever reached everybody) certainly the more nearly a
work of art approaches to such expression of feeling that every one may
be infected by it—the nearer (apart from all question of subject-matter)
it approaches perfection.

But now as to subject-matter. The subject-matter of art consists of
feelings which can be spread from man to man, feelings which are
“contagious” or “infectious.” Is it of no importance _what_ feelings
increase and multiply among men?

One man feels that submission to the authority of _his_ church, and
belief in all that it teaches him, is good; another is embued by a sense
of each man’s duty to think with his own head—to use for his guidance in
life the reason and conscience given to him. One man feels that his
nation _ought to_ wipe out in blood the shame of a defeat inflicted on
her; another feels that we are brothers, sons of one spirit, and that
the slaughter of man by man is always wrong. One man feels that the most
desirable thing in life is the satisfaction obtainable by the love of
women; another man feels that sex-love is an entanglement and a snare,
hindering his real work in life. And each of these, if he possess an
artist’s gift of expression, and if the feeling be really his own and
sincere, may infect other men. But some of these feelings will benefit
and some will harm mankind, and the more widely they are spread the
greater will be their effect.

Art unites men. Surely it is desirable that the feelings in which it
unites them should be “the best and highest to which men have risen,” or
at least should not run contrary to our perception of what makes for the
well-being of ourselves and of others. And our perception of what makes
for the well-being of ourselves and of others is what Tolstoy calls our
“religious perception.”

Therefore the subject-matter of what we, in our day, can esteem as being
the best art, can be of two kinds only—

(1) Feelings flowing from the highest perception now attainable by man
of our right relation to our neighbour and to the Source from which we
come. Dickens’ “Christmas Carol,” uniting us in a more vivid sense of
compassion and love, is a ready example of such art.

(2) The simple feelings of common life, accessible to every one—provided
that they are such as do not hinder progress towards well-being. Art of
this kind makes us realise to how great an extent we already are members
one of another—sharing the feelings of one common human nature.

The success of a very primitive novel—the story of Joseph, which made
its way into the sacred books of the Jews, spread from land to land and
from age to age, and continues to be read to-day among people quite free
from bibliolatry—shows how nearly “universal” may be the appeal of this
kind of art. This branch includes all harmless jokes, folk-stories,
nursery rhymes, and even dolls, if only the author or designer has
expressed a feeling (tenderness, pleasure, humour, or what not) so as to
infect others.

But how are we to know what _are_ the “best” feelings? What is good? and
what is evil? This is decided by “religious perception.” Some such
perception exists in every human being; there is always something he
approves of, and something he disapproves of. Reason and conscience are
always present, active or latent, as long as man lives. Miss Flora Shaw
tells that the most degraded cannibal she ever met, drew the line at
eating his own mother—nothing would induce him to entertain the thought,
his moral sense was revolted by the suggestion. In most societies the
“religious perception,” to which they have advanced,—the foremost stage
in mankind’s long march towards perfection, which has been
discerned,—has been clearly expressed by some one, and more or less
consciously accepted as an ideal by the many. But there are transition
periods in history when the worn-out formularies of a past age have
ceased to satisfy men, or have become so incrusted with superstitions
that their original brightness is lost. The “religious perception” that
is dawning may not yet have found such expression as to be generally
understood, but for all that it exists, and shows itself by compelling
men to repudiate beliefs that satisfied their forefathers, the outward
and visible signs of which are still endowed and dominant long after
their spirit has taken refuge in temples not made with hands.

At such times it is difficult for men to understand each other, for the
very _words_ needed to express the deepest experiences of men’s
consciousness mean different things to different men. So among us
to-day, to many minds _faith_ means _credulity_, and _God_ suggests a
person of the male sex, father of one only-begotten son, and creator of
the universe.

This is why Tolstoy’s clear and rational “religious perception,”
expressed in the books named on a previous page, is frequently spoken of
by people who have not grasped it, as “mysticism.”

The narrow materialist is shocked to find that Tolstoy will not confine
himself to the “objective” view of life. Encountering in himself that
“inner voice” which compels us all to choose between good and evil,
Tolstoy refuses to be diverted from a matter which is of immediate and
vital importance to him, by discussions as to the derivation of the
external manifestations of conscience which biologists are able to
detect in remote forms of life. The real mystic, on the other hand,
shrinks from Tolstoy’s desire to try all things by the light of reason,
to depend on nothing vague, and to accept nothing on authority. The man
who does not trust his own reason, fears that life thus squarely faced
will prove less worth having than it is when clothed in mist.

In this work, however, Tolstoy does not recapitulate at length what he
has said before. He does not pause to re-explain why he condemns
Patriotism—_i.e._, each man’s preference for the predominance of _his
own_ country, which leads to the murder of man by man in war; or
Churches, which are sectarian—_i.e._, which striving to assert that your
doxy is heterodoxy, but that _our_ doxy is orthodoxy, make external
authorities (Popes, Bibles, Councils) supreme, and cling to
superstitions (_their own_ miracles, legends, and myths), thus
separating themselves from communion with the rest of mankind. Nor does
he re-explain why he (like Christ) says “pitiable is your plight—ye
rich,” who live artificial lives, maintainable only by the unbrotherly
use of force (police and soldiers), but blessed are ye poor—who, by your
way of life, are within easier reach of brotherly conditions, if you
will but trust to reason and conscience, and change the direction of
your hearts and of your labour,—working no more primarily from fear or
greed, but seeking _first_ the kingdom of righteousness, in which all
good things will be added unto you. He merely summarises it all in a few
sentences, defining the “religious perception” of to-day, which alone
can decide for us “the degree of importance both of the feelings
transmitted by art and of the information transmitted by science.”

“The religious perception of our time, in its widest and most practical
application, is the consciousness that our well-being, both material and
spiritual, individual and collective, temporal and eternal, lies in the
growth of brotherhood among men—in their loving harmony with one
another” (p. 159).

And again:

“However differently in form people belonging to our Christian world may
define the destiny of man; whether they see it in human progress in
whatever sense of the words, in the union of all men in a socialistic
realm, or in the establishment of a commune; whether they look forward
to the union of mankind under the guidance of one universal Church, or
to the federation of the world,—however various in form their
definitions of the destination of human life may be, all men in our
times already admit that the highest well-being attainable by men is to
be reached by their union with one another” (p. 188).

This is the foundation on which the whole work is based. It follows
necessarily from this perception that we should consider as most
important in science “investigations into the results of good and bad
actions, considerations of the reasonableness or unreasonableness of
human institutions and beliefs, considerations of how human life should
be lived in order to obtain the greatest well-being for each; as to what
one may and ought, and what one cannot and should not believe; how to
subdue one’s passions, and how to acquire the habit of virtue.” This is
the science that “occupied Moses, Solon, Socrates, Epictetus, Confucius,
Mencius, Marcus Aurelius, Spinoza, and all those who have taught men to
live a moral life,” and it is precisely the kind of scientific
investigation to which Tolstoy has devoted most of the last twenty
years, and for the sake of which he is often said to have “abandoned
art.”

Since science, like art, is a “human activity,” _that_ science best
deserves our esteem, best deserves to be “chosen, tolerated, approved,
and diffused,” which treats of what is supremely important to man; which
deals with urgent, vital, inevitable problems of actual life. Such
science as this brings “to the consciousness of men the truths that flow
from the religious perception of our times,” and “indicates the various
methods of applying this consciousness to life.” “Art should transform
this perception into feeling.”

The “science” which is occupied in “pouring liquids from one jar into
another, or analysing the spectrum, or cutting up frogs and porpoises,”
is no use for rendering such guidance to art, though capable of
practical applications which, under a more righteous system of society,
might greatly have lightened the sufferings of mankind.

Naturally enough, the last chapter of the book deals with the relation
between science and art. And the conclusion is that:

“The destiny of art in our time is to transmit from the realm of reason
to the realm of feeling the truth that well-being for men consists in
being united together, and to set up, in place of the existing reign of
force, that kingdom of God, _i.e._ of love, which we all recognise to be
the highest aim of human life.”

And this art of the future will not be poorer, but far richer, in
subject-matter than the art of to-day. From the lullaby—that will
delight millions of people, generation after generation—to the highest
religious art, dealing with strong, rich, and varied emotions flowing
from a fresh outlook upon life and all its problems—the field open for
good art is enormous. With so much to say that is urgently important to
all, the art of the future will, in matter of form also, be far superior
to our art in “clearness, beauty, simplicity, and compression” (p. 194).

For beauty (_i.e._, “that which pleases”)—though it depends on taste,
and can furnish no _criterion_ for art—will be a natural characteristic
of work done, not for hire, nor even for fame, but because men, living a
natural and healthy life, wish to share the “highest spiritual strength
which passes through them” with the greatest possible number of others.
The feelings such an artist wishes to share, he will transmit in a way
that will please him, and will please other men who share his nature.

Morality is in the nature of things—we cannot escape it.

In a society where each man sets himself to obtain wealth, the
difficulty of obtaining an honest living tends to become greater and
greater. The more keenly a society pants to obtain “that which pleases,”
and puts this forward as the first and great consideration, the more
puerile and worthless will their art become. But in a society which
sought, primarily, for right relations between its members, an abundance
would easily be obtainable for all; and when “religious perception”
guides a people’s art—beauty inevitably results, as has always been the
case when men have seized a fresh perception of life and of its purpose.

                  *       *       *       *       *

An illustration which Tolstoy struck out of the work while it was being
printed, may serve to illustrate how, with the aid of the principles
explained above, we may judge of the merits of any work professing to be
art.

Take _Romeo and Juliet_. The conventional view is that Shakespear is the
greatest of artists, and that _Romeo and Juliet_ is one of his good
plays. Why this is so nobody can tell you. It is so: that is the way
certain people feel about it. They are “the authorities,” and to doubt
their dictum is to show that you know nothing about art. Tolstoy does
not agree with them in their estimate of Shakespear, therefore Tolstoy
is wrong!

But now let us apply Tolstoy’s view of art to _Romeo and Juliet_. He
does not deny that it infects. “Let us admit that it is a work of art,
that it infects (though it is so artificial that it can infect only
those who have been carefully educated thereunto); but what are the
feelings it transmits?”

That is to say, judging by the _internal_ test, Tolstoy admits that
_Romeo and Juliet_ unites him to its author and to other people in
feeling. But the work is very far from being one of “universal” art—only
a small minority of people ever have cared, or ever will care, for it.
Even in England, or even in the layer of European society it is best
adapted to reach, it only touches a minority, and does not approach the
universality attained by the story of Joseph and many pieces of
folk-lore.

But perhaps the subject-matter, the _feeling_ with which _Romeo and
Juliet_ infects those whom it does reach, lifts it into the class of the
highest religious art? Not so. The feeling is one of the attractiveness
of “love at first sight.” A girl fourteen years old and a young man meet
at an aristocratic party, where there is feasting and pleasure and
idleness, and, without knowing each other’s minds, they fall in love as
the birds and beasts do. If any feeling is transmitted to us, it is the
feeling that there _is_ a pleasure in these things. Somewhere, in most
natures, there dwells, dominant or dormant, an inclination to let such
physical sexual attraction guide our course in life. To give it a plain
name, it is “sensuality.” “How can I, father or mother of a daughter of
Juliet’s age, wish that those foul feelings which the play transmits
should be communicated to my daughter? And if the feelings transmitted
by the play are bad, how can I call it good in subject-matter?”

But, objects a friend, the _moral_ of _Romeo and Juliet_ is excellent.
See what disasters followed from the physical “love at first sight.” But
that is quite another matter. It is the feelings with which you are
infected when reading, and not any moral you can deduce, that is
subject-matter of art. Pondering upon the consequences that flow from
Romeo and Juliet’s behaviour may belong to the domain of moral science,
but not to that of art.

I have hesitated to use an illustration Tolstoy had struck out, but I
think it serves its purpose. No doubt there are other, subordinate,
feelings (_e.g._ humour) to be found in _Romeo and Juliet_; but many
quaint conceits that are ingenious, and have been much admired, are not,
I think, infectious.

Tried by such tests, the enormous majority of the things we have been
taught to consider great works of art are found wanting. Either they
fail to infect (and attract merely by being interesting, realistic,
effectful, or by borrowing from others), and are therefore not works of
art at all; or they are works of “exclusive art,” bad in form and
capable of infecting only a select audience trained and habituated to
such inferior art; or they are bad in subject-matter, transmitting
feelings harmful to mankind.

Tolstoy does not shrink from condemning his own artistic productions;
with the exception of two short stories, he tells us they are works of
bad art. Take, for instance, the novel _Resurrection_, which is now
appearing, and of which he has, somewhere, spoken disparagingly, as
being “written in my former style,” and being therefore bad art. What
does this mean? The book is a masterpiece in its own line; it is eagerly
read in many languages; it undoubtedly infects its readers, and the
feelings transmitted are, in the main, such as Tolstoy approves of—in
fact, they are the feelings to which his religious perception has
brought him. If lust is felt in one chapter, the reaction follows as
inevitably as in real life, and is transmitted with great artistic
power. Why a work of such rare merit does not satisfy Tolstoy, is
because it is a work of “exclusive art,” laden with details of time and
place. It has not the “simplicity and compression” necessary in works of
“universal” art. Things are mentioned which might apparently be quite
well omitted. The style, also, is not one of great simplicity; the
sentences are often long and involved, as is commonly the case in
Tolstoy’s writings. It is a novel appealing mainly to the class that has
leisure for novel reading because it neglects to produce its own food,
make its own clothes, or build its own houses. If Tolstoy is stringent
in his judgment of other artists, he is more stringent still in his
judgment of his own artistic works. Had _Resurrection_ been written by
Dickens, or by Hugo, Tolstoy would, I think, have found a place for it
(with whatever reservations) among the examples of religious art. For
indeed, strive as we may to be clear and explicit, our approval and
disapproval is a matter of degree. The thought which underlay the
remark: “Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, even God,”
applies not to man only, but to all things human.

_What is Art?_ itself is a work of science—though many passages, and
even some whole chapters, appeal to us as works of art, and we feel the
contagion of the author’s hope, his anxiety to serve the cause of truth
and love, his indignation (sometimes rather sharply expressed) with what
blocks the path of advance, and his contempt for much that the “cultured
crowd,” in our erudite, perverted society, have persuaded themselves,
and would fain persuade others, is the highest art.

One result which follows inevitably from Tolstoy’s view (and which
illustrates how widely his views differ from the fashionable æsthetic
mysticism), is that art is not stationary but progressive. It is true
that our highest religious perception found expression eighteen hundred
years ago, and then served as the basis of an art which is still
unmatched; and similar cases can be instanced from the East. But
allowing for such great exceptions,—to which, not inaptly, the term of
“inspiration” has been specially applied,—the subject-matter of art
improves, though long periods of time may have to be considered in order
to make this obvious. Our power of verbal expression, for instance, may
now be no better than it was in the days of David, but we must no longer
esteem as good _in subject-matter_ poems which appeal to the Eternal to
destroy a man’s private or national foes; for we have reached a
“religious perception” which bids us have no foes, and the ultimate
source (undefinable by us) from which this consciousness has come, is
what we mean when we speak of God.

AYLMER MAUDE.

Wickham’s Farm,
Near Danbury, Essex,
_23rd March 1899_.

Footnote 1:

  Bolton Hall has recently published a little work, _Life, and Love, and
  Death_, with the object of making the philosophy contained in _On
  Life_ more easily accessible in English.




                          The Author’s Preface


This book of mine, “What is Art?” appears now for the first time in its
true form. More than one edition has already been issued in Russia, but
in each case it has been so mutilated by the “Censor,” that I request
all who are interested in my views on art only to judge of them by the
work in its present shape. The causes which led to the publication of
the book—with my name attached to it—in a mutilated form, were the
following:—In accordance with a decision I arrived at long ago,—not to
submit my writings to the “Censorship” (which I consider to be an
immoral and irrational institution), but to print them only in the shape
in which they were written,—I intended not to attempt to print this work
in Russia. However, my good acquaintance Professor Grote, editor of a
Moscow psychological magazine, having heard of the contents of my work,
asked me to print it in his magazine, and promised me that he would get
the book through the “Censor’s” office unmutilated if I would but agree
to a few very unimportant alterations, merely toning down certain
expressions. I was weak enough to agree to this, and it has resulted in
a book appearing, under my name, from which not only have some essential
thoughts been excluded, but into which the thoughts of other men—even
thoughts utterly opposed to my own convictions—have been introduced.

The thing occurred in this way. First, Grote softened my expressions,
and in some cases weakened them. For instance, he replaced the words:
_always_ by _sometimes_, _all_ by _some_, _Church_ religion by _Roman
Catholic_ religion, “_Mother of God_” by _Madonna_, _patriotism_ by
_pseudo-patriotism_, _palaces_ by _palatii_,[2] etc., and I did not
consider it necessary to protest. But when the book was already in type,
the Censor required that whole sentences should be altered, and that
instead of what I said about the evil of landed property, a remark
should be substituted on the evils of a landless proletariat.[3] I
agreed to this also and to some further alterations. It seemed not worth
while to upset the whole affair for the sake of one sentence, and when
one alteration had been agreed to it seemed not worth while to protest
against a second and a third. So, little by little, expressions crept
into the book which altered the sense and attributed things to me that I
could not have wished to say. So that by the time the book was printed
it had been deprived of some part of its integrity and sincerity. But
there was consolation in the thought that the book, even in this form,
if it contains something that is good, would be of use to Russian
readers whom it would otherwise not have reached. Things, however,
turned out otherwise. _Nous comptions sans notre hôte._ After the legal
term of four days had already elapsed, the book was seized, and, on
instructions received from Petersburg, it was handed over to the
“Spiritual Censor.” Then Grote declined all further participation in the
affair, and the “Spiritual Censor” proceeded to do what he would with
the book. The “Spiritual Censorship” is one of the most ignorant, venal,
stupid, and despotic institutions in Russia. Books which disagree in any
way with the recognised state religion of Russia, if once it gets hold
of them, are almost always totally suppressed and burnt; which is what
happened to all my religious works when attempts were made to print them
in Russia. Probably a similar fate would have overtaken this work also,
had not the editors of the magazine employed all means to save it. The
result of their efforts was that the “Spiritual Censor,” a priest who
probably understands art and is interested in art as much as I
understand or am interested in church services, but who gets a good
salary for destroying whatever is likely to displease his superiors,
struck out all that seemed to him to endanger his position, and
substituted his thoughts for mine wherever he considered it necessary to
do so. For instance, where I speak of Christ going to the Cross for the
sake of the truth He professed, the “Censor” substituted a statement
that Christ died for mankind, _i.e._ he attributed to me an assertion of
the dogma of the Redemption, which I consider to be one of the most
untrue and harmful of Church dogmas. After correcting the book in this
way, the “Spiritual Censor” allowed it to be printed.

To protest in Russia is impossible, no newspaper would publish such a
protest, and to withdraw my book from the magazine and place the editor
in an awkward position with the public was also not possible.

So the matter has remained. A book has appeared under my name containing
thoughts attributed to me which are not mine.

I was persuaded to give my article to a Russian magazine, in order that
my thoughts, which may be useful, should become the possession of
Russian readers; and the result has been that my name is affixed to a
work from which it might be assumed that I quite arbitrarily assert
things contrary to the general opinion, without adducing my reasons;
that I only consider false patriotism bad, but patriotism in general a
very good feeling; that I merely deny the absurdities of the Roman
Catholic Church and disbelieve in the Madonna, but that I believe in the
Orthodox Eastern faith and in the “Mother of God”; that I consider all
the writings collected in the Bible to be holy books, and see the chief
importance of Christ’s life in the Redemption of mankind by his death.

I have narrated all this in such detail because it strikingly
illustrates the indubitable truth, that all compromise with institutions
of which your conscience disapproves,—compromises which are usually made
for the sake of the general good,—instead of producing the good you
expected, inevitably lead you not only to acknowledge the institution
you disapprove of, but also to participate in the evil that institution
produces.

I am glad to be able by this statement at least to do something to
correct the error into which I was led by my compromise.

I have also to mention that besides reinstating the parts excluded by
the Censor from the Russian editions, other corrections and additions of
importance have been made in this edition.

LEO TOLSTOY.

_29th March 1898._

Footnote 2:

  Tolstoy’s remarks on Church religion were re-worded so as to seem to
  relate only to the Western Church, and his disapproval of luxurious
  life was made to apply not, say, to Queen Victoria or Nicholas II.,
  but to the Cæsars or the Pharaohs.—Trans.

Footnote 3:

  The Russian peasant is usually a member of a village commune, and has
  therefore a right to a share in the land belonging to the village.
  Tolstoy disapproves of the order of society which allows less land for
  the support of a whole village full of people than is sometimes owned
  by a single landed proprietor. The “Censor” will not allow disapproval
  of this state of things to be expressed, but is prepared to admit that
  the laws and customs, say, of England—where a yet more extreme form of
  landed property exists, and the men who actually labour on the land
  usually possess none of it—deserve criticism.—Trans.




                                Contents


INTRODUCTION v

AUTHOR’S PREFACE xxxiii

CHAPTER I

Time and labour spent on art—Lives stunted in its service—Morality
sacrificed to and anger justified by art—The rehearsal of an opera
described 1

CHAPTER II

Does art compensate for so much evil?—What is art?—Confusion of
opinions—Is it “that which produces beauty”?—The word “beauty” in
Russian—Chaos in æsthetics 9

CHAPTER III

Summary of various æsthetic theories and definitions, from Baumgarten to
to-day 20

CHAPTER IV

Definitions of art founded on beauty—Taste not definable—A clear
definition needed to enable us to recognise works of art 38

CHAPTER V

Definitions not founded on beauty—Tolstoy’s definition—The extent and
necessity of art—How people in the past have distinguished good from bad
in art 46

CHAPTER VI

How art for pleasure has come into esteem—Religions indicate what is
considered good and bad—Church Christianity—The Renaissance—Scepticism
of the upper classes—They confound beauty with goodness 53

CHAPTER VII

An æsthetic theory framed to suit this view of life 61

CHAPTER VIII

Who have adopted it?—Real art needful for all men—Our art too expensive,
too unintelligible, and too harmful for the masses—The theory of “the
elect” in art 67

CHAPTER IX

Perversion of our art—It has lost its natural subject-matter—Has no flow
of fresh feeling—Transmits chiefly three base emotions 73

CHAPTER X

Loss of comprehensibility—Decadent art—Recent French art—Have we a right
to say it is bad and that what we like is good art?—The highest art has
always been comprehensible to normal people—What fails to infect normal
people is not art 79

CHAPTER XI

Counterfeits of art produced by: Borrowing; Imitating; Striking;
Interesting—Qualifications needful for production of real works of art,
and those sufficient for production of counterfeits 106

CHAPTER XII

Causes of production of counterfeits—Professionalism—Criticism—Schools
of art 118

CHAPTER XIII

Wagner’s “Nibelung’s Ring” a type of counterfeit art—Its success, and
the reasons thereof 128

CHAPTER XIV

Truths fatal to preconceived views are not readily recognised—Proportion
of works of art to counterfeits—Perversion of taste and incapacity to
recognise art—Examples 143

CHAPTER XV

=The quality of art, considered apart from its subject-matter=—The sign
of art: infectiousness—Incomprehensible to those whose taste is
perverted—Conditions of infection: Individuality; Clearness; Sincerity
152

CHAPTER XVI

=The quality of art, considered according to its subject-matter=—The
better the feeling the better the art—The cultured crowd—The religious
perception of our age—The new ideals put fresh demands to art—Art
unites—Religious art—Universal art—Both co-operate to one result—The new
appraisement of art—Bad art—Examples of art—How to test a work claiming
to be art 156

CHAPTER XVII

Results of absence of true art—Results of perversion of art: Labour and
lives spent on what is useless and harmful—The abnormal life of the
rich—Perplexity of children and plain folk—Confusion of right and
wrong—Nietzsche and Redbeard—Superstition, Patriotism, and Sensuality
175

CHAPTER XVIII

The purpose of human life is the brotherly union of man—Art must be
guided by this perception 187

CHAPTER XIX

The art of the future not a possession of a select minority, but a means
towards perfection and unity 192

CHAPTER XX

The connection between science and art—The mendacious sciences; the
trivial sciences—Science should deal with the great problems of human
life, and serve as a basis for art 200




                               APPENDICES

Appendix I 215

Appendix II 218

Appendix III 226

Appendix IV 232




                              What is Art?


Take up any one of our ordinary newspapers, and you will find a part
devoted to the theatre and music. In almost every number you will find a
description of some art exhibition, or of some particular picture, and
you will always find reviews of new works of art that have appeared, of
volumes of poems, of short stories, or of novels.

Promptly, and in detail, as soon as it has occurred, an account is
published of how such and such an actress or actor played this or that
rôle in such and such a drama, comedy, or opera; and of the merits of
the performance, as well as of the contents of the new drama, comedy, or
opera, with its defects and merits. With as much care and detail, or
even more, we are told how such and such an artist has sung a certain
piece, or has played it on the piano or violin, and what were the merits
and defects of the piece and of the performance. In every large town
there is sure to be at least one, if not more than one, exhibition of
new pictures, the merits and defects of which are discussed in the
utmost detail by critics and connoisseurs.

New novels and poems, in separate volumes or in the magazines, appear
almost every day, and the newspapers consider it their duty to give
their readers detailed accounts of these artistic productions.

For the support of art in Russia (where for the education of the people
only a hundredth part is spent of what would be required to give
everyone the opportunity of instruction) the Government grants millions
of roubles in subsidies to academies, conservatoires and theatres. In
France twenty million francs are assigned for art, and similar grants
are made in Germany and England.

In every large town enormous buildings are erected for museums,
academies, conservatoires, dramatic schools, and for performances and
concerts. Hundreds of thousands of workmen,—carpenters, masons,
painters, joiners, paperhangers, tailors, hairdressers, jewellers,
moulders, type-setters,—spend their whole lives in hard labour to
satisfy the demands of art, so that hardly any other department of human
activity, except the military, consumes so much energy as this.

Not only is enormous labour spent on this activity, but in it, as in
war, the very lives of men are sacrificed. Hundreds of thousands of
people devote their lives from childhood to learning to twirl their legs
rapidly (dancers), or to touch notes and strings very rapidly
(musicians), or to draw with paint and represent what they see
(artists), or to turn every phrase inside out and find a rhyme to every
word. And these people, often very kind and clever, and capable of all
sorts of useful labour, grow savage over their specialised and
stupefying occupations, and become one-sided and self-complacent
specialists, dull to all the serious phenomena of life, and skilful only
at rapidly twisting their legs, their tongues, or their fingers.

But even this stunting of human life is not the worst. I remember being
once at the rehearsal of one of the most ordinary of the new operas
which are produced at all the opera houses of Europe and America.

I arrived when the first act had already commenced. To reach the
auditorium I had to pass through the stage entrance. By dark entrances
and passages, I was led through the vaults of an enormous building past
immense machines for changing the scenery and for illuminating; and
there in the gloom and dust I saw workmen busily engaged. One of these
men, pale, haggard, in a dirty blouse, with dirty, work-worn hands and
cramped fingers, evidently tired and out of humour, went past me,
angrily scolding another man. Ascending by a dark stair, I came out on
the boards behind the scenes. Amid various poles and rings and scattered
scenery, decorations and curtains, stood and moved dozens, if not
hundreds, of painted and dressed-up men, in costumes fitting tight to
their thighs and calves, and also women, as usual, as nearly nude as
might be. These were all singers, or members of the chorus, or
ballet-dancers, awaiting their turns. My guide led me across the stage
and, by means of a bridge of boards, across the orchestra (in which
perhaps a hundred musicians of all kinds, from kettle-drum to flute and
harp, were seated), to the dark pit-stalls.

On an elevation, between two lamps with reflectors, and in an arm-chair
placed before a music-stand, sat the director of the musical part,
_bâton_ in hand, managing the orchestra and singers, and, in general,
the production of the whole opera.

The performance had already commenced, and on the stage a procession of
Indians who had brought home a bride was being represented. Besides men
and women in costume, two other men in ordinary clothes bustled and ran
about on the stage; one was the director of the dramatic part, and the
other, who stepped about in soft shoes and ran from place to place with
unusual agility, was the dancing-master, whose salary per month exceeded
what ten labourers earn in a year.

These three directors arranged the singing, the orchestra, and the
procession. The procession, as usual, was enacted by couples, with
tinfoil halberds on their shoulders. They all came from one place, and
walked round and round again, and then stopped. The procession took a
long time to arrange: first the Indians with halberds came on too late;
then too soon; then at the right time, but crowded together at the exit;
then they did not crowd, but arranged themselves badly at the sides of
the stage; and each time the whole performance was stopped and
recommenced from the beginning. The procession was introduced by a
recitative, delivered by a man dressed up like some variety of Turk,
who, opening his mouth in a curious way, sang, “Home I bring the
bri-i-ide.” He sings and waves his arm (which is of course bare) from
under his mantle. The procession commences, but here the French horn, in
the accompaniment of the recitative, does something wrong; and the
director, with a shudder as if some catastrophe had occurred, raps with
his stick on the stand. All is stopped, and the director, turning to the
orchestra, attacks the French horn, scolding him in the rudest terms, as
cabmen abuse each other, for taking the wrong note. And again the whole
thing recommences. The Indians with their halberds again come on,
treading softly in their extraordinary boots; again the singer sings,
“Home I bring the bri-i-ide.” But here the pairs get too close together.
More raps with the stick, more scolding, and a recommencement. Again,
“Home I bring the bri-i-ide,” again the same gesticulation with the bare
arm from under the mantle, and again the couples, treading softly with
halberds on their shoulders, some with sad and serious faces, some
talking and smiling, arrange themselves in a circle and begin to sing.
All seems to be going well, but again the stick raps, and the director,
in a distressed and angry voice, begins to scold the men and women of
the chorus. It appears that when singing they had omitted to raise their
hands from time to time in sign of animation. “Are you all dead, or
what? Cows that you are! Are you corpses, that you can’t move?” Again
they re-commence, “Home I bring the bri-i-ide,” and again, with
sorrowful faces, the chorus women sing, first one and then another of
them raising their hands. But two chorus-girls speak to each
other,—again a more vehement rapping with the stick. “Have you come here
to talk? Can’t you gossip at home? You there in red breeches, come
nearer. Look towards me! Recommence!” Again, “Home I bring the
bri-i-ide.” And so it goes on for one, two, three hours. The whole of
such a rehearsal lasts six hours on end. Raps with the stick,
repetitions, placings, corrections of the singers, of the orchestra, of
the procession, of the dancers,—all seasoned with angry scolding. I
heard the words, “asses,” “fools,” “idiots,” “swine,” addressed to the
musicians and singers at least forty times in the course of one hour.
And the unhappy individual to whom the abuse is addressed,—flautist,
horn-blower, or singer,—physically and mentally demoralised, does not
reply, and does what is demanded of him. Twenty times is repeated the
one phrase, “Home I bring the bri-i-ide,” and twenty times the striding
about in yellow shoes with a halberd over the shoulder. The conductor
knows that these people are so demoralised that they are no longer fit
for anything but to blow trumpets and walk about with halberds and in
yellow shoes, and that they are also accustomed to dainty, easy living,
so that they will put up with anything rather than lose their luxurious
life. He therefore gives free vent to his churlishness, especially as he
has seen the same thing done in Paris and Vienna, and knows that this is
the way the best conductors behave, and that it is a musical tradition
of great artists to be so carried away by the great business of their
art that they cannot pause to consider the feelings of other artists.

It would be difficult to find a more repulsive sight. I have seen one
workman abuse another for not supporting the weight piled upon him when
goods were being unloaded, or, at hay-stacking, the village elder scold
a peasant for not making the rick right, and the man submitted in
silence. And, however unpleasant it was to witness the scene, the
unpleasantness was lessened by the consciousness that the business in
hand was needful and important, and that the fault for which the
head-man scolded the labourer was one which might spoil a needful
undertaking.

But what was being done here? For what, and for whom? Very likely the
conductor was tired out, like the workman I passed in the vaults; it was
even evident that he was; but who made him tire himself? And for what
was he tiring himself? The opera he was rehearsing was one of the most
ordinary of operas for people who are accustomed to them, but also one
of the most gigantic absurdities that could possibly be devised. An
Indian king wants to marry; they bring him a bride; he disguises himself
as a minstrel; the bride falls in love with the minstrel and is in
despair, but afterwards discovers that the minstrel is the king, and
everyone is highly delighted.

That there never were, or could be, such Indians, and that they were not
only unlike Indians, but that what they were doing was unlike anything
on earth except other operas, was beyond all manner of doubt; that
people do not converse in such a way as recitative, and do not place
themselves at fixed distances, in a quartet, waving their arms to
express their emotions; that nowhere, except in theatres, do people walk
about in such a manner, in pairs, with tinfoil halberds and in slippers;
that no one ever gets angry in such a way, or is affected in such a way,
or laughs in such a way, or cries in such a way; and that no one on
earth can be moved by such performances; all this is beyond the
possibility of doubt.

Instinctively the question presents itself—For whom is this being done?
Whom _can_ it please? If there are, occasionally, good melodies in the
opera, to which it is pleasant to listen, they could have been sung
simply, without these stupid costumes and all the processions and
recitatives and hand-wavings.

The ballet, in which half-naked women make voluptuous movements,
twisting themselves into various sensual wreathings, is simply a lewd
performance.

So one is quite at a loss as to whom these things are done for. The man
of culture is heartily sick of them, while to a real working man they
are utterly incomprehensible. If anyone can be pleased by these things
(which is doubtful), it can only be some young footman or depraved
artisan, who has contracted the spirit of the upper classes but is not
yet satiated with their amusements, and wishes to show his breeding.

And all this nasty folly is prepared, not simply, nor with kindly
merriment, but with anger and brutal cruelty.

It is said that it is all done for the sake of art, and that art is a
very important thing. But is it true that art is so important that such
sacrifices should be made for its sake? This question is especially
urgent, because art, for the sake of which the labour of millions, the
lives of men, and above all, love between man and man, are being
sacrificed,—this very art is becoming something more and more vague and
uncertain to human perception.

Criticism, in which the lovers of art used to find support for their
opinions, has latterly become so self-contradictory, that, if we exclude
from the domain of art all that to which the critics of various schools
themselves deny the title, there is scarcely any art left.

The artists of various sects, like the theologians of the various sects,
mutually exclude and destroy themselves. Listen to the artists of the
schools of our times, and you will find, in all branches, each set of
artists disowning others. In poetry the old romanticists deny the
parnassians and the decadents; the parnassians disown the romanticists
and the decadents; the decadents disown all their predecessors and the
symbolists; the symbolists disown all their predecessors and _les
mages_; and _les mages_ disown all, all their predecessors. Among
novelists we have naturalists, psychologists, and “nature-ists,” all
rejecting each other. And it is the same in dramatic art, in painting
and in music. So that art, which demands such tremendous
labour-sacrifices from the people, which stunts human lives and
transgresses against human love, is not only _not_ a thing clearly and
firmly defined, but is understood in such contradictory ways by its own
devotees that it is difficult to say what is meant by art, and
especially what is good, useful art,—art for the sake of which we might
condone such sacrifices as are being offered at its shrine.




                               CHAPTER II


For the production of every ballet, circus, opera, operetta, exhibition,
picture, concert, or printed book, the intense and unwilling labour of
thousands and thousands of people is needed at what is often harmful and
humiliating work. It were well if artists made all they require for
themselves, but, as it is, they all need the help of workmen, not only
to produce art, but also for their own usually luxurious maintenance.
And, one way or other, they get it; either through payments from rich
people, or through subsidies given by Government (in Russia, for
instance, in grants of millions of roubles to theatres, conservatoires
and academies). This money is collected from the people, some of whom
have to sell their only cow to pay the tax, and who never get those
æsthetic pleasures which art gives.

It was all very well for a Greek or Roman artist, or even for a Russian
artist of the first half of our century (when there were still slaves,
and it was considered right that there should be), with a quiet mind to
make people serve him and his art; but in our day, when in all men there
is at least some dim perception of the equal rights of all, it is
impossible to constrain people to labour unwillingly for art, without
first deciding the question whether it is true that art is so good and
so important an affair as to redeem this evil.

If not, we have the terrible probability to consider, that while fearful
sacrifices of the labour and lives of men, and of morality itself, are
being made to art, that same art may be not only useless but even
harmful.

And therefore it is necessary for a society in which works of art arise
and are supported, to find out whether all that professes to be art is
really art; whether (as is presupposed in our society) all that which is
art is good; and whether it is important and worth those sacrifices
which it necessitates. It is still more necessary for every
conscientious artist to know this, that he may be sure that all he does
has a valid meaning; that it is not merely an infatuation of the small
circle of people among whom he lives which excites in him the false
assurance that he is doing a good work; and that what he takes from
others for the support of his often very luxurious life, will be
compensated for by those productions at which he works. And that is why
answers to the above questions are especially important in our time.

What is this art, which is considered so important and necessary for
humanity that for its sake these sacrifices of labour, of human life,
and even of goodness may be made?

“What is art? What a question! Art is architecture, sculpture, painting,
music, and poetry in all its forms,” usually replies the ordinary man,
the art amateur, or even the artist himself, imagining the matter about
which he is talking to be perfectly clear, and uniformly understood by
everybody. But in architecture, one inquires further, are there not
simple buildings which are not objects of art, and buildings with
artistic pretensions which are unsuccessful and ugly and therefore
cannot be considered as works of art? wherein lies the characteristic
sign of a work of art?

It is the same in sculpture, in music, and in poetry. Art, in all its
forms, is bounded on one side by the practically useful and on the other
by unsuccessful attempts at art. How is art to be marked off from each
of these? The ordinary educated man of our circle, and even the artist
who has not occupied himself especially with æsthetics, will not
hesitate at this question either. He thinks the solution has been found
long ago, and is well known to everyone.

“Art is such activity as produces beauty,” says such a man.

If art consists in that, then is a ballet or an operetta art? you
inquire.

“Yes,” says the ordinary man, though with some hesitation, “a good
ballet or a graceful operetta is also art, in so far as it manifests
beauty.”

But without even asking the ordinary man what differentiates the “good”
ballet and the “graceful” operetta from their opposites (a question he
would have much difficulty in answering), if you ask him whether the
activity of costumiers and hairdressers, who ornament the figures and
faces of the women for the ballet and the operetta, is art; or the
activity of Worth, the dressmaker; of scent-makers and men-cooks, then
he will, in most cases, deny that their activity belongs to the sphere
of art. But in this the ordinary man makes a mistake, just because he is
an ordinary man and not a specialist, and because he has not occupied
himself with æsthetic questions. Had he looked into these matters, he
would have seen in the great Renan’s book, _Marc Aurele_, a dissertation
showing that the tailor’s work is art, and that those who do not see in
the adornment of woman an affair of the highest art are very
small-minded and dull. “_C’est le grand art_” says Renan. Moreover, he
would have known that in many æsthetic systems—for instance, in the
æsthetics of the learned Professor Kralik, _Weltschönheit_, _Versuch
einer allgemeinen Æsthetik_, _von Richard Kralik_, and in _Les problèmes
de l’Esthétique Contemporaine_, by Guyau—the arts of costume, of taste,
and of touch are included.

“_Es Folgt nun ein Fünfblatt von Künsten, die der subjectiven
Sinnlichkeit entkeimen_” (There results then a pentafoliate of arts,
growing out of the subjective perceptions), says Kralik (p. 175). “_Sie
sind die ästhetische Behandlung der fünf Sinne._” (They are the æsthetic
treatment of the five senses.)

These five arts are the following:—

_Die Kunst des Geschmacksinns_—The art of the sense of taste (p. 175).

_Die Kunst des Geruchsinns_—The art of the sense of smell (p. 177).

_Die Kunst des Tastsinns_—The art of the sense of touch (p. 180).

_Die Kunst des Gehörsinns_—The art of the sense of hearing (p. 182).

_Die Kunst des Gesichtsinns_—The art of the sense of sight (p. 184).

Of the first of these—_die Kunst des Geschmacksinns_—he says: “_Man hält
zwar gewöhnlich nur zwei oder höchstens drei Sinne für würdig, den Stoff
künstlerischer Behandlung abzugeben, aber ich glaube nur mit bedingtem
Recht. Ich will kein allzugrosses Gewicht darauf legen, dass der gemeine
Sprachgebrauch manch andere Künste, wie zum Beispiel die Kochkunst
kennt._”[4]

And further: “_Und es ist doch gewiss eine ästhetische Leistung, wenn es
der Kochkunst gelingt aus einem thierischen Kadaver einen Gegenstand des
Geschmacks in jedem Sinne zu machen. Der Grundsatz der Kunst des
Geschmacksinns (die weiter ist als die sogenannte Kochkunst) ist also
dieser: Es soll alles Geniessbare als Sinnbild einer Idee behandelt
werden und in jedesmaligem Einklang zur auszudrückenden Idee._”[5]

This author, like Renan, acknowledges a _Kostümkunst_ (Art of Costume)
(p. 200), etc.

Such is also the opinion of the French writer, Guyau, who is highly
esteemed by some authors of our day. In his book, _Les problèmes de
l’esthétique contemporaine_, he speaks seriously of touch, taste, and
smell as giving, or being capable of giving, aesthetic impressions: “_Si
la couleur manque au toucher, il nous fournit en revanche une notion que
l’œil seul ne peut nous donner, et qui a une valeur esthétique
considérable, celle du doux, du soyeux du poli. Ce qui caractérise la
beauté du velours, c’est sa douceur au toucher non moins que son
brillant. Dans l’idée que nous nous faisons de la beauté d’une femme, le
velouté de sa peau entre comme élément essentiel._”

“_Chacun de nous probablement avec un peu d’attention se rappellera des
jouissances du goût, qui out été de véritables jouissances
esthétiques._”[6] And he recounts how a glass of milk drunk by him in
the mountains gave him æsthetic enjoyment.

So it turns out that the conception of art as consisting in making
beauty manifest is not at all so simple as it seemed, especially now,
when in this conception of beauty are included our sensations of touch
and taste and smell, as they are by the latest æsthetic writers.

But the ordinary man either does not know, or does not wish to know, all
this, and is firmly convinced that all questions about art may be simply
and clearly solved by acknowledging beauty to be the subject-matter of
art. To him it seems clear and comprehensible that art consists in
manifesting beauty, and that a reference to beauty will serve to explain
all questions about art.

But what is this beauty which forms the subject-matter of art? How is it
defined? What is it?

As is always the case, the more cloudy and confused the conception
conveyed by a word, with the more _aplomb_ and self-assurance do people
use that word, pretending that what is understood by it is so simple and
clear that it is not worth while even to discuss what it actually means.

