I.
Pick up any newspaper of our time, and in every one of them you will find a section on theatre and music; in almost every issue you will find a description of some exhibition or other, or of some particular painting, and in every one you will find reports on newly appearing books of an artistic nature - poetry, stories, novels.
Immediately after the event, a detailed description is published of how this or that actress or actor played this or that role in such and such a drama, comedy or opera, and what merits they displayed, and what the contents of the new drama, comedy or opera were, and its merits or shortcomings. With the same detail and care they describe how such-and-such an artist sang such-and-such a piece, or performed it on the piano or the violin, and what the shortcomings or merits of the piece and of the performance were. In every large town there will always be, if not several, then certainly one exhibition of new paintings, whose merits and shortcomings are analysed with the greatest profundity by critics and connoisseurs. Almost every day new novels and poems appear, separately or in magazines, and the newspapers consider it their duty to give their readers detailed reports on these works of art.
To support art in Russia, where only a hundredth part of what would be needed to provide all the people with the opportunity of learning is spent on popular education, the government gives millions in subsidies to academies, conservatories and theatres. In France eight millions are allotted to art, and the same in Germany and England. In every large town huge buildings are constructed for museums, academies, conservatories, dramatic schools, and for performances and concerts. Hundreds of thousands of workers -- carpenters, masons, painters, joiners, paper-hangers, tailors, hairdressers, jewellers, bronze founders, typesetters -- spend their whole lives in hard labour to satisfy the demands of art, so that there is another human activity, except the military, that consumes as much effort as this.
But it is not only that such enormous labour is expended on this activity -- human lives are also expended on it directly, as in war: From an early age, hundreds of thousands of people devote their entire lives to learning how to twirl their legs very quickly (dancers); others (musicians) to learning how to finger keys or strings very quickly; still others (artists) to acquiring skill with paint and to depicting all they see; a fourth group to acquiring skill in twisting every phrase in all possible ways and finding a rhyme for every word. And these people, often very kind, intelligent, capable of every sort of useful labour, grow wild in these exceptional, stupefying occupations and become dull to all serious phenomena of life, one-sided and self-complacent specialists, knowing only how to twirl their legs, tongues or fingers. . .
Criticism, in which lovers of art used to find support for their judgements of art, has lately become so contradictory that, if we should exclude from the realm of art all that the critics of various schools deny the right of belonging to art, almost no art would be left.
Like theologians of various trends, so artists of various trends exclude and destroy each other. Listen to the artists of the present-day schools and you will see in all branches of art one set of artists denying the others: in poetry, the old romantics deny the Parnassians and decadents; the Parnassians deny the romantics and the decadents; the decadents deny all their predecessors and the symbolists; the symbolists deny all their predecessors and les mages,' while les mages simply deny all their predecessors; in the novel, naturalists, psychologists and naturists deny each other. And it is the same in drama, painting and music. So that art, which consumes enormous amounts of human labour and of human lives, and breaks down love among people, not only is not anything clearly and firmly defined, but is understood in such contradictory ways by its lovers, that it is difficult to say what generally is understood as art, and particularly as good, useful art, in the name of which such sacrifices as are offered to it may rightly be offered.
II.
Every ballet, circus, opera, operetta, exhibition, painting, concert, printing of a book, requires the intense effort of thousands and thousands of people, working forcedly at what are often harmful and humiliating tasks.
It would be well if artists did the whole job themselves, but no, they all need the help of workers, not only to produce art, but also to maintain their -- for the most part luxurious -- existence, and they get it in one way or another, in the form of fees from wealthy people, or in government subsidies -- in our country, for instance, given them in millions for theatres, conservatories, academies. And this money is collected from the people, whose cow has to be sold for the purpose, and who never benefit from those aesthetic pleasures that art affords.
For it was well for a Greek or Roman artist, or even for a Russian artist of the first half of our century, when there were slaves and it was considered a proper thing in all good conscience to make people serve one and one's own pleasure; but in our time, when everyone is at least dimly aware of the equal rights of all people, it is impossible to make people labour forcedly for art, without first resolving the question whether it is true that aft is such a good and important thing as to redeem this coercion.