This is how matters of orthodox religion are usually dealt with, and
this is how people now deal with the conception of beauty. It is taken
for granted that what is meant by the word beauty is known and
understood by everyone. And yet not only is this not known, but, after
whole mountains of books have been written on the subject by the most
learned and profound thinkers during one hundred and fifty years (ever
since Baumgarten founded æsthetics in the year 1750), the question, What
is beauty? remains to this day quite unsolved, and in each new work on
æsthetics it is answered in a new way. One of the last books I read on
æsthetics is a not ill-written booklet by Julius Mithalter, called
_Rätsel des Schönen_ (The Enigma of the Beautiful). And that title
precisely expresses the position of the question, What is beauty? After
thousands of learned men have discussed it during one hundred and fifty
years, the meaning of the word beauty remains an enigma still. The
Germans answer the question in their manner, though in a hundred
different ways. The physiologist-æstheticians, especially the
Englishmen: Herbert Spencer, Grant Allen and his school, answer it, each
in his own way; the French eclectics, and the followers of Guyau and
Taine, also each in his own way; and all these people know all the
preceding solutions given by Baumgarten, and Kant, and Schelling, and
Schiller, and Fichte, and Winckelmann, and Lessing, and Hegel, and
Schopenhauer, and Hartmann, and Schasler, and Cousin, and Lévêque and
others.

What is this strange conception “beauty,” which seems so simple to those
who talk without thinking, but in defining which all the philosophers of
various tendencies and different nationalities can come to no agreement
during a century and a half? What is this conception of beauty, on which
the dominant doctrine of art rests?

In Russian, by the word _krasota_ (beauty) we mean only that which
pleases the sight. And though latterly people have begun to speak of “an
ugly deed,” or of “beautiful music,” it is not good Russian.

A Russian of the common folk, not knowing foreign languages, will not
understand you if you tell him that a man who has given his last coat to
another, or done anything similar, has acted “beautifully,” that a man
who has cheated another has done an “ugly” action, or that a song is
“beautiful.”

In Russian a deed may be kind and good, or unkind and bad. Music may be
pleasant and good, or unpleasant and bad; but there can be no such thing
as “beautiful” or “ugly” music.

Beautiful may relate to a man, a horse, a house, a view, or a movement.
Of actions, thoughts, character, or music, if they please us, we may say
that they are good, or, if they do not please us, that they are not
good. But beautiful can be used only concerning that which pleases the
sight. So that the word and conception “good” includes the conception of
“beautiful,” but the reverse is not the case; the conception “beauty”
does not include the conception “good.” If we say “good” of an article
which we value for its appearance, we thereby say that the article is
beautiful; but if we say it is “beautiful,” it does not at all mean that
the article is a good one.

Such is the meaning ascribed by the Russian language, and therefore by
the sense of the people, to the words and conceptions “good” and
“beautiful.”

In all the European languages, _i.e._ the languages of those nations
among whom the doctrine has spread that beauty is the essential thing in
art, the words “beau,” “schön,” “beautiful,” “bello,” etc., while
keeping their meaning of beautiful in form, have come to also express
“goodness,” “kindness,” _i.e._ have come to act as substitutes for the
word “good.”

So that it has become quite natural in those languages to use such
expressions as “belle ame,” “schöne Gedanken,” of “beautiful deed.”
Those languages no longer have a suitable word wherewith expressly to
indicate beauty of form, and have to use a combination of words such as
“beau par la forme,” “beautiful to look at,” etc., to convey that idea.

Observation of the divergent meanings which the words “beauty” and
“beautiful” have in Russian on the one hand, and in those European
languages now permeated by this æsthetic theory on the other hand, shows
us that the word “beauty” has, among the latter, acquired a special
meaning, namely, that of “good.”

What is remarkable, moreover, is that since we Russians have begun more
and more to adopt the European view of art, the same evolution has begun
to show itself in our language also, and some people speak and write
quite confidently, and without causing surprise, of beautiful music and
ugly actions, or even thoughts; whereas forty years ago, when I was
young, the expressions “beautiful music” and “ugly actions” were not
only unusual but incomprehensible. Evidently this new meaning given to
beauty by European thought begins to be assimilated by Russian society.

And what really is this meaning? What is this “beauty” as it is
understood by the European peoples?

In order to answer this question, I must here quote at least a small
selection of those definitions of beauty most generally adopted in
existing æsthetic systems. I especially beg the reader not to be
overcome by dulness, but to read these extracts through, or, still
better, to read some one of the erudite æsthetic authors. Not to mention
the voluminous German æstheticians, a very good book for this purpose
would be either the German book by Kralik, the English work by Knight,
or the French one by Lévêque. It is necessary to read one of the learned
æsthetic writers in order to form at first-hand a conception of the
variety in opinion and the frightful obscurity which reigns in this
region of speculation; not, in this important matter, trusting to
another’s report.

This, for instance, is what the German æsthetician Schasler says in the
preface to his famous, voluminous, and detailed work on æsthetics:—

“Hardly in any sphere of philosophic science can we find such divergent
methods of investigation and exposition, amounting even to
self-contradiction, as in the sphere of æsthetics. On the one hand we
have elegant phraseology without any substance, characterised in great
part by most one-sided superficiality; and on the other hand,
accompanying undeniable profundity of investigation and richness of
subject-matter, we get a revolting awkwardness of philosophic
terminology, enfolding the simplest thoughts in an apparel of abstract
science as though to render them worthy to enter the consecrated palace
of the system; and finally, between these two methods of investigation
and exposition, there is a third, forming, as it were, the transition
from one to the other, a method consisting of eclecticism, now flaunting
an elegant phraseology and now a pedantic erudition.... A style of
exposition that falls into none of these three defects but it is truly
concrete, and, having important matter, expresses it in clear and
popular philosophic language, can nowhere be found less frequently than
in the domain of æsthetics.”[7]

It is only necessary, for instance, to read Schasler’s own book to
convince oneself of the justice of this observation of his.

On the same subject the French writer Véron, in the preface to his very
good work on æsthetics, says, “_Il n’y a pas de science, qui ait été
plus que l’esthétique livrée aux rêveries des métaphysiciens. Depuis
Platon jusqu’ aux doctrines officielles de nos jours, on a fait de l’art
je ne sais quel amalgame de fantaisies quintessenciées, et de mystères
transcendantaux qui trouvent leur expression suprême dans la conception
absolue du Beau idéal, prototype immuable et divin des choses réelles_”
(_L’esthétique_, 1878, p. 5).[8]

If the reader will only be at the pains to peruse the following
extracts, defining beauty, taken from the chief writers on æsthetics, he
may convince himself that this censure is thoroughly deserved.

I shall not quote the definitions of beauty attributed to the
ancients,—Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc., down to Plotinus,—because,
in reality, the ancients had not that conception of beauty separated
from goodness which forms the basis and aim of æsthetics in our time. By
referring the judgments of the ancients on beauty to our conception of
it, as is usually done in æsthetics, we give the words of the ancients a
meaning which is not theirs.[9]

Footnote 4:

  Only two, or at most three, senses are generally held worthy to supply
  matter for artistic treatment, but I think this opinion is only
  conditionally correct. I will not lay too much stress on the fact that
  our common speech recognises many other arts, as, for instance, the
  art of cookery.

Footnote 5:

  And yet it is certainly an æsthetic achievement when the art of
  cooking succeeds in making of an animal’s corpse an object in all
  respects tasteful. The principle of the Art of Taste (which goes
  beyond the so-called Art of Cookery) is therefore this: All that is
  eatable should be treated as the symbol of some Idea, and always in
  harmony with the Idea to be expressed.

Footnote 6:

  If the sense of touch lacks colour, it gives us, on the other hand, a
  notion which the eye alone cannot afford, and one of considerable
  æsthetic value, namely, that of _softness_, _silkiness_, _polish_. The
  beauty of velvet is characterised not less by its softness to the
  touch than by its lustre. In the idea we form of a woman’s beauty, the
  softness of her skin enters as an essential element.

  Each of us probably, with a little attention, can recall pleasures of
  taste which have been real æsthetic pleasures.

Footnote 7:

  M. Schasler, _Kritische Geschichte der Aesthetik_, 1872, vol. i. p.
  13.

Footnote 8:

  There is no science which more than æsthetics has been handed over to
  the reveries of the metaphysicians. From Plato down to the received
  doctrines of our day, people have made of art a strange amalgam of
  quintessential fancies and transcendental mysteries, which find their
  supreme expression in the conception of an absolute ideal Beauty,
  immutable and divine prototype of actual things.

Footnote 9:

  See on this matter Benard’s admirable book, _L’esthétique d’Aristote_,
  also Walter’s _Geschichte der Aesthetik im Altertum_.




                              CHAPTER III


I begin with the founder of æsthetics, Baumgarten (1714-1762).

According to Baumgarten,[10] the object of logical knowledge is Truth,
the object of æsthetic (_i.e._ sensuous) knowledge is Beauty. Beauty is
the Perfect (the Absolute), recognised through the senses; Truth is the
Perfect perceived through reason; Goodness is the Perfect reached by
moral will.

Beauty is defined by Baumgarten as a correspondence, _i.e._ an order of
the parts in their mutual relations to each other and in their relation
to the whole. The aim of beauty itself is to please and excite a desire,
“_Wohlgefallen und Erregung eines Verlangens._” (A position precisely
the opposite of Kant’s definition of the nature and sign of beauty.)

With reference to the manifestations of beauty, Baumgarten considers
that the highest embodiment of beauty is seen by us in nature, and he
therefore thinks that the highest aim of art is to copy nature. (This
position also is directly contradicted by the conclusions of the latest
æstheticians.)

Passing over the unimportant followers of Baumgarten,—Maier, Eschenburg,
and Eberhard,—who only slightly modified the doctrine of their teacher
by dividing the pleasant from the beautiful, I will quote the
definitions given by writers who came immediately after Baumgarten, and
defined beauty quite in another way. These writers were Sulzer,
Mendelssohn, and Moritz. They, in contradiction to Baumgarten’s main
position, recognise as the aim of art, not beauty, but goodness. Thus
Sulzer (1720-1777) says that only that can be considered beautiful which
contains goodness. According to his theory, the aim of the whole life of
humanity is welfare in social life. This is attained by the education of
the moral feelings, to which end art should be subservient. Beauty is
that which evokes and educates this feeling.

Beauty is understood almost in the same way by Mendelssohn (1729-1786).
According to him, art is the carrying forward of the beautiful,
obscurely recognised by feeling, till it becomes the true and good. The
aim of art is moral perfection.[11]

For the æstheticians of this school, the ideal of beauty is a beautiful
soul in a beautiful body. So that these æstheticians completely wipe out
Baumgarten’s division of the Perfect (the Absolute), into the three
forms of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty; and Beauty is again united with
the Good and the True.

But this conception is not only not maintained by the later
æstheticians, but the æsthetic doctrine of Winckelmann arises, again in
complete opposition. This divides the mission of art from the aim of
goodness in the sharpest and most positive manner, makes external beauty
the aim of art, and even limits it to visible beauty.

According to the celebrated work of Winckelmann (1717-1767), the law and
aim of all art is beauty only, beauty quite separated from and
independent of goodness. There are three kinds of beauty:—(1) beauty of
form, (2) beauty of idea, expressing itself in the position of the
figure (in plastic art), (3) beauty of expression, attainable only when
the two first conditions are present. This beauty of expression is the
highest aim of art, and is attained in antique art; modern art should
therefore aim at imitating ancient art.[12]

Art is similarly understood by Lessing, Herder, and afterwards by Goethe
and by all the distinguished æstheticians of Germany till Kant, from
whose day, again, a different conception of art commences.

Native æsthetic theories arose during this period in England, France,
Italy, and Holland, and they, though not taken from the German, were
equally cloudy and contradictory. And all these writers, just like the
German æstheticians, founded their theories on a conception of the
Beautiful, understanding beauty in the sense of a something existing
absolutely, and more or less intermingled with Goodness or having one
and the same root. In England, almost simultaneously with Baumgarten,
even a little earlier, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Home, Burke, Hogarth, and
others, wrote on art.

According to Shaftesbury (1670-1713), “That which is beautiful is
harmonious and proportionable, what is harmonious and proportionable is
true, and what is at once both beautiful and true is of consequence
agreeable and good.”[13] Beauty, he taught, is recognised by the mind
only. God is fundamental beauty; beauty and goodness proceed from the
same fount.

So that, although Shaftesbury regards beauty as being something separate
from goodness, they again merge into something inseparable.

According to Hutcheson (1694-1747—“Inquiry into the Original of our
Ideas of Beauty and Virtue”), the aim of art is beauty, the essence of
which consists in evoking in us the perception of uniformity amid
variety. In the recognition of what is art we are guided by “an internal
sense.” This internal sense may be in contradiction to the ethical one.
So that, according to Hutcheson, beauty does not always correspond with
goodness, but separates from it and is sometimes contrary to it.[14]

According to Home, Lord Kames (1696-1782), beauty is that which is
pleasant. Therefore beauty is defined by taste alone. The standard of
true taste is that the maximum of richness, fulness, strength, and
variety of impression should be contained in the narrowest limits. That
is the ideal of a perfect work of art.

According to Burke (1729-1797—“Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of
our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful”), the sublime and beautiful,
which are the aim of art, have their origin in the promptings of
self-preservation and of society. These feelings, examined in their
source, are means for the maintenance of the race through the
individual. The first (self-preservation) is attained by nourishment,
defence, and war; the second (society) by intercourse and propagation.
Therefore self-defence, and war, which is bound up with it, is the
source of the sublime; sociability, and the sex-instinct, which is bound
up with it, is the source of beauty.[15]

Such were the chief English definitions of art and beauty in the
eighteenth century.

During that period, in France, the writers on art were Père André and
Batteux, with Diderot, D’Alembert, and, to some extent, Voltaire,
following later.

According to Père André (“Essai sur le Beau,” 1741), there are three
kinds of beauty—divine beauty, natural beauty, and artificial
beauty.[16]

According to Batteux (1713-1780), art consists in imitating the beauty
of nature, its aim being enjoyment.[17] Such is also Diderot’s
definition of art.

The French writers, like the English, consider that it is taste that
decides what is beautiful. And the laws of taste are not only not laid
down, but it is granted that they cannot be settled. The same view was
held by D’Alembert and Voltaire.[18]

According to the Italian æsthetician of that period, Pagano, art
consists in uniting the beauties’ dispersed in nature. The capacity to
perceive these beauties is taste, the capacity to bring them into one
whole is artistic genius. Beauty commingles with goodness, so that
beauty is goodness made visible, and goodness is inner beauty.[19]

According to the opinion of other Italians: Muratori
(1672-1750),—“_Riflessioni sopra il buon gusto intorno le science e le
arti_,”—and especially Spaletti,[20]—“_Saggio sopra la bellezza_”
(1765),—art amounts to an egotistical sensation, founded (as with Burke)
on the desire for self-preservation and society.

Among Dutch writers, Hemsterhuis (1720-1790), who had an influence on
the German æstheticians and on Goethe, is remarkable. According to him,
beauty is that which gives most pleasure, and that gives most pleasure
which gives us the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time.
Enjoyment of the beautiful, because it gives the greatest quantity of
perceptions in the shortest time, is the highest notion to which man can
attain.[21]

Such were the æsthetic theories outside Germany during the last century.
In Germany, after Winckelmann, there again arose a completely new
æsthetic theory, that of Kant (1724-1804), which more than all others
clears up what this conception of beauty, and consequently of art,
really amounts to.

The æsthetic teaching of Kant is founded as follows:—Man has a knowledge
of nature outside him and of himself in nature. In nature, outside
himself, he seeks for truth; in himself he seeks for goodness. The first
is an affair of pure reason, the other of practical reason (free-will).
Besides these two means of perception, there is yet the judging capacity
(_Urteilskraft_), which forms judgments without reasonings and produces
pleasure without desire (_Urtheil ohne Begriff und Vergnügen ohne
Begehren_). This capacity is the basis of æsthetic feeling. Beauty,
according to Kant, in its subjective meaning is that which, in general
and necessarily, without reasonings and without practical advantage,
pleases. In its objective meaning it is the form of a suitable object in
so far as that object is perceived without any conception of its
utility.[22]

Beauty is defined in the same way by the followers of Kant, among whom
was Schiller (1759-1805). According to Schiller, who wrote much on
æsthetics, the aim of art is, as with Kant, beauty, the source of which
is pleasure without practical advantage. So that art may be called a
game, not in the sense of an unimportant occupation, but in the sense of
a manifestation of the beauties of life itself without other aim than
that of beauty.[23]

Besides Schiller, the most remarkable of Kant’s followers in the sphere
of æsthetics was Wilhelm Humboldt, who, though he added nothing to the
definition of beauty, explained various forms of it,—the drama, music,
the comic, etc.[24]

After Kant, besides the second-rate philosophers, the writers on
æsthetics were Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and their followers. Fichte
(1762-1814) says that perception of the beautiful proceeds from this:
the world—_i.e._ nature—has two sides: it is the sum of our limitations,
and it is the sum of our free idealistic activity. In the first aspect
the world is limited, in the second aspect it is free. In the first
aspect every object is limited, distorted, compressed, confined—and we
see deformity; in the second we perceive its inner completeness,
vitality, regeneration—and we see beauty. So that the deformity or
beauty of an object, according to Fichte, depends on the point of view
of the observer. Beauty therefore exists, not in the world, but in the
beautiful soul (_schöner Geist_). Art is the manifestation of this
beautiful soul, and its aim is the education, not only of the mind—that
is the business of the _savant_; not only of the heart—that is the
affair of the moral preacher; but of the whole man. And so the
characteristic of beauty lies, not in anything external, but in the
presence of a beautiful soul in the artist.[25]

Following Fichte, and in the same direction, Friedrich Schlegel and Adam
Müller also defined beauty. According to Schlegel (1772—1829), beauty in
art is understood too incompletely, one-sidedly, and disconnectedly.
Beauty exists not only in art, but also in nature and in love; so that
the truly beautiful is expressed by the union of art, nature, and love.
Therefore, as inseparably one with aesthetic art, Schlegel acknowledges
moral and philosophic art.[26]

According to Adam Muller (1779-1829), there are two kinds of beauty; the
one, general beauty, which attracts people as the sun attracts the
planet—this is found chiefly in antique art—and the other, individual
beauty, which results from the observer himself becoming a sun
attracting beauty,—this is the beauty of modern art. A world in which
all contradictions are harmonised is the highest beauty. Every work of
art is a reproduction of this universal harmony.[27] The highest art is
the art of life.[28]

Next after Fichte and his followers came a contemporary of his, the
philosopher Schelling (1775-1854), who has had a great influence on the
æsthetic conceptions of our times. According to Schelling’s philosophy,
art is the production or result of that conception of things by which
the subject becomes its own object, or the object its own subject.
Beauty is the perception of the infinite in the finite. And the chief
characteristic of works of art is unconscious infinity. Art is the
uniting of the subjective with the objective, of nature with reason, of
the unconscious with the conscious, and therefore art is the highest
means of knowledge. Beauty is the contemplation of things in themselves
as they exist in the prototype (_In den Urbildern_). It is not the
artist who by his knowledge or skill produces the beautiful, but the
idea of beauty in him itself produces it.[29]

Of Schelling’s followers the most noticeable was Solger
(1780-1819—_Vorlesungen über Aesthetik_). According to him, the idea of
beauty is the fundamental idea of everything. In the world we see only
distortions of the fundamental idea, but art, by imagination, may lift
itself to the height of this idea. Art is therefore akin to
creation.[30]

According to another follower of Schelling, Krause (1781-1832), true,
positive beauty is the manifestation of the Idea in an individual form;
art is the actualisation of the beauty existing in the sphere of man’s
free spirit. The highest stage of art is the art of life, which directs
its activity towards the adornment of life so that it may be a beautiful
abode for a beautiful man.[31]

After Schelling and his followers came the new æsthetic doctrine of
Hegel, which is held to this day, consciously by many, but by the
majority unconsciously. This teaching is not only no clearer or better
defined than the preceding ones, but is, if possible, even more cloudy
and mystical.

According to Hegel (1770-1831), God manifests himself in nature and in
art in the form of beauty. God expresses himself in two ways: in the
object and in the subject, in nature and in spirit. Beauty is the
shining of the Idea through matter. Only the soul, and what pertains to
it, is truly beautiful; and therefore the beauty of nature is only the
reflection of the natural beauty of the spirit—the beautiful has only a
spiritual content. But the spiritual must appear in sensuous form. The
sensuous manifestation of spirit is only appearance (_schein_), and this
appearance is the only reality of the beautiful. Art is thus the
production of this appearance of the Idea, and is a means, together with
religion and philosophy, of bringing to consciousness and of expressing
the deepest problems of humanity and the highest truths of the spirit.

Truth and beauty, according to Hegel, are one and the same thing; the
difference being only that truth is the Idea itself as it exists in
itself, and is thinkable. The Idea, manifested externally, becomes to
the apprehension not only true but beautiful. The beautiful is the
manifestation of the Idea.[32]

Following Hegel came his many adherents, Weisse, Arnold Ruge,
Rosenkrantz, Theodor Vischer and others.

According to Weisse (1801-1867), art is the introduction (_Einbildung_)
of the absolute spiritual reality of beauty into external, dead,
indifferent matter, the perception of which latter apart from the beauty
brought into it presents the negation of all existence in itself
(_Negation alles Fürsichseins_).

In the idea of truth, Weisse explains, lies a contradiction between the
subjective and the objective sides of knowledge, in that an individual
_I_ discerns the Universal. This contradiction can be removed by a
conception that should unite into one the universal and the individual,
which fall asunder in our conceptions of truth. Such a conception would
be reconciled (_aufgehoben_) truth. Beauty is such a reconciled
truth.[33]

According to Ruge (1802-1880), a strict follower of Hegel, beauty is the
Idea expressing itself. The spirit, contemplating itself, either finds
itself expressed completely, and then that full expression of itself is
beauty; or incompletely, and then it feels the need to alter this
imperfect expression of itself, and becomes creative art.[34]

According to Vischer (1807-1887), beauty is the Idea in the form of a
finite phenomenon. The Idea itself is not indivisible, but forms a
system of ideas, which may be represented by ascending and descending
lines. The higher the idea the more beauty it contains; but even the
lowest contains beauty, because it forms an essential link of the
system. The highest form of the Idea is personality, and therefore the
highest art is that which has for its subject-matter the highest
personality.[35]

Such were the theories of the German æstheticians in the Hegelian
direction, but they did not monopolise æsthetic dissertations. In
Germany, side by side and simultaneously with the Hegelian theories,
there appeared theories of beauty not only independent of Hegel’s
position (that beauty is the manifestation of the Idea), but directly
contrary to this view, denying and ridiculing it. Such was the line
taken by Herbart and, more particularly, by Schopenhauer.

According to Herbart (1776-1841), there is not, and cannot be, any such
thing as beauty existing in itself. What does exist is only our opinion,
and it is necessary to find the base of this opinion (_Ästhetisches
Elementarurtheil_). Such bases are connected with our impressions. There
are certain relations which we term beautiful; and art consists in
finding these relations, which are simultaneous in painting, the plastic
art, and architecture, successive and simultaneous in music, and purely
successive in poetry. In contradiction to the former æstheticians,
Herbart holds that objects are often beautiful which express nothing at
all, as, for instance, the rainbow, which is beautiful for its lines and
colours, and not for its mythological connection with Iris or Noah’s
rainbow.[36]

Another opponent of Hegel was Schopenhauer, who denied Hegel’s whole
system, his æsthetics included.

According to Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Will objectivizes itself in the
world on various planes; and although the higher the plane on which it
is objectivized the more beautiful it is, yet each plane has its own
beauty. Renunciation of one’s individuality and contemplation of one of
these planes of manifestation of Will gives us a perception of beauty.
All men, says Schopenhauer, possess the capacity to objectivize the Idea
on different planes. The genius of the artist has this capacity in a
higher degree, and therefore makes a higher beauty manifest.[37]

After these more eminent writers there followed, in Germany, less
original and less influential ones, such as Hartmann, Kirkmann,
Schnasse, and, to some extent, Helmholtz (as an æsthetician), Bergmann,
Jungmann, and an innumerable host of others.

According to Hartmann (1842), beauty lies, not in the external world,
nor in “the thing in itself,” neither does it reside in the soul of man,
but it lies in the “seeming” (_Schein_) produced by the artist. The
thing in itself is not beautiful, but is transformed into beauty by the
artist.[38]

According to Schnasse (1798-1875), there is no perfect beauty in the
world. In nature there is only an approach towards it. Art gives what
nature cannot give. In the energy of the free _ego_, conscious of
harmony not found in nature, beauty is disclosed.[39]

Kirkmann wrote on experimental aesthetics. All aspects of history in his
system are joined by pure chance. Thus, according to Kirkmann
(1802-1884), there are six realms of history:—The realm of Knowledge, of
Wealth, of Morality, of Faith, of Politics, and of Beauty; and activity
in the last-named realm is art.[40]

According to Helmholtz (1821), who wrote on beauty as it relates to
music, beauty in musical productions is attained only by following
unalterable laws. These laws are not known to the artist; so that beauty
is manifested by the artist unconsciously, and cannot be subjected to
analysis.[41]

According to Bergmann (1840) (_Ueber das Schöne_, 1887), to define
beauty objectively is impossible. Beauty is only perceived subjectively,
and therefore the problem of æsthetics is to define what pleases
whom.[42]

According to Jungmann (d. 1885), firstly, beauty is a suprasensible
quality of things; secondly, beauty produces in us pleasure by merely
being contemplated; and, thirdly, beauty is the foundation of love.[43]

The æsthetic theories of the chief representatives of France, England,
and other nations in recent times have been the following:—

In France, during this period, the prominent writers on æsthetics were
Cousin, Jouffroy, Pictet, Ravaisson, Lévêque.

Cousin (1792-1867) was an eclectic, and a follower of the German
idealists. According to his theory, beauty always has a moral
foundation. He disputes the doctrine that art is imitation and that the
beautiful is what pleases. He affirms that beauty may be defined
objectively, and that it essentially consists in variety in unity.[44]

After Cousin came Jouffroy (1796-1842), who was a pupil of Cousin’s and
also a follower of the German æstheticians. According to his definition,
beauty is the expression of the invisible by those natural signs which
manifest it. The visible world is the garment by means of which we see
beauty.[45]

The Swiss writer Pictet repeated Hegel and Plato, supposing beauty to
exist in the direct and free manifestation of the divine Idea revealing
itself in sense forms.[46]

Lévêque was a follower of Schelling and Hegel. He holds that beauty is
something invisible behind nature—a force or spirit revealing itself in
ordered energy.[47]

Similar vague opinions about the nature of beauty were expressed by the
French metaphysician Ravaisson, who considered beauty to be the ultimate
aim and purpose of the world. “_La beauté la plus divine et
principalement la plus parfaite contient le secret du monde._”[48] And
again:—_“Le monde entier est l’œuvre d’une beauté absolue, qui n’est la
cause des choses que par l’amour qu’elle met en elles_.”

I purposely abstain from translating these metaphysical expressions,
because, however cloudy the Germans may be, the French, once they absorb
the theories of the Germans and take to imitating them, far surpass them
in uniting heterogeneous conceptions into one expression, and putting
forward one meaning or another indiscriminately. For instance, the
French philosopher Renouvier, when discussing beauty, says:—“_Ne
craignons pas de dire qu’une vérité qui ne serait pas belle, ne serait
qu’un jeu logique de notre esprit et que la seule vérité solide et digne
de ce nom c’est la beauté._”[49]

Besides the æsthetic idealists who wrote and still write under the
influence of German philosophy, the following recent writers have also
influenced the comprehension of art and beauty in France: Taine, Guyau,
Cherbuliez, Coster, and Véron.

According to Taine (1828-1893), beauty is the manifestation of the
essential characteristic of any important idea more completely than it
is expressed in reality.[50]

Guyau (1854-1888) taught that beauty is not something exterior to the
object itself,—is not, as it were, a parasitic growth on it,—but is
itself the very blossoming forth of that on which it appears. Art is the
expression of reasonable and conscious life, evoking in us both the
deepest consciousness of existence and the highest feelings and loftiest
thoughts. Art lifts man from his personal life into the universal life,
by means, not only of participation in the same ideas and beliefs, but
also by means of similarity in feeling.[51]

According to Cherbuliez, art is an activity, (1) satisfying our innate
love of forms (_apparences_), (2) endowing these forms with ideas, (3)
affording pleasure alike to our senses, heart, and reason. Beauty is not
inherent in objects, but is an act of our souls. Beauty is an illusion;
there is no absolute beauty. But what we consider characteristic and
harmonious appears beautiful to us.

Coster held that the ideas of the beautiful, the good, and the true are
innate. These ideas illuminate our minds and are identical with God, who
is Goodness, Truth, and Beauty. The idea of Beauty includes unity of
essence, variety of constitutive elements, and order, which brings unity
into the various manifestations of life.[52]

For the sake of completeness, I will further cite some of the very
latest writings upon art.

_La psychologie du Beau et de l’Art, par Mario Pilo_ (1895), says that
beauty is a product of our physical feelings. The aim of art is
pleasure, but this pleasure (for some reason) he considers to be
necessarily highly moral.

The _Essai sur l’art contemporain, par Fierens Gevaert_ (1897), says
that art rests on its connection with the past, and on the religious
ideal of the present which the artist holds when giving to his work the
form of his individuality.

Then again, Sar Peladan’s _L’art idéaliste et mystique_ (1894) says that
beauty is one of the manifestations of God. “_Il n’y a pas d’autre
Réalité que Dieu, n’y a pas d’autre Vérité que Dieu, il n’y a pas
d’autre Beauté, que Dieu_” (p. 33). This book is very fantastic and very
illiterate, but is characteristic in the positions it takes up, and
noticeable on account of a certain success it is having with the younger
generation in France.

All the æsthetics diffused in France up to the present time are similar
in kind, but among them Véron’s _L’esthétique_ (1878) forms an
exception, being reasonable and clear. That work, though it does not
give an exact definition of art, at least rids æsthetics of the cloudy
conception of an absolute beauty.

According to Véron (1825-1889), art is the manifestation of emotion
transmitted externally by a combination of lines, forms, colours, or by
a succession of movements, sounds, or words subjected to certain
rhythms.[53]

In England, during this period, the writers on æsthetics define beauty
more and more frequently, not by its own qualities, but by taste, and
the discussion about beauty is superseded by a discussion on taste.

After Reid (1704-1796), who acknowledged beauty as being entirely
dependent on the spectator, Alison, in his _Essay on the Nature and
Principles of Taste_ (1790), proved the same thing. From another side
this was also asserted by Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), the grandfather of
the celebrated Charles Darwin.

He says that we consider beautiful that which is connected in our
conception with what we love. Richard Knight’s work, _An Analytical
Inquiry into the Principles of Taste_, also tends in the same direction.

Most of the English theories of æsthetics are on the same lines. The
prominent writers on æsthetics in England during the present century
have been Charles Darwin, (to some extent), Herbert Spencer, Grant
Allen, Ker, and Knight.

According to Charles Darwin (1809-1882—_Descent of Man_, 1871), beauty
is a feeling natural not only to man but also to animals, and
consequently to the ancestors of man. Birds adorn their nests and esteem
beauty in their mates. Beauty has an influence on marriages. Beauty
includes a variety of diverse conceptions. The origin of the art of
music is the call of the males to the females.[54]

According to Herbert Spencer (b. 1820), the origin of art is play, a
thought previously expressed by Schiller. In the lower animals all the
energy of life is expended in life-maintenance and race-maintenance; in
man, however, there remains, after these needs are satisfied, some
superfluous strength. This excess is used in play, which passes over
into art. Play is an imitation of real activity, so is art. The sources
of æsthetic pleasure are threefold:—(1) That “which exercises the
faculties affected in the most complete ways, with the fewest drawbacks
from excess of exercise,” (2) “the difference of a stimulus in large
amount, which awakens a glow of agreeable feeling,” (3) the partial
revival of the same, with special combinations.[55]

In Todhunter’s _Theory of the Beautiful_ (1872), beauty is infinite
loveliness, which we apprehend both by reason and by the enthusiasm of
love. The recognition of beauty as being such depends on taste; there
can be no criterion for it. The only approach to a definition is found
in culture. (What culture is, is not defined.) Intrinsically, art—that
which affects us through lines, colours, sounds, or words—is not the
product of blind forces, but of reasonable ones, working, with mutual
helpfulness, towards a reasonable aim. Beauty is the reconciliation of
contradictions.[56]

Grant Allen is a follower of Spencer, and in his _Physiological
Æsthetics_ (1877) he says that beauty has a physical origin. Æsthetic
pleasures come from the contemplation of the beautiful, but the
conception of beauty is obtained by a physiological process. The origin
of art is play; when there is a superfluity of physical strength man
gives himself to play; when there is a superfluity of receptive power
man gives himself to art. The beautiful is that which affords the
maximum of stimulation with the minimum of waste. Differences in the
estimation of beauty proceed from taste. Taste can be educated. We must
have faith in the judgments “of the finest-nurtured and most
discriminative” men. These people form the taste of the next
generation.[57]

According to Ker’s _Essay on the Philosophy of Art_ (1883), beauty
enables us to make part of the objective world intelligible to ourselves
without being troubled by reference to other parts of it, as is
inevitable for science. So that art destroys the opposition between the
one and the many, between the law and its manifestation, between the
subject and its object, by uniting them. Art is the revelation and
vindication of freedom, because it is free from the darkness and
incomprehensibility of finite things.[58]

According to Knight’s _Philosophy of the Beautiful_, Part II. (1893),
beauty is (as with Schelling) the union of object and subject, the
drawing forth from nature of that which is cognate to man, and the
recognition in oneself of that which is common to all nature.

The opinions on beauty and on Art here mentioned are far from exhausting
what has been written on the subject. And every day fresh writers on
æsthetics arise, in whose disquisitions appear the same enchanted
confusion and contradictoriness in defining beauty. Some, by inertia,
continue the mystical æsthetics of Baumgarten and Hegel with sundry
variations; others transfer the question to the region of subjectivity,
and seek for the foundation of the beautiful in questions of taste;
others—the æstheticians of the very latest formation—seek the origin of
beauty in the laws of physiology; and finally, others again investigate
the question quite independently of the conception of beauty. Thus,
Sully in his _Sensation and Intuition: Studies in Psychology and
Æsthetics_ (1874), dismisses the conception of beauty altogether, art,
by his definition, being the production of some permanent object or
passing action fitted to supply active enjoyment to the producer, and a
pleasurable impression to a number of spectators or listeners, quite
apart from any personal advantage derived from it.[59]

Footnote 10:

  Schasler, p. 361.

Footnote 11:

  Schasler, p. 369.

Footnote 12:

  Schasler, pp. 388-390.

Footnote 13:

  Knight, _Philosophy of the Beautiful_, i. pp. 165, 166.

Footnote 14:

  Schasler, p. 289. Knight, pp. 168, 169.

Footnote 15:

  R. Kralik, _Weltschönheit, Versuch einer allgemeinen Aesthetik_, pp.
  304-306.

Footnote 16:

  Knight, p. 101.

Footnote 17:

  Schasler, p. 316.

Footnote 18:

  Knight, pp. 102-104.

Footnote 19:

  R. Kralik, p. 124.

Footnote 20:

  Spaletti, Schasler, p. 328.

Footnote 21:

  Schasler, pp. 331-333.

Footnote 22:

  Schasler, pp. 525-528.

Footnote 23:

  Knight, pp. 61-63.

Footnote 24:

  Schasler, pp. 740-743.

Footnote 25:

  Schasler, pp. 769-771.

Footnote 26:

  Schasler, pp. 786, 787.

Footnote 27:

  Kralik, p. 148.

Footnote 28:

  Kralik, p. 820.

Footnote 29:

  Schasler, pp. 828, 829, 834-841.

Footnote 30:

  Schasler, p. 891.

Footnote 31:

  Schasler, p. 917.

Footnote 32:

  Schasler, pp. 946, 1085, 984, 985, 990.

Footnote 33:

  Schasler, pp. 966, 655, 956.

Footnote 34:

  Schasler, p. 1017.

Footnote 35:

  Schasler, pp. 1065, 1066.

Footnote 36:

  Schasler, pp. 1097-1100.

Footnote 37:

  Schasler, pp. 1124, 1107.

Footnote 38:

  Knight, pp. 81, 82.

Footnote 39:

  Knight, p. 83.

Footnote 40:

  Schasler, p. 1121.

Footnote 41:

  Knight, pp. 85, 86.

Footnote 42:

  Knight, p. 88.

Footnote 43:

  Knight, p. 88.

Footnote 44:

  Knight, p. 112.

Footnote 45:

  Knight, p. 116.

Footnote 46:

  Knight, pp. 118, 119.

Footnote 47:

  Knight, pp. 123, 124.

Footnote 48:

  _La philosophie en France_, p. 232.

Footnote 49:

  _Du fondement de l’induction._

Footnote 50:

  _Philosophie de l’art_, vol. i. 1893, p. 47.

Footnote 51:

  Knight, p. 139-141.

Footnote 52:

  Knight, pp. 134.

Footnote 53:

  _L’esthétique_, p. 106.

Footnote 54:

  Knight, p. 238.

Footnote 55:

  Knight, pp. 239, 240.

Footnote 56:

  Knight, pp. 240-243.

Footnote 57:

  Knight, pp. 250-252.

Footnote 58:

  Knight, pp. 258, 259.

Footnote 59:

  Knight, p. 243.




                               CHAPTER IV


To what do these definitions of beauty amount? Not reckoning the
thoroughly inaccurate definitions of beauty which fail to cover the
conception of art, and which suppose beauty to consist either in
utility, or in adjustment to a purpose, or in symmetry, or in order, or
in proportion, or in smoothness, or in harmony of the parts, or in unity
amid variety, or in various combinations of these,—not reckoning these
unsatisfactory attempts at objective definition, all the æsthetic
definitions of beauty lead to two fundamental conceptions. The first is
that beauty is something having an independent existence (existing in
itself), that it is one of the manifestations of the absolutely Perfect,
of the Idea, of the Spirit, of Will, or of God; the other is that beauty
is a kind of pleasure received by us, not having personal advantage for
its object.

The first of these definitions was accepted by Fichte, Schelling, Hegel,
Schopenhauer, and the philosophising Frenchmen, Cousin, Jouffroy,
Ravaisson, and others, not to enumerate the second-rate æsthetic
philosophers. And this same objective-mystical definition of beauty is
held by a majority of the educated people of our day. It is a conception
very widely spread, especially among the elder generation.

The second view, that beauty is a certain kind of pleasure received by
us, not having personal advantage for its aim, finds favour chiefly
among the English æsthetic writers, and is shared by the other part of
our society, principally by the younger generation.

So there are (and it could not be otherwise) only two definitions of
beauty: the one objective, mystical, merging this conception into that
of the highest perfection, God—a fantastic definition, founded on
nothing; the other, on the contrary, a very simple and intelligible
subjective one, which considers beauty to be that which pleases (I do
not add to the word “pleases” the words “without the aim of advantage,”
because “pleases” naturally presupposes the absence of the idea of
profit).

On the one hand, beauty is viewed as something mystical and very
elevated, but unfortunately at the same time very indefinite, and
consequently embracing philosophy, religion, and life itself (as in the
theories of Schelling and Hegel, and their German and French followers);
or, on the other hand (as necessarily follows from the definition of
Kant and his adherents), beauty is simply a certain kind of
disinterested pleasure received by us. And this conception of beauty,
although it seems very clear, is, unfortunately, again inexact; for it
widens out on the other side, _i.e._ it includes the pleasure derived
from drink, from food, from touching a delicate skin, etc., as is
acknowledged by Guyau, Kralik, and others.

It is true that, following the development of the æsthetic doctrines on
beauty, we may notice that, though at first (in the times when the
foundations of the science of æsthetics were being laid) the
metaphysical definition of beauty prevailed, yet the nearer we get to
our own times the more does an experimental definition (recently
assuming a physiological form) come to the front, so that at last we
even meet with such æstheticians as Véron and Sully, who try to escape
entirely from the conception of beauty. But such æstheticians have very
little success, and with the majority of the public, as well as of
artists and the learned, a conception of beauty is firmly held which
agrees with the definitions contained in most of the æsthetic treatises,
_i.e._ which regards beauty either as something mystical or
metaphysical, or as a special kind of enjoyment.

What then is this conception of beauty, so stubbornly held to by people
of our circle and day as furnishing a definition of art?

In the subjective aspect, we call beauty that which supplies us with a
particular kind of pleasure.

In the objective aspect, we call beauty something absolutely perfect,
and we acknowledge it to be so only because we receive, from the
manifestation of this absolute perfection, a certain kind of pleasure;
so that this objective definition is nothing but the subjective
conception differently expressed. In reality both conceptions of beauty
amount to one and the same thing, namely, the reception by us of a
certain kind of pleasure, _i.e._ we call “beauty” that which pleases us
without evoking in us desire.

Such being the position of affairs, it would seem only natural that the
science of art should decline to content itself with a definition of art
based on beauty (_i.e._ on that which pleases), and seek a general
definition, which should apply to all artistic productions, and by
reference to which we might decide whether a certain article belonged to
the realm of art or not. But no such definition is supplied, as the
reader may see from those summaries of the æsthetic theories which I
have given, and as he may discover even more clearly from the original
æsthetic works, if he will be at the pains to read them. All attempts to
define absolute beauty in itself—whether as an imitation of nature, or
as suitability to its object, or as a correspondence of parts, or as
symmetry, or as harmony, or as unity in variety, etc.—either define
nothing at all, or define only some traits of some artistic productions,
and are far from including all that everybody has always held, and still
holds, to be art.

There is no objective definition of beauty. The existing definitions,
(both the metaphysical and the experimental), amount only to one and the
same subjective definition which (strange as it seems to say so) is,
that art is that which makes beauty manifest, and beauty is that which
pleases (without exciting desire). Many æstheticians have felt the
insufficiency and instability of such a definition, and, in order to
give it a firm basis, have asked themselves why a thing pleases. And
they have converted the discussion on beauty into a question concerning
taste, as did Hutcheson, Voltaire, Diderot, and others. But all attempts
to define what taste is must lead to nothing, as the reader may see both
from the history of æsthetics and experimentally. There is and can be no
explanation of why one thing pleases one man and displeases another, or
_vice versâ_. So that the whole existing science of æsthetics fails to
do what we might expect from it, being a mental activity calling itself
a science, namely, it does not define the qualities and laws of art, or
of the beautiful (if that be the content of art), or the nature of taste
(if taste decides the question of art and its merit), and then, on the
basis of such definitions, acknowledge as art those productions which
correspond to these laws, and reject those which do not come under them.
But this science of æsthetics consists in first acknowledging a certain
set of productions to be art (because they please us), and then framing
such a theory of art that all those productions which please a certain
circle of people should fit into it. There exists an art canon,
according to which certain productions favoured by our circle are
acknowledged as being art,—Phidias, Sophocles, Homer, Titian, Raphael,
Bach, Beethoven, Dante, Shakespear, Goethe, and others,—and the æsthetic
laws must be such as to embrace all these productions. In æsthetic
literature you will incessantly meet with opinions on the merit and
importance of art, founded not on any certain laws by which this or that
is held to be good or bad, but merely on the consideration whether this
art tallies with the art canon we have drawn up.

The other day I was reading a far from ill-written book by Folgeldt.
Discussing the demand for morality in works of art, the author plainly
says that we must not demand morality in art. And in proof of this he
advances the fact that if we admit such a demand, Shakespear’s _Romeo
and Juliet_ and Goethe’s _Wilhelm Meister_ would not fit into the
definition of good art; but since both these books are included in our
canon of art, he concludes that the demand is unjust. And therefore it
is necessary to find a definition of art which shall fit the works; and
instead of a demand for morality, Folgeldt postulates as the basis of
art a demand for the important (_Bedeutungsvolles_).

All the existing æsthetic standards are built on this plan. Instead of
giving a definition of true art, and then deciding what is and what is
not good art by judging whether a work conforms or does not conform to
the definition, a certain class of works, which for some reason please a
certain circle of people, is accepted as being art, and a definition of
art is then devised to cover all these productions. I recently came upon
a remarkable instance of this method in a very good German work, _The
History of Art in the Nineteenth Century_, by Muther. Describing the
pre-Raphaelites, the Decadents and the Symbolists (who are already
included in the canon of art), he not only does not venture to blame
their tendency, but earnestly endeavours to widen his standard so that
it may include them all, they appearing to him to represent a legitimate
reaction from the excesses of realism. No matter what insanities appear
in art, when once they find acceptance among the upper classes of our
society a theory is quickly invented to explain and sanction them; just
as if there had never been periods in history when certain special
circles of people recognised and approved false, deformed, and insensate
art which subsequently left no trace and has been utterly forgotten. And
to what lengths the insanity and deformity of art may go, especially
when, as in our days, it knows that it is considered infallible, may be
seen by what is being done in the art of our circle to-day.

So that the theory of art, founded on beauty, expounded by æsthetics,
and, in dim outline, professed by the public, is nothing but the setting
up as good, of that which has pleased and pleases us, _i.e._ pleases a
certain class of people.

In order to define any human activity, it is necessary to understand its
sense and importance. And, in order to do that, it is primarily
necessary to examine that activity in itself, in its dependence on its
causes, and in connection with its effects, and not merely in relation
to the pleasure we can get from it.

If we say that the aim of any activity is merely our pleasure, and
define it solely by that pleasure, our definition will evidently be a
false one. But this is precisely what has occurred in the efforts to
define art. Now, if we consider the food question, it will not occur to
anyone to affirm that the importance of food consists in the pleasure we
receive when eating it. Everyone understands that the satisfaction of
our taste cannot serve as a basis for our definition of the merits of
food, and that we have therefore no right to presuppose that the dinners
with cayenne pepper, Limburg cheese, alcohol, etc., to which we are
accustomed and which please us, form the very best human food.

And in the same way, beauty, or that which pleases us, can in no sense
serve as the basis for the definition of art; nor can a series of
objects which afford us pleasure serve as the model of what art should
be.

To see the aim and purpose of art in the pleasure we get from it, is
like assuming (as is done by people of the lowest moral development,
_e.g._ by savages) that the purpose and aim of food is the pleasure
derived when consuming it.

Just as people who conceive the aim and purpose of food to be pleasure
cannot recognise the real meaning of eating, so people who consider the
aim of art to be pleasure cannot realise its true meaning and purpose,
because they attribute to an activity, the meaning of which lies in its
connection with other phenomena of life, the false and exceptional aim
of pleasure. People come to understand that the meaning of eating lies
in the nourishment of the body only when they cease to consider that the
object of that activity is pleasure. And it is the same with regard to
art. People will come to understand the meaning of art only when they
cease to consider that the aim of that activity is beauty, _i.e._
pleasure. The acknowledgment of beauty (_i.e._ of a certain kind of
pleasure received from art) as being the aim of art, not only fails to
assist us in finding a definition of what art is, but, on the contrary,
by transferring the question into a region quite foreign to art (into
metaphysical, psychological, physiological, and even historical
discussions as to why such a production pleases one person, and such
another displeases or pleases someone else), it renders such definition
impossible. And since discussions as to why one man likes pears and
another prefers meat do not help towards finding a definition of what is
essential in nourishment, so the solution of questions of taste in art
(to which the discussions on art involuntarily come) not only does not
help to make clear what this particular human activity which we call art
really consists in, but renders such elucidation quite impossible, until
we rid ourselves of a conception which justifies every kind of art, at
the cost of confusing the whole matter.

To the question, What is this art, to which is offered up the labour of
millions, the very lives of men, and even morality itself? we have
extracted replies from the existing æsthetics, which all amount to this:
that the aim of art is beauty, that beauty is recognised by the
enjoyment it gives, and that artistic enjoyment is a good and important
thing, because it _is_ enjoyment. In a word, that enjoyment is good
because it is enjoyment. Thus, what is considered the definition of art
is no definition at all, but only a shuffle to justify existing art.
Therefore, however strange it may seem to say so, in spite of the
mountains of books written about art, no exact definition of art has
been constructed. And the reason of this is that the conception of art
has been based on the conception of beauty.




                               CHAPTER V


What is art, if we put aside the conception of beauty, which confuses
the whole matter? The latest and most comprehensible definitions of art,
apart from the conception of beauty, are the following:—(1 _a_) Art is
an activity arising even in the animal kingdom, and springing from
sexual desire and the propensity to play (Schiller, Darwin, Spencer),
and (1 _b_) accompanied by a pleasurable excitement of the nervous
system (Grant Allen). This is the physiological-evolutionary definition.
(2) Art is the external manifestation, by means of lines, colours,
movements, sounds, or words, of emotions felt by man (Véron). This is
the experimental definition. According to the very latest definition
(Sully), (3) Art is “the production of some permanent object, or passing
action, which is fitted not only to supply an active enjoyment to the
producer, but to convey a pleasurable impression to a number of
spectators or listeners, quite apart from any personal advantage to be
derived from it.”

Notwithstanding the superiority of these definitions to the metaphysical
definitions which depended on the conception of beauty, they are yet far
from exact. (1 _a_) The first, the physiological-evolutionary
definition, is inexact, because, instead of speaking about the artistic
activity itself, which is the real matter in hand, it treats of the
derivation of art. The modification of it (1 _b_), based on the
physiological effects on the human organism, is inexact, because within
the limits of such definition many other human activities can be
included, as has occurred in the neo-æsthetic theories, which reckon as
art the preparation of handsome clothes, pleasant scents, and even of
victuals.

The experimental definition (2), which makes art consist in the
expression of emotions, is inexact, because a man may express his
emotions by means of lines, colours, sounds, or words, and yet may not
act on others by such expression; and then the manifestation of his
emotions is not art.

The third definition (that of Sully) is inexact, because in the
production of objects or actions affording pleasure to the producer and
a pleasant emotion to the spectators or hearers apart from personal
advantage, may be included the showing of conjuring tricks or gymnastic
exercises, and other activities which are not art. And, further, many
things, the production of which does not afford pleasure to the
producer, and the sensation received from which is unpleasant, such as
gloomy, heart-rending scenes in a poetic description or a play, may
nevertheless be undoubted works of art.

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 lightheartedness, 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, humour 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, colours,
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 towards
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.[60]

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
theatres, 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 civilised European society of our class and day, in
favouring 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 patronise any art. And I think the last error is much
grosser than the first, and that its consequences are far more harmful.

Footnote 60:

  “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.—Trans.




                               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 towards 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 worshipping 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 honouring 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 recognised as being good and was encouraged; but art which
transmitted feelings considered to be bad by this general religious
conception, was recognised 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 recognised 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, paganised 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, vitalised by the same source of
feeling—religion—as the mass of the people, and transmitting, in
architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry or drama, the feelings
and states of mind they experienced, were true artists; and their
activity, founded on the highest conceptions accessible to their age and
common to the entire people, though, for our times a mean art, was,
nevertheless a true one, shared by the whole community.

And this was the state of things until, in the upper, rich, more
educated classes of European society, doubt arose as to the truth of
that understanding of life which was expressed by Church Christianity.
When, after the Crusades and the maximum development of papal power and
its abuses, people of the rich classes became acquainted with the wisdom
of the classics, and saw, on the one hand, the reasonable lucidity of
the teaching of the ancient sages, and, on the other hand, the
incompatibility of the Church doctrine with the teaching of Christ, they
lost all possibility of continuing to believe the Church teaching.

If, in externals, they still kept to the forms of Church teaching, they
could no longer believe in it, and held to it only by inertia and for
the sake of influencing the masses, who continued to believe blindly in
Church doctrine, and whom the upper classes, for their own advantage,
considered it necessary to support in those beliefs.

So that a time came when Church Christianity ceased to be the general
religious doctrine of all Christian people; some—the masses—continued
blindly to believe in it, but the upper classes—those in whose hands lay
the power and wealth, and therefore the leisure to produce art and the
means to stimulate it—ceased to believe in that teaching.

In respect to religion, the upper circles of the Middle Ages found
themselves in the same position in which the educated Romans were before
Christianity arose, _i.e._ they no longer believed in the religion of
the masses, but had no beliefs to put in place of the worn-out Church
doctrine which for them had lost its meaning.

There was only this difference, that whereas for the Romans who lost
faith in their emperor-gods and household-gods it was impossible to
extract anything further from all the complex mythology they had
borrowed from all the conquered nations, and it was consequently
necessary to find a completely new conception of life, the people of the
Middle Ages, when they doubted the truth of the Church teaching, had no
need to seek a fresh one. That Christian teaching which they professed
in a perverted form as Church doctrine, had mapped out the path of human
progress so far ahead, that they had but to rid themselves of those
perversions which hid the teaching announced by Christ, and to adopt its
real meaning—if not completely, then at least in some greater degree
than that in which the Church had held it.

And this was partially done, not only in the reformations of Wyclif,
Huss, Luther, and Calvin, but by all that current of non-Church
Christianity, represented in earlier times by the Paulicians, the
Bogomili,[61] and, afterwards, by the Waldenses and the other non-Church
Christians who were called heretics. But this could be, and was, done
chiefly by poor people—who did not rule. A few of the rich and strong,
like Francis of Assisi and others, accepted the Christian teaching in
its full significance, even though it undermined their privileged
positions. But most people of the upper classes (though in the depth of
their souls they had lost faith in the Church teaching) could not or
would not act thus, because the essence of that Christian view of life,
which stood ready to be adopted when once they rejected the Church
faith, was a teaching of the brotherhood (and therefore the equality) of
man, and this negatived those privileges on which they lived, in which
they had grown up and been educated, and to which they were accustomed.
Not, in the depth of their hearts, believing in the Church
teaching,—which had outlived its age and had no longer any true meaning
for them,—and not being strong enough to accept true Christianity, men
of these rich, governing classes—popes, kings, dukes, and all the great
ones of the earth—were left without any religion, with but the external
forms of one, which they supported as being profitable and even
necessary for themselves, since these forms screened a teaching which
justified those privileges which they made use of. In reality, these
people believed in nothing, just as the Romans of the first centuries of
our era believed in nothing. But at the same time these were the people
who had the power and the wealth, and these were the people who rewarded
art and directed it.

And, let it be noticed, it was just among these people that there grew
up an art esteemed not according to its success in expressing men’s
religious feelings, but in proportion to its beauty,—in other words,
according to the enjoyment it gave.

No longer able to believe in the Church religion whose falsehood they
had detected, and incapable of accepting true Christian teaching, which
denounced their whole manner of life, these rich and powerful people,
stranded without any religious conception of life, involuntarily
returned to that pagan view of things which places life’s meaning in
personal enjoyment. And then took place among the upper classes what is
called the “Renaissance of science and art,” and which was really not
only a denial of every religion but also an assertion that religion is
unnecessary.

The Church doctrine is so coherent a system that it cannot be altered or
corrected without destroying it altogether. As soon as doubt arose with
regard to the infallibility of the pope (and this doubt was then in the
minds of all educated people), doubt inevitably followed as to the truth
of tradition. But doubt as to the truth of tradition is fatal not only
to popery and Catholicism, but also to the whole Church creed with all
its dogmas: the divinity of Christ, the resurrection, and the Trinity;
and it destroys the authority of the Scriptures, since they were
considered to be inspired only because the tradition of the Church
decided it so.

So that the majority of the highest classes of that age, even the popes
and the ecclesiastics, really believed in nothing at all. In the Church
doctrine these people did not believe, for they saw its insolvency; but
neither could they follow Francis of Assisi, Keltchitsky,[62] and most
of the heretics, in acknowledging the moral, social teaching of Christ,
for that teaching undermined their social position. And so these people
remained without any religious view of life. And, having none, they
could have no standard wherewith to estimate what was good and what was
bad art but that of personal enjoyment. And, having acknowledged their
criterion of what was good to be pleasure, _i.e._, beauty, these people
of the upper classes of European society went back in their
comprehension of art to the gross conception of the primitive Greeks
which Plato had already condemned. And conformably to this understanding
of life a theory of art was formulated.

Footnote 61:

  Eastern sects well known in early Church history, who rejected the
  Church’s rendering of Christ’s teaching and were cruelly
  persecuted.—Trans.

Footnote 62:

  Keltchitsky, a Bohemian of the fifteenth century, was the author of a
  remarkable book, _The Net of Faith_, directed against Church and
  State. It is mentioned in Tolstoy’s _The Kingdom of God is Within
  You_.—Trans.




                              CHAPTER VII


From the time that people of the upper classes lost faith in Church
Christianity, beauty (_i.e._ the pleasure received from art) became
their standard of good and bad art. And, in accordance with that view,
an æsthetic theory naturally sprang up among those upper classes
justifying such a conception,—a theory according to which the aim of art
is to exhibit beauty. The partisans of this æsthetic theory, in
confirmation of its truth, affirmed that it was no invention of their
own, but that it existed in the nature of things, and was recognised
even by the ancient Greeks. But this assertion was quite arbitrary, and
has no foundation other than the fact that among the ancient Greeks, in
consequence of the low grade of their moral ideal (as compared with the
Christian), their conception of the good, τὸ ἀγαθόν, was not yet sharply
divided from their conception of the beautiful, τὸ καλόν.

That highest perfection of goodness (not only not identical with beauty,
but, for the most part, contrasting with it) which was discerned by the
Jews even in the times of Isaiah, and fully expressed by Christianity,
was quite unknown to the Greeks. They supposed that the beautiful must
necessarily also be the good. It is true that their foremost
thinkers—Socrates, Plato, Aristotle—felt that goodness may happen not to
coincide with beauty. Socrates expressly subordinated beauty to
goodness; Plato, to unite the two conceptions, spoke of spiritual
beauty; while Aristotle demanded from art that it should have a moral
influence on people (κάθαρσις). But, notwithstanding all this, they
could not quite dismiss the notion that beauty and goodness coincide.

And consequently, in the language of that period, a compound word
(καλο-κἀγαθία, beauty-goodness), came into use to express that notion.

Evidently the Greek sages began to draw near to that perception of
goodness which is expressed in Buddhism and in Christianity, and they
got entangled in defining the relation between goodness and beauty.
Plato’s reasonings about beauty and goodness are full of contradictions.
And it was just this confusion of ideas that those Europeans of a later
age, who had lost all faith, tried to elevate into a law. They tried to
prove that this union of beauty and goodness is inherent in the very
essence of things; that beauty and goodness must coincide; and that the
word and conception καλο-κἀγαθία (which had a meaning for Greeks but has
none at all for Christians) represents the highest ideal of humanity. On
this misunderstanding the new science of æsthetics was built up. And, to
justify its existence, the teachings of the ancients on art were so
twisted as to make it appear that this invented science of æsthetics had
existed among the Greeks.

In reality, the reasoning of the ancients on art was quite unlike ours.
As Benard, in his book on the æsthetics of Aristotle, quite justly
remarks: “_Pour qui veut y regarder de près, la théorie du beau et celle
de l’art sont tout à fait séparées dans Aristote, comme elles le sont
dans Platon et chez tous leurs successeurs_” (_L’esthétique d’Aristote
et de ses successeurs_, Paris, 1889, p. 28).[63] And indeed the
reasoning of the ancients on art not only does not confirm our science
of æsthetics, but rather contradicts its doctrine of beauty. But
nevertheless all the æsthetic guides, from Schasler to Knight, declare
that the science of the beautiful—æsthetic science—was commenced by the
ancients, by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle; and was continued, they say,
partially by the Epicureans and Stoics: by Seneca and Plutarch, down to
Plotinus. But it is supposed that this science, by some unfortunate
accident, suddenly vanished in the fourth century, and stayed away for
about 1500 years, and only after these 1500 years had passed did it
revive in Germany, A.D. 1750, in Baumgarten’s doctrine.

After Plotinus, says Schasler, fifteen centuries passed away during
which there was not the slightest scientific interest felt for the world
of beauty and art. These one and a half thousand years, says he, have
been lost to æsthetics and have contributed nothing towards the erection
of the learned edifice of this science.[64]

In reality nothing of the kind happened. The science of æsthetics, the
science of the beautiful, neither did nor could vanish because it never
existed. Simply, the Greeks (just like everybody else, always and
everywhere) considered art (like everything else) good only when it
served goodness (as they understood goodness), and bad when it was in
opposition to that goodness. And the Greeks themselves were so little
developed morally, that goodness and beauty seemed to them to coincide.
On that obsolete Greek view of life was erected the science of
æsthetics, invented by men of the eighteenth century, and especially
shaped and mounted in Baumgarten’s theory. The Greeks (as anyone may see
who will read Benard’s admirable book on Aristotle and his successors,
and Walter’s work on Plato) never had a science of æsthetics.

Æsthetic theories arose about one hundred and fifty years ago among the
wealthy classes of the Christian European world, and arose
simultaneously among different nations,—German, Italian, Dutch, French,
and English. The founder and organiser of it, who gave it a scientific,
theoretic form, was Baumgarten.

With a characteristically German, external exactitude, pedantry and
symmetry, he devised and expounded this extraordinary theory. And,
notwithstanding its obvious insolidity, nobody else’s theory so pleased
the cultured crowd, or was accepted so readily and with such an absence
of criticism. It so suited the people of the upper classes, that to this
day, notwithstanding its entirely fantastic character and the arbitrary
nature of its assertions, it is repeated by learned and unlearned as
though it were something indubitable and self-evident.

_Habent sua fata libelli pro capite lectoris_, and so, or even more so,
theories _habent sua fata_ according to the condition of error in which
that society is living, among whom and for whom the theories are
invented. If a theory justifies the false position in which a certain
part of a society is living, then, however unfounded or even obviously
false the theory may be, it is accepted, and becomes an article of faith
to that section of society. Such, for instance, was the celebrated and
unfounded theory expounded by Malthus, of the tendency of the population
of the world to increase in geometrical progression, but of the means of
sustenance to increase only in arithmetical progression, and of the
consequent overpopulation of the world; such, also, was the theory (an
outgrowth of the Malthusian) of selection and struggle for existence as
the basis of human progress. Such, again, is Marx’s theory, which
regards the gradual destruction of small private production by large
capitalistic production now going on around us, as an inevitable decree
of fate. However unfounded such theories are, however contrary to all
that is known and confessed by humanity, and however obviously immoral
they may be, they are accepted with credulity, pass uncriticised, and
are preached, perchance for centuries, until the conditions are
destroyed which they served to justify, or until their absurdity has
become too evident. To this class belongs this astonishing theory of the
Baumgartenian Trinity—Goodness, Beauty, and Truth, according to which it
appears that the very best that can be done by the art of nations after
1900 years of Christian teaching, is to choose as the ideal of their
life the ideal that was held by a small, semi-savage, slave-holding
people who lived 2000 years ago, who imitated the nude human body
extremely well, and erected buildings pleasant to look at. All these
incompatibilities pass completely unnoticed. Learned people write long,
cloudy treatises on beauty as a member of the æsthetic trinity of
Beauty, Truth, and Goodness; _das Schöne, das Wahre, das Gute_; _le
Beau, le Vrai, le Bon_, are repeated, with capital letters, by
philosophers, æstheticians and artists, by private individuals, by
novelists and by _feuilletonistes_, and they all think, when pronouncing
these sacrosanct words, that they speak of something quite definite and
solid—something on which they can base their opinions. In reality, these
words not only have no definite meaning, but they hinder us in attaching
any definite meaning to existing art; they are wanted only for the
purpose of justifying the false importance we attribute to an art that
transmits every kind of feeling if only those feelings afford us
pleasure.

Footnote 63:

  Any one examining closely may see that the theory of beauty and that
  of art are quite separated in Aristotle as they are in Plato and in
  all their successors.

Footnote 64:

  Die Lücke von fünf Jahrhunderten, welche zwischen den
  Kunstphilosophischen Betrachtungen des Plato und Aristoteles und die
  des Plotins fällt, kann zwar auffällig erscheinen; dennoch kann man
  eigentlich nicht sagen, dass in dieser Zwischenzeit überhaupt von
  ästhetischen Dingen nicht die Rede gewesen; oder dass gar ein völliger
  Mangel an Zusammenhang zwischen den Kunst-anscliauungen des
  letztgenannten Philosophen und denen der ersteren existire. Freilich
  wurde die von Aristoteles begründete Wissenschaft in Nichts dadurch
  gefördert; immerhin aber zeigt sich in jener Zwischenzeit noch ein
  gewisses Interesse für ästhetische Fragen. Nach Plotin aber, die
  wenigen, ihm in der Zeit nahestehenden Philosophen, wie Longin,
  Augustin, u. s. f. kommen, wie wir gesehen, kaum in Betracht und
  schliessen sich übrigens in ihrer Anschauungsweise an ihn an,—vergehen
  nicht fünf, sondern _fünfzehn Jahrhunderte_, in denen von irgend einer
  wissenschaftlichen Interesse für die Welt des Schönen und der Kunst
  nichts zu spüren ist.

  Diese anderthalbtausend Jahre, innerhalb deren der Weltgeist durch die
  mannigfachsten Kämpfe hindurch zu einer völlig neuen Gestaltung des
  Lebens sich durcharbeitete, sind für die Aesthetik, hinsichtlich des
  weiteren Ausbaus dieser Wissenschaft verloren.—Max Schasler.




                              CHAPTER VIII


But if art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission
to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen, how
could it be that humanity for a certain rather considerable period of
its existence (from the time people ceased to believe in Church doctrine
down to the present day) should exist without this important activity,
and, instead of it, should put up with an insignificant artistic
activity only affording pleasure?

In order to answer this question, it is necessary, first of all, to
correct the current error people make in attributing to our art the
significance of true, universal art. We are so accustomed, not only
naïvely to consider the Circassian family the best stock of people, but
also the Anglo-Saxon race the best race if we are Englishmen or
Americans, or the Teutonic if we are Germans, or the Gallo-Latin if we
are French, or the Slavonic if we are Russians, that when speaking of
our own art we feel fully convinced, not only that our art is true art,
but even that it is the best and only true art. But in reality our art
is not only not the only art (as the Bible once was held to be the only
book), but it is not even the art of the whole of Christendom,—only of a
small section of that part of humanity. It was correct to speak of a
national Jewish, Grecian, or Egyptian art, and one may speak of a
now-existing Chinese, Japanese, or Indian art shared in by a whole
people. Such art, common to a whole nation, existed in Russia till Peter
the First’s time, and existed in the rest of Europe until the thirteenth
or fourteenth century; but since the upper classes of European society,
having lost faith in the Church teaching, did not accept real
Christianity but remained without any faith, one can no longer speak of
an art of the Christian nations in the sense of the whole of art. Since
the upper classes of the Christian nations lost faith in Church
Christianity, the art of those upper classes has separated itself from
the art of the rest of the people, and there have been two arts—the art
of the people and genteel art. And therefore the answer to the question
how it could occur that humanity lived for a certain period without real
art, replacing it by art which served enjoyment only, is, that not all
humanity, nor even any considerable portion of it, lived without real
art, but only the highest classes of European Christian society, and
even they only for a comparatively short time—from the commencement of
the Renaissance down to our own day.

And the consequence of this absence of true art showed itself,
inevitably, in the corruption of that class which nourished itself on
the false art. All the confused, unintelligible theories of art, all the
false and contradictory judgments on art, and particularly the
self-confident stagnation of our art in its false path, all arise from
the assertion, which has come into common use and is accepted as an
unquestioned truth, but is yet amazingly and palpably false, the
assertion, namely, that the art of our upper classes[65] is the whole of
art, the true, the only, the universal art. And although this assertion
(which is precisely similar to the assertion made by religious people of
the various Churches who consider that theirs is the only true religion)
is quite arbitrary and obviously unjust, yet it is calmly repeated by
all the people of our circle with full faith in its infallibility.

The art we have is the whole of art, the real, the only art, and yet
two-thirds of the human race (all the peoples of Asia and Africa) live
and die knowing nothing of this sole and supreme art. And even in our
Christian society hardly one per cent. of the people make use of this
art which we speak of as being the _whole_ of art; the remaining
ninety-nine per cent. live and die, generation after generation, crushed
by toil and never tasting this art, which moreover is of such a nature
that, if they could get it, they would not understand anything of it.
We, according to the current æsthetic theory, acknowledge art either as
one of the highest manifestations of the Idea, God, Beauty, or as the
highest spiritual enjoyment; furthermore, we hold that all people have
equal rights, if not to material, at any rate to spiritual well-being;
and yet ninety-nine per cent. of our European population live and die,
generation after generation, crushed by toil, much of which toil is
necessary for the production of our art which they never use, and we,
nevertheless, calmly assert that the art which we produce is the real,
true, only art—all of art!

To the remark that if our art is the true art everyone should have the
benefit of it, the usual reply is that if not everybody at present makes
use of existing art, the fault lies, not in the art, but in the false
organisation of society; that one can imagine to oneself, in the future,
a state of things in which physical labour will be partly superseded by
machinery, partly lightened by its just distribution, and that labour
for the production of art will be taken in turns; that there is no need
for some people always to sit below the stage moving the decorations,
winding up the machinery, working at the piano or French horn, and
setting type and printing books, but that the people who do all this
work might be engaged only a few hours per day, and in their leisure
time might enjoy all the blessings of art.

That is what the defenders of our exclusive art say. But I think they do
not themselves believe it. They cannot help knowing that fine art can
arise only on the slavery of the masses of the people, and can continue
only as long as that slavery lasts, and they cannot help knowing that
only under conditions of intense labour for the workers, can
specialists—writers, musicians, dancers, and actors—arrive at that fine
degree of perfection to which they do attain, or produce their refined
works of art; and only under the same conditions can there be a fine
public to esteem such productions. Free the slaves of capital, and it
will be impossible to produce such refined art.

But even were we to admit the inadmissible, and say that means may be
found by which art (that art which among us is considered to be art) may
be accessible to the whole people, another consideration presents itself
showing that fashionable art cannot be the whole of art, viz. the fact
that it is completely unintelligible to the people. Formerly men wrote
poems in Latin, but now their artistic productions are as unintelligible
to the common folk as if they were written in Sanskrit. The usual reply
to this is, that if the people do not now understand this art of ours,
it only proves that they are undeveloped, and that this has been so at
each fresh step forward made by art. First it was not understood, but
afterwards people got accustomed to it.

“It will be the same with our present art; it will be understood when
everybody is as well educated as are we—the people of the upper
classes—who produce this art,” say the defenders of our art. But this
assertion is evidently even more unjust than the former; for we know
that the majority of the productions of the art of the upper classes,
such as various odes, poems, dramas, cantatas, pastorals, pictures,
etc., which delighted the people of the upper classes when they were
produced, never were afterwards either understood or valued by the great
masses of mankind, but have remained, what they were at first, a mere
pastime for rich people of their time, for whom alone they ever were of
any importance. It is also often urged in proof of the assertion that
the people will some day understand our art, that some productions of
so-called “classical” poetry, music, or painting, which formerly did not
please the masses, do—now that they have been offered to them from all
sides—begin to please these same masses; but this only shows that the
crowd, especially the half-spoilt town crowd, can easily (its taste
having been perverted) be accustomed to any sort of art. Moreover, this
art is not produced by these masses, nor even chosen by them, but is
energetically thrust upon them in those public places in which art is
accessible to the people. For the great majority of working people, our
art, besides being inaccessible on account of its costliness, is strange
in its very nature, transmitting as it does the feelings of people far
removed from those conditions of laborious life which are natural to the
great body of humanity. That which is enjoyment to a man of the rich
classes, is incomprehensible, as a pleasure, to a working man, and
evokes in him either no feeling at all, or only a feeling quite contrary
to that which it evokes in an idle and satiated man. Such feelings as
form the chief subjects of present-day art—say, for instance,
honour,[66] patriotism and amorousness, evoke in a working man only
bewilderment and contempt, or indignation. So that even if a possibility
were given to the labouring classes, in their free time, to see, to
read, and to hear all that forms the flower of contemporary art (as is
done to some extent in towns, by means of picture galleries, popular
concerts, and libraries), the working man (to the extent to which he is
a labourer, and has not begun to pass into the ranks of those perverted
by idleness) would be able to make nothing of our fine art, and if he
did understand it, that which he understood would not elevate his soul,
but would certainly, in most cases, pervert it. To thoughtful and
sincere people there can therefore be no doubt that the art of our upper
classes never can be the art of the whole people. But if art is an
important matter, a spiritual blessing, essential for all men (“like
religion,” as the devotees of art are fond of saying), then it should be
accessible to everyone. And if, as in our day, it is not accessible to
all men, then one of two things: either art is not the vital matter it
is represented to be, or that art which we call art is not the real
thing.

The dilemma is inevitable, and therefore clever and immoral people avoid
it by denying one side of it, viz. denying that the common people have a
right to art. These people simply and boldly speak out (what lies at the
heart of the matter), and say that the participators in and utilisers of
what in their esteem is highly beautiful art, _i.e._ art furnishing the
greatest enjoyment, can only be “schöne Geister,” “the elect,” as the
romanticists called them, the “Uebermenschen,” as they are called by the
followers of Nietzsche; the remaining vulgar herd, incapable of
experiencing these pleasures, must serve the exalted pleasures of this
superior breed of people. The people who express these views at least do
not pretend and do not try to combine the incombinable, but frankly
admit, what is the case, that our art is an art of the upper classes
only. So, essentially, art has been, and is, understood by everyone
engaged on it in our society.

Footnote 65:

  The contrast made is between the classes and the masses: between those
  who do not and those who do earn their bread by productive manual
  labour; the middle classes being taken as an offshoot of the upper
  classes.—Trans.

Footnote 66:

  Duelling is still customary among the higher circles in Russia, as in
  other Continental countries.—Trans.




                               CHAPTER IX


The unbelief of the upper classes of the European world had this effect,
that instead of an artistic activity aiming at transmitting the highest
feelings to which humanity has attained,—those flowing from religious
perception,—we have an activity which aims at affording the greatest
enjoyment to a certain class of society. And of all the immense domain
of art, that part has been fenced off, and is alone called art, which
affords enjoyment to the people of this particular circle.

Apart from the moral effects on European society of such a selection
from the whole sphere of art of what did not deserve such a valuation,
and the acknowledgment of it as important art, this perversion of art
has weakened art itself, and well-nigh destroyed it. The first great
result was that art was deprived of the infinite, varied, and profound
religious subject-matter proper to it. The second result was that having
only a small circle of people in view, it lost its beauty of form and
became affected and obscure; and the third and chief result was that it
ceased to be either natural or even sincere, and became thoroughly
artificial and brain-spun.

The first result—the impoverishment of subject-matter—followed because
only that is a true work of art which transmits fresh feelings not
before experienced by man. As thought-product is only then real
thought-product when it transmits new conceptions and thoughts, and does
not merely repeat what was known before, so also an art-product is only
then a genuine art-product when it brings a new feeling (however
insignificant) into the current of human life. This explains why
children and youths are so strongly impressed by those works of art
which first transmit to them feelings they had not before experienced.

The same powerful impression is made on people by feelings which are
quite new, and have never before been expressed by man. And it is the
source from which such feelings flow of which the art of the upper
classes has deprived itself by estimating feelings, not in conformity
with religious perception, but according to the degree of enjoyment they
afford. There is nothing older and more hackneyed than enjoyment, and
there is nothing fresher than the feelings springing from the religious
consciousness of each age. It could not be otherwise: man’s enjoyment
has limits established by his nature, but the movement forward of
humanity, that which is voiced by religious perception, has no limits.
At every forward step taken by humanity—and such steps are taken in
consequence of the greater and greater elucidation of religious
perception—men experience new and fresh feelings. And therefore only on
the basis of religious perception (which shows the highest level of
life-comprehension reached by the men of a certain period) can fresh
emotion, never before felt by man, arise. From the religious perception
of the ancient Greeks flowed the really new, important, and endlessly
varied feelings expressed by Homer and the tragic writers. It was the
same among the Jews, who attained the religious conception of a single
God,—from that perception flowed all those new and important emotions
expressed by the prophets. It was the same for the poets of the Middle
Ages, who, if they believed in a heavenly hierarchy, believed also in
the Catholic commune; and it is the same for a man of to-day who has
grasped the religious conception of true Christianity—the brotherhood of
man.

The variety of fresh feelings flowing from religious perception is
endless, and they are all new, for religious perception is nothing else
than the first indication of that which is coming into existence, viz.
the new relation of man to the world around him. But the feelings
flowing from the desire for enjoyment are, on the contrary, not only
limited, but were long ago experienced and expressed. And therefore the
lack of belief of the upper classes of Europe has left them with an art
fed on the poorest subject-matter.

The impoverishment of the subject-matter of upper-class art was further
increased by the fact that, ceasing to be religious, it ceased also to
be popular, and this again diminished the range of feelings which it
transmitted. For the range of feelings experienced by the powerful and
the rich, who have no experience of labour for the support of life, is
far poorer, more limited, and more insignificant than the range of
feelings natural to working people.

People of our circle, æstheticians, usually think and say just the
contrary of this. I remember how Gontchareff, the author, a very clever
and educated man but a thorough townsman and an æsthetician, said to me
that after Tourgenieff’s _Memoirs of a Sportsman_ there was nothing left
to write about in peasant life. It was all used up. The life of working
people seemed to him so simple that Tourgenieff’s peasant stories had
used up all there was to describe. The life of our wealthy people, with
their love affairs and dissatisfaction with themselves, seemed to him
full of inexhaustible subject-matter. One hero kissed his lady on her
palm, another on her elbow, and a third somewhere else. One man is
discontented through idleness, and another because people don’t love
him. And Gontchareff thought that in this sphere there is no end of
variety. And this opinion—that the life of working people is poor in
subject-matter, but that our life, the life of the idle, is full of
interest—is shared by very many people in our society. The life of a
labouring man, with its endlessly varied forms of labour, and the
dangers connected with this labour on sea and underground; his
migrations, the intercourse with his employers, overseers, and
companions and with men of other religions and other nationalities; his
struggles with nature and with wild beasts, the associations with
domestic animals, the work in the forest, on the steppe, in the field,
the garden, the orchard; his intercourse with wife and children, not
only as with people near and dear to him, but as with co-workers and
helpers in labour, replacing him in time of need; his concern in all
economic questions, not as matters of display or discussion, but as
problems of life for himself and his family; his pride in
self-suppression and service to others, his pleasures of refreshment;
and with all these interests permeated by a religious attitude towards
these occurrences—all this to us, who have not these interests and
possess no religious perception, seems monotonous in comparison with
those small enjoyments and insignificant cares of our life,—a life, not
of labour nor of production, but of consumption and destruction of that
which others have produced for us. We think the feelings experienced by
people of our day and our class are very important and varied; but in
reality almost all the feelings of people of our class amount to but
three very insignificant and simple feelings—the feeling of pride, the
feeling of sexual desire, and the feeling of weariness of life. These
three feelings, with their outgrowths, form almost the only
subject-matter of the art of the rich classes.

At first, at the very beginning of the separation of the exclusive art
of the upper classes from universal art, its chief subject-matter was
the feeling of pride. It was so at the time of the Renaissance and after
it, when the chief subject of works of art was the laudation of the
strong—popes, kings, and dukes: odes and madrigals were written in their
honour, and they were extolled in cantatas and hymns; their portraits
were painted, and their statues carved, in various adulatory ways. Next,
the element of sexual desire began more and more to enter into art, and
(with very few exceptions, and in novels and dramas almost without
exception) it has now become an essential feature of every art product
of the rich classes.

The third feeling transmitted by the art of the rich—that of discontent
with life—appeared yet later in modern art. This feeling, which, at the
commencement of the present century, was expressed only by exceptional
men; by Byron, by Leopardi, and afterwards by Heine, has latterly become
fashionable and is expressed by most ordinary and empty people. Most
justly does the French critic Doumic characterise the works of the new
writers—“_c’est la lassitude de vivre, le mépris de l’époque présente,
le regret d’un autre temps aperçu à travers l’illusion de l’art, le goût
du paradoxe, le besoin de se singulariser, une aspiration de raffinés
vers la simplicité, l’adoration enfantine du merveilleux, la séduction
maladive de la rêverie, l’ébranlement des nerfs,—surtout l’appel
exaspéré de la sensualité_” (_Les Jeunes_, René Doumic).[67] And, as a
matter of fact, of these three feelings it is sensuality, the lowest
(accessible not only to all men but even to all animals) which forms the
chief subject-matter of works of art of recent times.

From Boccaccio to Marcel Prévost, all the novels, poems, and verses
invariably transmit the feeling of sexual love in its different forms.
Adultery is not only the favourite, but almost the only theme of all the
novels. A performance is not a performance unless, under some pretence,
women appear with naked busts and limbs. Songs and _romances_—all are
expressions of lust, idealised in various degrees.

A majority of the pictures by French artists represent female nakedness
in various forms. In recent French literature there is hardly a page or
a poem in which nakedness is not described, and in which, relevantly or
irrelevantly, their favourite thought and word _nu_ is not repeated a
couple of times. There is a certain writer, René de Gourmond, who gets
printed, and is considered talented. To get an idea of the new writers,
I read his novel, _Les Chevaux de Diomède_. It is a consecutive and
detailed account of the sexual connections some gentleman had with
various women. Every page contains lust-kindling descriptions. It is the
same in Pierre Louÿs’ book, _Aphrodite_, which met with success; it is
the same in a book I lately chanced upon—Huysmans’ _Certains_, and, with
but few exceptions, it is the same in all the French novels. They are
all the productions of people suffering from erotic mania. And these
people are evidently convinced that as their whole life, in consequence
of their diseased condition, is concentrated on amplifying various
sexual abominations, therefore the life of all the world is similarly
concentrated. And these people, suffering from erotic mania, are
imitated throughout the whole artistic world of Europe and America.

Thus in consequence of the lack of belief and the exceptional manner of
life of the wealthy classes, the art of those classes became
impoverished in its subject-matter, and has sunk to the transmission of
the feelings of pride, discontent with life, and, above all, of sexual
desire.

Footnote 67:

  It is the weariness of life, contempt for the present epoch, regret
  for another age seen through the illusion of art, a taste for paradox,
  a desire to be singular, a sentimental aspiration after simplicity, an
  infantine adoration of the marvellous, a sickly tendency towards
  reverie, a shattered condition of nerves, and, above all, the
  exasperated demand of sensuality.




                               CHAPTER X


In consequence of their unbelief the art of the upper classes became
poor in subject-matter. But besides that, becoming continually more and
more exclusive, it became at the same time continually more and more
involved, affected, and obscure.

When a universal artist (such as were some of the Grecian artists or the
Jewish prophets) composed his work, he naturally strove to say what he
had to say in such a manner that his production should be intelligible
to all men. But when an artist composed for a small circle of people
placed in exceptional conditions, or even for a single individual and
his courtiers,—for popes, cardinals, kings, dukes, queens, or for a
king’s mistress,—he naturally only aimed at influencing these people,
who were well known to him, and lived in exceptional conditions familiar
to him. And this was an easier task, and the artist was involuntarily
drawn to express himself by allusions comprehensible only to the
initiated, and obscure to everyone else. In the first place, more could
be said in this way; and secondly, there is (for the initiated) even a
certain charm in the cloudiness of such a manner of expression. This
method, which showed itself both in euphemism and in mythological and
historical allusions, came more and more into use, until it has,
apparently, at last reached its utmost limits in the so-called art of
the Decadents. It has come, finally, to this: that not only is haziness,
mysteriousness, obscurity, and exclusiveness (shutting out the masses)
elevated to the rank of a merit and a condition of poetic art, but even
incorrectness, indefiniteness, and lack of eloquence are held in esteem.

Théophile Gautier, in his preface to the celebrated _Fleurs du Mal_,
says that Baudelaire, as far as possible, banished from poetry
eloquence, passion, and truth too strictly copied (“_l’éloquence, la
passion, et la vérité calquée trop exactement_”).

And Baudelaire not only expressed this, but maintained his thesis in his
verses, and yet more strikingly in the prose of his _Petits Poèmes en
Prose_, the meanings of which have to be guessed like a rebus, and
remain for the most part undiscovered.