If not, it is dreadful to think that terrible sacrifices are quite possibly being offered to art in labour, people's lives and morals, while this art is not only not useful, but is even harmful. And therefore, for a society within which works of art emerge and are supported, it is necessary to know whether all that passes for art is indeed art, and whether all that is art is good, as is thought in our society, and, if it is good, whether it is important and worth the sacrifices demanded for its sake. And it is still more necessary for every conscientious artist to know that, so as to be confident that everything he does has meaning and is not a passion of the little circle of people among whom he lives, arousing in him a false confidence that he is doing a good thing, and that what he takes from other people as support of his -- for the most part very luxurious -- life will be compensated by the productions on which he is now working. And therefore the answers to these questions are especially important for our time.
What, then, is this art which is considered so important and necessary for mankind that it can be offered the sacrifices not only of human labour and lives, but also of goodness, which are offered to it?
What is art? Why even ask such a question? Art is architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry in all its forms -- that is the usual answer of the average man, of the art lover, and even of the artist himself, who assumes that what he is talking about is understood quite clearly and in the same way by all people. But in architecture, one may object, there are simple buildings that are not works of art, and buildings that claim to be works of art, but are unsuccessful, ugly, and which therefore cannot be regarded as works of art. What, then, is the sign of a work of art?
It is exactly the same in sculpture, and in music, and in poetry. Art in all its forms borders, on the one hand, on the practically useful, and on the other, on unsuccessful attempts at art. How to separate art from the one and the other? The average educated man of our circle, and even the artist who is not especially concerned with aesthetics, will also not find this a difficult question. He thinks the answer was found long ago and is well known to everyone.
'Art is that activity which manifests beauty,' such an average man will reply.
'But, if art consists in that, then is a ballet or an operetta also art?' you will ask.
'Yes,' the average man will reply, albeit with some uncertainty. 'A good ballet and a graceful operetta are also art in as much as they manifest beauty.
But even without going on to ask the average man what distinguishes the good ballet or the graceful operetta from the ungraceful-- a question it would be very difficult for him to answer-- if you ask the same average man whether. one can regard as art the activity of the costume-maker and hairdresser who adorn the figures and faces of women in the ballet or operetta, or the activity of the tailor Worth, or of the perfumer or the chef, he would in the majority of cases deny that the activity of the tailor, the hairdresser, the costume-maker and the chef belong to the realm of art. But here the average man will be mistaken, precisely because he is an average man and not a specialist, and has not studied the questions of aesthetics. If he should study them, he would see in the famous Renan, in his book Marc Aur~Ie,2 a discussion about the art of the tailor being art, and about the dullness and limitedness of people who do not see in woman's attire a matter of the highest art. 'C'est le grand art,' he says. Moreover, the average man would learn that in many aesthetic systems-- for instance, in the aesthetics of the learned professor Kralik, Weltschonheit, Versuch einer ailgemeinen Asthetik, and in Guyau's Les problemes de I'esthetique-- the arts of costume, of taste and of touch are recognized as arts. . .
Thus the notion of art as the manifestation of beauty is not at all as simple as it seems, especially now when our senses of touch, taste, and smell are included in it, as they arc by the latest aestheticians.
But the average man either does not know or does not want to know this, and is firmly convinced that all questions of art are simply and clearly resolved by the recognition of beauty as the content of art. For the average man it seems clear and comprehensible that art is the manifestation of beauty; and by beauty all questions of art are explained to him.
But what is this beauty which, in his opinion, makes up the content of art? How is it defined, and what is it?