The poet Verlaine (who followed next after Baudelaire, and was also
esteemed great) even wrote an “_Art poétique_,” in which he advises this
style of composition:—

                  _De la musique avant toute chose,
                  Et pour cela préfère l’Impair
                  Plus vague et plus soluble dans l’air,
                  Sans rien en lui qui pèse ou qui pose._

                  _Il faut aussi que tu n’ailles point
                  Choisir tes mots sans quelque méprise:
                  Rien de plus cher que la chanson grise
                  Où l’Indécis au Précis se joint._

And again:—

                  _De la musique encore et toujours!
                  Que ton vers soit la chose envolée
                  Qu’on sent qui fuit d’une âme en allée
                  Vers d’autres cieux à d’autres amours._

                  _Que ton vers soit la bonne aventure
                  Éparse au vent crispé du matin,
                  Qui va fleurant la menthe et le thym ...
                  Et tout le reste est littérature._[68]

After these two comes Mallarmé, considered the most important of the
young poets, and he plainly says that the charm of poetry lies in our
having to guess its meaning—that in poetry there should always be a
puzzle:—

_Je pense qu’il faut qu’il n’y ait qu’allusion_, says he. _La
contemplation des objets, l’image s’envolant des rêveries suscitées par
eux, sont le chant: les Parnassiens, eux, prennent la chose entièrement
et la montrent; par là ils manquent de mystère; ils retirent aux esprits
cette joie délicieuse de croire qu’ils créent. Nommer un objet, c’est
supprimer les trois quarts de la jouissance du poème, qui est faite du
bonheur de deviner peu à peu: le suggérer, voilà le rêve. C’est le
parfait usage de ce mystère qui constitue le symbole: évoquer petit à
petit un objet pour montrer un état d’âme, ou, inversement, choisir un
objet et en dégager un état d’âme, par une sèrie de déchiffrements._

... _Si un être d’une intelligence moyenne, et d’une préparation
littéraire insuffisante, ouvre par hasard un livre ainsi fait et prétend
en jouir, il y a malentendu, il faut remettre les choses à leur place.
Il doit y avoir toujours énigme en poèsie, et c’est le but de la
littérature, il n’y en a pas d’autre,—d’évoquer les objets._—“_Enquête
sur l’évolution littéraire_,” Jules Huret, pp. 60, 61.[69]

Thus is obscurity elevated into a dogma among the new poets. As the
French critic Doumic (who has not yet accepted the dogma) quite
correctly says:—

“_Il serait temps aussi d’en finir avec cette fameuse ‘théorie de
l’obscurité’ que la nouvelle école a élevée, en effet, à la hauteur d’un
dogme._”—_Les Jeunes_, par René Doumic.[70]

But it is not French writers only who think thus. The poets of all other
countries think and act in the same way: German, and Scandinavian, and
Italian, and Russian, and English. So also do the artists of the new
period in all branches of art: in painting, in sculpture, and in music.
Relying on Nietzsche and Wagner, the artists of the new age conclude
that it is unnecessary for them to be intelligible to the vulgar crowd;
it is enough for them to evoke poetic emotion in “the finest nurtured,”
to borrow a phrase from an English æsthetician.

In order that what I am saying may not seem to be mere assertion, I will
quote at least a few examples from the French poets who have led this
movement. The name of these poets is legion. I have taken French
writers, because they, more decidedly than any others, indicate the new
direction of art, and are imitated by most European writers.

Besides those whose names are already considered famous, such as
Baudelaire and Verlaine, here are the names of a few of them: Jean
Moréas, Charles Morice, Henri de Régnier, Charles Vignier, Adrien
Remacle, René Ghil, Maurice Maeterlinck, G. Albert Aurier, Rémy de
Gourmont, Saint-Pol-Roux-le-Magnifique, Georges Rodenbach, le comte
Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac. These are Symbolists and Decadents. Next
we have the “Magi”: Joséphin Péladan, Paul Adam, Jules Bois, M. Papus,
and others.

Besides these, there are yet one hundred and forty-one others, whom
Doumic mentions in the book referred to above.

Here are some examples from the work of those of them who are considered
to be the best, beginning with that most celebrated man, acknowledged to
be a great artist worthy of a monument—Baudelaire. This is a poem from
his celebrated _Fleurs du Mal_:—

           No. XXIV.

           _Je t’adore à l’égal de la voûte nocturne,
           O vase de tristesse, ô grande taciturne,
           Et t’aime d’autant plus, belle, que tu me fuis,
           Et que tu me parais, ornement de mes nuits,
           Plus ironiquement accumuler les lieues
           Qui séparent mes bras des immensités bleues._

           _Je m’avance à l’attaque, et je grimpe aux assauts,
           Comme après un cadavre un chœur de vermisseaux,
           Et je chéris, ô bête implacable et cruelle,
           Jusqu’à cette froideur par où tu m’es plus belle!_[71]

And this is another by the same writer:—

          No. XXXVI.

          _DUELLUM._

          _Deux guerriers ont couru l’un sur l’autre; leurs armes
          Ont éclaboussé l’air de lueurs et de sang.
          Ces jeux, ces cliquetis du fer sont les vacarmes
          D’une jeunesse en proie à l’amour vagissant._


          _Les glaives sont brisés! comme notre jeunesse,
          Ma chère! Mais les dents, les ongles acérés,
          Vengent bientôt l’épée et la dague traîtresse.
          O fureur des cœurs mûrs par l’amour ulcérés!_


          _Dans le ravin hanté des chats-pards et des onces
          Nos héros, s’étreignant méchamment, ont roulé,
          Et leur peau fleurira l’aridité des ronces._

          _Ce gouffre, c’est l’enfer, de nos amis peuplé!
          Roulons-y sans remords, amazone inhumaine,
          Afin d’éterniser l’ardeur de notre haine!_[72]

To be exact, I should mention that the collection contains verses less
comprehensible than these, but not one poem which is plain and can be
understood without a certain effort—an effort seldom rewarded, for the
feelings which the poet transmits are evil and very low ones. And these
feelings are always, and purposely, expressed by him with eccentricity
and lack of clearness. This premeditated obscurity is especially
noticeable in his prose, where the author could, if he liked, speak
plainly.

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

    _L’ÉTRANGER._

    _Qui aimes-tu le mieux, homme énigmatique, dis? ton père, ta mère,
    ta sœur, ou ton frère?_

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

    _Tes amis?_

    _Vous vous servez là d’une parole dont le sens m’est resté jusqu’ à
    ce jour inconnu._

    _Ta patrie?_

    _J’ignore sous quelle latitude elle est située._

    _La beauté?_

    _Je l’aimerais volontiers, déesse et immortelle._

    _L’or?_

    _Je le hais comme vous haïssez Dieu._

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

    _J’aime les nuages ... les nuages qui passent ... là bas, ... les
    merveilleux nuages!_

The piece called _La Soupe et les Nuages_ is probably intended to
express the unintelligibility of the poet even to her whom he loves.
This is the piece in question:—

    _Ma petite folle bien-aimée me donnait à dîner, et par la fenêtre
    ouverte de la salle à manger je contemplais les mouvantes
    architectures que Dieu fait avec les vapeurs, les merveilleuses
    constructions de l’impalpable. Et je me disais, à travers ma
    contemplation: “Toutes ces fantasmagories sont presque aussi belles
    que les yeux de ma belle bien-aimée, la petite folle monstrueuse aux
    yeux verts.”_

    _Et tout à coup je reçus un violent coup de poing dans le dos, et
    j’entendis une voix rauque et charmante, une voix hystérique et
    comme enrouée par l’eau-de-vie, la voix de ma chère petite
    bien-aimée, qui me disait, “Allez-vous bientôt manger votre soupe, s
    ... b ... de marchand de nuages?”_[73]

However artificial these two pieces may be, it is still possible, with
some effort, to guess at what the author meant them to express, but some
of the pieces are absolutely incomprehensible—at least to me. _Le Galant
Tireur_ is a piece I was quite unable to understand.

    _LE GALANT TIREUR._

    _Comme la voiture traversait le bois, il la fit arrêter dans le
    voisinage d’un tir, disant qu’il lui serait agréable de tirer
    quelques balles pour tuer le Temps. Tuer ce monstre-là, n’est-ce pas
    l’occupation la plus ordinaire et la plus légitime de chacun?—Et il
    offrit galamment la main à sa chère, délicieuse et exécrable femme,
    à cette mystérieuse femme à laquelle il doit tant de plaisirs, tant
    de douleurs, et peut-être aussi une grande partie de son génie._

    _Plusieurs balles frappèrent loin du but proposé, l’une d’elles
    s’enfonça même dans le plafond; et comme la charmante créature riait
    follement, se moquant de la maladresse de son époux, celui-ci se
    tourna brusquement vers elle, et lui dit: “Observez cette poupée,
    là-bas, à droite, qui porte le nez en l’air et qui a la mine si
    hautaine. Eh bien! cher ange, je me figure que c’est vous.” Et il
    ferma les yeux et il lâcha la détente. La poupée fut nettement
    décapitée._

    _Alors s’ inclinant vers sa chère, sa délicieuse, son exécrable
    femme, son inévitable et impitoyable Muse, et lui baisant
    respectueusement la main, il ajouta: “Ah! mon cher ange, combien je
    vous remercie de mon adresse!”_[74]

The productions of another celebrity, Verlaine, are not less affected
and unintelligible. This, for instance, is the first poem in the section
called _Ariettes Oubliées_.

                     “_Le vent dans la plaine
                       Suspend son haleine_.”—FAVART.

                     _C’est l’extase langoureuse,
                     C’est la fatigue amoureuse,
                     C’est tous les frissons des bois
                     Parmi l’étreinte des brises,
                     C’est, vers les ramures grises,
                     Le chœur des petites voix._

                     _O le frêle et frais murmure!
                     Cela gazouille et susurre,
                     Cela ressemble au cri doux
                     Que l’herbe agitée expire ...
                     Tu dirais, sous l’eau qui vire,
                     Le roulis sourd des cailloux._

                     _Cette âme qui se lamente
                     En cette plainte dormante
                     C’est la nôtre, n’est-ce pas?
                     La mienne, dis, et la tienne,
                     Dont s’exhale l’humble antienne
                     Par ce tiède soir, tout has?_[75]

What “_chœur des petites voix_”? and what “_cri doux que l’herbe agitée
expire_”? and what it all means, remains altogether unintelligible to
me.

And here is another _Ariette_:—

                        _VIII._

                        _Dans l’interminable
                        Ennui de la plaine,
                        La neige incertaine
                        Luit comme du sable._

                        _Le ciel est de cuivre,
                        Sans lueur aucune.
                        On croirait voir vivre
                        Et mourir la lune._

                        _Comme des nuées
                        Flottent gris les chênes
                        Des forêts prochaines
                        Parmi les buées._

                        _Le ciel est de cuivre,
                        Sans lueur aucune.
                        On croirait voir vivre
                        Et mourir la lune._

                        _Corneille poussive
                        Et vous, les loups maigres,
                        Par ces bises aigres
                        Quoi donc vous arrive?_

                        _Dans l’interminable
                        Ennui de la plaine,
                        La neige incertaine
                        Luit comme du sable._[76]

How does the moon seem to live and die in a copper heaven? And how can
snow shine like sand? The whole thing is not merely unintelligible, but,
under pretence of conveying an impression, it passes off a string of
incorrect comparisons and words.

Besides these artificial and obscure poems, there are others which are
intelligible, but which make up for it by being altogether bad, both in
form and in subject. Such are all the poems under the heading _La
Sagesse_. The chief place in these verses is occupied by a very poor
expression of the most commonplace Roman Catholic and patriotic
sentiments. For instance, one meets with verses such as this:—

               _Je ne veux plus penser qu’ à ma mère Marie,
               Siège de la sagesse et source de pardons,
               Mère de France aussi de qui nous attendons
               Inébranlablement l’honneur de la patrie._[77]

Before citing examples from other poets, I must pause to note the
amazing celebrity of these two versifiers, Baudelaire and Verlaine, who
are now accepted as being great poets. How the French, who had Chénier,
Musset, Lamartine, and, above all, Hugo,—and among whom quite recently
flourished the so-called Parnassiens: Leconte de Lisle, Sully-Prudhomme,
etc.,—could attribute such importance to these two versifiers, who were
far from skilful in form and most contemptible and commonplace in
subject-matter, is to me incomprehensible. The conception-of-life of one
of them, Baudelaire, consisted in elevating gross egotism into a theory,
and replacing morality by a cloudy conception of beauty, and especially
artificial beauty. Baudelaire had a preference, which he expressed, for
a woman’s face painted rather than showing its natural colour, and for
metal trees and a theatrical imitation of water rather than real trees
and real water.

The life-conception of the other, Verlaine, consisted in weak
profligacy, confession of his moral impotence, and, as an antidote to
that impotence, in the grossest Roman Catholic idolatry. Both, moreover,
were quite lacking in naïveté, sincerity, and simplicity, and both
overflowed with artificiality, forced originality, and self-assurance.
So that in their least bad productions one sees more of M. Baudelaire or
M. Verlaine than of what they were describing. But these two indifferent
versifiers form a school, and lead hundreds of followers after them.

There is only one explanation of this fact: it is that the art of the
society in which these versifiers lived is not a serious, important
matter of life, but is a mere amusement. And all amusements grow
wearisome by repetition. And, in order to make wearisome amusement again
tolerable, it is necessary to find some means to freshen it up. When, at
cards, ombre grows stale, whist is introduced; when whist grows stale,
écarté is substituted; when écarté grows stale, some other novelty is
invented, and so on. The substance of the matter remains the same, only
its form is changed. And so it is with this kind of art. The
subject-matter of the art of the upper classes growing continually more
and more limited, it has come at last to this, that to the artists of
these exclusive classes it seems as if everything has already been said,
and that to find anything new to say is impossible. And therefore, to
freshen up this art, they look out for fresh forms.

Baudelaire and Verlaine invent such a new form, furbish it up, moreover,
with hitherto unused pornographic details, and—the critics and the
public of the upper classes hail them as great writers.

This is the only explanation of the success, not of Baudelaire and
Verlaine only, but of all the Decadents.

For instance, there are poems by Mallarmé and Maeterlinck which have no
meaning, and yet for all that, or perhaps on that very account, are
printed by tens of thousands, not only in various publications, but even
in collections of the best works of the younger poets.

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

                    _A la nue accablante tu
                    Basse de basalte et de laves
                    A même les échos esclaves
                    Par une trompe sans vertu._

                    _Quel sépulcral naufrage (tu
                    Le soir, écume, mais y baves)
                    Suprême une entre les épaves
                    Abolit le mât dévêtu._

                    _Ou cela que furibond faute
                    De quelque perdition haute
                    Tout l’abîme vain éployé_

                    _Dans le si blanc cheveu qui traîne
                    Avarement aura noyé
                    Le flanc enfant d’une sirène._[78]

                    (“Pan,” 1895, No. 1.)

This poem is not exceptional in its incomprehensibility. I have read
several poems by Mallarmé, and they also had no meaning whatever. I give
a sample of his prose in Appendix I. There is a whole volume of this
prose, called “_Divagations_.” It is impossible to understand any of it.
And that is evidently what the author intended.

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

                       _Quand il est sorti,
                       (J’entendis la porte)
                       Quand il est sorti
                       Elle avait souri ..._

                       _Mais quand il entra
                       (J’entendis la lampe)
                       Mais quand il entra
                       Une autre était là ..._

                       _Et j’ai vu la mort,
                       (J’entendis son âme)
                       Et j’ai vu la mort
                       Qui l’attend encore ..._

                       _On est venu dire,
                       (Mon enfant j’ai peur)
                       On est venu dire
                       Qu’il allait partir ..._

                       _Ma lampe allumée,
                       (Mon enfant j’ai peur)
                       Ma lampe allumée
                       Me suis approchée ..._

                       _A la première porte,
                       (Mon enfant j’ai peur)
                       A la première porte,
                       La flamme a tremblé ..._

                       _A la seconde porte,
                       (Mon enfant j’ai peur)
                       A la seconde porte,
                       La flamme a parlé ..._

                       _A la troisième porte,
                       (Mon enfant j’ai peur)
                       A la troisième porte,
                       La lumière est morte ..._

                       _Et s’il revenait un jour
                       Que faut-il lui dire?
                       Dites-lui qu’on l’attendit
                       Jusqu’à s’en mourir ..._

                       _Et s’il demande où vous êtes
                       Que faut-il répondre?
                       Donnez-lui mon anneau d’or
                       Sans rien lui répondre ..._

                       _Et s’il m’interroge alors
                       Sur la dernière heure?
                       Dites lui que fai souri
                       De peur qu’il ne pleure ..._

                       _Et s’il m’interroge encore
                       Sans me reconnaître?
                       Parlez-lui comme une sœur,
                       Il souffre peut-être ..._

                       _Et s’il veut savoir pourquoi
                       La salle est déserte?
                       Montrez lui la lampe éteinte
                       Et la porte ouverte ..._[79]

                       (“Pan,” 1895, No. 2.)

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

I beg the reader to be at the pains of reading through the samples I
cite in Appendix II. of the celebrated and esteemed young poets—Griffin,
Verhaeren, Moréas, and Montesquiou. It is important to do so in order to
form a clear conception of the present position of art, and not to
suppose, as many do, that Decadentism is an accidental and transitory
phenomenon. To avoid the reproach of having selected the worst verses, I
have copied out of each volume the poem which happened to stand on page
28.

All the other productions of these poets are equally unintelligible, or
can only be understood with great difficulty, and then not fully. All
the productions of those hundreds of poets, of whom I have named a few,
are the same in kind. And among the Germans, Swedes, Norwegians,
Italians, and us Russians, similar verses are printed. And such
productions are printed and made up into book form, if not by the
million, then by the hundred thousand (some of these works sell in tens
of thousands). For type-setting, paging, printing, and binding these
books, millions and millions of working days are spent—not less, I
think, than went to build the great pyramid. And this is not all. The
same is going on in all the other arts: millions and millions of working
days are being spent on the production of equally incomprehensible works
in painting, in music, and in the drama.

Painting not only does not lag behind poetry in this matter, but rather
outstrips it. Here is an extract from the diary of an amateur of art,
written when visiting the Paris exhibitions in 1894:—

“I was to-day at three exhibitions: the Symbolists’, the
Impressionists’, and the Neo-Impressionists’. I looked at the pictures
conscientiously and carefully, but again felt the same stupefaction and
ultimate indignation. The first exhibition, that of Camille Pissarro,
was comparatively the most comprehensible, though the pictures were out
of drawing, had no subject, and the colourings were most improbable. The
drawing was so indefinite that you were sometimes unable to make out
which way an arm or a head was turned. The subject was generally,
‘_effets_’—_Effet de brouillard_, _Effet du soir_, _Soleil couchant_.
There were some pictures with figures, but without subjects.

“In the colouring, bright blue and bright green predominated. And each
picture had its special colour, with which the whole picture was, as it
were, splashed. For instance in ‘A Girl guarding Geese’ the special
colour is _vert de gris_, and dots of it were splashed about everywhere:
on the face, the hair, the hands, and the clothes. In the same
gallery—‘Durand Ruel’—were other pictures, by Puvis de Chavannes, Manet,
Monet, Renoir, Sisley—who are all Impressionists. One of them, whose
name I could not make out,—it was something like Redon,—had painted a
blue face in profile. On the whole face there is only this blue tone,
with white-of-lead. Pissarro has a water-colour all done in dots. In the
foreground is a cow entirely painted with various-coloured dots. The
general colour cannot be distinguished, however much one stands back
from, or draws near to, the picture. From there I went to see the
Symbolists. I looked at them long without asking anyone for an
explanation, trying to guess the meaning; but it is beyond human
comprehension. One of the first things to catch my eye was a wooden
_haut-relief_, wretchedly executed, representing a woman (naked) who
with both hands is squeezing from her two breasts streams of blood. The
blood flows down, becoming lilac in colour. Her hair first descends and
then rises again and turns into trees. The figure is all coloured
yellow, and the hair is brown.

“Next—a picture: a yellow sea, on which swims something which is neither
a ship nor a heart; on the horizon is a profile with a halo and yellow
hair, which changes into a sea, in which it is lost. Some of the
painters lay on their colours so thickly that the effect is something
between painting and sculpture. A third exhibit was even less
comprehensible: a man’s profile; before him a flame and black
stripes—leeches, as I was afterwards told. At last I asked a gentleman
who was there what it meant, and he explained to me that the
_haut-relief_ was a symbol, and that it represented ‘_La Terre_.’ The
heart swimming in a yellow sea was ‘_Illusion perdue_,’ and the
gentleman with the leeches was ‘_Le Mal_.’ There were also some
Impressionist pictures: elementary profiles, holding some sort of
flowers in their hands: in monotone, out of drawing, and either quite
blurred or else marked out with wide black outlines.”

This was in 1894; the same tendency is now even more strongly defined,
and we have Böcklin, Stuck, Klinger, Sasha Schneider, and others.

The same thing is taking place in the drama. The play-writers give us an
architect who, for some reason, has not fulfilled his former high
intentions, and who consequently climbs on to the roof of a house he has
erected and tumbles down head foremost; or an incomprehensible old woman
(who exterminates rats), and who, for an unintelligible reason, takes a
poetic child to the sea and there drowns him; or some blind men, who,
sitting on the seashore, for some reason always repeat one and the same
thing; or a bell of some kind, which flies into a lake and there rings.

And the same is happening in music—in that art which, more than any
other, one would have thought, should be intelligible to everybody.

An acquaintance of yours, a musician of repute, sits down to the piano
and plays you what he says is a new composition of his own, or of one of
the new composers. You hear the strange, loud sounds, and admire the
gymnastic exercises performed by his fingers; and you see that the
performer wishes to impress upon you that the sounds he is producing
express various poetic strivings of the soul. You see his intention, but
no feeling whatever is transmitted to you except weariness. The
execution lasts long, or at least it seems very long to you, because you
do not receive any clear impression, and involuntarily you remember the
words of Alphonse Karr, “_Plus ça va vite, plus ça dure longtemps._”[80]
And it occurs to you that perhaps it is all a mystification; perhaps the
performer is trying you—just throwing his hands and fingers wildly about
the key-board in the hope that you will fall into the trap and praise
him, and then he will laugh and confess that he only wanted to see if he
could hoax you. But when at last the piece does finish, and the
perspiring and agitated musician rises from the piano evidently
anticipating praise, you see that it was all done in earnest.

The same thing takes place at all the concerts with pieces by Liszt,
Wagner, Berlioz, Brahms, and (newest of all) Richard Strauss, and the
numberless other composers of the new school, who unceasingly produce
opera after opera, symphony after symphony, piece after piece.

The same is occurring in a domain in which it seemed hard to be
unintelligible—in the sphere of novels and short stories.

Read _Là-Bas_ by Huysmans, or some of Kipling’s short stories, or
_L’annonciateur_ by Villiers de l’Isle Adam in his _Contes Cruels_,
etc., and you will find them not only “abscons” (to use a word adopted
by the new writers), but absolutely unintelligible both in form and in
substance. Such, again, is the work by E. Morel, _Terre Promise_, now
appearing in the _Revue Blanche_, and such are most of the new novels.
The style is very high-flown, the feelings seem to be most elevated, but
you can’t make out what is happening, to whom it is happening, and where
it is happening. And such is the bulk of the young art of our time.

People who grew up in the first half of this century, admiring Goethe,
Schiller, Musset, Hugo, Dickens, Beethoven, Chopin, Raphael, da Vinci,
Michael Angelo, Delaroche, being unable to make head or tail of this new
art, simply attribute its productions to tasteless insanity and wish to
ignore them. But such an attitude towards this new art is quite
unjustifiable, because, in the first place, that art is spreading more
and more, and has already conquered for itself a firm position in
society, similar to the one occupied by the Romanticists in the third
decade of this century; and secondly and chiefly, because, if it is
permissible to judge in this way of the productions of the latest form
of art, called by us Decadent art, merely because we do not understand
it, then remember, there are an enormous number of people,—all the
labourers and many of the non-labouring folk,—who, in just the same way,
do not comprehend those productions of art which we consider admirable:
the verses of our favourite artists—Goethe, Schiller, and Hugo; the
novels of Dickens, the music of Beethoven and Chopin, the pictures of
Raphael, Michael Angelo, da Vinci, etc.

If I have a right to think that great masses of people do not understand
and do not like what I consider undoubtedly good because they are not
sufficiently developed, then I have no right to deny that perhaps the
reason why I cannot understand and cannot like the new productions of
art, is merely that I am still insufficiently developed to understand
them. If I have a right to say that I, and the majority of people who
are in sympathy, with me, do not understand the productions of the new
art simply because there is nothing in it to understand and because it
is bad art, then, with just the same right, the still larger majority,
the whole labouring mass, who do not understand what I consider
admirable art, can say that what I reckon as good art is bad art, and
there is nothing in it to understand.

I once saw the injustice of such condemnation of the new art with
especial clearness, when, in my presence, a certain poet, who writes
incomprehensible verses, ridiculed incomprehensible music with gay
self-assurance; and, shortly afterwards, a certain musician, who
composes incomprehensible symphonies, laughed at incomprehensible poetry
with equal self-confidence. I have no right, and no authority, to
condemn the new art on the ground that I (a man educated in the first
half of the century) do not understand it; I can only say that it is
incomprehensible to me. The only advantage the art I acknowledge has
over the Decadent art, lies in the fact that the art I recognise is
comprehensible to a somewhat larger number of people than the
present-day art.

The fact that I am accustomed to a certain exclusive art, and can
understand it, but am unable to understand another still more exclusive
art, does not give me a right to conclude that my art is the real true
art, and that the other one, which I do not understand, is an unreal, a
bad art. I can only conclude that art, becoming ever more and more
exclusive, has become more and more incomprehensible to an
ever-increasing number of people, and that, in this its progress towards
greater and greater incomprehensibility (on one level of which I am
standing, with the art familiar to me), it has reached a point where it
is understood by a very small number of the elect, and the number of
these chosen people is ever becoming smaller and smaller.

As soon as ever the art of the upper classes separated itself from
universal art, a conviction arose that art may be art and yet be
incomprehensible to the masses. And as soon as this position was
admitted, it had inevitably to be admitted also that art may be
intelligible only to the very smallest number of the elect, and,
eventually, to two, or to one, of our nearest friends, or to oneself
alone. Which is practically what is being said by modern artists:—“I
create and understand myself, and if anyone does not understand me, so
much the worse for him.”

The assertion that art may be good art, and at the same time
incomprehensible to a great number of people, is extremely unjust, and
its consequences are ruinous to art itself; but at the same time it is
so common and has so eaten into our conceptions, that it is impossible
sufficiently to elucidate all the absurdity of it.

Nothing is more common than to hear it said of reputed works of art,
that they are very good but very difficult to understand. We are quite
used to such assertions, and yet to say that a work of art is good, but
incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some
kind of food that it is very good but that most people can’t eat it. The
majority of men may not like rotten cheese or putrefying grouse—dishes
esteemed by people with perverted tastes; but bread and fruit are only
good when they please the majority of men. And it is the same with art.
Perverted art may not please the majority of men, but good art always
pleases everyone.

It is said that the very best works of art are such that they cannot be
understood by the mass, but are accessible only to the elect who are
prepared to understand these great works. But if the majority of men do
not understand, the knowledge necessary to enable them to understand
should be taught and explained to them. But it turns out that there is
no such knowledge, that the works cannot be explained, and that those
who say the majority do not understand good works of art, still do not
explain those works, but only tell us that, in order to understand them,
one must read, and see, and hear these same works over and over again.
But this is not to explain, it is only to habituate! And people may
habituate themselves to anything, even to the very worst things. As
people may habituate themselves to bad food, to spirits, tobacco, and
opium, just in the same way they may habituate themselves to bad art—and
that is exactly what is being done.

Moreover, it cannot be said that the majority of people lack the taste
to esteem the highest works of art. The majority always have understood,
and still understand, what we also recognise as being the very best art:
the epic of Genesis, the Gospel parables, folk-legends, fairy-tales, and
folk-songs are understood by all. How can it be that the majority has
suddenly lost its capacity to understand what is high in our art?

Of a speech it may be said that it is admirable, but incomprehensible to
those who do not know the language in which it is delivered. A speech
delivered in Chinese may be excellent, and may yet remain
incomprehensible to me if I do not know Chinese; but what distinguishes
a work of art from all other mental activity is just the fact that its
language is understood by all, and that it infects all without
distinction. The tears and laughter of a Chinese infect me just as the
laughter and tears of a Russian; and it is the same with painting and
music and poetry, when it is translated into a language I understand.
The songs of a Kirghiz or of a Japanese touch me, though in a lesser
degree than they touch a Kirghiz or a Japanese. I am also touched by
Japanese painting, Indian architecture, and Arabian stories. If I am but
little touched by a Japanese song and a Chinese novel, it is not that I
do not understand these productions, but that I know and am accustomed
to higher works of art. It is not because their art is above me. Great
works of art are only great because they are accessible and
comprehensible to everyone. The story of Joseph, translated into the
Chinese language, touches a Chinese. The story of Sakya Muni touches us.
And there are, and must be, buildings, pictures, statues, and music of
similar power. So that, if art fails to move men, it cannot be said that
this is due to the spectators’ or hearers’ lack of understanding; but
the conclusion to be drawn may, and should be, that such art is either
bad art, or is not art at all.

Art is differentiated from activity of the understanding, which demands
preparation and a certain sequence of knowledge (so that one cannot
learn trigonometry before knowing geometry), by the fact that it acts on
people independently of their state of development and education, that
the charm of a picture, of sounds, or of forms, infects any man whatever
his plane of development.

The business of art lies just in this—to make that understood and felt
which, in the form of an argument, might be incomprehensible and
inaccessible. Usually it seems to the recipient of a truly artistic
impression that he knew the thing before but had been unable to express
it.

And such has always been the nature of good, supreme art; the _Iliad_,
the _Odyssey_, the stories of Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, the Hebrew
prophets, the psalms, the Gospel parables, the story of Sakya Muni, and
the hymns of the Vedas: all transmit very elevated feelings, and are
nevertheless quite comprehensible now to us, educated or uneducated, as
they were comprehensible to the men of those times, long ago, who were
even less educated than our labourers. People talk about
incomprehensibility; but if art is the transmission of feelings flowing
from man’s religious perception, how can a feeling be incomprehensible
which is founded on religion, _i.e._ on man’s relation to God? Such art
should be, and has actually, always been, comprehensible to everybody,
because every man’s relation to God is one and the same. And therefore
the churches and the images in them were always comprehensible to
everyone. The hindrance to understanding the best and highest feelings
(as is said in the gospel) does not at all lie in deficiency of
development or learning, but, on the contrary, in false development and
false learning. A good and lofty work of art may be incomprehensible,
but not to simple, unperverted peasant labourers (all that is highest is
understood by them)—it may be, and often is, unintelligible to erudite,
perverted people destitute of religion. And this continually occurs in
our society, in which the highest feelings are simply not understood.
For instance, I know people who consider themselves most refined, and
who say that they do not understand the poetry of love to one’s
neighbour, of self-sacrifice, or of chastity.

So that good, great, universal, religious art may be incomprehensible to
a small circle of spoilt people, but certainly not to any large number
of plain men.

Art cannot be incomprehensible to the great masses only because it is
very good,—as artists of our day are fond of telling us. Rather we are
bound to conclude that this art is unintelligible to the great masses
only because it is very bad art, or even is not art at all. So that the
favourite argument (naïvely accepted by the cultured crowd), that in
order to feel art one has first to understand it (which really only
means habituate oneself to it), is the truest indication that what we
are asked to understand by such a method is either very bad, exclusive
art, or is not art at all.

People say that works of art do not please the people because they are
incapable of understanding them. But if the aim of works of art is to
infect people with the emotion the artist has experienced, how can one
talk about not understanding?

A man of the people reads a book, sees a picture, hears a play or a
symphony, and is touched by no feeling. He is told that this is because
he cannot understand. People promise to let a man see a certain show; he
enters and sees nothing. He is told that this is because his sight is
not prepared for this show. But the man well knows that he sees quite
well, and if he does not see what people promised to show him, he only
concludes (as is quite just) that those who undertook to show him the
spectacle have not fulfilled their engagement. And it is perfectly just
for a man who does feel the influence of some works of art to come to
this conclusion concerning artists who do not, by their works, evoke
feeling in him. To say that the reason a man is not touched by my art is
because he is still too stupid, besides being very self-conceited and
also rude, is to reverse the rôles, and for the sick to send the hale to
bed.

Voltaire said that “_Tous les genres sont bons, hors le genre
ennuyeux_”;[81] but with even more right one may say of art that _Tous
les genres sons bons, hors celui qu’on ne comprend pas_, or _qui ne
produit pas son effet_,[82] for of what value is an article which fails
to do that for which it was intended?

Mark this above all: if only it be admitted that art may be art and yet
be unintelligible to anyone of sound mind, there is no reason why any
circle of perverted people should not compose works tickling their own
perverted feelings and comprehensible to no one but themselves, and call
it “art,” as is actually being done by the so-called Decadents.

The direction art has taken may be compared to placing on a large circle
other circles, smaller and smaller, until a cone is formed, the apex of
which is no longer a circle at all. That is what has happened to the art
of our times.

Footnote 68:

                   Music, music before all things
                   The eccentric still prefer,
                   Vague in air, and nothing weighty,
                   Soluble. Yet do not err,

                   Choosing words; still do it lightly,
                   Do it too with some contempt;
                   Dearest is the song that’s tipsy,
                   Clearness, dimness not exempt.


                   Music always, now and ever
                   Be thy verse the thing that flies
                   From a soul that’s gone, escaping,
                   Gone to other loves and skies.

                   Gone to other loves and regions,
                   Following fortunes that allure,
                   Mint and thyme and morning crispness ...
                   All the rest’s mere literature.

Footnote 69:

  I think there should be nothing but allusions. The contemplation of
  objects, the flying image of reveries evoked by them, are the song.
  The Parnassiens state the thing completely, and show it, and thereby
  lack mystery; they deprive the mind of that delicious joy of imagining
  that it creates. To _name an object is to take three-quarters from the
  enjoyment of the poem, which consists in the happiness of guessing
  little by little: to suggest, that is the dream_. It is the perfect
  use of this mystery that constitutes the symbol: little by little, to
  evoke an object in order to show a state of the soul; or inversely, to
  choose an object, and from it to disengage a state of the soul by a
  series of decipherings.

  ... If a being of mediocre intelligence and insufficient literary
  preparation chance to open a book made in this way and pretends to
  enjoy it, there is a misunderstanding—things must be returned to their
  places. _There should always be an enigma in poetry_, and the aim of
  literature—it has no other—is to evoke objects.

Footnote 70:

  It were time also to have done with this famous “theory of obscurity,”
  which the new school have practically raised to the height of a dogma.

Footnote 71:

  For translation, see Appendix IV.

Footnote 72:

  For translation, see Appendix IV.

Footnote 73:

  For translation, see Appendix IV.

Footnote 74:

  For translation, see Appendix IV.

Footnote 75:

  For translation, see Appendix IV.

Footnote 76:

  For translation, see Appendix IV.

Footnote 77:

        I do not wish to think any more, except about my mother Mary,
        Seat of wisdom and source of pardon,
        Also Mother of France, _from whom we
        Steadfastly expect the honour of our country_.

Footnote 78:

  This sonnet seems too unintelligible for translation.—Trans.

Footnote 79:

  For translation, see Appendix IV.

Footnote 80:

  The quicker it goes the longer it lasts.

Footnote 81:

  All styles are good except the wearisome style.

Footnote 82:

  All styles are good except that which is not understood, _or_ which
  fails to produce its effect.




                               CHAPTER XI


Becoming ever poorer and poorer in subject-matter and more and more
unintelligible in form, the art of the upper classes, in its latest
productions, has even lost all the characteristics of art, and has been
replaced by imitations of art. Not only has upper-class art, in
consequence of its separation from universal art, become poor in
subject-matter and bad in form, _i.e._ ever more and more
unintelligible, it has, in course of time, ceased even to be art at all,
and has been replaced by counterfeits.

This has resulted from the following causes. Universal art arises only
when some one of the people, having experienced a strong emotion, feels
the necessity of transmitting it to others. The art of the rich classes,
on the other hand, arises not from the artist’s inner impulse, but
chiefly because people of the upper classes demand amusement and pay
well for it. They demand from art the transmission of feelings that
please them, and this demand artists try to meet. But it is a very
difficult task, for people of the wealthy classes, spending their lives
in idleness and luxury, desire to be continually diverted by art; and
art, even the lowest, cannot be produced at will, but has to generate
spontaneously in the artist’s inner self. And therefore, to satisfy the
demands of people of the upper classes, artists have had to devise
methods of producing imitations of art. And such methods have been
devised.

These methods are those of (1) borrowing, (2) imitating, (3) striking
(effects), and (4) interesting.

The first method consists in borrowing whole subjects, or merely
separate features, from former works recognised by everyone as being
poetical, and in so re-shaping them, with sundry additions, that they
should have an appearance of novelty.

Such works, evoking in people of a certain class memories of artistic
feelings formerly experienced, produce an impression similar to art,
and, provided only that they conform to other needful conditions, they
pass for art among those who seek for pleasure from art. Subjects
borrowed from previous works of art are usually called poetical
subjects. Objects and people thus borrowed are called poetical objects
and people. Thus, in our circle, all sorts of legends, sagas, and
ancient traditions are considered poetical subjects. Among poetical
people and objects we reckon maidens, warriors, shepherds, hermits,
angels, devils of all sorts, moonlight, thunder, mountains, the sea,
precipices, flowers, long hair, lions, lambs, doves, and nightingales.
In general, all those objects are considered poetical which have been
most frequently used by former artists in their productions.

Some forty years ago a stupid but highly cultured—_ayant beaucoup
d’acquis_—lady (since deceased) asked me to listen to a novel written by
herself. It began with a heroine who, in a poetic white dress, and with
poetically flowing hair, was reading poetry near some water in a poetic
wood. The scene was in Russia, but suddenly from behind the bushes the
hero appears, wearing a hat with a feather _à la Guillaume Tell_ (the
book specially mentioned this) and accompanied by two poetical white
dogs. The authoress deemed all this highly poetical, and it might have
passed muster if only it had not been necessary for the hero to speak.
But as soon as the gentleman in the hat _à la Guillaume Tell_ began to
converse with the maiden in the white dress, it became obvious that the
authoress had nothing to say, but had merely been moved by poetic
memories of other works, and imagined that by ringing the changes on
those memories she could produce an artistic impression. But an artistic
impression, _i.e._ infection, is only received when an author has, in
the manner peculiar to himself, experienced the feeling which he
transmits, and not when he passes on another man’s feeling previously
transmitted to him. Such poetry from poetry cannot infect people, it can
only simulate a work of art, and even that only to people of perverted
æsthetic taste. The lady in question being very stupid and devoid of
talent, it was at once apparent how the case stood; but when such
borrowing is resorted to by people who are erudite and talented and have
cultivated the technique of their art, we get those borrowings from the
Greek, the antique, the Christian or mythological world which have
become so numerous, and which, particularly in our day, continue to
increase and multiply, and are accepted by the public as works of art,
if only the borrowings are well mounted by means of the technique of the
particular art to which they belong.

As a characteristic example of such counterfeits of art in the realm of
poetry, take Rostand’s _Princesse Lointaine_, in which there is not a
spark of art, but which seems very poetical to many people, and probably
also to its author.

The second method of imparting a semblance of art is that which I have
called imitating. The essence of this method consists in supplying
details accompanying the thing described or depicted. In literary art
this method consists in describing, in the minutest details, the
external appearance, the faces, the clothes, the gestures, the tones,
and the habitations of the characters represented, with all the
occurrences met with in life. For instance, in novels and stories, when
one of the characters speaks we are told in what voice he spoke, and
what he was doing at the time. And the things said are not given so that
they should have as much sense as possible, but, as they are in life,
disconnectedly, and with interruptions and omissions. In dramatic art,
besides such imitation of real speech, this method consists in having
all the accessories and all the people just like those in real life. In
painting this method assimilates painting to photography and destroys
the difference between them. And, strange to say, this method is used
also in music: music tries to imitate not only by its rhythm but also by
its very sounds, the sounds which in real life accompany the thing it
wishes to represent.

The third method is by action, often purely physical, on the outer
senses. Work of this kind is said to be “striking,” “effectful.” In all
arts these effects consist chiefly in contrasts; in bringing together
the terrible and the tender, the beautiful and the hideous, the loud and
the soft, darkness and light, the most ordinary and the most
extraordinary. In verbal art, besides effects of contrast, there are
also effects consisting in the description of things that have never
before been described. These are usually pornographic details evoking
sexual desire, or details of suffering and death evoking feelings of
horror, as, for instance, when describing a murder, to give a detailed
medical account of the lacerated tissues, of the swellings, of the
smell, quantity and appearance of the blood. It is the same in painting:
besides all kinds of other contrasts, one is coming into vogue which
consists in giving careful finish to one object and being careless about
all the rest. The chief and usual effects in painting are effects of
light and the depiction of the horrible. In the drama, the most common
effects, besides contrasts, are tempests, thunder, moonlight, scenes at
sea or by the sea-shore, changes of costume, exposure of the female
body, madness, murders, and death generally: the dying person exhibiting
in detail all the phases of agony. In music the most usual effects are a
_crescendo_, passing from the softest and simplest sounds to the loudest
and most complex crash of the full orchestra; a repetition of the same
sounds _arpeggio_ in all the octaves and on various instruments; or that
the harmony, tone, and rhythm be not at all those naturally flowing from
the course of the musical thought, but such as strike one by their
unexpectedness. Besides these, the commonest effects in music are
produced in a purely physical manner by strength of sound, especially in
an orchestra.

Such are some of the most usual effects in the various arts, but there
yet remains one common to them all, namely, to convey by means of one
art what it would be natural to convey by another: for instance, to make
music describe (as is done by the programme music of Wagner and his
followers), or to make painting, the drama, or poetry, induce a frame of
mind (as is aimed at by all the Decadent art).

The fourth method is that of interesting (that is, absorbing the mind)
in connection with works of art. The interest may lie in an intricate
plot—a method till quite recently much employed in English novels and
French plays, but now going out of fashion and being replaced by
authenticity, _i.e._ by detailed description of some historical period
or some branch of contemporary life. For example, in a novel,
interestingness may consist in a description of Egyptian or Roman life,
the life of miners, or that of the clerks in a large shop. The reader
becomes interested and mistakes this interest for an artistic
impression. The interest may also depend on the very method of
expression; a kind of interest that has now come much into use. Both
verse and prose, as well as pictures, plays, and music, are constructed
so that they must be guessed like riddles, and this process of guessing
again affords pleasure and gives a semblance of the feeling received
from art.

It is very often said that a work of art is very good because it is
poetic, or realistic, or striking, or interesting; whereas not only can
neither the first, nor the second, nor the third, nor the fourth of
these attributes supply a standard of excellence in art, but they have
not even anything in common with art.

Poetic—means borrowed. All borrowing merely recalls to the reader,
spectator, or listener some dim recollection of artistic impressions
they have received from previous works of art, and does not infect them
with feeling which the artist has himself experienced. A work founded on
something borrowed, like Goethe’s _Faust_ for instance, may be very well
executed and be full of mind and every beauty, but because it lacks the
chief characteristic of a work of art—completeness, oneness, the
inseparable unity of form and contents expressing the feeling the artist
has experienced—it cannot produce a really artistic impression. In
availing himself of this method, the artist only transmits the feeling
received by him from a previous work of art; therefore every borrowing,
whether it be of whole subjects, or of various scenes, situations, or
descriptions, is but a reflection of art, a simulation of it, but not
art itself. And therefore, to say that a certain production is good
because it is poetic,—_i.e._ resembles a work of art,—is like saying of
a coin that it is good because it resembles real money.