As happens with everything, the more vague and confused the concept conveyed by a word, the greater is the aplomb and assurance with which people use the word, pretending that what is understood by this word is so simple and clear that it is not even worth talking about what it actually means. This is how people usually act with regard to questions of religious superstition, and this is how they act in our time with regard to the concept ofbeauty. It is assumed that everyone knows and understands what is meant by the word beauty. And yet not only is this not known, but now, after mountains of books have been written on the subject by the most learned and profound men over the course of one hundred and fifty years -- since 1750, when Baumgarten founded aesthetics7 -- the question of what beauty is remains completely open, and each new work on aesthetics resolves it in a new way. One of the latest books I happen to have read on aesthetics is a nice little book by Julius Mithalter, entitled Ratsel des Schonen ['The Riddle of the Beautiful']. And this title expresses quite correctly the state of the question of what beauty is. After thousands of learned men have discussed it for one hundred and fifty years, the meaning of the word beauty has remained a riddle. The Germans resolve this riddle after their own fashion, albeit in hundreds of different ways; the psychologist-aestheticians, mostly Englishmen of the Herbert Spencer-Grant Allen school,8 also each in his own fashion; the French eclectics and the followers of Guyau and Tame,9 also each in his own fashion -- and all these men know all the preceding solutions of Baumgarten, Kant, Schelling, Schiller, Fichte, Winckelmann, Lessing, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Schassler, Cousin, Leveque, and others.
What, then, is this strange concept of beauty, which seems so comprehensible to those who do not think about what they are saying, while for one hundred and fifty years, philosophers of various nations and of the most various trends have been unable to agree on its definition? What is this concept of beauty, upon which the reigning doctrine of art is based?
In Russian, by the word krasota [beauty'] we mean only that which is pleasing to the sight. Though lately people have begun to say of an action that it is nekrasivy ['unbeautiful', i.e. bad or of music that it is krasivaya ['beautiful'I, this is not really Russian.
A Russian man of the people, who does not know foreign languages, will not understand you if you tell him that a man who gave his last clothes to another, or something like that, acted krasivo, or that by deceiving another he acted nekrasivo, or that a song is krasivaya. In Russian, an action can be kind and good, or wicked and unkind; music can be pleasant and good, or unpleasant and bad, but it can never be either beautiful or unbeautiful.
A man, a horse, a house, a view, a movement may be beautiful, but of actions, thoughts, character, music, we may say they are good, if we like them very much, or not good, if we do not like them; we can say 'beautiful' only of what is pleasing to our sight. So that the word and concept 'good' includes within itself the concept 'beautiful', but not vice versa: the concept 'beautiful' does not cover the concept 'good'. If we say of an object valued for its appearance that it is 'good', we are thereby saying that this object is also beautiful; but if we say it is 'beautiful', that by no means implies that the object is good.
Such is the meaning ascribed to the words and concepts 'good' and 'beautiful' by the Russian language, and therefore by the sense of the Russian people.
In all European languages, the languages of those people among whom the doctrine of beauty as the essence of art has spread, the words beau, schon, beautiful, bello, while keeping the meaning of beauty of form, have also come to signify 'goodness' -- that is, have come to replace the word 'good'.
So that these languages now quite naturally employ such expressions as belle dine, schone Gedanken, or beaut~ful deed, and yet these languages do not have an apposite, word for defining beauty of form and must employ such combinations of words as beau par Ia forme, and so on.
Observing the meaning that the word 'beauty', 'the beautiful', has in the Russian language, and in the languages of the people among whom aesthetic theory has been established, we see that the word 'beauty' is endowed by these people with some special meaning -- namely, the meaning of 'good'.
The remarkable thing is that since we Russians have begun to adopt European views of art more and more, the same evolution has begun to occur in our language as well, and people speak and write with complete assurance, and without surprising anyone, of beautiful music and unbeautiful actions or even thoughts, whereas forty years ago, in my youth, the expressions 'beautiful music' and 'unbeautiful actions' were not only not in use, but incomprehensible. Evidently this new meaning with which European thought has endowed beauty is beginning to be adopted by Russian society as well.
What, then, is this meaning? What, then, is beauty as understood by European people?
In order to answer this question, I will cite at least a small number of those definitions of beauty most widely spread in existing aesthetic systems. I especially beg the reader not to be bored and to read what is cited here, or, what would be better still, to read some work on aesthetics. Not to speak of voluminous German works, some good choices for this purpose are the German book by Kralik, the English one by Knight,'1 and the French one by Leveque. It is necessary to read some work on aesthetics in order to form a personal idea of the diversity ofjudgements and the terrible vagueness that reign in this sphere of opinion, and not to trust the words of others in this important matter.
Here, for example, is what the German aesthetician Schassler says about the character of all aesthetic research in the preface to his famous, voluminous and thorough book on aesthetics:
One hardly finds in any other area of philosophical science such methods of research and exposition, crude to the point of contradiction, as in the area of aesthetics. On the one hand, fine phrase-making without any content, distinguished for the most part by an altogether one-sided superficiality; on the other hand, together with all its indisputable depth of research and wealth of content, a repulsive clumsiness of philosophical terminology, which clothes the simplest things in the garb of abstract scientificality, as if to make them worthy thereby of entering the bright mansions of the system . . .
For aestheticians of this tendency, the ideal of beauty is a beautiful soul in a beautiful body. So that for them the division of the perfect (the absolute) into its three forms, of the true, the good and the beautiful, is completely effaced, and beauty again merges with the good and the true.
However, not only is this understanding of beauty not retained by later aestheticians, but there appears the aesthetics of Winckelmann, again completely opposite to these views, most decisively and sharply separating the tasks of art from the aim of the good, and setting as the aim of art an external and even merely plastic beauty.
According to the famous work of Winckelmann [German philosopher], the law and aim of all art is beauty alone, completely separate from and independent of the good. Beauty can be of three kinds: (1) beauty of form; (2) beauty of idea, expressed in the pose of the figure (with regard to plastic art); (3) beauty of expression, which is possible only in the presence of the first two conditions. This beauty of expression is the highest aim of art, and was in fact realized in antique art. Consequently, the art of the present day should strive to imitate antique art.
Beauty is understood in the same way by Lessing and Herder, then by Goethe and all prominent German aestheticians up to Kant, from whose time, again, a different understanding of art begins.
In England, France, Italy and Holland at this same time, independ-ently from the German writers, native aesthetic theories were born, just as unclear and contradictory, and all these aestheticians, in exactly the same way as the Germans, place the concept of beauty at the foundation of their reasoning, understanding it as something that exists absolutely and either merges more or less with the good, or has the same root. In England, at around the same time as Baumgarten, or even a little earlier, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Home, Burke, Hogarth, and others wrote on art.
According to Shaftesbury, what is beautiful is harmonious and proportionate; what is beautiful and proportionate is true; and what is beautiful and at the same time true, is also pleasant and good. Beauty, according to Shaftesbury, is known only by the spirit. God
is the principal beauty-the beautiful and the good proceed from a single source. Thus, even though Shaftesbury regards beauty as something separate from the good, they still merge again into something inseparable.
According to Hutcheson, in his Origin of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, the aim of art is beauty, the essence of which consists in the manifestation of unity within diversity. In the perception of what is beautiful we are guided by ethical instinct ('an internal sense'). This instinct may be contrary to the aesthetic one. Thus, according to Hutcheson, beauty no longer always coincides with the good, but is separate from it and sometimes contrary to it.
According to Home, beauty is that which is pleasant. And therefore beauty is determined only by taste. The basis for correct taste consists in the greatest wealth, fullness, force and diversity of impressions being contained within the strictest limits. This is the ideal of the perfect work of art.
According to Burke, in his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, the sublime and the beautiful, which constitute the aim of art, are based on the sense of self-preservation and the sense of communality. These senses, considered at their sources, are means for maintaining the gens through the individual. The first is achieved by nourishment, defence and war; the second by communion and reproduction. And therefore self-preservation and the war connected with it are the source of the sublime, while communality and the sexual need connected with it are the source of beauty.
Such were the main English definitions of art and beauty in the eighteenth century.