Equally little can imitation, realism, serve, as many people think, as a
measure of the quality of art. Imitation cannot be such a measure, for
the chief characteristic of art is the infection of others with the
feelings the artist has experienced, and infection with a feeling is not
only not identical with description of the accessories of what is
transmitted, but is usually hindered by superfluous details. The
attention of the receiver of the artistic impression is diverted by all
these well-observed details, and they hinder the transmission of feeling
even when it exists.

To value a work of art by the degree of its realism, by the accuracy of
the details reproduced, is as strange as to judge of the nutritive
quality of food by its external appearance. When we appraise a work
according to its realism, we only show that we are talking, not of a
work of art, but of its counterfeit.

Neither does the third method of imitating art—by the use of what is
striking or effectful—coincide with real art any better than the two
former methods, for in effectfulness—the effects of novelty, of the
unexpected, of contrasts, of the horrible—there is no transmission of
feeling, but only an action on the nerves. If an artist were to paint a
bloody wound admirably, the sight of the wound would strike me, but it
would not be art. One prolonged note on a powerful organ will produce a
striking impression, will often even cause tears, but there is no music
in it, because no feeling is transmitted. Yet such physiological effects
are constantly mistaken for art by people of our circle, and this not
only in music, but also in poetry, painting, and the drama. It is said
that art has become refined. On the contrary, thanks to the pursuit of
effectfulness, it has become very coarse. A new piece is brought out and
accepted all over Europe, such, for instance, as _Hannele_, in which
play the author wishes to transmit to the spectators pity for a
persecuted girl. To evoke this feeling in the audience by means of art,
the author should either make one of the characters express this pity in
such a way as to infect everyone, or he should describe the girl’s
feelings correctly. But he cannot, or will not, do this, and chooses
another way, more complicated in stage management but easier for the
author. He makes the girl die on the stage; and, still further to
increase the physiological effect on the spectators, he extinguishes the
lights in the theatre, leaving the audience in the dark, and to the
sound of dismal music he shows how the girl is pursued and beaten by her
drunken father. The girl shrinks—screams—groans—and falls. Angels appear
and carry her away. And the audience, experiencing some excitement while
this is going on, are fully convinced that this is true æsthetic
feeling. But there is nothing æsthetic in such excitement, for there is
no infecting of man by man, but only a mingled feeling of pity for
another, and of self-congratulation that it is not I who am suffering:
it is like what we feel at the sight of an execution, or what the Romans
felt in their circuses.

The substitution of effectfulness for æsthetic feeling is particularly
noticeable in musical art—that art which by its nature has an immediate
physiological action on the nerves. Instead of transmitting by means of
a melody the feelings he has experienced, a composer of the new school
accumulates and complicates sounds, and by now strengthening, now
weakening them, he produces on the audience a physiological effect of a
kind that can be measured by an apparatus invented for the purpose.[83]
And the public mistake this physiological effect for the effect of art.

As to the fourth method—that of interesting—it also is frequently
confounded with art. One often hears it said, not only of a poem, a
novel, or a picture, but even of a musical work, that it is interesting.
What does this mean? To speak of an interesting work of art means either
that we receive from a work of art information new to us, or that the
work is not fully intelligible, and that little by little, and with
effort, we arrive at its meaning, and experience a certain pleasure in
this process of guessing it. In neither case has the interest anything
in common with artistic impression. Art aims at infecting people with
feeling experienced by the artist. But the mental effort necessary to
enable the spectator, listener, or reader to assimilate the new
information contained in the work, or to guess the puzzles propounded,
by distracting him, hinders the infection. And therefore the
interestingness of a work not only has nothing to do with its excellence
as a work of art, but rather hinders than assists artistic impression.

We may, in a work of art, meet with what is poetic, and realistic, and
striking, and interesting, but these things cannot replace the essential
of art—feeling experienced by the artist. Latterly, in upper-class art,
most of the objects given out as being works of art are of the kind
which only resemble art, and are devoid of its essential quality—feeling
experienced by the artist. And, for the diversion of the rich, such
objects are continually being produced in enormous quantities by the
artisans of art.

Many conditions must be fulfilled to enable a man to produce a real work
of art. It is necessary that he should stand on the level of the highest
life-conception of his time, that he should experience feeling and have
the desire and capacity to transmit it, and that he should, moreover,
have a talent for some one of the forms of art. It is very seldom that
all these conditions necessary to the production of true art are
combined. But in order—aided by the customary methods of borrowing,
imitating, introducing effects, and interesting—unceasingly to produce
counterfeits of art which pass for art in our society and are well paid
for, it is only necessary to have a talent for some branch of art; and
this is very often to be met with. By talent I mean ability: in literary
art, the ability to express one’s thoughts and impressions easily and to
notice and remember characteristic details; in the depictive arts, to
distinguish and remember lines, forms, and colours; in music, to
distinguish the intervals, and to remember and transmit the sequence of
sounds. And a man, in our times, if only he possesses such a talent and
selects some specialty, may, after learning the methods of
counterfeiting used in his branch of art,—if he has patience and if his
æsthetic feeling (which would render such productions revolting to him)
be atrophied,—unceasingly, till the end of his life, turn out works
which will pass for art in our society.

To produce such counterfeits, definite rules or recipes exist in each
branch of art. So that the talented man, having assimilated them, may
produce such works _à froid_, cold drawn, without any feeling.

In order to write poems a man of literary talent needs only these
qualifications: to acquire the knack, conformably with the requirements
of rhyme and rhythm, of using, instead of the one really suitable word,
ten others meaning approximately the same; to learn how to take any
phrase which, to be clear, has but one natural order of words, and
despite all possible dislocations still to retain some sense in it; and
lastly, to be able, guided by the words required for the rhymes, to
devise some semblance of thoughts, feelings, or descriptions to suit
these words. Having acquired these qualifications, he may unceasingly
produce poems—short or long, religious, amatory or patriotic, according
to the demand.

If a man of literary talent wishes to write a story or novel, he need
only form his style—_i.e._ learn how to describe all that he sees—and
accustom himself to remember or note down details. When he has
accustomed himself to this, he can, according to his inclination or the
demand, unceasingly produce novels or stories—historical, naturalistic,
social, erotic, psychological, or even religious, for which latter kind
a demand and fashion begins to show itself. He can take subjects from
books or from the events of life, and can copy the characters of the
people in his book from his acquaintances.

And such novels and stories, if only they are decked out with well
observed and carefully noted details, preferably erotic ones, will be
considered works of art, even though they may not contain a spark of
feeling experienced.

To produce art in dramatic form, a talented man, in addition to all that
is required for novels and stories, must also learn to furnish his
characters with as many smart and witty sentences as possible, must know
how to utilise theatrical effects, and how to entwine the action of his
characters so that there should not be any long conversations, but as
much bustle and movement on the stage as possible. If the writer is able
to do this, he may produce dramatic works one after another without
stopping, selecting his subjects from the reports of the law courts, or
from the latest society topic, such as hypnotism, heredity, etc., or
from deep antiquity, or even from the realms of fancy.

In the sphere of painting and sculpture it is still easier for the
talented man to produce imitations of art. He need only learn to draw,
paint, and model—especially naked bodies. Thus equipped he can continue
to paint pictures, or model statues, one after another, choosing
subjects according to his bent—mythological, or religious, or fantastic,
or symbolical; or he may depict what is written about in the papers—a
coronation, a strike, the Turko-Grecian war, famine scenes; or,
commonest of all, he may just copy anything he thinks beautiful—from
naked women to copper basins.

For the production of musical art the talented man needs still less of
what constitutes the essence of art, _i.e._ feeling wherewith to infect
others; but, on the other hand, he requires more physical, gymnastic
labour than for any other art, unless it be dancing. To produce works of
musical art, he must first learn to move his fingers on some instrument
as rapidly as those who have reached the highest perfection; next he
must know how in former times polyphonic music was written, must study
what are called counterpoint and fugue; and furthermore, he must learn
orchestration, _i.e._ how to utilise the effects of the instruments. But
once he has learned all this, the composer may unceasingly produce one
work after another; whether programme-music, opera, or song (devising
sounds more or less corresponding to the words), or chamber music,
_i.e._ he may take another man’s themes and work them up into definite
forms by means of counterpoint and fugue; or, what is commonest of all,
he may compose fantastic music, _i.e._ he may take a conjunction of
sounds which happens to come to hand, and pile every sort of
complication and ornamentation on to this chance combination.

Thus, in all realms of art, counterfeits of art are manufactured to a
ready-made, prearranged recipe, and these counterfeits the public of our
upper classes accept for real art.

And this substitution of counterfeits for real works of art was the
third and most important consequence of the separation of the art of the
upper classes from universal art.

Footnote 83:

  An apparatus exists by means of which a very sensitive arrow, in
  dependence on the tension of a muscle of the arm, will indicate the
  physiological action of music on the nerves and muscles.




                              CHAPTER XII


In our society three conditions co-operate to cause the production of
objects of counterfeit art. They are—(1) the considerable remuneration
of artists for their productions and the professionalisation of artists
which this has produced, (2) art criticism, and (3) schools of art.

While art was as yet undivided, and only religious art was valued and
rewarded while indiscriminate art was left unrewarded, there were no
counterfeits of art, or, if any existed, being exposed to the criticism
of the whole people, they quickly disappeared. But as soon as that
division occurred, and the upper classes acclaimed every kind of art as
good if only it afforded them pleasure, and began to reward such art
more highly than any other social activity, immediately a large number
of people devoted themselves to this activity, and art assumed quite a
different character and became a profession.

And as soon as this occurred, the chief and most precious quality of
art—its sincerity—was at once greatly weakened and eventually quite
destroyed.

The professional artist lives by his art, and has continually to invent
subjects for his works, and does invent them. And it is obvious how
great a difference must exist between works of art produced on the one
hand by men such as the Jewish prophets, the authors of the Psalms,
Francis of Assisi, the authors of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, of
folk-stories, legends, and folk-songs, many of whom not only received no
remuneration for their work, but did not even attach their names to it;
and, on the other hand, works produced by court poets, dramatists and
musicians receiving honours and remuneration; and later on by
professional artists, who lived by the trade, receiving remuneration
from newspaper editors, publishers, impresarios, and in general from
those agents who come between the artists and the town public—the
consumers of art.

Professionalism is the first condition of the diffusion of false,
counterfeit art.

The second condition is the growth, in recent times, of artistic
criticism, _i.e._ the valuation of art not by everybody, and, above all,
not by plain men, but by erudite, that is, by perverted and at the same
time self-confident individuals.

A friend of mine, speaking of the relation of critics to artists,
half-jokingly defined it thus: “Critics are the stupid who discuss the
wise.” However partial, inexact, and rude this definition may be, it is
yet partly true, and is incomparably juster than the definition which
considers critics to be men who can explain works of art.

“Critics explain!” What do they explain?

The artist, if a real artist, has by his work transmitted to others the
feeling he experienced. What is there, then, to explain?

If a work be good as art, then the feeling expressed by the artist—be it
moral or immoral—transmits itself to other people. If transmitted to
others, then they feel it, and all interpretations are superfluous. If
the work does not infect people, no explanation can make it contagious.
An artist’s work cannot be interpreted. Had it been possible to explain
in words what he wished to convey, the artist would have expressed
himself in words. He expressed it by his art, only because the feeling
he experienced could not be otherwise transmitted. The interpretation of
works of art by words only indicates that the interpreter is himself
incapable of feeling the infection of art. And this is actually the
case, for, however strange it may seem to say so, critics have always
been people less susceptible than other men to the contagion of art. For
the most part they are able writers, educated and clever, but with their
capacity of being infected by art quite perverted or atrophied. And
therefore their writings have always largely contributed, and still
contribute, to the perversion of the taste of that public which reads
them and trusts them.

Artistic criticism did not exist—could not and cannot exist—in societies
where art is undivided, and where, consequently, it is appraised by the
religious understanding-of-life common to the whole people. Art
criticism grew, and could grow, only on the art of the upper classes,
who did not acknowledge the religious perception of their time.

Universal art has a definite and indubitable internal
criterion—religious perception; upper-class art lacks this, and
therefore the appreciators of that art are obliged to cling to some
external criterion. And they find it in “the judgments of the
finest-nurtured,” as an English æsthetician has phrased it, that is, in
the authority of the people who are considered educated, nor in this
alone, but also in a tradition of such authorities. This tradition is
extremely misleading, both because the opinions of “the finest-nurtured”
are often mistaken, and also because judgments which were valid once
cease to be so with the lapse of time. But the critics, having no basis
for their judgments, never cease to repeat their traditions. The
classical tragedians were once considered good, and therefore criticism
considers them to be so still. Dante was esteemed a great poet, Raphael
a great painter, Bach a great musician—and the critics, lacking a
standard by which to separate good art from bad, not only consider these
artists great, but regard all their productions as admirable and worthy
of imitation. Nothing has contributed, and still contributes, so much to
the perversion of art as these authorities set up by criticism. A man
produces a work of art, like every true artist expressing in his own
peculiar manner a feeling he has experienced. Most people are infected
by the artist’s feeling; and his work becomes known. Then criticism,
discussing the artist, says that the work is not bad, but all the same
the artist is not a Dante, nor a Shakespear, nor a Goethe, nor a
Raphael, nor what Beethoven was in his last period. And the young artist
sets to work to copy those who are held up for his imitation, and he
produces not only feeble works, but false works, counterfeits of art.

Thus, for instance, our Pushkin writes his short poems, _Evgeniy
Onegin_, _The Gipsies_, and his stories—works all varying in quality,
but all true art. But then, under the influence of false criticism
extolling Shakespear, he writes _Boris Godunoff_, a cold, brain-spun
work, and this production is lauded by the critics, set up as a model,
and imitations of it appear: _Minin_ by Ostrovsky, and _Tsar Boris_ by
Alexée Tolstoy, and such imitations of imitations as crowd all
literatures with insignificant productions. The chief harm done by the
critics is this, that themselves lacking the capacity to be infected by
art (and that is the characteristic of all critics; for did they not
lack this they could not attempt the impossible—the interpretation of
works of art), they pay most attention to, and eulogise, brain-spun,
invented works, and set these up as models worthy of imitation. That is
the reason they so confidently extol, in literature, the Greek
tragedians, Dante, Tasso, Milton, Shakespear, Goethe (almost all he
wrote), and, among recent writers, Zola and Ibsen; in music, Beethoven’s
last period, and Wagner. To justify their praise of these brain-spun,
invented works, they devise entire theories (of which the famous theory
of beauty is one); and not only dull but also talented people compose
works in strict deference to these theories; and often even real
artists, doing violence to their genius, submit to them.

Every false work extolled by the critics serves as a door through which
the hypocrites of art at once crowd in.

It is solely due to the critics, who in our times still praise rude,
savage, and, for us, often meaningless works of the ancient Greeks:
Sophocles, Euripides, Æschylus, and especially Aristophanes; or, of
modern writers, Dante, Tasso, Milton, Shakespear; in painting, all of
Raphael, all of Michael Angelo, including his absurd “Last Judgment”; in
music, the whole of Bach, and the whole of Beethoven, including his last
period,—thanks only to them, have the Ibsens, Maeterlincks, Verlaines,
Mallarmés, Puvis de Chavannes, Klingers, Böcklins, Stucks, Schneiders;
in music, the Wagners, Liszts, Berliozes, Brahmses, and Richard
Strausses, etc., and all that immense mass of good-for-nothing imitators
of these imitators, become possible in our day.

As a good illustration of the harmful influence of criticism, take its
relation to Beethoven. Among his innumerable hasty productions written
to order, there are, notwithstanding their artificiality of form, works
of true art. But he grows deaf, cannot hear, and begins to write
invented, unfinished works, which are consequently often meaningless and
musically unintelligible. I know that musicians can imagine sounds
vividly enough, and can almost hear what they read, but imaginary sounds
can never replace real ones, and every composer must hear his production
in order to perfect it. Beethoven, however, could not hear, could not
perfect his work, and consequently published productions which are
artistic ravings. But criticism, having once acknowledged him to be a
great composer, seizes on just these abnormal works with special gusto,
and searches for extraordinary beauties in them. And, to justify its
laudations (perverting the very meaning of musical art), it attributed
to music the property of describing what it cannot describe. And
imitators appear—an innumerable host of imitators of these abnormal
attempts at artistic productions which Beethoven wrote when he was deaf.

Then Wagner appears, who at first in critical articles praises just
Beethoven’s last period, and connects this music with Schopenhauer’s
mystical theory that music is the expression of Will—not of separate
manifestations of will objectivised on various planes, but of its very
essence—which is in itself as absurd as this music of Beethoven. And
afterwards he composes music of his own on this theory, in conjunction
with another still more erroneous system of the union of all the arts.
After Wagner yet new imitators appear, diverging yet further from art:
Brahms, Richard Strauss, and others.

Such are the results of criticism. But the third condition of the
perversion of art, namely, art schools, is almost more harmful still.

As soon as art became, not art for the whole people but for a rich
class, it became a profession; as soon as it became a profession,
methods were devised to teach it; people who chose this profession of
art began to learn these methods, and thus professional schools sprang
up: classes of rhetoric or literature in the public schools, academies
for painting, conservatoires for music, schools for dramatic art.

In these schools art is taught! But art is the transmission to others of
a special feeling experienced by the artist. How can this be taught in
schools?

No school can evoke feeling in a man, and still less can it teach him
how to manifest it in the one particular manner natural to him alone.
But the essence of art lies in these things.

The one thing these schools can teach is how to transmit feelings
experienced by other artists in the way those other artists transmitted
them. And this is just what the professional schools do teach; and such
instruction not only does not assist the spread of true art, but, on the
contrary, by diffusing counterfeits of art, does more than anything else
to deprive people of the capacity to understand true art.

In literary art people are taught how, without having anything they wish
to say, to write a many-paged composition on a theme about which they
have never thought, and, moreover, to write it so that it should
resemble the work of an author admitted to be celebrated. This is taught
in schools.

In painting the chief training consists in learning to draw and paint
from copies and models, the naked body chiefly (the very thing that is
never seen, and which a man occupied with real art hardly ever has to
depict), and to draw and paint as former masters drew and painted. The
composition of pictures is taught by giving out themes similar to those
which have been treated by former acknowledged celebrities.

So also in dramatic schools, the pupils are taught to recite monologues
just as tragedians, considered celebrated, declaimed them.

It is the same in music. The whole theory of music is nothing but a
disconnected repetition of those methods which the acknowledged? masters
of composition made use of.

I have elsewhere quoted the profound remark of the Russian artist
Bruloff on art, but I cannot here refrain from repeating it, because
nothing better illustrates what can and what can not be taught in the
schools. Once when correcting a pupil’s study, Bruloff just touched it
in a few places, and the poor dead study immediately became animated.
“Why, you only touched it a _wee bit_, and it is quite another thing!”
said one of the pupils. “Art begins where the _wee bit_ begins,” replied
Bruloff, indicating by these words just what is most characteristic of
art. The remark is true of all the arts, but its justice is particularly
noticeable in the performance of music. That musical execution should be
artistic, should be art, _i.e._ should infect, three chief conditions
must be observed,—there are many others needed for musical perfection;
the transition from one sound to another must be interrupted or
continuous; the sound must increase or diminish steadily; it must be
blended with one and not with another sound; the sound must have this or
that timbre, and much besides,—but take the three chief conditions: the
pitch, the time, and the strength of the sound. Musical execution is
only then art, only then infects, when the sound is neither higher nor
lower than it should be, that is, when exactly the infinitely small
centre of the required note is taken; when that note is continued
exactly as long as is needed; and when the strength of the sound is
neither more nor less than is required. The slightest deviation of pitch
in either direction, the slightest increase or decrease in time, or the
slightest strengthening or weakening of the sound beyond what is needed,
destroys the perfection and, consequently, the infectiousness of the
work. So that the feeling of infection by the art of music, which seems
so simple and so easily obtained, is a thing we receive only when the
performer finds those infinitely minute degrees which are necessary to
perfection in music. It is the same in all arts: a wee bit lighter, a
wee bit darker, a wee bit higher, lower, to the right or the left—in
painting; a wee bit weaker or stronger in intonation, or a wee bit
sooner or later—in dramatic art; a wee bit omitted, over-emphasised, or
exaggerated—in poetry, and there is no contagion. Infection is only
obtained when an artist finds those infinitely minute degrees of which a
work of art consists, and only to the extent to which he finds them. And
it is quite impossible to teach people by external means to find these
minute degrees: they can only be found when a man yields to his feeling.
No instruction can make a dancer catch just the tact of the music, or a
singer or a fiddler take exactly the infinitely minute centre of his
note, or a sketcher draw of all possible lines the only right one, or a
poet find the only meet arrangement of the only suitable words. All this
is found only by feeling. And therefore schools may teach what is
necessary in order to produce something resembling art, but not art
itself.

The teaching of the schools stops there where the _wee bit_
begins—consequently where art begins.

Accustoming people to something resembling art, disaccustoms them to the
comprehension of real art. And that is how it comes about that none are
more dull to art than those who have passed through the professional
schools and been most successful in them. Professional schools produce
an hypocrisy of art precisely akin to that hypocrisy of religion which
is produced by theological colleges for training priests, pastors, and
religious teachers generally. As it is impossible in a school to train a
man so as to make a religious teacher of him, so it is impossible to
teach a man how to become an artist.

Art schools are thus doubly destructive of art: first, in that they
destroy the capacity to produce real art in those who have the
misfortune to enter them and go through a 7 or 8 years’ course;
secondly, in that they generate enormous quantities of that counterfeit
art which perverts the taste of the masses and overflows our world. In
order that born artists may know the methods of the various arts
elaborated by former artists, there should exist in all elementary
schools such classes for drawing and music (singing) that, after passing
through them, every talented scholar may, by using existing models
accessible to all, be able to perfect himself in his art independently.

These three conditions—the professionalisation of artists, art
criticism, and art schools—have had this effect that most people in our
times are quite unable even to understand what art is, and accept as art
the grossest counterfeits of it.




                              CHAPTER XIII


To what an extent people of our circle and time have lost the capacity
to receive real art, and have become accustomed to accept as art things
that have nothing in common with it, is best seen from the works of
Richard Wagner, which have latterly come to be more and more esteemed,
not only by the Germans but also by the French and the English, as the
very highest art, revealing new horizons to us.

The peculiarity of Wagner’s music, as is known, consists in this, that
he considered that music should serve poetry, expressing all the shades
of a poetical work.

The union of the drama with music, devised in the fifteenth century in
Italy for the revival of what they imagined to have been the ancient
Greek drama with music, is an artificial form which had, and has,
success only among the upper classes, and that only when gifted
composers, such as Mozart, Weber, Rossini, and others, drawing
inspiration from a dramatic subject, yielded freely to the inspiration
and subordinated the text to the music, so that in their operas the
important thing to the audience was merely the music on a certain text,
and not the text at all, which latter, even when it was utterly absurd,
as, for instance, in the _Magic Flute_, still did not prevent the music
from producing an artistic impression.

Wagner wishes to correct the opera by letting music submit to the
demands of poetry and unite with it. But each art has its own definite
realm, which is not identical with the realm of other arts, but merely
comes in contact with them; and therefore, if the manifestation of, I
will not say several, but even of two arts—the dramatic and the
musical—be united in one complete production, then the demands of the
one art will make it impossible to fulfil the demands of the other, as
has always occurred in the ordinary operas, where the dramatic art has
submitted to, or rather yielded place to, the musical. Wagner wishes
that musical art should submit to dramatic art, and that both should
appear in full strength. But this is impossible, for every work of art,
if it be a true one, is an expression of intimate feelings of the
artist, which are quite exceptional, and not like anything else. Such is
a musical production, and such is a dramatic work, if they be true art.
And therefore, in order that a production in the one branch of art
should coincide with a production in the other branch, it is necessary
that the impossible should happen: that two works from different realms
of art should be absolutely exceptional, unlike anything that existed
before, and yet should coincide, and be exactly alike.

And this cannot be, just as there cannot be two men, or even two leaves
on a tree, exactly alike. Still less can two works from different realms
of art, the musical and the literary, be absolutely alike. If they
coincide, then either one is a work of art and the other a counterfeit,
or both are counterfeits. Two live leaves cannot be exactly alike, but
two artificial leaves may be. And so it is with works of art. They can
only coincide completely when neither the one nor the other is art, but
only cunningly devised semblances of it.

If poetry and music may be joined, as occurs in hymns, songs, and
_romances_—(though even in these the music does not follow the changes
of each verse of the text, as Wagner wants to, but the song and the
music merely produce a coincident effect on the mind)—this occurs only
because lyrical poetry and music have, to some extent, one and the same
aim: to produce a mental condition, and the conditions produced by
lyrical poetry and by music can, more or less, coincide. But even in
these conjunctions the centre of gravity always lies in one of the two
productions, so that it is one of them that produces the artistic
impression while the other remains unregarded. And still less is it
possible for such union to exist between epic or dramatic poetry and
music.

Moreover, one of the chief conditions of artistic creation is the
complete freedom of the artist from every kind of preconceived demand.
And the necessity of adjusting his musical work to a work from another
realm of art is a preconceived demand of such a kind as to destroy all
possibility of creative power; and therefore works of this kind,
adjusted to one another, are, and must be, as has always happened, not
works of art but only imitations of art, like the music of a melodrama,
signatures to pictures, illustrations, and librettos to operas.

And such are Wagner’s productions. And a confirmation of this is to be
seen in the fact that Wagner’s new music lacks the chief characteristic
of every true work of art, namely, such entirety and completeness that
the smallest alteration in its form would disturb the meaning of the
whole work. In a true work of art—poem, drama, picture, song, or
symphony—it is impossible to extract one line, one scene, one figure, or
one bar from its place and put it in another, without infringing the
significance of the whole work; just as it is impossible, without
infringing the life of an organic being, to extract an organ from one
place and insert it in another. But in the music of Wagner’s last
period, with the exception of certain parts of little importance which
have an independent musical meaning, it is possible to make all kinds of
transpositions, putting what was in front behind, and _vice, versâ_,
without altering the musical sense. And the reason why these
transpositions do not alter the sense of Wagner’s music is because the
sense lies in the words and not in the music.

The musical score of Wagner’s later operas is like what the result would
be should one of those versifiers—of whom there are now many, with
tongues so broken that they can write verses on any theme to any rhymes
in any rhythm, which sound as if they had a meaning—conceive the idea of
illustrating by his verses some symphony or sonata of Beethoven, or some
ballade of Chopin, in the following manner. To the first bars, of one
character, he writes verses corresponding in his opinion to those first
bars. Next come some bars of a different character, and he also writes
verses corresponding in his opinion to them, but with no internal
connection with the first verses, and, moreover, without rhymes and
without rhythm. Such a production, without the music, would be exactly
parallel in poetry to what Wagner’s operas are in music, if heard
without the words.

But Wagner is not only a musician, he is also a poet, or both together;
and therefore, to judge of Wagner, one must know his poetry also—that
same poetry which the music has to subserve. The chief poetical
production of Wagner is _The Nibelung’s Ring_. This work has attained
such enormous importance in our time, and has such influence on all that
now professes to be art, that it is necessary for everyone to-day to
have some idea of it. I have carefully read through the four booklets
which contain this work, and have drawn up a brief summary of it, which
I give in Appendix III. I would strongly advise the reader (if he has
not perused the poem itself, which would be the best thing to do) at
least to read my account of it, so as to have an idea of this
extraordinary work. It is a model work of counterfeit art, so gross as
to be even ridiculous.

But we are told that it is impossible to judge of Wagner’s works without
seeing them on the stage. The Second Day of this drama, which, as I was
told, is the best part of the whole work, was given in Moscow last
winter, and I went to see the performance.

When I arrived the enormous theatre was already filled from top to
bottom. There were Grand-Dukes, and the flower of the aristocracy, of
the merchant class, of the learned, and of the middle-class official
public. Most of them held the libretto, fathoming its meaning.
Musicians—some of them elderly, grey-haired men—followed the music,
score in hand. Evidently the performance of this work was an event of
importance.

I was rather late, but I was told that the short prelude, with which the
act begins, was of little importance, and that it did not matter having
missed it. When I arrived, an actor sat on the stage amid decorations
intended to represent a cave, and before something which was meant to
represent a smith’s forge. He was dressed in trico-tights, with a cloak
of skins, wore a wig and an artificial beard, and with white, weak,
genteel hands (his easy movements, and especially the shape of his
stomach and his lack of muscle revealed the actor) beat an impossible
sword with an unnatural hammer in a way in which no one ever uses a
hammer; and at the same time, opening his mouth in a strange way, he
sang something incomprehensible. The music of various instruments
accompanied the strange sounds which he emitted. From the libretto one
was able to gather that the actor had to represent a powerful gnome, who
lived in the cave, and who was forging a sword for Siegfried, whom he
had reared. One could tell he was a gnome by the fact that the actor
walked all the time bending the knees of his trico-covered legs. This
gnome, still opening his mouth in the same strange way, long continued
to sing or shout. The music meanwhile runs over something strange, like
beginnings which are not continued and do not get finished. From the
libretto one could learn that the gnome is telling himself about a ring
which a giant had obtained, and which the gnome wishes to procure
through Siegfried’s aid, while Siegfried wants a good sword, on the
forging of which the gnome is occupied. After this conversation or
singing to himself has gone on rather a long time, other sounds are
heard in the orchestra, also like something beginning and not finishing,
and another actor appears, with a horn slung over his shoulder, and
accompanied by a man running on all fours dressed up as a bear, whom he
sets at the smith-gnome. The latter runs away without unbending the
knees of his trico-covered legs. This actor with the horn represented
the hero, Siegfried. The sounds which were emitted in the orchestra on
the entrance of this actor were intended to represent Siegfried’s
character and are called Siegfried’s _leit-motiv_. And these sounds are
repeated each time Siegfried appears. There is one fixed combination of
sounds, or _leit-motiv_, for each character, and this _leit-motiv_ is
repeated every time the person whom it represents appears; and when
anyone is mentioned the _motiv_ is heard which relates to that person.
Moreover, each article also has its own _leit-motiv_ or chord. There is
a _motiv_ of the ring, a _motiv_ of the helmet, a _motiv_ of the apple,
a _motiv_ of fire, spear, sword, water, etc.; and as soon as the ring,
helmet, or apple is mentioned, the _motiv_ or chord of the ring, helmet,
or apple is heard. The actor with the horn opens his mouth as
unnaturally as the gnome, and long continues in a chanting voice to
shout some words, and in a similar chant Mime (that is the gnome’s name)
answers something or other to him. The meaning of this conversation can
only be discovered from the libretto; and it is that Siegfried was
brought up by the gnome, and therefore, for some reason, hates him and
always wishes to kill him. The gnome has forged a sword for Siegfried,
but Siegfried is dissatisfied with it. From a ten-page conversation (by
the libretto), lasting half an hour and conducted with the same strange
openings of the mouth and chantings, it appears that Siegfried’s mother
gave birth to him in the wood, and that concerning his father all that
is known is that he had a sword which was broken, the pieces of which
are in Mime’s possession, and that Siegfried does not know fear and
wishes to go out of the wood. Mime, however, does not want to let him
go. During the conversation the music never omits, at the mention of
father, sword, etc., to sound the _motive_ of these people and things.
After these conversations fresh sounds are heard—those of the god
Wotan—and a wanderer appears. This wanderer is the god Wotan. Also
dressed up in a wig, and also in tights, this god Wotan, standing in a
stupid pose with a spear, thinks proper to recount what Mime must have
known before, but what it is necessary to tell the audience. He does not
tell it simply, but in the form of riddles which he orders himself to
guess, staking his head (one does not know why) that he will guess
right. Moreover, whenever the wanderer strikes his spear on the ground,
fire comes out of the ground, and in the orchestra the sounds of spear
and of fire are heard. The orchestra accompanies the conversation, and
the _motive_ of the people and things spoken of are always artfully
intermingled. Besides this the music expresses feelings in the most
naïve manner: the terrible by sounds in the bass, the frivolous by rapid
touches in the treble, etc.

The riddles have no meaning except to tell the audience what the
_nibelungs_ are, what the giants are, what the gods are, and what has
happened before. This conversation also is chanted with strangely opened
mouths and continues for eight libretto pages, and correspondingly long
on the stage. After this the wanderer departs, and Siegfried returns and
talks with Mime for thirteen pages more. There is not a single melody
the whole of this time, but merely intertwinings of the _leit-motive_ of
the people and things mentioned. The conversation tells that Mime wishes
to teach Siegfried fear, and that Siegfried does not know what fear is.
Having finished this conversation, Siegfried seizes one of the pieces of
what is meant to represent the broken sword, saws it up, puts it on what
is meant to represent the forge, melts it, and then forges it and sings:
Heiho! heiho! heiho! Ho! ho! Aha! oho! aha! Heiaho! heiaho! heiaho! Ho!
ho! Hahei! hoho! hahei! and Act I. finishes.

As far as the question I had come to the theatre to decide was
concerned, my mind was fully made up, as surely as on the question of
the merits of my lady acquaintance’s novel when she read me the scene
between the loose-haired maiden in the white dress and the hero with two
white dogs and a hat with a feather _à la Guillaume Tell_.

From an author who could compose such spurious scenes, outraging all
æsthetic feeling, as those which I had witnessed, there was nothing to
be hoped; it may safely be decided that all that such an author can
write will be bad, because he evidently does not know what a true work
of art is. I wished to leave, but the friends I was with asked me to
remain, declaring that one could not form an opinion by that one act,
and that the second would be better. So I stopped for the second act.

Act II., night. Afterwards dawn. In general the whole piece is crammed
with lights, clouds, moonlight, darkness, magic fires, thunder, etc.

The scene represents a wood, and in the wood there is a cave. At the
entrance of the cave sits a third actor in tights, representing another
gnome. It dawns. Enter the god Wotan, again with a spear, and again in
the guise of a wanderer. Again his sounds, together with fresh sounds of
the deepest bass that can be produced. These latter indicate that the
dragon is speaking. Wotan awakens the dragon. The same bass sounds are
repeated, growing yet deeper and deeper. First the dragon says, “I want
to sleep,” but afterwards he crawls out of the cave. The dragon is
represented by two men; it is dressed in a green, scaly skin, waves a
tail at one end, while at the other it opens a kind of crocodile’s jaw
that is fastened on, and from which flames appear. The dragon (who is
meant to be dreadful, and may appear so to five-year-old children)
speaks some words in a terribly bass voice. This is all so stupid, so
like what is done in a booth at a fair, that it is surprising that
people over seven years of age can witness it seriously; yet thousands
of quasi-cultured people sit and attentively hear and see it, and are
delighted.

Siegfried, with his horn, reappears, as does Mime also. In the orchestra
the sounds denoting them are emitted, and they talk about whether
Siegfried does or does not know what fear is. Mime goes away, and a
scene commences which is intended to be most poetical. Siegfried, in his
tights, lies down in a would-be beautiful pose, and alternately keeps
silent and talks to himself. He ponders, listens to the song of birds,
and wishes to imitate them. For this purpose he cuts a reed with his
sword and makes a pipe. The dawn grows brighter and brighter; the birds
sing. Siegfried tries to imitate the birds. In the orchestra is heard
the imitation of birds, alternating with sounds corresponding to the
words he speaks. But Siegfried does not succeed with his pipe-playing,
so he plays on his horn instead. This scene is unendurable. Of music,
_i.e._ of art serving as a means to transmit a state of mind experienced
by the author, there is not even a suggestion. There is something that
is absolutely unintelligible musically. In a musical sense a hope is
continually experienced, followed by disappointment, as if a musical
thought were commenced only to be broken off. If there are something
like musical commencements, these commencements are so short, so
encumbered with complications of harmony and orchestration and with
effects of contrast, are so obscure and unfinished, and what is
happening on the stage meanwhile is so abominably false, that it is
difficult even to perceive these musical snatches, let alone to be
infected by them. Above all, from the very beginning to the very end,
and in each note, the author’s purpose is so audible and visible, that
one sees and hears neither Siegfried nor the birds, but only a limited,
self-opinionated German of bad taste and bad style, who has a most false
conception of poetry, and who, in the rudest and most primitive manner,
wishes to transmit to me these false and mistaken conceptions of his.

Everyone knows the feeling of distrust and resistance which is always
evoked by an author’s evident predetermination. A narrator need only say
in advance, Prepare to cry or to laugh, and you are sure neither to cry
nor to laugh. But when you see that an author prescribes emotion at what
is not touching but only laughable or disgusting, and when you see,
moreover, that the author is fully assured that he has captivated you, a
painfully tormenting feeling results, similar to what one would feel if
an old, deformed woman put on a ball-dress and smilingly coquetted
before you, confident of your approbation. This impression was
strengthened by the fact that around me I saw a crowd of three thousand
people, who not only patiently witnessed all this absurd nonsense, but
even considered it their duty to be delighted with it.

I somehow managed to sit out the next scene also, in which the monster
appears, to the accompaniment of his bass notes intermingled with the
_motiv_ of Siegfried; but after the fight with the monster, and all the
roars, fires, and sword-wavings, I could stand no more of it, and
escaped from the theatre with a feeling of repulsion which, even now, I
cannot forget.

Listening to this opera, I involuntarily thought of a respected, wise,
educated country labourer,—one, for instance, of those wise and truly
religious men whom I know among the peasants,—and I pictured to myself
the terrible perplexity such a man would be in were he to witness what I
was seeing that evening.

What would he think if he knew of all the labour spent on such a
performance, and saw that audience, those great ones of the earth,—old,
bald-headed, grey-bearded men, whom he had been accustomed to
respect,—sit silent and attentive, listening to and looking at all these
stupidities for five hours on end? Not to speak of an adult labourer,
one can hardly imagine even a child of over seven occupying himself with
such a stupid, incoherent fairy tale.

And yet an enormous audience, the cream of the cultured upper classes,
sits out five hours of this insane performance, and goes away imagining
that by paying tribute to this nonsense it has acquired a fresh right to
esteem itself advanced and enlightened.

I speak of the Moscow public. But what is the Moscow public? It is but a
hundredth part of that public which, while considering itself most
highly enlightened, esteems it a merit to have so lost the capacity of
being infected by art, that not only can it witness this stupid sham
without being revolted, but can even take delight in it.

In Bayreuth, where these performances were first given, people who
consider themselves finely cultured assembled from the ends of the
earth, spent, say £100 each, to see this performance, and for four days
running they went to see and hear this nonsensical rubbish, sitting it
out for six hours each day.

But why did people go, and why do they still go to these performances,
and why do they admire them? The question naturally presents itself: How
is the success of Wagner’s works to be explained?

That success I explain to myself in this way: thanks to his exceptional
position in having at his disposal the resources of a king, Wagner was
able to command all the methods for counterfeiting art which have been
developed by long usage, and, employing these methods with great
ability, he produced a model work of counterfeit art. The reason why I
have selected his work for my illustration is, that in no other
counterfeit of art known to me are all the methods by which art is
counterfeited—namely, borrowings, imitation, effects, and
interestingness—so ably and powerfully united.

From the subject, borrowed from antiquity, to the clouds and the risings
of the sun and moon, Wagner, in this work, has made use of all that is
considered poetical. We have here the sleeping beauty, and nymphs, and
subterranean fires, and gnomes, and battles, and swords, and love, and
incest, and a monster, and singing-birds: the whole arsenal of the
poetical is brought into action.

Moreover, everything is imitative: the decorations are imitated and the
costumes are imitated. All is just as, according to the data supplied by
archæology, they would have been in antiquity. The very sounds are
imitative, for Wagner, who was not destitute of musical talent, invented
just such sounds as imitate the strokes of a hammer, the hissing of
molten iron, the singing of birds, etc.

Furthermore, in this work everything is in the highest degree striking
in its effects and in its peculiarities: its monsters, its magic fires,
and its scenes under water; the darkness in which the audience sit, the
invisibility of the orchestra, and the hitherto unemployed combinations
of harmony.

And besides, it is all interesting. The interest lies not only in the
question who will kill whom, and who will marry whom, and who is whose
son, and what will happen next?—the interest lies also in the relation
of the music to the text. The rolling waves of the Rhine—now how is that
to be expressed in music? An evil gnome appears—how is the music to
express an evil gnome?—and how is it to express the sensuality of this
gnome? How will bravery, fire, or apples be expressed in music? How are
the _leit-motive_ of the people speaking to be interwoven with the
_leit-motive_ of the people and objects about whom they speak? Besides,
the music has a further interest. It diverges from all formerly accepted
laws, and most unexpected and totally new modulations crop up (as is not
only possible but even easy in music having no inner law of its being);
the dissonances are new, and are allowed in a new way—and this, too, is
interesting.

And it is this poeticality, imitativeness, effectfulness, and
interestingness which, thanks to the peculiarities of Wagner’s talent
and to the advantageous position in which he was placed, are in these
productions carried to the highest pitch of perfection, that so act on
the spectator, hypnotising him as one would be hypnotised who should
listen for several consecutive hours to the ravings of a maniac
pronounced with great oratorical power.

People say, “You cannot judge without having seen Wagner performed at
Bayreuth: in the dark, where the orchestra is out of sight concealed
under the stage, and where the performance is brought to the highest
perfection.” And this just proves that we have here no question of art,
but one of hypnotism. It is just what the spiritualists say. To convince
you of the reality of their apparitions, they usually say, “You cannot
judge; you must try it, be present at several séances,” _i.e._ come and
sit silent in the dark for hours together in the same room with
semi-sane people, and repeat this some ten times over, and you shall see
all that we see.

Yes, naturally! Only place yourself in such conditions, and you may see
what you will. But this can be still more quickly attained by getting
drunk or smoking opium. It is the same when listening to an opera of
Wagner’s. Sit in the dark for four days in company with people who are
not quite normal, and, through the auditory nerves, subject your brain
to the strongest action of the sounds best adapted to excite it, and you
will no doubt be reduced to an abnormal condition and be enchanted by
absurdities. But to attain this end you do not even need four days; the
five hours during which one “day” is enacted, as in Moscow, are quite
enough. Nor are five hours needed; even one hour is enough for people
who have no clear conception of what art should be, and who have come to
the conclusion in advance that what they are going to see is excellent,
and that indifference or dissatisfaction with this work will serve as a
proof of their inferiority and lack of culture.

I observed the audience present at this representation. The people who
led the whole audience and gave the tone to it were those who had
previously been hypnotised, and who again succumbed to the hypnotic
influence to which they were accustomed. These hypnotised people, being
in an abnormal condition, were perfectly enraptured. Moreover, all the
art critics, who lack the capacity to be infected by art and therefore
always especially prize works like Wagner’s opera where it is all an
affair of the intellect, also, with much profundity, expressed their
approval of a work affording such ample material for ratiocination. And
following these two groups went that large city crowd (indifferent to
art, with their capacity to be infected by it perverted and partly
atrophied), headed by the princes, millionaires, and art patrons, who,
like sorry harriers, keep close to those who most loudly and decidedly
express their opinion.