In France at the same time, Pare Andr& Batteux, and, later, Diderot, D'Alembert and, to some extent, Voltaire, wrote on art.
According to Pére Andre (Essai sur le Beau), there are three kinds of beauty: (1) divine beauty, (2) natural beauty, and (3) artificial beauty.
According to Batteux, art consists in imitating the beauty of nature, and its aim is pleasure. Diderot's definition of art is the same. The arbiter of what is beautiful is supposed to be taste, just as with the English. But not only are the laws of taste not established, it is even acknowledged that to do so is impossible. D'Alembert and Voltaire were of the same opinion.
According to Pagano, an Italian aesthetician of the same time, art consists in the uniting into one of the beauties scattered through nature. The ability to see these beauties is taste; the ability to unite them in one whole is artistic genius. Beauty, according to Pagano, merges with the good in such fashion that beauty is the good made manifest, while the good is inner beauty.
According to other Italians -- Muratori in his Confiessioni sopra il buon gusto intorno le scienze e le arti, and especially Spaletti in his Saggio sopra Ia belezza-art comes down to an egoistic sensation, based, as in Burke, on the striving for self-preservation and communality.
Among the Dutch, Hemsterhuis, who influenced the German aestheticians and Goethe, is noteworthy. According to his teaching, beauty is that which gives us the greatest pleasure, and that which gives us the greatest pleasure is that which gives us the greatest number of ideas within the shortest time. The pleasure of the beautiful is the highest knowledge to which man can attain, because it gives the greatest number of perceptions in the shortest time.
Such were the theories of aesthetics outside Germany during the last century. In Germany, after Winckelmann, there again appeared a completely new aesthetic theory, that of Kant [nineteenth-century German philosopher], which more than all others clarifies the essence of the concept of beauty, and therefore also of art.
Kant's aesthetics is based on the following: man, according to Kant, perceives nature outside himself and himself in nature. In nature outside himself he seeks the true; within himself he seeks the good-the first is a matter of pure reason, and the second of practical reason (freedom). Besides these two means of perception, there is, according to Kant, also the power ofjudgement (Urteilskraft), which forms judgements without concepts and produces pleasure without desire (Urteil ohne Begruffund, Vergnügen ohne Begehren). It is this power that constitutes the basis of the aesthetic sense. And beauty, according to Kant, is in a subjective sense that which, without concepts and without practical benefit, is generally and necessarily pleasing, and in an objective sense is the form of a purposeful object in so far as it is perceived without any notion of its purpose.
Beauty is defined in the same way by Kant's followers, Schiller among them. According to Schiller, who wrote much on aesthetics, the aim of art, as with Kant, is beauty, the source of which is pleasure without practical usefulness. So that art may be called play, though not in the sense of a worthless occupation, but in the sense of a manifestation of the beauty of life itself, which has no other aim than beauty.
Besides Schiller, the most remarkable of Kant's followers in the field of aesthetics were Jean-Paul and Wilhelm Humboldt, who, while adding nothing to the definition of beauty, clarified its various kinds-drama, music, the comic, etc.
After Kant, besides some second-rate philosophers, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and their followers wrote on aesthetics. According to Fichte, consciousness of the beautiful arises in the following way. The world-that is, nature-has two sides: it is the product of our limitation, and it is also the product of our free ideal activity. In the first sense, the world is limited, in the second it is free. In the first sense, every body is limited, distorted, compressed, constrained, and we see ugliness; in the second, we see inner fullness, vitality, regeneration - we see beauty. Thus the ugliness or beauty of an object, according to Fichte, depends on the point of view of the contemplator. And that is why beauty is located, not in the world, but in the beautiful soul (schöner Geist). Art, then, is the manifestation of this beautiful soul, and its aim is education, not only of the mind, which is the work of the scholar, not only of the heart, which is the work of the moral preacher, but of the whole man. And therefore the token of beauty is not in anything external, but in the presence of a beautiful soul in the artist.
Following Fichte, Friedrich Schlegel and Adam Muller defined beauty along the same lines. According to Schlegel, beauty in art is understood too incompletely, one-sidedly and separately; beauty is not only in art, but also in nature, and also in love, so that the truly unity and multiplicity, between law and phenomenon, between subject and object, uniting them in one. Art is the manifestation and affirmation of freedom, because it is free of the darkness and incomprehensibility of finite things.
According to W. A. Knight (Philosophy of the Beautful, II, 589), beauty is, as with Schelling, the union of object and subject; it is the extraction from nature of that which is proper to man, and the consciousness in oneself of that which is common to the whole of nature.
The judgements of beauty and art cited here are far from exhausting all that has been written on the subject. Moreover, new writers on aesthetics appear every day, and the judgements of these new writers contain the same strange, spellbound obscurity and contradictoriness in their definition of beauty. Some continue by inertia the mystical aesthetics of Baumgarten and Hegel, with various modifications; others transfer the question to the realm of the subjective and discover that the principles of the beautiful are a matter of taste; still others-aestheticians of the very latest formation-discover the origin of beauty in the laws of physiology; a fourth group, finally, considers the question quite independently of the notion of beauty. Thus, according to Sully in Studies in Psychology and Aesthetics (1874), the concept of beauty is completely abolished, since art, in Sully's definition, is the production of an abiding or transient object capable of giving active enjoyment and a pleasurable impression to a certain number of spectators or listeners, regardless of the advantage to be derived from it.
What then follows from all these definitions of beauty offered by the science of aesthetics? If we set aside those totally inaccurate definitions of beauty which do not cover the idea of art, and which place it now in usefulness, now in expediency, now in symmetry, or in order, or in proportionality, or in polish, or in harmony of parts, or in unity within diversity, or in various combinations of all these principles-if we set aside these unsatisfactory attempts at objective definition, all the aesthetic definitions of beauty come down to two fundamental views: one, that beauty is something existing in itself, a manifestation of the absolutely perfect-idea, spirit, will, God; the other, that beauty is a certain pleasure we experience, which does not have personal advantage as its aim.
The first definition was adopted by Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and by the philosophizing Frenchmen-Cousin, Jouffroy, Ravaisson et al., not to mention the second-rate aesthetic philosophers. The same objective -- mystical definition of beauty is held by the greater portion of educated people in our time. It is a widely spread understanding of beauty, especially among people of the older generation.
The second definition of beauty, as a certain pleasure we receive which has no personal advantage as its aim, is spread mostly among English aestheticians, and is shared by the other, mostly younger, portion of our society.
Thus there exist (and it could not be otherwise) only two definitions of beauty: one the objective and mystical one, which merges this concept with the highest perfection, with God - a fantastic definition, not based on anything; the other, on the contrary, a very simple and clear subjective one, which considers beauty to be that which is pleasing (I do not add 'without aim or advantage', because the word pleasing of itself implies this absence of any consideration of advantage).
On the one hand, beauty is understood as something mystical and very exalted, but unfortunately very indefinite and, therefore, inclusive of philosophy, religion, and life itself, as in Schelling, Hegel and their German and French followers; or, on the other hand, according to the definition of Kant and his followers, beauty is only a particular kind of disinterested pleasure that we receive. In this case the concept of beauty, though seemingly very clear, is unfortunately also imprecise, because it expands in the other direction-meaning that it includes the pleasure derived from drinking, eating, touching soft skin, etc., as is admitted in Guyau, Kralik et al.
It is true that, in following the development of the teaching concerning beauty, one can observe that at first, from the time when aesthetics emerged as a science, the metaphysical definition of beauty prevailed, while the closer we come to our own time, the more there emerges a practical definition, recently acquiring a physiological character, so that one even comes upon aestheticians such as Vion and Sully, who attempt to do without the concept of beauty entirely. But such aestheticians have very little success, and the majority of the public, and of artists and scholars as well, firmly hold to. the concept of beauty as defined in the majority of aesthetic systems-that is, either as something mystical or metaphysical, or as a particular kind of pleasure.