“Oh yes, certainly! What poetry! Marvellous! Especially the birds!”
“Yes, yes! I am quite vanquished!” exclaim these people, repeating in
various tones what they have just heard from men whose opinion appears
to them authoritative.

If some people do feel insulted by the absurdity and spuriousness of the
whole thing, they are timidly silent, as sober men are timid and silent
when surrounded by tipsy ones.

And thus, thanks to the masterly skill with which it counterfeits art
while having nothing in common with it, a meaningless, coarse, spurious
production finds acceptance all over the world, costs millions of
roubles to produce, and assists more and more to pervert the taste of
people of the upper classes and their conception of what is art.




                              CHAPTER XIV


I know that most men—not only those considered clever, but even those
who are very clever and capable of understanding most difficult
scientific, mathematical or philosophic problems—can very seldom discern
even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as to oblige them
to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much
difficulty—conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught
to others, and on which they have built their lives. And therefore I
have little hope that what I adduce as to the perversion of art and
taste in our society will be accepted or even seriously considered.
Nevertheless, I must state fully the inevitable conclusion to which my
investigation into the question of art has brought me. This
investigation has brought me to the conviction that almost all that our
society considers to be art, good art, and the whole of art, far from
being real and good art, and the whole of art, is not even art at all,
but only a counterfeit of it. This position, I know, will seem very
strange and paradoxical; but if we once acknowledge art to be a human
activity by means of which some people transmit their feelings to others
(and not a service of Beauty, nor a manifestation of the Idea, and so
forth), we shall inevitably have to admit this further conclusion also.
If it is true that art is an activity by means of which one man having
experienced a feeling intentionally transmits it to others, then we have
inevitably to admit further, that of all that among us is termed the art
of the upper classes—of all those novels, stories, dramas, comedies,
pictures, sculptures, symphonies, operas, operettas, ballets, etc.,
which profess to be works of art—scarcely one in a hundred thousand
proceeds from an emotion felt by its author, all the rest being but
manufactured counterfeits of art in which borrowing, imitating, effects,
and interestingness replace the contagion of feeling. That the
proportion of real productions of art is to the counterfeits as one to
some hundreds of thousands or even more, may be seen by the following
calculation. I have read somewhere that the artist painters in Paris
alone number 30,000; there will probably be as many in England, as many
in Germany, and as many in Russia, Italy, and the smaller states
combined. So that in all there will be in Europe, say, 120,000 painters;
and there are probably as many musicians and as many literary artists.
If these 360,000 individuals produce three works a year each (and many
of them produce ten or more), then each year yields over a million
so-called works of art. How many, then, must have been produced in the
last ten years, and how many in the whole time since upper-class art
broke off from the art of the whole people? Evidently millions. Yet who
of all the connoisseurs of art has received impressions from all these
pseudo works of art? Not to mention all the labouring classes who have
no conception of these productions, even people of the upper classes
cannot know one in a thousand of them all, and cannot remember those
they have known. These works all appear under the guise of art, produce
no impression on anyone (except when they serve as pastimes for the idle
crowd of rich people), and vanish utterly.

In reply to this it is usually said that without this enormous number of
unsuccessful attempts we should not have the real works of art. But such
reasoning is as though a baker, in reply to a reproach that his bread
was bad, were to say that if it were not for the hundreds of spoiled
loaves there would not be any well-baked ones. It is true that where
there is gold there is also much sand; but that can not serve as a
reason for talking a lot of nonsense in order to say something wise.

We are surrounded by productions considered artistic. Thousands of
verses, thousands of poems, thousands of novels, thousands of dramas,
thousands of pictures, thousands of musical pieces, follow one after
another. All the verses describe love, or nature, or the author’s state
of mind, and in all of them rhyme and rhythm are observed. All the
dramas and comedies are splendidly mounted and are performed by
admirably trained actors. All the novels are divided into chapters; all
of them describe love, contain effective situations, and correctly
describe the details of life. All the symphonies contain _allegro_,
_andante_, _scherzo_, and _finale_; all consist of modulations and
chords, and are played by highly-trained musicians. All the pictures, in
gold frames, saliently depict faces and sundry accessories. But among
these productions in the various branches of art there is in each branch
one among hundreds of thousands, not only somewhat better than the rest,
but differing from them as a diamond differs from paste. The one is
priceless, the others not only have no value but are worse than
valueless, for they deceive and pervert taste. And yet, externally, they
are, to a man of perverted or atrophied artistic perception, precisely
alike.

In our society the difficulty of recognising real works of art is
further increased by the fact that the external quality of the work in
false productions is not only no worse, but often better, than in real
ones; the counterfeit is often more effective than the real, and its
subject more interesting. How is one to discriminate? How is one to find
a production in no way distinguished in externals from hundreds of
thousands of others intentionally made to imitate it precisely?

For a country peasant of unperverted taste this is as easy as it is for
an animal of unspoilt scent to follow the trace he needs among a
thousand others in wood or forest. The animal unerringly finds what he
needs. So also the man, if only his natural qualities have not been
perverted, will, without fail, select from among thousands of objects
the real work of art he requires—that infecting him with the feeling
experienced by the artist. But it is not so with those whose taste has
been perverted by their education and life. The receptive feeling for
art of these people is atrophied, and in valuing artistic productions
they must be guided by discussion and study, which discussion and study
completely confuse them. So that most people in our society are quite
unable to distinguish a work of art from the grossest counterfeit.
People sit for whole hours in concert-rooms and theatres listening to
the new composers, consider it a duty to read the novels of the famous
modern novelists and to look at pictures representing either something
incomprehensible or just the very things they see much better in real
life; and, above all, they consider it incumbent on them to be
enraptured by all this, imagining it all to be art, while at the same
time they will pass real works of art by, not only without attention,
but even with contempt, merely because, in their circle, these works are
not included in the list of works of art.

A few days ago I was returning home from a walk feeling depressed, as
occurs sometimes. On nearing the house I heard the loud singing of a
large choir of peasant women. They were welcoming my daughter,
celebrating her return home after her marriage. In this singing, with
its cries and clanging of scythes, such a definite feeling of joy,
cheerfulness, and energy was expressed, that, without noticing how it
infected me, I continued my way towards the house in a better mood, and
reached home smiling and quite in good spirits. That same evening, a
visitor, an admirable musician, famed for his execution of classical
music, and particularly of Beethoven, played us Beethoven’s sonata, Opus
101. For the benefit of those who might otherwise attribute my judgment
of that sonata of Beethoven to non-comprehension of it, I should mention
that whatever other people understand of that sonata and of other
productions of Beethoven’s later period, I, being very susceptible to
music, equally understood. For a long time I used to atune myself so as
to delight in those shapeless improvisations which form the
subject-matter of the works of Beethoven’s later period, but I had only
to consider the question of art seriously, and to compare the impression
I received from Beethoven’s later works with those pleasant, clear, and
strong musical impressions which are transmitted, for instance, by the
melodies of Bach (his arias), Haydn, Mozart, Chopin (when his melodies
are not overloaded with complications and ornamention), and of Beethoven
himself in his earlier period, and above all, with the impressions
produced by folk-songs,—Italian, Norwegian, or Russian,—by the Hungarian
_tzardas_, and other such simple, clear, and powerful music, and the
obscure, almost unhealthy excitement from Beethoven’s later pieces that
I had artificially evoked in myself was immediately destroyed.

On the completion of the performance (though it was noticeable that
everyone had become dull) those present, in the accepted manner, warmly
praised Beethoven’s profound production, and did not forget to add that
formerly they had not been able to understand that last period of his,
but that they now saw that he was really then at his very best. And when
I ventured to compare the impression made on me by the singing of the
peasant women—an impression which had been shared by all who heard
it—with the effect of this sonata, the admirers of Beethoven only smiled
contemptuously, not considering it necessary to reply to such strange
remarks.

But, for all that, the song of the peasant women was real art,
transmitting a definite and strong feeling; while the 101st sonata of
Beethoven was only an unsuccessful attempt at art, containing no
definite feeling and therefore not infectious.

For my work on art I have this winter read diligently, though with great
effort, the celebrated novels and stories, praised by all Europe,
written by Zola, Bourget, Huysmans, and Kipling. At the same time I
chanced on a story in a child’s magazine, and by a quite unknown writer,
which told of the Easter preparations in a poor widow’s family. The
story tells how the mother managed with difficulty to obtain some
wheat-flour, which she poured on the table ready to knead. She then went
out to procure some yeast, telling the children not to leave the hut,
and to take care of the flour. When the mother had gone, some other
children ran shouting near the window, calling those in the hut to come
to play. The children forgot their mother’s warning, ran into the
street, and were soon engrossed in the game. The mother, on her return
with the yeast, finds a hen on the table throwing the last of the flour
to her chickens, who were busily picking it out of the dust of the
earthen floor. The mother, in despair, scolds the children, who cry
bitterly. And the mother begins to feel pity for them—but the white
flour has all gone. So to mend matters she decides to make the Easter
cake with sifted rye-flour, brushing it over with white of egg and
surrounding it with eggs. “Rye-bread which we bake is akin to any cake,”
says the mother, using a rhyming proverb to console the children for not
having an Easter cake made with white flour. And the children, quickly
passing from despair to rapture, repeat the proverb and await the Easter
cake more merrily even than before.

Well! the reading of the novels and stories by Zola, Bourget, Huysmans,
Kipling, and others, handling the most harrowing subjects, did not touch
me for one moment, and I was provoked with the authors all the while, as
one is provoked with a man who considers you so naïve that he does not
even conceal the trick by which he intends to take you in. From the
first lines you see the intention with which the book is written, and
the details all become superfluous, and one feels dull. Above all, one
knows that the author had no other feeling all the time than a desire to
write a story or a novel, and so one receives no artistic impression. On
the other hand, I could not tear myself away from the unknown author’s
tale of the children and the chickens, because I was at once infected by
the feeling which the author had evidently experienced, re-evoked in
himself, and transmitted.

Vasnetsoff is one of our Russian painters. He has painted ecclesiastical
pictures in Kieff Cathedral, and everyone praises him as the founder of
some new, elevated kind of Christian art. He worked at those pictures
for ten years, was paid tens of thousands of roubles for them, and they
are all simply bad imitations of imitations of imitations, destitute of
any spark of feeling. And this same Vasnetsoff drew a picture for
Tourgenieff’s story “The Quail” (in which it is told how, in his son’s
presence, a father killed a quail and felt pity for it), showing the boy
asleep with pouting upper lip, and above him, as a dream, the quail. And
this picture is a true work of art.

In the English Academy of 1897 two pictures were exhibited together; one
of which, by J. C. Dolman, was the temptation of St. Anthony. The Saint
is on his knees praying. Behind him stands a naked woman and animals of
some kind. It is apparent that the naked woman pleased the artist very
much, but that Anthony did not concern him at all; and that, so far from
the temptation being terrible to him (the artist) it is highly
agreeable. And therefore if there be any art in this picture, it is very
nasty and false. Next in the same book of academy pictures comes a
picture by Langley, showing a stray beggar boy, who has evidently been
called in by a woman who has taken pity on him. The boy, pitifully
drawing his bare feet under the bench, is eating; the woman is looking
on, probably considering whether he will not want some more; and a girl
of about seven, leaning on her arm, is carefully and seriously looking
on, not taking her eyes from the hungry boy, and evidently understanding
for the first time what poverty is, and what inequality among people is,
and asking herself why she has everything provided for her while this
boy goes bare-foot and hungry? She feels sorry and yet pleased. And she
loves both the boy and goodness.... And one feels that the artist loved
this girl, and that she too loves. And this picture, by an artist who, I
think, is not very widely known, is an admirable and true work of art.

I remember seeing a performance of _Hamlet_ by Rossi. Both the tragedy
itself and the performer who took the chief part are considered by our
critics to represent the climax of supreme dramatic art. And yet, both
from the subject-matter of the drama and from the performance, I
experienced all the time that peculiar suffering which is caused by
false imitations of works of art. And I lately read of a theatrical
performance among the savage tribe the Voguls. A spectator describes the
play. A big Vogul and a little one, both dressed in reindeer skins,
represent a reindeer-doe and its young. A third Vogul, with a bow,
represents a huntsman on snow-shoes, and a fourth imitates with his
voice a bird that warns the reindeer of their danger. The play is that
the huntsman follows the track that the doe with its young one has
travelled. The deer run off the scene and again reappear. (Such
performances take place in a small tent-house.) The huntsman gains more
and more on the pursued. The little deer is tired, and presses against
its mother. The doe stops to draw breath. The hunter comes up with them
and draws his bow. But just then the bird sounds its note, warning the
deer of their danger. They escape. Again there is a chase, and again the
hunter gains on them, catches them and lets fly his arrow. The arrow
strikes the young deer. Unable to run, the little one presses against
its mother. The mother licks its wound. The hunter draws another arrow.
The audience, as the eye-witness describes them, are paralysed with
suspense; deep groans and even weeping is heard among them. And, from
the mere description, I felt that this was a true work of art.

What I am saying will be considered irrational paradox, at which one can
only be amazed; but for all that I must say what I think, namely, that
people of our circle, of whom some compose verses, stories, novels,
operas, symphonies, and sonatas, paint all kinds of pictures and make
statues, while others hear and look at these things, and again others
appraise and criticise it all, discuss, condemn, triumph, and raise
monuments to one another generation after generation,—that all these
people, with very few exceptions, artists, and public, and critics, have
never (except in childhood and earliest youth, before hearing any
discussions on art), experienced that simple feeling familiar to the
plainest man and even to a child, that sense of infection with another’s
feeling,—compelling us to joy in another’s gladness, to sorrow at
another’s grief, and to mingle souls with another,—which is the very
essence of art. And therefore these people not only cannot distinguish
true works of art from counterfeits, but continually mistake for real
art the worst and most artificial, while they do not even perceive works
of real art, because the counterfeits are always more ornate, while true
art is modest.




                               CHAPTER XV


Art, in our society, has been so perverted that not only has bad art
come to be considered good, but even the very perception of what art
really is has been lost. In order to be able to speak about the art of
our society, it is, therefore, first of all necessary to distinguish art
from counterfeit art.

There is one indubitable indication distinguishing real art from its
counterfeit, namely, the infectiousness of art. If a man, without
exercising effort and without altering his standpoint, on reading,
hearing, or seeing another man’s work, experiences a mental condition
which unites him with that man and with other people who also partake of
that work of art, then the object evoking that condition is a work of
art. And however poetical, realistic, effectful, or interesting a work
may be, it is not a work of art if it does not evoke that feeling (quite
distinct from all other feelings) of joy, and of spiritual union with
another (the author) and with others (those who are also infected by
it).

It is true that this indication is an _internal_ one, and that there are
people who have forgotten what the action of real art is, who expect
something else from art (in our society the great majority are in this
state), and that therefore such people may mistake for this æsthetic
feeling the feeling of divertisement and a certain excitement which they
receive from counterfeits of art. But though it is impossible to
undeceive these people, just as it is impossible to convince a man
suffering from “Daltonism” that green is not red, yet, for all that,
this indication remains perfectly definite to those whose feeling for
art is neither perverted nor atrophied, and it clearly distinguishes the
feeling produced by art from all other feelings.

The chief peculiarity of this feeling is that the receiver of a true
artistic impression is so united to the artist that he feels as if the
work were his own and not someone else’s,—as if what it expresses were
just what he had long been wishing to express. A real work of art
destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between
himself and the artist, nor that alone, but also between himself and all
whose minds receive this work of art. In this freeing of our personality
from its separation and isolation, in this uniting of it with others,
lies the chief characteristic and the great attractive force of art.

If a man is infected by the author’s condition of soul, if he feels this
emotion and this union with others, then the object which has effected
this is art; but if there be no such infection, if there be not this
union with the author and with others who are moved by the same
work—then it is not art. And not only is infection a sure sign of art,
but the degree of infectiousness is also the sole measure of excellence
in art.

_The stronger the infection the better is the art, as art_, speaking now
apart from its subject-matter, _i.e._ not considering the quality of the
feelings it transmits.

And the degree of the infectiousness of art depends on three
conditions:—

(1) On the greater or lesser individuality of the feeling transmitted;
(2) on the greater or lesser clearness with which the feeling is
transmitted; (3) on the sincerity of the artist, _i.e._ on the greater
or lesser force with which the artist himself feels the emotion he
transmits.

The more individual the feeling transmitted the more strongly does it
act on the receiver; the more individual the state of soul into which he
is transferred the more pleasure does the receiver obtain, and therefore
the more readily and strongly does he join in it.

The clearness of expression assists infection, because the receiver, who
mingles in consciousness with the author, is the better satisfied the
more clearly the feeling is transmitted, which, as it seems to him, he
has long known and felt, and for which he has only now found expression.

But most of all is the degree of infectiousness of art increased by
the degree of sincerity in the artist. As soon as the spectator,
hearer, or reader feels that the artist is infected by his own
production, and writes, sings, or plays for himself and not merely to
act on others, this mental condition of the artist infects the
receiver; and, contrariwise, as soon as the spectator, reader, or
hearer feels that the author is not writing, singing, or playing for
his own satisfaction,—does not himself feel what he wishes to
express,—but is doing it for him, the receiver, a resistance
immediately springs up, and the most individual and the newest
feelings and the cleverest technique not only fail to produce any
infection but actually repel.

I have mentioned three conditions of contagiousness in art, but they may
all be summed up into one, the last, sincerity, _i.e._ that the artist
should be impelled by an inner need to express his feeling. That
condition includes the first; for if the artist is sincere he will
express the feeling as he experienced it. And as each man is different
from everyone else, his feeling will be individual for everyone else;
and the more individual it is,—the more the artist has drawn it from the
depths of his nature,—the more sympathetic and sincere will it be. And
this same sincerity will impel the artist to find a clear expression of
the feeling which he wishes to transmit.

Therefore this third condition—sincerity—is the most important of the
three. It is always complied with in peasant art, and this explains why
such art always acts so powerfully; but it is a condition almost
entirely absent from our upper-class art, which is continually produced
by artists actuated by personal aims of covetousness or vanity.

Such are the three conditions which divide art from its counterfeits,
and which also decide the quality of every work of art apart from its
subject-matter.

The absence of any one of these conditions excludes a work from the
category of art and relegates it to that of art’s counterfeits. If the
work does not transmit the artist’s peculiarity of feeling, and is
therefore not individual, if it is unintelligibly expressed, or if it
has not proceeded from the author’s inner need for expression—it is not
a work of art. If all these conditions are present, even in the smallest
degree, then the work, even if a weak one, is yet a work of art.

The presence in various degrees of these three conditions:
individuality, clearness, and sincerity, decides the merit of a work of
art, as art, apart from subject-matter. All works of art take rank of
merit according to the degree in which they fulfil the first, the
second, and the third of these conditions. In one the individuality of
the feeling transmitted may predominate; in another, clearness of
expression; in a third, sincerity; while a fourth may have sincerity and
individuality but be deficient in clearness; a fifth, individuality and
clearness, but less sincerity; and so forth, in all possible degrees and
combinations.

Thus is art divided from not art, and thus is the quality of art, as
art, decided, independently of its subject-matter, _i.e._ apart from
whether the feelings it transmits are good or bad.

But how are we to define good and bad art with reference to its
subject-matter?




                              CHAPTER XVI


How in art are we to decide what is good and what is bad in
subject-matter?

Art, like speech, is a means of communication, and therefore of
progress, _i.e._ of the movement of humanity forward towards perfection.
Speech renders accessible to men of the latest generations all the
knowledge discovered by the experience and reflection, both of preceding
generations and of the best and foremost men of their own times; art
renders accessible to men of the latest generations all the feelings
experienced by their predecessors, and those also which are being felt
by their best and foremost contemporaries. And as the evolution of
knowledge proceeds by truer and more necessary knowledge dislodging and
replacing what is mistaken and unnecessary, so the evolution of feeling
proceeds through art,—feelings less kind and less needful for the
well-being of mankind are replaced by others kinder and more needful for
that end. That is the purpose of art. And, speaking now of its
subject-matter, the more art fulfils that purpose the better the art,
and the less it fulfils it the worse the art.

And the appraisement of feelings (_i.e._ the acknowledgment of these or
those feelings as being more or less good, more or less necessary for
the well-being of mankind) is made by the religious perception of the
age.

In every period of history, and in every human society, there exists an
understanding of the meaning of life which represents the highest level
to which men of that society have attained,—an understanding defining
the highest good at which that society aims. And this understanding is
the religious perception of the given time and society. And this
religious perception is always clearly expressed by some advanced men,
and more or less vividly perceived by all the members of the society.
Such a religious perception and its corresponding expression exists
always in every society. If it appears to us that in our society there
is no religious perception, this is not because there really is none,
but only because we do not want to see it. And we often wish not to see
it because it exposes the fact that our life is inconsistent with that
religious perception.

Religious perception in a society is like the direction of a flowing
river. If the river flows at all, it must have a direction. If a society
lives, there must be a religious perception indicating the direction in
which, more or less consciously, all its members tend.

And so there always has been, and there is, a religious perception in
every society. And it is by the standard of this religious perception
that the feelings transmitted by art have always been estimated. Only on
the basis of this religious perception of their age have men always
chosen from the endlessly varied spheres of art that art which
transmitted feelings making religious perception operative in actual
life. And such art has always been highly valued and encouraged; while
art transmitting feelings already outlived, flowing from the antiquated
religious perceptions of a former age, has always been condemned and
despised. All the rest of art, transmitting those most diverse feelings
by means of which people commune together, was not condemned, and was
tolerated, if only it did not transmit feelings contrary to religious
perception. Thus, for instance, among the Greeks, art transmitting the
feeling of beauty, strength, and courage (Hesiod, Homer, Phidias) was
chosen, approved, and encouraged; while art transmitting feelings of
rude sensuality, despondency, and effeminacy was condemned and despised.
Among the Jews, art transmitting feelings of devotion and submission to
the God of the Hebrews and to His will (the epic of Genesis, the
prophets, the Psalms) was chosen and encouraged, while art transmitting
feelings of idolatry (the golden calf) was condemned and despised. All
the rest of art—stories, songs, dances, ornamentation of houses, of
utensils, and of clothes—which was not contrary to religious perception,
was neither distinguished nor discussed. Thus, in regard to its
subject-matter, has art been appraised always and everywhere, and thus
it should be appraised, for this attitude towards art proceeds from the
fundamental characteristics of human nature, and those characteristics
do not change.

I know that according to an opinion current in our times, religion is a
superstition, which humanity has outgrown, and that it is therefore
assumed that no such thing exists as a religious perception common to us
all by which art, in our time, can be estimated. I know that this is the
opinion current in the pseudo-cultured circles of to-day. People who do
not acknowledge Christianity in its true meaning because it undermines
all their social privileges, and who, therefore, invent all kinds of
philosophic and æsthetic theories to hide from themselves the
meaninglessness and wrongness of their lives, cannot think otherwise.
These people intentionally, or sometimes unintentionally, confusing the
conception of a religious cult with the conception of religious
perception, think that by denying the cult they get rid of religious
perception. But even the very attacks on religion, and the attempts to
establish a life-conception contrary to the religious perception of our
times, most clearly demonstrate the existence of a religious perception
condemning the lives that are not in harmony with it.

If humanity progresses, _i.e._ moves forward, there must inevitably be a
guide to the direction of that movement. And religions have always
furnished that guide. All history shows that the progress of humanity is
accomplished not otherwise than under the guidance of religion. But if
the race cannot progress without the guidance of religion,—and progress
is always going on, and consequently also in our own times,—then there
must be a religion of our times. So that, whether it pleases or
displeases the so-called cultured people of to-day, they must admit the
existence of religion—not of a religious cult, Catholic, Protestant, or
another, but of religious perception—which, even in our times, is the
guide always present where there is any progress. And if a religious
perception exists amongst us, then our art should be appraised on the
basis of that religious perception; and, as has always and everywhere
been the case, art transmitting feelings flowing from the religious
perception of our time should be chosen from all the indifferent art,
should be acknowledged, highly esteemed, and encouraged; while art
running counter to that perception should be condemned and despised, and
all the remaining indifferent art should neither be distinguished nor
encouraged.

The religious perception of our time, in its widest and most practical
application, is the consciousness that our well-being, both material and
spiritual, individual and collective, temporal and eternal, lies in the
growth of brotherhood among all men—in their loving harmony with one
another. This perception is not only expressed by Christ and all the
best men of past ages, it is not only repeated in the most varied forms
and from most diverse sides by the best men of our own times, but it
already serves as a clue to all the complex labour of humanity,
consisting as this labour does, on the one hand, in the destruction of
physical and moral obstacles to the union of men, and, on the other
hand, in establishing the principles common to all men which can and
should unite them into one universal brotherhood. And it is on the basis
of this perception that we should appraise all the phenomena of our
life, and, among the rest, our art also; choosing from all its realms
whatever transmits feelings flowing from this religious perception,
highly prizing and encouraging such art, rejecting whatever is contrary
to this perception, and not attributing to the rest of art an importance
not properly pertaining to it.

The chief mistake made by people of the upper classes of the time of the
so-called Renaissance,—a mistake which we still perpetuate,—was not that
they ceased to value and to attach importance to religious art (people
of that period could not attach importance to it, because, like our own
upper classes, they could not believe in what the majority considered to
be religion), but their mistake was that they set up in place of
religious art which was lacking, an insignificant art which aimed only
at giving pleasure, _i.e._ they began to choose, to value, and to
encourage, in place of religious art, something which, in any case, did
not deserve such esteem and encouragement.

One of the Fathers of the Church said that the great evil is not that
men do not know God, but that they have set up, instead of God, that
which is not God. So also with art. The great misfortune of the people
of the upper classes of our time is not so much that they are without a
religious art, as that, instead of a supreme religious art, chosen from
all the rest as being specially important and valuable, they have chosen
a most insignificant and, usually, harmful art, which aims at pleasing
certain people, and which, therefore, if only by its exclusive nature,
stands in contradiction to that Christian principle of universal union
which forms the religious perception of our time. Instead of religious
art, an empty and often vicious art is set up, and this hides from men’s
notice the need of that true religious art which should be present in
life in order to improve it.

It is true that art which satisfies the demands of the religious
perception of our time is quite unlike former art, but, notwithstanding
this dissimilarity, to a man who does not intentionally hide the truth
from himself, it is very clear and definite what does form the religious
art of our age. In former times, when the highest religious perception
united only some people (who, even if they formed a large society, were
yet but one society surrounded by others—Jews, or Athenian or Roman
citizens), the feelings transmitted by the art of that time flowed from
a desire for the might, greatness, glory, and prosperity of that
society, and the heroes of art might be people who contributed to that
prosperity by strength, by craft, by fraud, or by cruelty (Ulysses,
Jacob, David, Samson, Hercules, and all the heroes). But the religious
perception of our times does not select any one society of men; on the
contrary, it demands the union of all—absolutely of all people without
exception—and above every other virtue it sets brotherly love to all
men. And, therefore, the feelings transmitted by the art of our time not
only cannot coincide with the feelings transmitted by former art, but
must run counter to them.

Christian, truly Christian, art has been so long in establishing itself,
and has not yet established itself, just because the Christian religious
perception was not one of those small steps by which humanity advances
regularly; but was an enormous revolution, which, if it has not already
altered, must inevitably alter the entire life-conception of mankind,
and, consequently, the whole internal organisation of their life. It is
true that the life of humanity, like that of an individual, moves
regularly; but in that regular movement come, as it were,
turning-points, which sharply divide the preceding from the subsequent
life. Christianity was such a turning-point; such, at least, it must
appear to us who live by the Christian perception of life. Christian
perception gave another, a new direction to all human feelings, and
therefore completely altered both the contents and the significance of
art. The Greeks could make use of Persian art and the Romans could use
Greek art, or, similarly, the Jews could use Egyptian art,—the
fundamental ideals were one and the same. Now the ideal was the
greatness and prosperity of the Persians, now the greatness and
prosperity of the Greeks, now that of the Romans. The same art was
transferred into other conditions, and served new nations. But the
Christian ideal changed and reversed everything, so that, as the Gospel
puts it, “That which was exalted among men has become an abomination in
the sight of God.” The ideal is no longer the greatness of Pharaoh or of
a Roman emperor, not the beauty of a Greek nor the wealth of Phœnicia,
but humility, purity, compassion, love. The hero is no longer Dives, but
Lazarus the beggar; not Mary Magdalene in the day of her beauty, but in
the day of her repentance; not those who acquire wealth, but those who
have abandoned it; not those who dwell in palaces, but those who dwell
in catacombs and huts; not those who rule over others, but those who
acknowledge no authority but God’s. And the greatest work of art is no
longer a cathedral of victory[84] with statues of conquerors, but the
representation of a human soul so transformed by love that a man who is
tormented and murdered yet pities and loves his persecutors.

And the change is so great that men of the Christian world find it
difficult to resist the inertia of the heathen art to which they have
been accustomed all their lives. The subject-matter of Christian
religious art is so new to them, so unlike the subject-matter of former
art, that it seems to them as though Christian art were a denial of art,
and they cling desperately to the old art. But this old art, having no
longer, in our day, any source in religious perception, has lost its
meaning, and we shall have to abandon it whether we wish to or not.

The essence of the Christian perception consists in the recognition by
every man of his sonship to God, and of the consequent union of men with
God and with one another, as is said in the Gospel (John xvii. 21[85]).
Therefore the subject-matter of Christian art is such feeling as can
unite men with God and with one another.

The expression _unite men with God and with one another_ may seem
obscure to people accustomed to the misuse of these words which is so
customary, but the words have a perfectly clear meaning nevertheless.
They indicate that the Christian union of man (in contradiction to the
partial, exclusive union of only some men) is that which unites all
without exception.

Art, all art, has this characteristic, that it unites people. Every art
causes those to whom the artist’s feeling is transmitted to unite in
soul with the artist, and also with all who receive the same impression.
But non-Christian art, while uniting some people together, makes that
very union a cause of separation between these united people and others;
so that union of this kind is often a source, not only of division, but
even of enmity towards others. Such is all patriotic art, with its
anthems, poems, and monuments; such is all Church art, _i.e._ the art of
certain cults, with their images, statues, processions, and other local
ceremonies. Such art is belated and non-Christian art, uniting the
people of one cult only to separate them yet more sharply from the
members of other cults, and even to place them in relations of hostility
to each other. Christian art is only such as tends to unite all without
exception, either by evoking in them the perception that each man and
all men stand in like relation towards God and towards their neighbour,
or by evoking in them identical feelings, which may even be the very
simplest provided only that they are not repugnant to Christianity and
are natural to everyone without exception.

Good Christian art of our time may be unintelligible to people because
of imperfections in its form, or because men are inattentive to it, but
it must be such that all men can experience the feelings it transmits.
It must be the art, not of some one group of people, nor of one class,
nor of one nationality, nor of one religious cult; that is, it must not
transmit feelings which are accessible only to a man educated in a
certain way, or only to an aristocrat, or a merchant, or only to a
Russian, or a native of Japan, or a Roman Catholic, or a Buddhist, etc.,
but it must transmit feelings accessible to everyone. Only art of this
kind can be acknowledged in our time to be good art, worthy of being
chosen out from all the rest of art and encouraged.

Christian art, _i.e._ the art of our time, should be catholic in the
original meaning of the word, _i.e._ universal, and therefore it should
unite all men. And only two kinds of feeling do unite all men: first,
feelings flowing from the perception of our sonship to God and of the
brotherhood of man; and next, the simple feelings of common life,
accessible to everyone without exception—such as the feeling of
merriment, of pity, of cheerfulness, of tranquillity, etc. Only these
two kinds of feelings can now supply material for art good in its
subject-matter.

And the action of these two kinds of art, apparently so dissimilar, is
one and the same. The feelings flowing from perception of our sonship to
God and of the brotherhood of man—such as a feeling of sureness in
truth, devotion to the will of God, self-sacrifice, respect for and love
of man—evoked by Christian religious perception; and the simplest
feelings—such as a softened or a merry mood caused by a song or an
amusing jest intelligible to everyone, or by a touching story, or a
drawing, or a little doll: both alike produce one and the same
effect—the loving union of man with man. Sometimes people who are
together are, if not hostile to one another, at least estranged in mood
and feeling, till perchance a story, a performance, a picture, or even a
building, but oftenest of all music, unites them all as by an electric
flash, and, in place of their former isolation or even enmity, they are
all conscious of union and mutual love. Each is glad that another feels
what he feels; glad of the communion established, not only between him
and all present, but also with all now living who will yet share the
same impression; and more than that, he feels the mysterious gladness of
a communion which, reaching beyond the grave, unites us with all men of
the past who have been moved by the same feelings, and with all men of
the future who will yet be touched by them. And this effect is produced
both by the religious art which transmits feelings of love to God and
one’s neighbour, and by universal art transmitting the very simplest
feelings common to all men.

The art of our time should be appraised differently from former art
chiefly in this, that the art of our time, _i.e._ Christian art (basing
itself on a religious perception which demands the union of man),
excludes from the domain of art good in subject-matter everything
transmitting exclusive feelings, which do not unite but divide men. It
relegates such work to the category of art bad in its subject-matter,
while, on the other hand, it includes in the category of art good in
subject-matter a section not formerly admitted to deserve to be chosen
out and respected, namely, universal art transmitting even the most
trifling and simple feelings if only they are accessible to all men
without exception, and therefore unite them. Such art cannot, in our
time, but be esteemed good, for it attains the end which the religious
perception of our time, _i.e._ Christianity, sets before humanity.

Christian art either evokes in men those feelings which, through love of
God and of one’s neighbour, draw them to greater and ever greater union,
and make them ready for and capable of such union; or evokes in them
those feelings which show them that they are already united in the joys
and sorrows of life. And therefore the Christian art of our time can be
and is of two kinds: (1) art transmitting feelings flowing from a
religious perception of man’s position in the world in relation to God
and to his neighbour—religious art in the limited meaning of the term;
and (2) art transmitting the simplest feelings of common life, but such,
always, as are accessible to all men in the whole world—the art of
common life—the art of a people—universal art. Only these two kinds of
art can be considered good art in our time.

The first, religious art,—transmitting both positive feelings of love to
God and one’s neighbour, and negative feelings of indignation and horror
at the violation of love,—manifests itself chiefly in the form of words,
and to some extent also in painting and sculpture: the second kind
(universal art) transmitting feelings accessible to all, manifests
itself in words, in painting, in sculpture, in dances, in architecture,
and, most of all, in music.

If I were asked to give modern examples of each of these kinds of art,
then, as examples of the highest art, flowing from love of God and man
(both of the higher, positive, and of the lower, negative kind), in
literature I should name _The Robbers_ by Schiller: Victor Hugo’s _Les
Pauvres Gens_ and _Les Misérables_: the novels and stories of
Dickens—_The Tale of Two Cities_, _The Christmas Carol_, _The Chimes_,
and others: _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_: Dostoievsky’s works—especially his
_Memoirs from the House of Death_: and _Adam Bede_ by George Eliot.

In modern painting, strange to say, works of this kind, directly
transmitting the Christian feeling of love of God and of one’s
neighbour, are hardly to be found, especially among the works of the
celebrated painters. There are plenty of pictures treating of the Gospel
stories; they, however, depict historical events with great wealth of
detail, but do not, and cannot, transmit religious feeling not possessed
by their painters. There are many pictures treating of the personal
feelings of various people, but of pictures representing great deeds of
self-sacrifice and of Christian love there are very few, and what there
are are principally by artists who are not celebrated, and are, for the
most part, not pictures but merely sketches. Such, for instance, is the
drawing by Kramskoy (worth many of his finished pictures), showing a
drawing-room with a balcony, past which troops are marching in triumph
on their return from the war. On the balcony stands a wet-nurse holding
a baby and a boy. They are admiring the procession of the troops, but
the mother, covering her face with a handkerchief, has fallen back on
the sofa, sobbing. Such also is the picture by Walter Langley, to which
I have already referred, and such again is a picture by the French
artist Morion, depicting a lifeboat hastening, in a heavy storm, to the
relief of a steamer that is being wrecked. Approaching these in kind are
pictures which represent the hard-working peasant with respect and love.
Such are the pictures by Millet, and, particularly, his drawing, “The
Man with the Hoe,” also pictures in this style by Jules Breton,
L’Hermitte, Defregger, and others. As examples of pictures evoking
indignation and horror at the violation of love to God and man, Gay’s
picture, “Judgment,” may serve, and also Leizen-Mayer’s, “Signing the
Death Warrant.” But there are also very few of this kind. Anxiety about
the technique and the beauty of the picture for the most part obscures
the feeling. For instance, Gérôme’s “Pollice Verso” expresses, not so
much horror at what is being perpetrated as attraction by the beauty of
the spectacle.[86]

To give examples, from the modern art of our upper classes, of art of
the second kind, good universal art or even of the art of a whole
people, is yet more difficult, especially in literary art and music. If
there are some works which by their inner contents might be assigned to
this class (such as _Don Quixote_, Molière’s comedies, _David
Copperfield_ and _The Pickwick Papers_ by Dickens, Gogol’s and Pushkin’s
tales, and some things of Maupassant’s), these works are for the most
part—from the exceptional nature of the feelings they transmit, and the
superfluity of special details of time and locality, and, above all, on
account of the poverty of their subject-matter in comparison with
examples of universal ancient art (such, for instance, as the story of
Joseph)—comprehensible only to people of their own circle. That Joseph’s
brethren, being jealous of his father’s affection, sell him to the
merchants; that Potiphar’s wife wishes to tempt the youth; that having
attained the highest station, he takes pity on his brothers, including
Benjamin the favourite,—these and all the rest are feelings accessible
alike to a Russian peasant, a Chinese, an African, a child, or an old
man, educated or uneducated; and it is all written with such restraint,
is so free from any superfluous detail, that the story may be told to
any circle and will be equally comprehensible and touching to everyone.
But not such are the feelings of Don Quixote or of Molière’s heroes
(though Molière is perhaps the most universal, and therefore the most
excellent, artist of modern times), nor of Pickwick and his friends.
These feelings are not common to all men but very exceptional, and
therefore, to make them infectious, the authors have surrounded them
with abundant details of time and place. And this abundance of detail
makes the stories difficult of comprehension to all people not living
within reach of the conditions described by the author.

The author of the novel of Joseph did not need to describe in detail, as
would be done nowadays, the bloodstained coat of Joseph, the dwelling
and dress of Jacob, the pose and attire of Potiphar’s wife, and how,
adjusting the bracelet on her left arm, she said, “Come to me,” and so
on, because the subject-matter of feelings in this novel is so strong
that all details, except the most essential,—such as that Joseph went
out into another room to weep,—are superfluous, and would only hinder
the transmission of feelings. And therefore this novel is accessible to
all men, touches people of all nations and classes, young and old, and
has lasted to our times, and will yet last for thousands of years to
come. But strip the best novels of our times of their details, and what
will remain?

It is therefore impossible in modern literature to indicate works fully
satisfying the demands of universality. Such works as exist are, to a
great extent, spoilt by what is usually called “realism,” but would be
better termed “provincialism,” in art.

In music the same occurs as in verbal art, and for similar reasons. In
consequence of the poorness of the feeling they contain, the melodies of
the modern composers are amazingly empty and insignificant. And to
strengthen the impression produced by these empty melodies, the new
musicians pile complex modulations on to each trivial melody, not only
in their own national manner, but also in the way characteristic of
their own exclusive circle and particular musical school. Melody—every
melody—is free, and may be understood of all men; but as soon as it is
bound up with a particular harmony, it ceases to be accessible except to
people trained to such harmony, and it becomes strange, not only to
common men of another nationality, but to all who do not belong to the
circle whose members have accustomed themselves to certain forms of
harmonisation. So that music, like poetry, travels in a vicious circle.
Trivial and exclusive melodies, in order to make them attractive, are
laden with harmonic, rhythmic, and orchestral complications, and thus
become yet more exclusive, and far from being universal are not even
national, _i.e._ they are not comprehensible to the whole people but
only to some people.

In music, besides marches and dances by various composers, which satisfy
the demands of universal art, one can indicate very few works of this
class: Bach’s famous violin _aria_, Chopin’s nocturne in E flat major,
and perhaps a dozen bits (not whole pieces, but parts) selected from the
works of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, and Chopin.[87]

Although in painting the same thing is repeated as in poetry and in
music,—namely, that in order to make them more interesting, works weak
in conception are surrounded by minutely studied accessories of time and
place, which give them a temporary and local interest but make them less
universal,—still, in painting, more than in the other spheres of art,
may be found works satisfying the demands of universal Christian art;
that is to say, there are more works expressing feelings in which all
men may participate.

In the arts of painting and sculpture, all pictures and statues in
so-called genre style, depictions of animals, landscapes and caricatures
with subjects comprehensible to everyone, and also all kinds of
ornaments, are universal in subject-matter. Such productions in painting
and sculpture are very numerous (_e.g._ china dolls), but for the most
part such objects (for instance, ornaments of all kinds) are either not
considered to be art or are considered to be art of a low quality. In
reality all such objects, if only they transmit a true feeling
experienced by the artist and comprehensible to everyone (however
insignificant it may seem to us to be) are works of real, good,
Christian art.

I fear it will here be urged against me that having denied that the
conception of beauty can supply a standard for works of art, I
contradict myself by acknowledging ornaments to be works of good art.
The reproach is unjust, for the subject-matter of all kinds of
ornamentation consists not in the beauty, but in the feeling (of
admiration of, and delight in, the combination of lines and colours)
which the artist has experienced and with which he infects the
spectator. Art remains what it was and what it must be: nothing but the
infection by one man of another, or of others, with the feelings
experienced by the infector. Among those feelings is the feeling of
delight at what pleases the sight. Objects pleasing the sight may be
such as please a small or a large number of people, or such as please
all men. And ornaments for the most part are of the latter kind. A
landscape representing a very unusual view, or a genre picture of a
special subject, may not please everyone, but ornaments, from Yakutsk
ornaments to Greek ones, are intelligible to everyone and evoke a
similar feeling of admiration in all, and therefore this despised kind
of art should, in Christian society, be esteemed far above exceptional,
pretentious pictures and sculptures.

So that there are only two kinds of good Christian art: all the rest of
art not comprised in these two divisions should be acknowledged to be
bad art, deserving not to be encouraged but to be driven out, denied and
despised, as being art not uniting but dividing people. Such, in
literary art, are all novels and poems which transmit Church or
patriotic feelings, and also exclusive feelings pertaining only to the
class of the idle rich; such as aristocratic honour, satiety, spleen,
pessimism, and refined and vicious feelings flowing from sex-love—quite
incomprehensible to the great majority of mankind.