What essentially is this concept of beauty, to which people of our circle and day hold so stubbornly for the defining of art?
We call beauty in the subjective sense that which affords us a certain kind of pleasure. In the objective sense, we call beauty something absolutely perfect which exists outside us. But since we recognize the absolutely perfect which exists outside us and acknow-ledge it as such only because we receive a certain kind of pleasure from the manifestation of this absolutely perfect, it means that the objective definition is nothing but the subjective one differently expressed. In fact, both notions of beauty come down to a certain sort of pleasure that we receive, meaning that we recognize as beauty that which pleases us without awakening our lust. In such a situation, it would seem natural for the science of art not to content itself with a definition of art based on beauty -that is, on what is pleasing-and to seek a general definition, applicable to all works of art, on the basis of which it would be possible to resolve the question of what does or does not belong to art. But as the reader may see from the passages I have cited from works on aesthetics, and still more clearly from the works themselves, if he should take the trouble to read them, no such definition exists. All attempts to define absolute beauty in itself-as an imitation of nature, as purposefulness, as correspondence of parts, symmetry, harmony, unity in diversity and so on-either do not define anything, or define only certain features of certain works of art, and are far from embracing everything that all people have always regarded and still regard as art.
An objective definition of art does not exist; the existing definitions, metaphysical as well as practical, come down to one and the same subjective definition, which, strange as it is to say, is the view of art as the manifestation of beauty, and of beauty as that which pleases (without awakening lust). Many aestheticians have felt the inadequacy and instability of such a definition, and, in order to give it substance, have asked themselves what is pleasing and why, thus shifting the question of beauty to the question of taste, as did Hutcheson, Voltaire, Diderot et al. But (as the reader can see both from the history of aesthetics and from experience) no attempts to define taste can lead anywhere, and there is not and can never be any explanation of why something is pleasing to one man and not to another, or vice versa. Thus, existing aesthetics as a whole consists not in something such as might be expected of an intellectual activity calling itself a science-namely, in a definition of the properties and laws of art, or of the beautiful, if it is the content of art, or in a definition of the properties of taste, if it is taste that decides the question of art and its worth, and then, on the basis of these laws, the recognition as art of those works that fit them, and the rejection of those that do not fit them - but instead it consists in first recognizing a certain kind of work as good because it pleases us, and then in constructing such a theory of art as will include all works found pleasing by a certain circle of people. There exists an artistic canon according to which the favourite works of our circle are recognized as art (Phidias, Sophocles, Homer, Titian, Raphael, Bach, Beethoven, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe et al.), and aesthetic judgements must be such as can embrace all these works. One has no difficulty finding in aesthetic literature judgements of the worth and significance of art based not on known laws, according to which we regard this or that object as good or bad, but on whether it conforms to the artistic canon we have established. The other day I was reading a very nice book by Volkelt.38 Discussing the require-ment of morality in works of art, the author says straight out that it is wrong to bring any moral requirements to art, and as proof he points out that if such requirements were admitted, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Goethe's Wilhelm Meister would not fall under the definition of good art. Since both works belong to the artistic canon, the requirement would be incorrect. And therefore one must find a definition of art that would allow these works of art to fit into it, and, instead of the requirement of morality, Volkelt posits as the basis of art the requirement of significance (Bedeutungsvolles).
All existing aesthetic systems are constructed on this plan. Instead of giving a definition of true art and then, depending on whether a work fits or does not fit this definition, judging what is and what is not art, a certain series of works found pleasing for some reason by people of a certain circle is recognized as art, and a definition of art such as will include all these works is then invented. Recently I came across a remarkable confirmation of this method in a very good book, Muther's History of Nineteenth Century Art.39 Setting out to describe the pre-Raphaelites, the decadents and the symbolists, who have already been received into the canon of art, he not only does not dare to denounce this tendency, but makes a great effort to expand his framework so as to include in it the pre-Raphaelites, the decadents and the symbolists, who seem to him to be a legitimate reaction against the excesses of naturalism. Whatever follies may be committed in art, once they are accepted among the upper classes of our society, a theory is at once elaborated to explain and legitimize these follies, as if there had ever been epochs in history when certain exceptional circles of people had not accepted and approved of false, ugly, meaningless art, which left no traces and was completely forgotten afterwards. And we can see by what is going on now in the art of our circle what degree of meaninglessness and ugliness art can attain to, especially when, as in our time, it knows it is regarded as infallible.