In painting we must similarly place in the class of bad art all the
Church, patriotic, and exclusive pictures; all the pictures representing
the amusements and allurements of a rich and idle life; all the
so-called symbolic pictures, in which the very meaning of the symbol is
comprehensible only to the people of a certain circle; and, above all,
pictures with voluptuous subjects—all that odious female nudity which
fills all the exhibitions and galleries. And to this class belongs
almost all the chamber and opera music of our times,—beginning
especially from Beethoven (Schumann, Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner),—by its
subject-matter devoted to the expression of feelings accessible only to
people who have developed in themselves an unhealthy, nervous irritation
evoked by this exclusive, artificial, and complex music.

“What! the _Ninth Symphony_ not a good work of art!” I hear exclaimed by
indignant voices.

And I reply: Most certainly it is not. All that I have written I have
written with the sole purpose of finding a clear and reasonable
criterion by which to judge the merits of works of art. And this
criterion, coinciding with the indications of plain and sane sense,
indubitably shows me that that symphony by Beethoven is not a good work
of art. Of course, to people educated in the adoration of certain
productions and of their authors, to people whose taste has been
perverted just by being educated in such adoration, the acknowledgment
that such a celebrated work is bad is amazing and strange. But how are
we to escape the indications of reason and of common sense?

Beethoven’s _Ninth Symphony_ is considered a great work of art. To
verify its claim to be such, I must first ask myself whether this work
transmits the highest religious feeling? I reply in the negative, for
music in itself cannot transmit those feelings; and therefore I ask
myself next, Since this work does not belong to the highest kind of
religious art, has it the other characteristic of the good art of our
time,—the quality of uniting all men in one common feeling: does it rank
as Christian universal art? And again I have no option but to reply in
the negative; for not only do I not see how the feelings transmitted by
this work could unite people not specially trained to submit themselves
to its complex hypnotism, but I am unable to imagine to myself a crowd
of normal people who could understand anything of this long, confused,
and artificial production, except short snatches which are lost in a sea
of what is incomprehensible. And therefore, whether I like it or not, I
am compelled to conclude that this work belongs to the rank of bad art.
It is curious to note in this connection, that attached to the end of
this very symphony is a poem of Schiller’s which (though somewhat
obscurely) expresses this very thought, namely, that feeling (Schiller
speaks only of the feeling of gladness) unites people and evokes love in
them. But though this poem is sung at the end of the symphony, the music
does not accord with the thought expressed in the verses; for the music
is exclusive and does not unite all men, but unites only a few, dividing
them off from the rest of mankind.

And, just in this same way, in all branches of art, many and many works
considered great by the upper classes of our society will have to be
judged. By this one sure criterion we shall have to judge the celebrated
_Divine Comedy_ and _Jerusalem Delivered_, and a great part of
Shakespeare’s and Goethe’s works, and in painting every representation
of miracles, including Raphael’s “Transfiguration,” etc.

Whatever the work may be and however it may have been extolled, we have
first to ask whether this work is one of real art or a counterfeit.
Having acknowledged, on the basis of the indication of its
infectiousness even to a small class of people, that a certain
production belongs to the realm of art, it is necessary, on the basis of
the indication of its accessibility, to decide the next question, Does
this work belong to the category of bad, exclusive art, opposed to
religious perception, or to Christian art, uniting people? And having
acknowledged an article to belong to real Christian art, we must then,
according to whether it transmits the feelings flowing from love to God
and man, or merely the simple feelings uniting all men, assign it a
place in the ranks of religious art or in those of universal art.

Only on the basis of such verification shall we find it possible to
select from the whole mass of what, in our society, claims to be art,
those works which form real, important, necessary spiritual food, and to
separate them from all the harmful and useless art, and from the
counterfeits of art which surround us. Only on the basis of such
verification shall we be able to rid ourselves of the pernicious results
of harmful art, and to avail ourselves of that beneficent action which
is the purpose of true and good art, and which is indispensable for the
spiritual life of man and of humanity.

Footnote 84:

  There is in Moscow a magnificent “Cathedral of our Saviour,” erected
  to commemorate the defeat of the French in the war of 1812.—Trans.

Footnote 85:

  “That they may be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee,
  that they also may be in us.”

Footnote 86:

  In this picture the spectators in the Roman Amphitheatre are turning
  down their thumbs to show that they wish the vanquished gladiator to
  be killed.—Trans.

Footnote 87:

  While offering as examples of art those that seem to me the best, I
  attach no special importance to my selection; for, besides being
  insufficiently informed in all branches of art, I belong to the class
  of people whose taste has, by false training, been perverted. And
  therefore my old, inured habits may cause me to err, and I may mistake
  for absolute merit the impression a work produced on me in my youth.
  My only purpose in mentioning examples of works of this or that class
  is to make my meaning clearer, and to show how, with my present views,
  I understand excellence in art in relation to its subject-matter. I
  must, moreover, mention that I consign my own artistic productions to
  the category of bad art, excepting the story _God sees the Truth_,
  which seeks a place in the first class, and _The Prisoner of the
  Caucasus_, which belongs to the second.




                              CHAPTER XVII


Art is one of two organs of human progress. By words man interchanges
thoughts, by the forms of art he interchanges feelings, and this with
all men, not only of the present time, but also of the past and the
future. It is natural to human beings to employ both these organs of
intercommunication, and therefore the perversion of either of them must
cause evil results to the society in which it occurs. And these results
will be of two kinds: first, the absence, in that society, of the work
which should be performed by the organ; and secondly, the harmful
activity of the perverted organ. And just these results have shown
themselves in our society. The organ of art has been perverted, and
therefore the upper classes of society have, to a great extent, been
deprived of the work that it should have performed. The diffusion in our
society of enormous quantities of, on the one hand, those counterfeits
of art which only serve to amuse and corrupt people, and, on the other
hand, of works of insignificant, exclusive art, mistaken for the highest
art, have perverted most men’s capacity to be infected by true works of
art, and have thus deprived them of the possibility of experiencing the
highest feelings to which mankind has attained, and which can only be
transmitted from man to man by art.

All the best that has been done in art by man remains strange to people
who lack the capacity to be infected by art, and is replaced either by
spurious counterfeits of art or by insignificant art, which they mistake
for real art. People of our time and of our society are delighted with
Baudelaires, Verlaines, Moréases, Ibsens, and Maeterlincks in poetry;
with Monets, Manets, Puvis de Chavannes, Burne-Joneses, Stucks, and
Böcklins in painting; with Wagners, Listzs, Richard Strausses, in music;
and they are no longer capable of comprehending either the highest or
the simplest art.

In the upper classes, in consequence of this loss of capacity to be
infected by works of art, people grow up, are educated, and live,
lacking the fertilising, improving influence of art, and therefore not
only do not advance towards perfection, do not become kinder, but, on
the contrary, possessing highly-developed external means of
civilisation, they yet tend to become continually more savage, more
coarse, and more cruel.

Such is the result of the absence from our society of the activity of
that essential organ—art. But the consequences of the perverted activity
of that organ are yet more harmful. And they are numerous.

The first consequence, plain for all to see, is the enormous expenditure
of the labour of working people on things which are not only useless,
but which, for the most part, are harmful; and more than that, the waste
of priceless human lives on this unnecessary and harmful business. It is
terrible to consider with what intensity, and amid what privations,
millions of people—who lack time and opportunity to attend to what they
and their families urgently require—labour for 10, 12, or 14 hours on
end, and even at night, setting the type for pseudo-artistic books which
spread vice among mankind, or working for theatres, concerts,
exhibitions, and picture galleries, which, for the most part, also serve
vice; but it is yet more terrible to reflect that lively, kindly
children, capable of all that is good, are devoted from their early
years to such tasks as these: that for 6, 8, or 10 hours a day, and for
10 or 15 years, some of them should play scales and exercises; others
should twist their limbs, walk on their toes, and lift their legs above
their heads; a third set should sing solfeggios; a fourth set, showing
themselves off in all manner of ways, should pronounce verses; a fifth
set should draw from busts or from nude models and paint studies; a
sixth set should write compositions according to the rules of certain
periods; and that in these occupations, unworthy of a human being, which
are often continued long after full maturity, they should waste their
physical and mental strength and lose all perception of the meaning of
life. It is often said that it is horrible and pitiful to see little
acrobats putting their legs over their necks, but it is not less pitiful
to see children of 10 giving concerts, and it is still worse to see
schoolboys of 10 who, as a preparation for literary work, have learnt by
heart the exceptions to the Latin grammar. These people not only grow
physically and mentally deformed, but also morally deformed, and become
incapable of doing anything really needed by man. Occupying in society
the rôle of amusers of the rich, they lose their sense of human dignity,
and develop in themselves such a passion for public applause that they
are always a prey to an inflated and unsatisfied vanity which grows in
them to diseased dimensions, and they expend their mental strength in
efforts to obtain satisfaction for this passion. And what is most tragic
of all is that these people, who for the sake of art are spoilt for
life, not only do not render service to this art, but, on the contrary,
inflict the greatest harm on it. They are taught in academies, schools,
and conservatoires how to counterfeit art, and by learning this they so
pervert themselves that they quite lose the capacity to produce works of
real art, and become purveyors of that counterfeit, or trivial, or
depraved art which floods our society. This is the first obvious
consequence of the perversion of the organ of art.

The second consequence is that the productions of amusement-art, which
are prepared in such terrific quantities by the armies of professional
artists, enable the rich people of our times to live the lives they do,
lives not only unnatural but in contradiction to the humane principles
these people themselves profess. To live as do the rich, idle people,
especially the women, far from nature and from animals, in artificial
conditions, with muscles atrophied or misdeveloped by gymnastics, and
with enfeebled vital energy would be impossible were it not for what is
called art—for this occupation and amusement which hides from them the
meaninglessness of their lives, and saves them from the dulness that
oppresses them. Take from all these people the theatres, concerts,
exhibitions, piano-playing, songs, and novels, with which they now fill
their time in full confidence that occupation with these things is a
very refined, æsthetical, and therefore good occupation; take from the
patrons of art who buy pictures, assist musicians, and are acquainted
with writers, their rôle of protectors of that important matter art, and
they will not be able to continue such a life, but will all be eaten up
by ennui and spleen, and will become conscious of the meaninglessness
and wrongness of their present mode of life. Only occupation with what,
among them, is considered art, renders it possible for them to continue
to live on, infringing all natural conditions, without perceiving the
emptiness and cruelty of their lives. And this support afforded to the
false manner of life pursued by the rich is the second consequence, and
a serious one, of the perversion of art.

The third consequence of the perversion of art is the perplexity
produced in the minds of children and of plain folk. Among people not
perverted by the false theories of our society, among workers and
children, there exists a very definite conception of what people may be
respected and praised for. In the minds of peasants and children the
ground for praise or eulogy can only be either physical strength:
Hercules, the heroes and conquerors; or moral, spiritual, strength:
Sakya Muni giving up a beautiful wife and a kingdom to save mankind,
Christ going to the cross for the truth he professed, and all the
martyrs and the saints. Both are understood by peasants and children.
They understand that physical strength must be respected, for it compels
respect; and the moral strength of goodness an unperverted man cannot
fail to respect, because all his spiritual being draws him towards it.
But these people, children and peasants, suddenly perceive that besides
those praised, respected, and rewarded for physical or moral strength,
there are others who are praised, extolled, and rewarded much more than
the heroes of strength and virtue, merely because they sing well,
compose verses, or dance. They see that singers, composers, painters,
ballet-dancers, earn millions of roubles and receive more honour than
the saints do: and peasants and children are perplexed.

When 50 years had elapsed after Pushkin’s death, and, simultaneously,
the cheap edition of his works began to circulate among the people and a
monument was erected to him in Moscow, I received more than a dozen
letters from different peasants asking why Pushkin was raised to such
dignity? And only the other day a literate[88] man from Saratoff called
on me who had evidently gone out of his mind over this very question. He
was on his way to Moscow to expose the clergy for having taken part in
raising a “monament” to Mr. Pushkin.

Indeed one need only imagine to oneself what the state of mind of such a
man of the people must be when he learns, from such rumours and
newspapers as reach him, that the clergy, the Government officials, and
all the best people in Russia are triumphantly unveiling a statue to a
great man, the benefactor, the pride of Russia—Pushkin, of whom till
then he had never heard. From all sides he reads or hears about this,
and he naturally supposes that if such honours are rendered to anyone,
then without doubt he must have done something extraordinary—either some
feat of strength or of goodness. He tries to learn who Pushkin was, and
having discovered that Pushkin was neither a hero nor a general, but was
a private person and a writer, he comes to the conclusion that Pushkin
must have been a holy man and a teacher of goodness, and he hastens to
read or to hear his life and works. But what must be his perplexity when
he learns that Pushkin was a man of more than easy morals, who was
killed in a duel, _i.e._ when attempting to murder another man, and that
all his service consisted in writing verses about love, which were often
very indecent.

That a hero, or Alexander the Great, or Genghis Khan, or Napoleon were
great, he understands, because any one of them could have crushed him
and a thousand like him; that Buddha, Socrates, and Christ were great he
also understands, for he knows and feels that he and all men should be
such as they were; but why a man should be great because he wrote verses
about the love of women he cannot make out.

A similar perplexity must trouble the brain of a Breton or Norman
peasant who hears that a monument, “_une statue_” (as to the Madonna),
is being erected to Baudelaire, and reads, or is told, what the contents
of his _Fleurs du Mal_ are; or, more amazing still, to Verlaine, when he
learns the story of that man’s wretched, vicious life, and reads his
verses. And what confusion it must cause in the brains of peasants when
they learn that some Patti or Taglioni is paid £10,000 for a season, or
that a painter gets as much for a picture, or that authors of novels
describing love-scenes have received even more than that.

And it is the same with children. I remember how I passed through this
stage of amazement and stupefaction, and only reconciled myself to this
exaltation of artists to the level of heroes and saints by lowering in
my own estimation the importance of moral excellence, and by attributing
a false, unnatural meaning to works of art. And a similar confusion must
occur in the soul of each child and each man of the people when he
learns of the strange honours and rewards that are lavished on artists.
This is the third consequence of the false relation in which our society
stands towards art.

The fourth consequence is that people of the upper classes, more and
more frequently encountering the contradictions between beauty and
goodness, put the ideal of beauty first, thus freeing themselves from
the demands of morality. These people, reversing the rôles, instead of
admitting, as is really the case, that the art they serve is an
antiquated affair, allege that morality is an antiquated affair, which
can have no importance for people situated on that high plane of
development on which they opine that they are situated.

This result of the false relation to art showed itself in our society
long ago; but recently, with its prophet Nietzsche and his adherents,
and with the decadents and certain English æsthetes who coincide with
him, it is being expressed with especial impudence. The decadents, and
æsthetes of the type at one time represented by Oscar Wilde, select as a
theme for their productions the denial of morality and the laudation of
vice.

This art has partly generated, and partly coincides with, a similar
philosophic theory. I recently received from America a book entitled
“_The Survival of the Fittest: Philosophy of Power_, 1896, by Ragnar
Redbeard, Chicago.” The substance of this book, as it is expressed in
the editor’s preface, is that to measure “right” by the false philosophy
of the Hebrew prophets and “weepful” Messiahs is madness. Right is not
the offspring of doctrine but of power. All laws, commandments, or
doctrines as to not doing to another what you do not wish done to you,
have no inherent authority whatever, but receive it only from the club,
the gallows, and the sword. A man truly free is under no obligation to
obey any injunction, human or divine. Obedience is the sign of the
degenerate. Disobedience is the stamp of the hero. Men should not be
bound by moral rules invented by their foes. The whole world is a
slippery battlefield. Ideal justice demands that the vanquished should
be exploited, emasculated, and scorned. The free and brave may seize the
world. And, therefore, there should be eternal war for life, for land,
for love, for women, for power, and for gold. (Something similar was
said a few years ago by the celebrated and refined academician, Vogüé.)
The earth and its treasures is “booty for the bold.”

The author has evidently by himself, independently of Nietzsche, come to
the same conclusions which are professed by the new artists.

Expressed in the form of a doctrine these positions startle us. In
reality they are implied in the ideal of art serving beauty. The art of
our upper classes has educated people in this ideal of the
over-man,[89]—which is, in reality, the old ideal of Nero, Stenka
Razin,[90] Genghis Khan, Robert Macaire,[91] or Napoleon, and all their
accomplices, assistants, and adulators—and it supports this ideal with
all its might.

It is this supplanting of the ideal of what is right by the ideal of
what is beautiful, _i.e._ of what is pleasant, that is the fourth
consequence, and a terrible one, of the perversion of art in our
society. It is fearful to think of what would befall humanity were such
art to spread among the masses of the people. And it already begins to
spread.

Finally, the fifth and chief result is, that the art which flourishes in
the upper classes of European society has a directly vitiating
influence, infecting people with the worst feelings and with those most
harmful to humanity—superstition, patriotism, and, above all,
sensuality.

Look carefully into the causes of the ignorance of the masses, and you
may see that the chief cause does not at all lie in the lack of schools
and libraries, as we are accustomed to suppose, but in those
superstitions, both ecclesiastical and patriotic, with which the people
are saturated, and which are unceasingly generated by all the methods of
art. Church superstitions are supported and produced by the poetry of
prayers, hymns, painting, by the sculpture of images and of statues, by
singing, by organs, by music, by architecture, and even by dramatic art
in religious ceremonies. Patriotic superstitions are supported and
produced by verses and stories, which are supplied even in schools, by
music, by songs, by triumphal processions, by royal meetings, by martial
pictures, and by monuments.

Were it not for this continual activity in all departments of art,
perpetuating the ecclesiastical and patriotic intoxication and
embitterment of the people, the masses would long ere this have attained
to true enlightenment.

But it is not only in Church matters and patriotic matters that art
depraves; it is art in our time that serves as the chief cause of the
perversion of people in the most important question of social life—in
their sexual relations. We nearly all know by our own experience, and
those who are fathers and mothers know in the case of their grown-up
children also, what fearful mental and physical suffering, what useless
waste of strength, people suffer merely as a consequence of
dissoluteness in sexual desire.

Since the world began, since the Trojan war, which sprang from that same
sexual dissoluteness, down to and including the suicides and murders of
lovers described in almost every newspaper, a great proportion of the
sufferings of the human race have come from this source.

And what is art doing? All art, real and counterfeit, with very few
exceptions, is devoted to describing, depicting, and inflaming sexual
love in every shape and form. When one remembers all those novels and
their lust-kindling descriptions of love, from the most refined to the
grossest, with which the literature of our society overflows; if one
only remembers all those pictures and statues representing women’s naked
bodies, and all sorts of abominations which are reproduced in
illustrations and advertisements; if one only remembers all the filthy
operas and operettas, songs and _romances_ with which our world teems,
involuntarily it seems as if existing art had but one definite aim—to
disseminate vice as widely as possible.

Such, though not all, are the most direct consequences of that
perversion of art which has occurred in our society. So that, what in
our society is called art not only does not conduce to the progress of
mankind, but, more than almost anything else, hinders the attainment of
goodness in our lives.

And therefore the question which involuntarily presents itself to every
man free from artistic activity and therefore not bound to existing art
by self-interest, the question asked by me at the beginning of this
work: Is it just that to what we call art, to a something belonging to
but a small section of society, should be offered up such sacrifices of
human labour, of human lives, and of goodness as are now being offered
up? receives the natural reply: No; it is unjust, and these things
should not be! So also replies sound sense and unperverted moral
feeling. Not only should these things not be, not only should no
sacrifices be offered up to what among us is called art, but, on the
contrary, the efforts of those who wish to live rightly should be
directed towards the destruction of this art, for it is one of the most
cruel of the evils that harass our section of humanity. So that, were
the question put: Would it be preferable for our Christian world to be
deprived of _all_ that is now esteemed to be art, and, together with the
false, to lose _all_ that is good in it? I think that every reasonable
and moral man would again decide the question as Plato decided it for
his _Republic_, and as all the Church Christian and Mahommedan teachers
of mankind decided it, _i.e._ would say, “Rather let there be no art at
all than continue the depraving art, or simulation of art, which now
exists.” Happily, no one has to face this question, and no one need
adopt either solution. All that man can do, and that we—the so-called
educated people, who are so placed that we have the possibility of
understanding the meaning of the phenomena of our life—can and should
do, is to understand the error we are involved in, and not harden our
hearts in it but seek for a way of escape.

Footnote 88:

  In Russian it is customary to make a distinction between literate and
  illiterate people, _i.e._ between those who can and those who cannot
  read. _Literate_ in this sense does not imply that the man would speak
  or write correctly.—Trans.

Footnote 89:

  The over-man (Uebermensch), in the Nietzschean philosophy, is that
  superior type of man whom the struggle for existence is to evolve, and
  who will seek only his own power and pleasure, will know nothing of
  pity, and will have the right, because he will possess the power, to
  make ordinary people serve him.—Trans.

Footnote 90:

  Stenka Razin was by origin a common Cossack. His brother was hung for
  a breach of military discipline, and to this event Stenka Razin’s
  hatred of the governing classes has been attributed. He formed a
  robber band, and subsequently headed a formidable rebellion, declaring
  himself in favour of freedom for the serfs, religious toleration, and
  the abolition of taxes. Like the Government he opposed, he relied on
  force, and, though he used it largely in defence of the poor against
  the rich, he still held to

                  “The good old rule, the simple plan,
                  That they should take who have the power,
                  And they should keep who can.”

  Like Robin Hood he is favourably treated in popular legends.—Trans.

Footnote 91:

  Robert Macaire is a modern type of adroit and audacious rascality. He
  was the hero of a popular play produced in Paris in 1834.—Trans.




                             CHAPTER XVIII


The cause of the lie into which the art of our society has fallen was
that people of the upper classes, having ceased to believe in the Church
teaching (called Christian), did not resolve to accept true Christian
teaching in its real and fundamental principles of sonship to God and
brotherhood to man, but continued to live on without any belief,
endeavouring to make up for the absence of belief—some by hypocrisy,
pretending still to believe in the nonsense of the Church creeds; others
by boldly asserting their disbelief; others by refined agnosticism; and
others, again, by returning to the Greek worship of beauty, proclaiming
egotism to be right, and elevating it to the rank of a religious
doctrine.

The cause of the malady was the non-acceptance of Christ’s teaching in
its real, _i.e._ its full, meaning. And the only cure for the illness
lies in acknowledging that teaching in its full meaning. And such
acknowledgment in our time is not only possible but inevitable. Already
to-day a man, standing on the height of the knowledge of our age,
whether he be nominally a Catholic or a Protestant, cannot say that he
really believes in the dogmas of the Church: in God being a Trinity, in
Christ being God, in the scheme of redemption, and so forth; nor can he
satisfy himself by proclaiming his unbelief or scepticism, nor by
relapsing into the worship of beauty and egotism. Above all, he can no
longer say that we do not know the real meaning of Christ’s teaching.
That meaning has not only become accessible to all men of our times, but
the whole life of man to-day is permeated by the spirit of that
teaching, and, consciously or unconsciously, is guided by it.

However differently in form people belonging to our Christian world may
define the destiny of man; whether they see it in human progress in
whatever sense of the words, in the union of all men in a socialistic
realm, or in the establishment of a commune; whether they look forward
to the union of mankind under the guidance of one universal Church, or
to the federation of the world,—however various in form their
definitions of the destination of human life may be, all men in our
times already admit that the highest well-being attainable by men is to
be reached by their union with one another.

However people of our upper classes (feeling that their ascendency can
only be maintained as long as they separate themselves—the rich and
learned—from the labourers, the poor, and the unlearned) may seek to
devise new conceptions of life by which their privileges may be
perpetuated,—now the ideal of returning to antiquity, now mysticism, now
Hellenism, now the cult of the superior person (overman-ism),—they have,
willingly or unwillingly, to admit the truth which is elucidating itself
from all sides, voluntarily and involuntarily, namely, that our welfare
lies only in the unification and the brotherhood of man.

Unconsciously this truth is confirmed by the construction of means of
communication,—telegraphs, telephones, the press, and the
ever-increasing attainability of material well-being for everyone,—and
consciously it is affirmed by the destruction of superstitions which
divide men, by the diffusion of the truths of knowledge, and by the
expression of the ideal of the brotherhood of man in the best works of
art of our time.

Art is a spiritual organ of human life which cannot be destroyed, and
therefore, notwithstanding all the efforts made by people of the upper
classes to conceal the religious ideal by which humanity lives, that
ideal is more and more clearly recognised by man, and even in our
perverted society is more and more often partially expressed by science
and by art. During the present century works of the higher kind of
religious art have appeared more and more frequently, both in literature
and in painting, permeated by a truly Christian spirit, as also works of
the universal art of common life, accessible to all. So that even art
knows the true ideal of our times, and tends towards it. On the one
hand, the best works of art of our times transmit religious feelings
urging towards the union and the brotherhood of man (such are the works
of Dickens, Hugo, Dostoievsky; and in painting, of Millet, Bastien
Lepage, Jules Breton, L’Hermitte, and others); on the other hand, they
strive towards the transmission, not of feelings which are natural to
people of the upper classes only, but of such feelings as may unite
everyone without exception. There are as yet few such works, but the
need of them is already acknowledged. In recent times we also meet more
and more frequently with attempts at publications, pictures, concerts,
and theatres for the people. All this is still very far from
accomplishing what should be done, but already the direction in which
good art instinctively presses forward to regain the path natural to it
can be discerned.

The religious perception of our time—which consists in acknowledging
that the aim of life (both collective and individual) is the union of
mankind—is already so sufficiently distinct that people have now only to
reject the false theory of beauty, according to which enjoyment is
considered to be the purpose of art, and religious perception will
naturally takes its place as the guide of the art of our time.

And as soon as the religious perception, which already unconsciously
directs the life of man, is consciously acknowledged, then immediately
and naturally the division of art, into art for the lower and art for
the upper classes, will disappear. There will be one common, brotherly,
universal art; and first, that art will naturally be rejected which
transmits feelings incompatible with the religious perception of our
time,—feelings which do not unite, but divide men,—and then that
insignificant, exclusive art will be rejected to which an importance is
now attached to which it has no right.

And as soon as this occurs, art will immediately cease to be, what it
has been in recent times: a means of making people coarser and more
vicious, and it will become, what it always used to be and should be, a
means by which humanity progresses towards unity and blessedness;

Strange as the comparison may sound, what has happened to the art of our
circle and time is what happens to a woman who sells her womanly
attractiveness, intended for maternity, for the pleasure of those who
desire such pleasures.

The art of our time and of our circle has become a prostitute. And this
comparison holds good even in minute details. Like her it is not limited
to certain times, like her it is always adorned, like her it is always
saleable, and like her it is enticing and ruinous.

A real work of art can only arise in the soul of an artist occasionally,
as the fruit of the life he has lived, just as a child is conceived by
its mother. But counterfeit art is produced by artisans and
handicraftsmen continually, if only consumers can be found.

Real art, like the wife of an affectionate husband, needs no ornaments.
But counterfeit art, like a prostitute, must always be decked out.

The cause of the production of real art is the artist’s inner need to
express a feeling that has accumulated, just as for a mother the cause
of sexual conception is love. The cause of counterfeit art, as of
prostitution, is gain.

The consequence of true art is the introduction of a new feeling into
the intercourse of life, as the consequence of a wife’s love is the
birth of a new man into life.

The consequences of counterfeit art are the perversion of man, pleasure
which never satisfies, and the weakening of man’s spiritual strength.

And this is what people of our day and of our circle should understand,
in order to avoid the filthy torrent of depraved and prostituted art
with which we are deluged.




                              CHAPTER XIX


People talk of the art of the future, meaning by “art of the future”
some especially refined, new art, which, as they imagine, will be
developed out of that exclusive art of one class which is now considered
the highest art. But no such new art of the future can or will be found.
Our exclusive art, that of the upper classes of Christendom, has found
its way into a blind alley. The direction in which it has been going
leads nowhere. Having once let go of that which is most essential for
art (namely, the guidance given by religious perception), that art has
become ever more and more exclusive, and therefore ever more and more
perverted, until, finally, it has come to nothing. The art of the
future, that which is really coming, will not be a development of
present-day art, but will arise on completely other and new foundations,
having nothing in common with those by which our present art of the
upper classes is guided.

Art of the future, that is to say, such part of art as will be chosen
from among all the art diffused among mankind, will consist, not in
transmitting feelings accessible only to members of the rich classes, as
is the case to-day, but in transmitting such feelings as embody the
highest religious perception of our times. Only those productions will
be considered art which transmit feelings drawing men together in
brotherly union, or such universal feelings as can unite all men. Only
such art will be chosen, tolerated, approved, and diffused. But art
transmitting feelings flowing from antiquated, worn-out religious
teaching,—Church art, patriotic art, voluptuous art, transmitting
feelings of superstitious fear, of pride, of vanity, of ecstatic
admiration of national heroes,—art exciting exclusive love of one’s own
people, or sensuality, will be considered bad, harmful art, and will be
censured and despised by public opinion. All the rest of art,
transmitting feelings accessible only to a section of people, will be
considered unimportant, and will be neither blamed nor praised. And the
appraisement of art in general will devolve, not, as is now the case, on
a separate class of rich people, but on the whole people; so that for a
work to be esteemed good, and to be approved of and diffused, it will
have to satisfy the demands, not of a few people living in identical and
often unnatural conditions, but it will have to satisfy the demands of
all those great masses of people who are situated in the natural
conditions of laborious life.

And the artists producing art will also not be, as now, merely a few
people selected from a small section of the nation, members of the upper
classes or their hangers-on, but will consist of all those gifted
members of the whole people who prove capable of, and are inclined
towards, artistic activity.

Artistic activity will then be accessible to all men. It will become
accessible to the whole people, because, in the first place, in the art
of the future, not only will that complex technique, which deforms the
productions of the art of to-day and requires so great an effort and
expenditure of time, not be demanded, but, on the contrary, the demand
will be for clearness, simplicity, and brevity—conditions mastered not
by mechanical exercises but by the education of taste. And secondly,
artistic activity will become accessible to all men of the people
because, instead of the present professional schools which only some can
enter, all will learn music and depictive art (singing and drawing)
equally with letters in the elementary schools, and in such a way that
every man, having received the first principles of drawing and music,
and feeling a capacity for, and a call to, one or other of the arts,
will be able to perfect himself in it.

People think that if there are no special art-schools the technique of
art will deteriorate. Undoubtedly, if by technique we understand those
complications of art which are now considered an excellence, it will
deteriorate; but if by technique is understood clearness, beauty,
simplicity, and compression in works of art, then, even if the elements
of drawing and music were not to be taught in the national schools, the
technique will not only not deteriorate, but, as is shown by all peasant
art, will be a hundred times better. It will be improved, because all
the artists of genius now hidden among the masses will become producers
of art and will give models of excellence, which (as has always been the
case) will be the best schools of technique for their successors. For
every true artist, even now, learns his technique, chiefly, not in the
schools but in life, from the examples of the great masters; then—when
the producers of art will be the best artists of the whole nation, and
there will be more such examples, and they will be more accessible—such
part of the school training as the future artist will lose will be a
hundredfold compensated for by the training he will receive from the
numerous examples of good art diffused in society.

Such will be one difference between present and future art. Another
difference will be that art will not be produced by professional artists
receiving payment for their work and engaged on nothing else besides
their art. The art of the future will be produced by all the members of
the community who feel the need of such activity, but they will occupy
themselves with art only when they feel such need.

In our society people think that an artist will work better, and produce
more, if he has a secured maintenance. And this opinion would serve once
more to show clearly, were such demonstration still needed, that what
among us is considered art is not art, but only its counterfeit. It is
quite true that for the production of boots or loaves division of labour
is very advantageous, and that the bootmaker or baker who need not
prepare his own dinner or fetch his own fuel will make more boots or
loaves than if he had to busy himself about these matters. But art is
not a handicraft; it is the transmission of feeling the artist has
experienced. And sound feeling can only be engendered in a man when he
is living on all its sides the life natural and proper to mankind. And
therefore security of maintenance is a condition most harmful to an
artist’s true productiveness, since it removes him from the condition
natural to all men,—that of struggle with nature for the maintenance of
both his own life and that of others,—and thus deprives him of
opportunity and possibility to experience the most important and natural
feelings of man. There is no position more injurious to an artist’s
productiveness than that position of complete security and luxury in
which artists usually live in our society.

The artist of the future will live the common life of man, earning his
subsistence by some kind of labour. The fruits of that highest spiritual
strength which passes through him he will try to share with the greatest
possible number of people, for in such transmission to others of the
feelings that have arisen in him he will find his happiness and his
reward. The artist of the future will be unable to understand how an
artist, whose chief delight is in the wide diffusion of his works, could
give them only in exchange for a certain payment.

Until the dealers are driven out, the temple of art will not be a
temple. But the art of the future will drive them out.

And therefore the subject-matter of the art of the future, as I imagine
it to myself, will be totally unlike that of to-day. It will consist,
not in the expression of exclusive feelings: pride, spleen, satiety, and
all possible forms of voluptuousness, available and interesting only to
people who, by force, have freed themselves from the labour natural to
human beings; but it will consist in the expression of feelings
experienced by a man living the life natural to all men and flowing from
the religious perception of our times, or of such feelings as are open
to all men without exception.

To people of our circle who do not know, and cannot or will not
understand the feelings which will form the subject-matter of the art of
the future, such subject-matter appears very poor in comparison with
those subtleties of exclusive art with which they are now occupied.
“What is there fresh to be said in the sphere of the Christian feeling
of love of one’s fellow-man? The feelings common to everyone are so
insignificant and monotonous,” think they. And yet, in our time, the
really fresh feelings can only be religious, Christian feelings, and
such as are open, accessible, to all. The feelings flowing from the
religious perception of our times, Christian feelings, are infinitely
new and varied, only not in the sense some people imagine,—not that they
can be evoked by the depiction of Christ and of Gospel episodes, or by
repeating in new forms the Christian truths of unity, brotherhood,
equality, and love,—but in that all the oldest, commonest, and most
hackneyed phenomena of life evoke the newest, most unexpected and
touching emotions as soon as a man regards them from the Christian point
of view.

What can be older than the relations between married couples, of parents
to children, of children to parents; the relations of men to their
fellow-countrymen and to foreigners, to an invasion, to defence, to
property, to the land, or to animals? But as soon as a man regards these
matters from the Christian point of view, endlessly varied, fresh,
complex, and strong emotions immediately arise.

And, in the same way, that realm of subject-matter for the art of the
future which relates to the simplest feelings of common life open to all
will not be narrowed but widened. In our former art only the expression
of feelings natural to people of a certain exceptional position was
considered worthy of being transmitted by art, and even then only on
condition that these feelings were transmitted in a most refined manner,
incomprehensible to the majority of men; all the immense realm of
folk-art, and children’s art—jests, proverbs, riddles, songs, dances,
children’s games, and mimicry—was not esteemed a domain worthy of art.

The artist of the future will understand that to compose a fairy-tale, a
little song which will touch, a lullaby or a riddle which will
entertain, a jest which will amuse, or to draw a sketch which will
delight dozens of generations or millions of children and adults, is
incomparably more important and more fruitful than to compose a novel or
a symphony, or paint a picture which will divert some members of the
wealthy classes for a short time, and then be for ever forgotten. The
region of this art of the simple feelings accessible to all is enormous,
and it is as yet almost untouched.

The art of the future, therefore, will not be poorer, but infinitely
richer in subject-matter. And the form of the art of the future will
also not be inferior to the present forms of art, but infinitely
superior to them. Superior, not in the sense of having a refined and
complex technique, but in the sense of the capacity briefly, simply, and
clearly to transmit, without any superfluities, the feeling which the
artist has experienced and wishes to transmit.

I remember once speaking to a famous astronomer who had given public
lectures on the spectrum analysis of the stars of the Milky Way, and
saying it would be a good thing if, with his knowledge and masterly
delivery, he would give a lecture merely on the formation and movements
of the earth, for certainly there were many people at his lecture on the
spectrum analysis of the stars of the Milky Way, especially among the
women, who did not well know why night follows day and summer follows
winter. The wise astronomer smiled as he answered, “Yes, it would be a
good thing, but it would be very difficult. To lecture on the spectrum
analysis of the Milky Way is far easier.”

And so it is in art. To write a rhymed poem dealing with the times of
Cleopatra, or paint a picture of Nero burning Rome, or compose a
symphony in the manner of Brahms or Richard Strauss, or an opera like
Wagner’s, is far easier than to tell a simple story without any
unnecessary details, yet so that it should transmit the feelings of the
narrator, or to draw a pencil-sketch which should touch or amuse the
beholder, or to compose four bars of clear and simple melody, without
any accompaniment, which should convey an impression and be remembered
by those who hear it.

“It is impossible for us, with our culture, to return to a primitive
state,” say the artists of our time. “It is impossible for us now to
write such stories as that of Joseph or the Odyssey, to produce such
statues as the Venus of Milo, or to compose such music as the
folk-songs.”

And indeed, for the artists of our society and day, it is impossible,
but not for the future artist, who will be free from all the perversion
of technical improvements hiding the absence of subject-matter, and who,
not being a professional artist and receiving no payment for his
activity, will only produce art when he feels impelled to do so by an
irresistible inner impulse.

The art of the future will thus be completely distinct, both in
subject-matter and in form, from what is now called art. The only
subject-matter of the art of the future will be either feelings drawing
men towards union, or such as already unite them; and the forms of art
will be such as will be open to everyone. And therefore, the ideal of
excellence in the future will not be the exclusiveness of feeling,
accessible only to some, but, on the contrary, its universality. And not
bulkiness, obscurity, and complexity of form, as is now esteemed, but,
on the contrary, brevity, clearness, and simplicity of expression. Only
when art has attained to that, will art neither divert nor deprave men
as it does now, calling on them to expend their best strength on it, but
be what it should be—a vehicle wherewith to transmit religious,
Christian perception from the realm of reason and intellect into that of
feeling, and really drawing people in actual life nearer to that
perfection and unity indicated to them by their religious perception.




                               CHAPTER XX
                             THE CONCLUSION


I have accomplished, to the best of my ability, this work which has
occupied me for 15 years, on a subject near to me—that of art. By saying
that this subject has occupied me for 15 years, I do not mean that I
have been writing this book 15 years, but only that I began to write on
art 15 years ago, thinking that when once I undertook the task I should
be able to accomplish it without a break. It proved, however, that my
views on the matter then were so far from clear that I could not arrange
them in a way that satisfied me. From that time I have never ceased to
think on the subject, and I have recommenced to write on it 6 or 7
times; but each time, after writing a considerable part of it, I have
found myself unable to bring the work to a satisfactory conclusion, and
have had to put it aside. Now I have finished it; and however badly I
may have performed the task, my hope is that my fundamental thought as
to the false direction the art of our society has taken and is
following, as to the reasons of this, and as to the real destination of
art, is correct, and that therefore my work will not be without avail.
But that this should come to pass, and that art should really abandon
its false path and take the new direction, it is necessary that another
equally important human spiritual activity,—science,—in intimate
dependence on which art always rests, should abandon the false path
which it too, like art, is following.

Science and art are as closely bound together as the lungs and the
heart, so that if one organ is vitiated the other cannot act rightly.

True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and
such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most
important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception to
the region of emotion. Therefore, if the path chosen by science be false
so also will be the path taken by art. Science and art are like a
certain kind of barge with kedge-anchors which used to ply on our
rivers. Science, like the boats which took the anchors up-stream and
made them secure, gives direction to the forward movement; while art,
like the windlass worked on the barge to draw it towards the anchor,
causes the actual progression. And thus a false activity of science
inevitably causes a correspondingly false activity of art.

As art in general is the transmission of every kind of feeling, but in
the limited sense of the word we only call that art which transmits
feelings acknowledged by us to be important, so also science in general
is the transmission of all possible knowledge; but in the limited sense
of the word we call science that which transmits knowledge acknowledged
by us to be important.

And the degree of importance, both of the feelings transmitted by art
and of the information transmitted by science, is decided by the
religious perception of the given time and society, _i.e._ by the common
understanding of the purpose of their lives possessed by the people of
that time or society.

That which most of all contributes to the fulfilment of that purpose
will be studied most; that which contributes less will be studied less;
that which does not contribute at all to the fulfilment of the purpose
of human life will be entirely neglected, or, if studied, such study
will not be accounted science. So it always has been, and so it should
be now; for such is the nature of human knowledge and of human life. But
the science of the upper classes of our time, which not only does not
acknowledge any religion, but considers every religion to be mere
superstition, could not and cannot make such distinctions.

Scientists of our day affirm that they study _everything_ impartially;
but as everything is too much (is in fact an infinite number of
objects), and as it is impossible to study all alike, this is only said
in the theory, while in practice not everything is studied, and study is
applied far from impartially, only that being studied which, on the one
hand, is most wanted by, and on the other hand, is pleasantest to those
people who occupy themselves with science. And what the people,
belonging to the upper classes, who are occupying themselves with
science most want is the maintenance of the system under which those
classes retain their privileges; and what is pleasantest are such things
as satisfy idle curiosity, do not demand great mental efforts, and can
be practically applied.

And therefore one side of science, including theology and philosophy
adapted to the existing order, as also history and political economy of
the same sort, are chiefly occupied in proving that the existing order
is the very one which ought to exist; that it has come into existence
and continues to exist by the operation of immutable laws not amenable
to human will, and that all efforts to change it are therefore harmful
and wrong. The other part, experimental science,—including mathematics,
astronomy, chemistry, physics, botany, and all the natural sciences,—is
exclusively occupied with things that have no direct relation to human
life: with what is curious, and with things of which practical
application advantageous to people of the upper classes can be made. And
to justify that selection of objects of study which (in conformity to
their own position) the men of science of our times have made, they have
devised a theory of science for science’s sake, quite similar to the
theory of art for art’s sake.

As by the theory of art for art’s sake it appears that occupation with
all those things that please us—is art, so, by the theory of science for
science’s sake, the study of that which interests us—is science.

So that one side of science, instead of studying how people should live
in order to fulfil their mission in life, demonstrates the righteousness
and immutability of the bad and false arrangements of life which exist
around us; while the other part, experimental science, occupies itself
with questions of simple curiosity or with technical improvements.

The first of these divisions of science is harmful, not only because it
confuses people’s perceptions and gives false decisions, but also
because it exists, and occupies the ground which should belong to true
science. It does this harm, that each man, in order to approach the
study of the most important questions of life, must first refute these
erections of lies which have during ages been piled around each of the
most essential questions of human life, and which are propped up by all
the strength of human ingenuity.

The second division—the one of which modern science is so particularly
proud, and which is considered by many people to be the only real
science—is harmful in that it diverts attention from the really
important subjects to insignificant subjects, and is also directly
harmful in that, under the evil system of society which the first
division of science justifies and supports, a great part of the
technical gains of science are turned not to the advantage but to the
injury of mankind.

Indeed it is only to those who are devoting their lives to such study
that it seems as if all the inventions which are made in the sphere of
natural science were very important and useful things. And to these
people it seems so only when they do not look around them and do not see
what is really important. They only need tear themselves away from the
psychological microscope under which they examine the objects of their
study, and look about them, in order to see how insignificant is all
that has afforded them such naïve pride, all that knowledge not only of
geometry of n-dimensions, spectrum analysis of the Milky Way, the form
of atoms, dimensions of human skulls of the Stone Age, and similar
trifles, but even our knowledge of micro-organisms, X-rays, etc., in
comparison with such knowledge as we have thrown aside and handed over
to the perversions of the professors of theology, jurisprudence,
political economy, financial science, etc. We need only look around us
to perceive that the activity proper to real science is not the study of
whatever happens to interest us, but the study of how man’s life should
be established,—the study of those questions of religion, morality, and
social life, without the solution of which all our knowledge of nature
will be harmful or insignificant.

We are highly delighted and very proud that our science renders it
possible to utilise the energy of a waterfall and make it work in
factories, or that we have pierced tunnels through mountains, and so
forth. But the pity of it is that we make the force of the waterfall
labour, not for the benefit of the workmen, but to enrich capitalists
who produce articles of luxury or weapons of man-destroying war. The
same dynamite with which we blast the mountains to pierce tunnels, we
use for wars, from which latter we not only do not intend to abstain,
but which we consider inevitable, and for which we unceasingly prepare.

If we are now able to inoculate preventatively with diphtheritic
microbes, to find a needle in a body by means of X-rays, to straighten a
hunched-back, cure syphilis, and perform wonderful operations, we should
not be proud of these acquisitions either (even were they all
established beyond dispute) if we fully understood the true purpose of
real science. If but one-tenth of the efforts now spent on objects of
pure curiosity or of merely practical application were expended on real
science organising the life of man, more than half the people now sick
would not have the illnesses from which a small minority of them now get
cured in hospitals. There would be no poor-blooded and deformed children
growing up in factories, no death-rates, as now, of 50 per cent. among
children, no deterioration of whole generations, no prostitution, no
syphilis, and no murdering of hundreds of thousands in wars, nor those
horrors of folly and of misery which our present science considers a
necessary condition of human life.

We have so perverted the conception of science that it seems strange to
men of our day to allude to sciences which should prevent the mortality
of children, prostitution, syphilis, the deterioration of whole
generations, and the wholesale murder of men. It seems to us that
science is only then real science when a man in a laboratory pours
liquids from one jar into another, or analyses the spectrum, or cuts up
frogs and porpoises, or weaves in a specialised, scientific jargon an
obscure network of conventional phrases—theological, philosophical,
historical, juridical, or politico-economical—semi-intelligible to the
man himself, and intended to demonstrate that what now is, is what
should be.

But science, true science,—such science as would really deserve the
respect which is now claimed by the followers of one (the least
important) part of science,—is not at all such as this: real science
lies in knowing what we should and what we should not believe, in
knowing how the associated life of man should and should not be
constituted; how to treat sexual relations, how to educate children, how
to use the land, how to cultivate it oneself without oppressing other
people, how to treat foreigners, how to treat animals, and much more
that is important for the life of man.

Such has true science ever been and such it should be. And such science
is springing up in our times; but, on the one hand, such true science is
denied and refuted by all those scientific people who defend the
existing order of society, and, on the other hand, it is considered
empty, unnecessary, unscientific science by those who are engrossed in
experimental science.

For instance, books and sermons appear, demonstrating the antiquatedness
and absurdity of Church dogmas, as well as the necessity of establishing
a reasonable religious perception suitable to our times, and all the
theology that is considered to be real science is only engaged in
refuting these works and in exercising human intelligence again and
again to find support and justification for superstitions long since
out-lived, and which have now become quite meaningless. Or a sermon
appears showing that land should not be an object of private possession,
and that the institution of private property in land is a chief cause of
the poverty of the masses. Apparently science, real science, should
welcome such a sermon and draw further deductions from this position.
But the science of our times does nothing of the kind: on the contrary,
political economy demonstrates the opposite position, namely, that
landed property, like every other form of property, must be more and
more concentrated in the hands of a small number of owners. Again, in
the same way, one would suppose it to be the business of real science to
demonstrate the irrationality, unprofitableness, and immorality of war
and of executions; or the inhumanity and harmfulness of prostitution; or
the absurdity, harmfulness, and immorality of using narcotics or of
eating animals; or the irrationality, harmfulness, and antiquatedness of
patriotism. And such works exist, but are all considered unscientific;
while works to prove that all these things ought to continue, and works
intended to satisfy an idle thirst for knowledge lacking any relation to
human life, are considered to be scientific.

The deviation of the science of our time from its true purpose is
strikingly illustrated by those ideals which are put forward by some
scientists, and are not denied, but admitted, by the majority of
scientific men.

These ideals are expressed not only in stupid, fashionable books,
describing the world as it will be in 1000 or 3000 years’ time, but also
by sociologists who consider themselves serious men of science. These
ideals are that food instead of being obtained from the land by
agriculture, will be prepared in laboratories by chemical means, and
that human labour will be almost entirely superseded by the utilisation
of natural forces.

Man will not, as now, eat an egg laid by a hen he has kept, or bread
grown on his field, or an apple from a tree he has reared and which has
blossomed and matured in his sight; but he will eat tasty, nutritious,
food which will be prepared in laboratories by the conjoint labour of
many people in which he will take a small part. Man will hardly need to
labour, so that all men will be able to yield to idleness as the upper,
ruling classes now yield to it.

Nothing shows more plainly than these ideals to what a degree the
science of our times has deviated from the true path.

The great majority of men in our times lack good and sufficient food (as
well as dwellings and clothes and all the first necessaries of life).
And this great majority of men is compelled, to the injury of its
well-being, to labour continually beyond its strength. Both these evils
can easily be removed by abolishing mutual strife, luxury, and the
unrighteous distribution of wealth, in a word by the abolition of a
false and harmful order and the establishment of a reasonable, human
manner of life. But science considers the existing order of things to be
as immutable as the movements of the planets, and therefore assumes that
the purpose of science is—not to elucidate the falseness of this order
and to arrange a new, reasonable way of life—but, under the existing
order of things, to feed everybody and enable all to be as idle as the
ruling classes, who live a depraved life, now are.

And, meanwhile, it is forgotten that nourishment with corn, vegetables,
and fruit raised from the soil by one’s own labour is the pleasantest,
healthiest, easiest, and most natural nourishment, and that the work of
using one’s muscles is as necessary a condition of life as is the
oxidation of the blood by breathing.

To invent means whereby people might, while continuing our false
division of property and labour, be well nourished by means of
chemically-prepared food, and might make the forces of nature work for
them, is like inventing means to pump oxygen into the lungs of a man
kept in a closed chamber the air of which is bad, when all that is
needed is to cease to confine the man in the closed chamber.

In the vegetable and animal kingdoms a laboratory for the production of
food has been arranged, such as can be surpassed by no professors, and
to enjoy the fruits of this laboratory, and to participate in it, man
has only to yield to that ever joyful impulse to labour, without which
man’s life is a torment. And lo and behold, the scientists of our times,
instead of employing all their strength to abolish whatever hinders man
from utilising the good things prepared for him, acknowledge the
conditions under which man is deprived of these blessings to be
unalterable, and instead of arranging the life of man so that he might
work joyfully and be fed from the soil, they devise methods which will
cause him to become an artificial abortion. It is like not helping a man
out of confinement into the fresh air, but devising means, instead, to
pump into him the necessary quantity of oxygen and arranging so that he
may live in a stifling cellar instead of living at home.

Such false ideals could not exist if science were not on a false path.

And yet the feelings transmitted by art grow up on the bases supplied by
science.

But what feelings can such misdirected science evoke? One side of this
science evokes antiquated feelings, which humanity has used up, and
which, in our times, are bad and exclusive. The other side, occupied
with the study of subjects unrelated to the conduct of human life, by
its very nature cannot serve as a basis for art.

So that art in our times, to be art, must either open up its own road
independently of science, or must take direction from the unrecognised
science which is denounced by the orthodox section of science. And this
is what art, when it even partially fulfils its mission, is doing.

It is to be hoped that the work I have tried to perform concerning art
will be performed also for science—that the falseness of the theory of
science for science’s sake will be demonstrated; that the necessity of
acknowledging Christian teaching in its true meaning will be clearly
shown, that on the basis of that teaching a reappraisement will be made
of the knowledge we possess, and of which we are so proud; that the
secondariness and insignificance of experimental science, and the
primacy and importance of religious, moral, and social knowledge will be
established; and that such knowledge will not, as now, be left to the
guidance of the upper classes only, but will form a chief interest of
all free, truth-loving men, such as those who, not in agreement with the
upper classes but in their despite, have always forwarded the real
science of life.

Astronomical, physical, chemical, and biological science, as also
technical and medical science, will be studied only in so far as they
can help to free mankind from religious, juridical, or social
deceptions, or can serve to promote the well-being of all men, and not
of any single class.

Only then will science cease to be what it is now—on the one hand a
system of sophistries, needed for the maintenance of the existing
worn-out order of society, and, on the other hand, a shapeless mass of
miscellaneous knowledge, for the most part good for little or
nothing—and become a shapely and organic whole, having a definite and
reasonable purpose comprehensible to all men, namely, the purpose of
bringing to the consciousness of men the truths that flow from the
religious perception of our times.

And only then will art, which is always dependent on science, be what it
might and should be, an organ coequally important with science for the
life and progress of mankind.

Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is a great matter.
Art is an organ of human life, transmitting man’s reasonable perception
into feeling. In our age the common religious perception of men is the
consciousness of the brotherhood of man—we know that the well-being of
man lies in union with his fellow-men. True science should indicate the
various methods of applying this consciousness to life. Art should
transform this perception into feeling.

The task of art is enormous. Through the influence of real art, aided by
science guided by religion, that peaceful co-operation of man which is
now obtained by external means—by our law-courts, police, charitable
institutions, factory inspection, etc.—should be obtained by man’s free
and joyous activity. Art should cause violence to be set aside.

And it is only art that can accomplish this.

All that now, independently of the fear of violence and punishment,
makes the social life of man possible (and already now this is an
enormous part of the order of our lives)—all this has been brought about
by art. If by art it has been inculcated how people should treat
religious objects, their parents, their children, their wives, their
relations, strangers, foreigners; how to conduct themselves to their
elders, their superiors, to those who suffer, to their enemies, and to
animals; and if this has been obeyed through generations by millions of
people, not only unenforced by any violence, but so that the force of
such customs can be shaken in no way but by means of art: then, by the
same art, other customs, more in accord with the religious perception of
our time, may be evoked. If art has been able to convey the sentiment of
reverence for images, for the eucharist, and for the king’s person; of
shame at betraying a comrade, devotion to a flag, the necessity of
revenge for an insult, the need to sacrifice one’s labour for the
erection and adornment of churches, the duty of defending one’s honour
or the glory of one’s native land—then that same art can also evoke
reverence for the dignity of every man and for the life of every animal;
can make men ashamed of luxury, of violence, of revenge, or of using for
their pleasure that of which others are in need; can compel people
freely, gladly, and without noticing it, to sacrifice themselves in the
service of man.

The task for art to accomplish is to make that feeling of brotherhood
and love of one’s neighbour, now attained only by the best members of
the society, the customary feeling and the instinct of all men. By
evoking, under imaginary conditions, the feeling of brotherhood and
love, religious art will train men to experience those same feelings
under similar circumstances in actual life; it will lay in the souls of
men the rails along which the actions of those whom art thus educates
will naturally pass. And universal art, by uniting the most different
people in one common feeling, by destroying separation, will educate
people to union, will show them, not by reason but by life itself, the
joy of universal union reaching beyond the bounds set by life.

The destiny of art in our time is to transmit from the realm of reason
to the realm of feeling the truth that well-being for men consists in
being united together, and to set up, in place of the existing reign of
force, that kingdom of God, _i.e._ of love, which we all recognise to be
the highest aim of human life.

Possibly, in the future, science may reveal to art yet newer and higher
ideals, which art may realise; but, in our time, the destiny of art is
clear and definite. The task for Christian art is to establish brotherly
union among men.




                               APPENDICES




                              APPENDIX I.


This is the first page of Mallarmé’s book _Divagations_:—


                          LE PHÉNOMÈNE FUTUR.


Un ciel pâle, sur le monde qui finit de décrépitude, va peut-être partir
avec les nuages: les lambeaux de la pourpre usée des couchants
déteignent dans une rivière dormant à l’horizon submergé de rayons et
d’eau. Les arbres s’ennuient, et, sous leur feuillage blanchi (de la
poussière du temps plutôt que celle des chemins) monte la maison en
toile de Montreur de choses Passées: maint réverbère attend le
crépuscule et ravive les visages d’une malheureuse foule, vaincue par la
maladie immortelle et le péché des siècles, d’hommes près de leurs
chétives complices enceintes des fruits misérables avec lesquels périra
la terre. Dans le silence inquiet de tous les yeux suppliant là-bas le
soleil qui, sous l’eau, s’enfonce avec le désespoir d’un cri, voici le
simple boniment: “Nulle enseigne ne vous régale du spectacle intérieur,
car il n’est pas maintenant un peintre capable d’en donner une ombre
triste. J’apporte, vivante (et préservée à travers les ans par la
science souveraine) une Femme d’autrefois. Quelque folie, originelle et
naïve, une extase d’or, je ne sais quoi! par elle nommé sa chevelure, se
ploie avec la grâce des étoffes autour d’un visage qu’ éclaire la nudité
sanglante de ses lèvres. A la place du vêtement vain, elle a un corps;
et les yeux, semblables aux pierres rares! ne valent pas ce regard qui
sort de sa chair heureuse: des seins levés comme s’ils étaient pleins
d’un lait éternel, la pointe vers le ciel, les jambes lisses qui gardent
le sel de la mer première.” Se rappelant leurs pauvres épouses, chauves,
morbides et pleines d’horreur, les maris se pressent: elles aussi par
curiosité, mélancoliques, veulent voir.

Quand tous auront contemplé la noble créature, vestige de quelque époque
déjà maudite, les uns indifférents, car ils n’auront pas eu la force de
comprendre, mais d’autres navrés et la paupière humide de larmes
résignées, se regarderont; tandis que les poètes de ces temps, sentant
se rallumer leur yeux éteints, s’achemineront vers leur lampe, le
cerveau ivre un instant d’une gloire confuse, hantés du Rythme et dans
l’oubli d’exister à une époque qui survit à la beauté.


                   THE FUTURE PHENOMENON—by Mallarmé


    A pale sky, above the world that is ending through decrepitude,
    going perhaps to pass away with the clouds: shreds of worn-out
    purple of the sunsets wash off their colour in a river sleeping on
    the horizon, submerged with rays and water. The trees are weary and,
    beneath their foliage, whitened (by the dust of time rather than
    that of the roads), rises the canvas house of “Showman of things
    Past.” Many a lamp awaits the gloaming and brightens the faces of a
    miserable crowd vanquished by the immortal illness and the sin of
    ages, of men by the sides of their puny accomplices pregnant with
    the miserable fruit with which the world will perish. In the anxious
    silence of all the eyes supplicating the sun there, which sinks
    under the water with the desperation of a cry, this is the plain
    announcement: “No sign-board now regales you with the spectacle that
    is inside, for there is no painter now capable of giving even a sad
    shadow of it. I bring living (and preserved by sovereign science
    through the years) a Woman of other days. Some kind of folly, naïve
    and original, an ecstasy of gold, I know not what, by her called her
    hair, clings with the grace of some material round a face brightened
    by the blood-red nudity of her lips. In place of vain clothing, she
    has a body; and her eyes, resembling precious stones! are not worth
    that look, which comes from her happy flesh: breasts raised as if
    full of eternal milk, the points towards the sky; the smooth legs,
    that keep the salt of the first sea.” Remembering their poor
    spouses, bald, morbid, and full of horrors, the husbands press
    forward: the women too, from curiosity, gloomily wish to see.

    When all shall have contemplated the noble creature, vestige of some
    epoch already damned, some indifferently, for they will not have had
    strength to understand, but others broken-hearted and with eyelids
    wet with tears of resignation, will look at each other; while the
    poets of those times, feeling their dim eyes rekindled, will make
    their way towards their lamp, their brain for an instant drunk with
    confused glory, haunted by Rhythm and forgetful that they exist at
    an epoch which has survived beauty.




                            APPENDIX II.[92]


                                 No. 1.


The following verses are by Vielé-Griffin, from page 28 of a volume of
his Poems:—


                     OISEAU BLEU COULEUR DU TEMPS.


                           1.

                           Sait-tu l’oubli
                           D’un vain doux rêve,
                           Oiseau moqueur
                           De la forêt?
                           Le jour pâlit,
                           La nuit se lève,
                           Et dans mon cœur
                           L’ombre a pleuré;


                           2.

                           O chante-moi
                           Ta folle gamme,
                           Car j’ai dormi
                           Ce jour durant;
                           Le lâche emoi
                           Où fut mon âme
                           Sanglote ennui
                           Le jour mourant...


                           3.

                           Sais-tu le chant
                           De sa parole
                           Et de sa voix,
                           Toi qui redis
                           Dans le couchant
                           Ton air frivole
                           Comme autrefois
                           Sous les midis?


                           4.

                           O chante alors
                           La mélodie
                           De son amour,
                           Mon fol espoir,
                           Parmi les ors
                           Et l’incendie
                           Du vain doux jour
                           Qui meurt ce soir.

                           FRANCIS VIELÉ-GRIFFIN.


                               BLUE BIRD.


                          1.

                          Canst thou forget,
                          In dreams so vain,
                          Oh, mocking bird
                          Of forest deep?
                          The day doth set,
                          Night comes again,
                          My heart has heard
                          The shadows weep;


                          2.

                          Thy tones let flow
                          In maddening scale,
                          For I have slept
                          The livelong day;
                          Emotions low
                          In me now wail,
                          My soul they’ve kept:
                          Light dies away ...


                          3.

                          That music sweet,
                          Ah, do you know
                          Her voice and speech?
                          Your airs so light
                          You who repeat
                          In sunset’s glow,
                          As you sang, each,
                          At noonday’s height.


                          4.

                          Of my desire,
                          My hope so bold,
                          Her love—up, sing,
                          Sing ’neath this light,
                          This flaming fire,
                          And all the gold
                          The eve doth bring
                          Ere comes the night.


                                 No. 2.


And here are some verses by the esteemed young poet Verhaeren, which I
also take from page 28 of his Works:—


                              ATTIRANCES.


           Lointainement, et si étrangement pareils,
           De grands masques d’argent que la brume recule,
           Vaguent, au jour tombant, autour des vieux soleils.

           Les doux lointaines!—et comme, au fond du crépuscule,
           Ils nous fixent le cœur, immensément le cœur,
           Avec les yeux _défunts de leur_ visage d’âme.

           C’est toujours du silence, à moins, dans la pâleur
           Du soir, un jet de feu soudain, un cri de flamme,
           Un départ de lumière inattendu vers Dieu.

           On se laisse charmer et troubler de mystère,
           Et l’on dirait des morts qui taisent un adieu
           Trop mystique, pour être écouté par la terre!

           Sont-ils le souvenir matériel et clair
           Des éphèbes chrétiens couchés aux catacombes
           Parmi les lys? Sont-ils leur regard et leur chair?

           Ou seul, ce qui survit de merveilleux aux tombes
           De ceux qui sont partis, vers leurs rêves, un soir,
           Conquérir la folie à l’assaut des nuées?

           Lointainement, combien nous les sentons vouloir
           Un peu d’amour pour leurs œuvres destituées,
           Pour leur errance et leur tristesse aux horizons.

           Toujours! aux horizons du cœur et des pensées,
           Alors que les vieux soirs éclatent en blasons
           Soudains, pour les gloires noires et angoissées.

           ÉMILE VERHAEREN,
           _Poèmes_.


                              ATTRACTIONS.


           Large masks of silver, by mists drawn away,
           So strangely alike, yet so far apart,
           Float round the old suns when faileth the day.

           They transfix our heart, so immensely our heart,
           Those distances mild, in the twilight deep,
           Looking out of dead faces with their spirit eyes.

           All around is now silence, except when there leap
           In the pallor of evening, with fiery cries,
           Some fountains of flame that God-ward do fly.

           Mysterious trouble and charms us enfold.
           You might think that the dead spoke a silent good-bye,
           Oh! too mystical far on earth to be told!

           Are they the memories, material and bright,
           Of the Christian youths that in catacombs sleep
           ’Mid the lilies? Are they their flesh or their sight?

           Or the marvel alone that survives, in the deep,
           Of those that, one night, returned to their dream
           Of conquering folly by assaulting the skies?

           For their destitute works—we feel it seems,
           For a little love their longing cries
           From horizons far—for their errings and pain.

           In horizons ever of heart and thought,
           While the evenings old in bright blaze wane
           Suddenly, for black glories anguish fraught.


                                 No. 3.


And the following is a poem by Moréas, evidently an admirer of Greek
beauty. It is from page 28 of a volume of his Poems:—


                         ENONE AU CLAIR VISAGE.


            Enone, j’avais cru qu’en aimant ta beauté
            Où l’âme avec le corps trouvent leur unité,
            J’allais, m’affermissant et le cœur et l’esprit,
            Monter jusqu’à cela qui jamais ne périt,
            N’ayant été crée, qui n’est froideur ou feu,
            Qui n’est beau quelque part et laid en autre lieu;
            Et me flattais encor’ d’une belle harmonie
            Que j’eusse composé du meilleur et du pire,
            Ainsi que le chanteur qui chérit Polimnie,
            En accordant le grave avec l’aigu, retire
            Un son bien élevé sur les nerfs de sa lyre.
            Mais mon courage, hélas! se pâmant comme mort,
            M’enseigna que le trait qui m’avait fait amant
            Ne fut pas de cet arc que courbe sans effort
            La Vénus qui naquit du mâle seulement,
            Mais que j’avais souffert cette Vénus dernière,
            Qui a le cœur couard, né d’une faible mère.
            Et pourtant, ce mauvais garçon, chasseur habile,
            Qui charge son carquois de sagette subtile,
            Qui secoue en riant sa torche, pour un jour,
            Qui ne pose jamais que sur de tendres fleurs,
            C’est sur un teint charmant qu’il essuie les pleurs,
            Et c’est encore un Dieu, Enone, cet Amour.
            Mais, laisse, les oiseaux du printemps sont partis,
            Et je vois les rayons du soleil amortis.
            Enone, ma douleur, harmonieux visage,
            Superbe humilité, doux honnête langage,
            Hier me remirant dans cet étang glacé
            Qui au bout du jardin se couvre de feuillage,
            Sur ma face je vis que les jours ont passé.

            JEAN MORÉAS.


                                 ENONE.


         Enone, in loving thy beauty, I thought,
         Where the soul and the body to union are brought,
         That mounting by steadying my heart and my mind,
         In that which can’t perish, myself I should find.
         For it ne’er was created, is not ugly and fair;
         Is not coldness in one part, while on fire it is there.
         Yes, I flattered myself that a harmony fine
         I’d succeed to compose of the worst and the best,
         Like the bard who adores Polyhymnia divine,
         And mingling sounds different from the nerves of his lyre,
         From the grave and the smart draws melodies higher.
         But, alas! my courage, so faint and nigh spent,
         The dart that has struck me proves without fail
         Not to be from that bow which is easily bent
         By the Venus that’s born alone of the male.
         No, ’twas that other Venus that caused me to smart,
         Born of frail mother with cowardly heart.
         And yet that naughty lad, that little hunter bold,
         Who laughs and shakes his flowery torch just for a day,
         Who never rests but upon tender flowers and gay,
         On sweetest skin who dries the tears his eyes that fill,
         Yet oh, Enone mine, a God’s that Cupid still.
         Let it pass; for the birds of the Spring are away,
         And dying I see the sun’s lingering ray.
         Enone, my sorrow, oh, harmonious face,
         Humility grand, words of virtue and grace,
         I looked yestere’en in the pond frozen fast,
         Strewn with leaves at the end of the garden’s fair space,
         And I read in my face that those days are now past.


                                 No. 4.


And this is also from page 28 of a thick book, full of similar Poems, by
M. Montesquiou.


                           BERCEUSE D’OMBRE.


                  Des formes, des formes, des formes
                  Blanche, bleue, et rose, et d’or
                  Descendront du haut des ormes
                  Sur l’enfant qui se rendort.
                            Des formes!

                  Des plumes, des plumes, des plumes
                  Pour composer un doux nid.
                  Midi sonne: les enclumes
                  Cessent; la rumeur finit ...
                            Des plumes!

                  Des roses, des roses, des roses
                  Pour embaumer son sommeil,
                  Vos pétales sont moroses
                  Près du sourire vermeil.
                            O roses!

                  Des ailes, des ailes, des ailes
                  Pour bourdonner à son front.
                  Abeilles et demoiselles,
                  Des rythmes qui berceront.
                            Des ailes!

                  Des branches, des branches, des branches
                  Pour tresser un pavillon,
                  Par où des clartés moins franches
                  Descendront sur l’oisillon.
                            Des branches!

                  Des songes, des songes, des songes
                  Dans ses pensers entr’ ouverts
                  Glissez un peu de mensonges
                  A voir le vie au travers
                            Des songes!

                  Des fées, des fées, des fées,
                  Pour filer leurs écheveaux
                  Des mirages, de bouffées
                  Dans tous ces petits cerveaux.
                            Des fées.

                  Des anges, des anges, des anges
                  Pour emporter dans l’éther
                  Les petits enfants étranges
                  Qui ne veulent pas rester ...
                            Nos anges!

                  COMTE ROBERT DE MONTESQUIOU-FEZENSAC,
                  _Les Hortensias Bleus_.


                          THE SHADOW LULLABY.


                    Oh forms, oh forms, oh forms
                    White, blue, and gold, and red
                    Descending from the elm trees,
                    On sleeping baby’s head.
                              Oh forms!

                    Oh feathers, feathers, feathers
                    To make a cosy nest.
                    Twelve striking: stops the clamour;
                    The anvils are at rest ...
                              Oh feathers!

                    Oh roses, roses, roses
                    To scent his sleep awhile,
                    Pale are your fragrant petals
                    Beside his ruby smile.
                              Oh roses!

                    Oh wings, oh wings, oh wings
                    Of bees and dragon-flies,
                    To hum around his forehead,
                    And lull him with your sighs.
                              Oh wings!

                    Branches, branches, branches
                    A shady bower to twine,
                    Through which, oh daylight, family
                    Descend on birdie mine.
                              Branches!

                    Oh dreams, oh dreams, oh dreams
                    Into his opening mind,
                    Let in a little falsehood
                    With sights of life behind.
                              Dreams!

                    Oh fairies, fairies, fairies,
                    To twine and twist their threads
                    With puffs of phantom visions
                    Into these little heads.
                              Fairies!

                    Angels, angels, angels
                    To the ether far away,
                    Those children strange to carry
                    That here don’t wish to stay ...
                              Our angels!

Footnote 92:

  The translations in Appendices I., II., and IV., are by Louise Maude.
  The aim of these renderings has been to keep as close to the originals
  as the obscurity of meaning allowed. The sense (or absence of sense)
  has therefore been more considered than the form of the verses.




                             APPENDIX III.


These are the contents of _The Nibelung’s Ring_:—

The first part tells that the nymphs, the daughters of the Rhine, for
some reason guard gold in the Rhine, and sing: Weia, Waga, Woge du
Welle, Walle zur Wiege, Wagalaweia, Wallala, Weiala, Weia, and so forth.

These singing nymphs are pursued by a gnome (a nibelung) who desires to
seize them. The gnome cannot catch any of them. Then the nymphs guarding
the gold tell the gnome just what they ought to keep secret, namely,
that whoever renounces love will be able to steal the gold they are
guarding. And the gnome renounces love, and steals the gold. This ends
the first scene.

In the second scene a god and a goddess lie in a field in sight of a
castle which giants have built for them. Presently they wake up and are
pleased with the castle, and they relate that in payment for this work
they must give the goddess Freia to the giants. The giants come for
their pay. But the god Wotan objects to parting with Freia. The giants
get angry. The gods hear that the gnome has stolen the gold, promise to
confiscate it and to pay the giants with it. But the giants won’t trust
them, and seize the goddess Freia in pledge.

The third scene takes place under ground. The gnome Alberich, who stole
the gold, for some reason beats a gnome, Mime, and takes from him a
helmet which has the power both of making people invisible and of
turning them into other animals. The gods, Wotan and others, appear and
quarrel with one another and with the gnomes, and wish to take the gold,
but Alberich won’t give it up, and (like everybody all through the
piece) behaves in a way to ensure his own ruin. He puts on the helmet,
and becomes first a dragon and then a toad. The gods catch the toad,
take the helmet off it, and carry Alberich away with them.

Scene IV. The gods bring Alberich to their home, and order him to
command his gnomes to bring them all the gold. The gnomes bring it.
Alberich gives up the gold, but keeps a magic ring. The gods take the
ring. So Alberich curses the ring, and says it is to bring misfortune on
anyone who has it. The giants appear; they bring the goddess Freia, and
demand her ransom. They stick up staves of Freia’s height, and gold is
poured in between these staves: this is to be the ransom. There is not
enough gold, so the helmet is thrown in, and they also demand the ring.
Wotan refuses to give it up, but the goddess Erda appears and commands
him to do so, because it brings misfortune. Wotan gives it up. Freia is
released. The giants, having received the ring, fight, and one of them
kills the other. This ends the Prelude, and we come to the First Day.

The scene shows a house in a tree. Siegmund runs in tired, and lies
down. Sieglinda, the mistress of the house (and wife of Hunding), gives
him a drugged draught, and they fall in love with each other.
Sieglinda’s husband comes home, learns that Siegmund belongs to a
hostile race, and wishes to fight him next day; but Sieglinda drugs her
husband, and comes to Siegmund. Siegmund discovers that Sieglinda is his
sister, and that his father drove a sword into the tree so that no one
can get it out. Siegmund pulls the sword out, and commits incest with
his sister.

Act II. Siegmund is to fight with Hunding. The gods discuss the question
to whom they shall award the victory. Wotan, approving of Siegmund’s
incest with his sister, wishes to spare him, but, under pressure from
his wife, Fricka, he orders the Valkyrie Brünnhilda to kill Siegmund.
Siegmund goes to fight; Sieglinda faints. Brünnhilda appears and wishes
to slay Siegmund. Siegmund wishes to kill Sieglinda also, but Brünnhilda
does not allow it; so he fights with Hunding. Brünnhilda defends
Siegmund, but Wotan defends Hunding. Siegmund’s sword breaks, and he is
killed. Sieglinda runs away.

Act III. The Valkyries (divine Amazons) are on the stage. The Valkyrie
Brünnhilda arrives on horseback, bringing Siegmund’s body. She is flying
from Wotan, who is chasing her for her disobedience. Wotan catches her,
and as a punishment dismisses her from her post as a Valkyrie. He casts
a spell on her, so that she has to go to sleep and to continue asleep
until a man wakes her. When someone wakes her she will fall in love with
him. Wotan kisses her; she falls asleep. He lets off fire, which
surrounds her.

We now come to the Second Day. The gnome Mime forges a sword in a wood.
Siegfried appears. He is a son born from the incest of brother with
sister (Siegmund with Sieglinda), and has been brought up in this wood
by the gnome. In general the motives of the actions of everybody in this
production are quite unintelligible. Siegfried learns his own origin,
and that the broken sword was his father’s. He orders Mime to reforge
it, and then goes off. Wotan comes in the guise of a wanderer, and
relates what will happen: that he who has not learnt to fear will forge
the sword, and will defeat everybody. The gnome conjectures that this is
Siegfried, and wants to poison him. Siegfried returns, forges his
father’s sword, and runs off, shouting, Heiho! heiho! heiho! Ho! ho!
Aha! oho! aha! Heiaho! heiaho! heiaho! Ho! ho! Hahei! hoho! hahei!

And we get to Act II. Alberich sits guarding a giant, who, in form of a
dragon, guards the gold he has received. Wotan appears, and for some
unknown reason foretells that Siegfried will come and kill the dragon.
Alberich wakes the dragon, and asks him for the ring, promising to
defend him from Siegfried. The dragon won’t give up the ring. Exit
Alberich. Mime and Siegfried appear. Mime hopes the dragon will teach
Siegfried to fear. But Siegfried does not fear. He drives Mime away and
kills the dragon, after which he puts his finger, smeared with the
dragon’s blood, to his lips. This enables him to know men’s secret
thoughts, as well as the language of birds. The birds tell him where the
treasure and the ring are, and also that Mime wishes to poison him. Mime
returns, and says out loud that he wishes to poison Siegfried. This is
meant to signify that Siegfried, having tasted dragon’s blood,
understands people’s secret thoughts. Siegfried, having learnt Mime’s
intentions, kills him. The birds tell Siegfried where Brünnhilda is, and
he goes to find her.

Act III. Wotan calls up Erda. Erda prophesies to Wotan, and gives him
advice. Siegfried appears, quarrels with Wotan, and they fight. Suddenly
Siegfried’s sword breaks Wotan’s spear, which had been more powerful
than anything else. Siegfried goes into the fire to Brünnhilda; kisses
her; she wakes up, abandons her divinity, and throws herself into
Siegfried’s arms.

Third Day. Prelude. Three Norns plait a golden rope, and talk about the
future. They go away. Siegfried and Brünnhilda appear. Siegfried takes
leave of her, gives her the ring, and goes away.

Act I. By the Rhine. A king wants to get married, and also to give his
sister in marriage. Hagen, the king’s wicked brother, advises him to
marry Brünnhilda, and to give his sister to Siegfried. Siegfried
appears; they give him a drugged draught, which makes him forget all the
past and fall in love with the king’s sister, Gutrune. So he rides off
with Gunther, the king, to get Brünnhilda to be the king’s bride. The
scene changes. Brünnhilda sits with the ring. A Valkyrie comes to her
and tells her that Wotan’s spear is broken, and advises her to give the
ring to the Rhine nymphs. Siegfried comes, and by means of the magic
helmet turns himself into Gunther, demands the ring from Brünnhilda,
seizes it, and drags her off to sleep with him.

Act II. By the Rhine. Alberich and Hagen discuss how to get the ring.
Siegfried comes, tells how he has obtained a bride for Gunther and spent
the night with her, but put a sword between himself and her. Brünnhilda
rides up, recognises the ring on Siegfried’s hand, and declares that it
was he, and not Gunther, who was with her. Hagen stirs everybody up
against Siegfried, and decides to kill him next day when hunting.

Act III. Again the nymphs in the Rhine relate what has happened.
Siegfried, who has lost his way, appears. The nymphs ask him for the
ring, but he won’t give it up. Hunters appear. Siegfried tells the story
of his life. Hagen then gives him a draught, which causes his memory to
return to him. Siegfried relates how he aroused and obtained Brünnhilda,
and everyone is astonished. Hagen stabs him in the back, and the scene
is changed. Gutrune meets the corpse of Siegfried. Gunther and Hagen
quarrel about the ring, and Hagen kills Gunther. Brünnhilda cries. Hagen
wishes to take the ring from Siegfried’s hand, but the hand of the
corpse raises itself threateningly. Brünnhilda takes the ring from
Siegfried’s hand, and when Siegfried’s corpse is carried to the pyre she
gets on to a horse and leaps into the fire. The Rhine rises, and the
waves reach the pyre. In the river are three nymphs. Hagen throws
himself into the fire to get the ring, but the nymphs seize him and
carry him off. One of them holds the ring; and that is the end of the
matter.

The impression obtainable from my recapitulation is, of course,
incomplete. But however incomplete it may be, it is certainly infinitely
more favourable than the impression which results from reading the four
booklets in which the work is printed.




                              APPENDIX IV.
      Translations of French poems and prose quoted in Chapter X.


                    BAUDELAIRE’S “FLOWERS OF EVIL.”
                               No. XXIV.


           I adore thee as much as the vaults of night,
           O vase full of grief, taciturnity great,
           And I love thee the more because of thy flight.
           It seemeth, my night’s beautifier, that you
           Still heap up those leagues—yes! ironically heap!—
           That divide from my arms the immensity blue.

           I advance to attack, I climb to assault,
           Like a choir of young worms at a corpse in the vault;
           Thy coldness, oh cruel, implacable beast!
           Yet heightens thy beauty, on which my eyes feast!


                    BAUDELAIRE’S “FLOWERS OF EVIL.”
                               No. XXXVI.


                                DUELLUM.


         Two warriors come running, to fight they begin,
         With gleaming and blood they bespatter the air;
       These games, and this clatter of arms, is the din
         Of youth that’s a prey to the surgings of love.

         The rapiers are broken! and so is our youth,
         But the dagger’s avenged, dear! and so is the sword,
         By the nail that is steeled and the hardened tooth.
       Oh, the fury of hearts aged and ulcered by love!

         In the ditch, where the ounce and the pard have their lair,
         Our heroes have rolled in an angry embrace;
         Their skin blooms on brambles that erewhile were bare.
       That ravine is a friend-inhabited hell!
         Then let us roll in, oh woman inhuman,
         To immortalise hatred that nothing can quell!


         FROM BAUDELAIRE’S PROSE WORK ENTITLED “LITTLE POEMS.”


                             THE STRANGER.


Whom dost thou love best? say, enigmatical man—thy father, thy mother,
thy brother, or thy sister?

“I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother.”

Thy friends?

“You there use an expression the meaning of which till now remains
unknown to me.”

Thy country?

“I ignore in what latitude it is situated.”

Beauty?

“I would gladly love her, goddess and immortal.”

Gold?

“I hate it as you hate God.”

Then what do you love, extraordinary stranger?

“I love the clouds ... the clouds that pass ... there ... the marvellous
clouds!”


                        BAUDELAIRE’S PROSE POEM,
                        THE SOUP AND THE CLOUDS.


My beloved little silly was giving me my dinner, and I was
contemplating, through the open window of the dining-room, those moving
architectures which God makes out of vapours, the marvellous
constructions of the impalpable. And I said to myself, amid my
contemplations, “All these phantasmagoria are almost as beautiful as the
eyes of my beautiful beloved, the monstrous little silly with the green
eyes.”

Suddenly I felt the violent blow of a fist on my back, and I heard a
harsh, charming voice, an hysterical voice, as it were hoarse with
brandy, the voice of my dear little well-beloved, saying, “Are you going
to eat your soup soon, you d—— b—— of a dealer in clouds?”


                        BAUDELAIRE’S PROSE POEM,
                         THE GALLANT MARKSMAN.


As the carriage was passing through the forest, he ordered it to be
stopped near a shooting-gallery, saying that he wished to shoot off a
few bullets to _kill_ Time. To kill this monster, is it not the most
ordinary and the most legitimate occupation of everyone? And he
gallantly offered his arm to his dear, delicious, and execrable
wife—that mysterious woman to whom he owed so much pleasure, so much
pain, and perhaps also a large part of his genius.

Several bullets struck far from the intended mark—one even penetrated
the ceiling; and as the charming creature laughed madly, mocking her
husband’s awkwardness, he turned abruptly towards her and said, “Look at
that doll there on the right with the haughty mien and her nose in the
air; well, dear angel, _I imagine to myself that it is you_!” And he
closed his eyes and pulled the trigger. The doll was neatly decapitated.

Then, bowing towards his dear one, his delightful, execrable wife, his
inevitable, pitiless muse, and kissing her hand respectfully, he added,
“Ah! my dear angel, how I thank you for my skill!”


                      VERLAINE’S “FORGOTTEN AIRS.”
                                 No. I.


                     “The wind in the plain
                     Suspends its breath.”—FAVART.

                     ’Tis ecstasy languishing,
                     Amorous fatigue,
                     Of woods all the shudderings
                     Embraced by the breeze,
                     ’Tis the choir of small voices
                     Towards the grey trees.

                     Oh the frail and fresh murmuring!
                     The twitter and buzz,
                     The soft cry resembling
                     That’s expired by the grass ...
                     Oh, the roll of the pebbles
                     ’Neath waters that pass!

                     Oh, this soul that is groaning
                     In sleepy complaint!
                     In us is it moaning?
                     In me and in you?
                     Low anthem exhaling
                     While soft falls the dew.


                      VERLAINE’S “FORGOTTEN AIRS.”
                               No. VIII.


                         In the unending
                         Dulness of this land,
                         Uncertain the snow
                         Is gleaming like sand.

                         No kind of brightness
                         In copper-hued sky,
                         The moon you might see
                         Now live and now die.

                         Grey float the oak trees—
                         Cloudlike they seem—
                         Of neighbouring forests,
                         The mists in between.

                         Wolves hungry and lean,
                         And famishing crow,
                         What happens to you
                         When acid winds blow?

                         In the unending
                         Dulness of this land,
                         Uncertain the snow
                         Is gleaming like sand.


                          SONG BY MAETERLINCK.


                      When he went away,
                      (Then I heard the door)
                      When he went away,
                      On her lips a smile there lay ...

                      Back he came to her,
                      (Then I heard the lamp)
                      Back he came to her,
                      Someone else was there ...

                      It was death I met,
                      (And I heard her soul)
                      It was death I met,
                      For her he’s waiting yet ...

                      Someone came to say,
                      (Child, I am afraid)
                      Someone came to say
                      That he would go away ...

                      With my lamp alight,
                      (Child, I am afraid)
                      With my lamp alight,
                      Approached I in affright ...

                      To one door I came,
                      (Child, I am afraid)
                      To one door I came,
                      A shudder shook the flame ...

                      At the second door,
                      (Child, I am afraid)
                      At the second door
                      Forth words the flame did pour ...

                      To the third I came,
                      (Child, I am afraid)
                      To the third I came,
                      Then died the little flame ...

                      Should he one day return
                      Then what shall we say?
                    Waiting, tell him, one
                      And dying for him lay ...

                      If he asks for you,
                      Say what answer then?
                    Give him my gold ring
                      And answer not a thing ...

                      Should he question me
                      Concerning the last hour?
                    Say I smiled for fear
                      That he should shed a tear ...

                      Should he question more
                      Without knowing me?
                    Like a sister speak;
                      Suffering he may be ...

                      Should he question why
                      Empty is the hall?
                    Show the gaping door,
                      The lamp alight no more ...


PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED, EDINBURGH




 ● Transcriber’s Notes:
    ○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
      Text that was in bold face is enclosed by equals signs (=bold=).
    ○ Footnotes have been moved to follow the chapters in which they are
      referenced.



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