Thus the theory of art based on beauty, expounded by aesthetics and professed in vague outlines by the public, is nothing other than the recognition as good of what has been and is found pleasing by us - that is, by a certain circle of people.
In order to define any human activity, one must understand its meaning and significance. And in order to understand the meaning
and significance of any human activity, it is necessary first of all to examine this activity in itself, as dependent on its own causes and effects, and not with regard to the pleasure we receive from it.
But if we accept that the aim of any activity is merely our own pleasure, and define it merely by that pleasure, then this definition will obviously be false. That is what has happened with the defini-tion of art. For, in analysing the question of food, it would not occur to anyone to see the significance of food in the pleasure we derive from eating it. Everyone understands that the satisfaction of our taste can in no way serve as a basis for defining the merits of food, and that we therefore have no right to suppose that dinners with cayenne pepper, Limburger cheese, alcohol and so on, to which we are accustomed and which we like, represent the best human food.
In just the same way, beauty, or that which pleases us, can in no way serve as the basis for defining art, and a series of objects that give us pleasure can in no way be an example of what art should be.
To see the aim and purpose of art in the pleasure we derive from it is the same as to ascribe the aim and significance of food to the pleasure we derive from eating it, as is done by people who stand at the lowest level of moral development (savages, for instance).
Just as people who think that the aim and purpose of food is pleasure cannot perceive the true meaning of eating, so people who think that the aim of art is pleasure cannot know its meaning and purpose, because they ascribe to an activity which has meaning in connection with other phenomena of life the false and exclusive aim of pleasure. People understand that the meaning of eating is the nourishment of the body only when they cease to consider pleasure the aim of this activity. So it is with art. People will understand the meaning of art only when they cease to regard beauty-that is, pleasure - as the aim of this activity. To recognize beauty, or the certain kind of pleasure to be derived from art, as the aim of art, not only does not contribute to defining what art is, but, on the contrary, by transferring the question to a realm quite alien to art-to metaphysical, psychological, physiological, and even historical discussions of why such-and-such a work is pleasing to some, and such-and-such is not pleasing, or is pleasing to others - makes that definition impossible. And just as discussing why one person likes pears and another meat in no way helps to define what the essence of nourishment is, so, too, the resolution of questions of taste in art (to which all discussions of art involuntarily come down) not only does not contribute to understanding what makes up that particular human activity which we call art, but makes that understanding completely impossible.
To the question, what is this art to which are offered in sacrifice the labours of millions of people, the very lives of people, and even morality, the existing aesthetic systems give answers all of which come down to saying that the aim of art is beauty, and that beauty is known by the pleasure it gives, and that the pleasure given by art is a good and important thing. That is, that pleasure is good because it is pleasure. So that what is considered the definition of art is not a definition of art at all, but is only a ruse to justify those sacrifices which are offered by people in the name of this supposed art, as well as the egoistic pleasure and immorality of existing art. And therefore, strange as it is to say, despite the mountains of books written on art, no precise definition of art has yet been made. The reason for this is that the concept of beauty has been placed at the foundation of the concept of art. . .
V.
What then is art, if we discard the all-confusing concept of beauty? The latest and most comprehensible definitions of art, independent of the concept of beauty, would be the following: art is an activity already emerging in the animal kingdom out of sexuality and a propensity for play (Schiller, Darwin, Spencer), accompanied by a pleasant excitation of nervous energy (Grant Allen). This is the physiological-evolutionary definition. Or, art is an external mani-festation, by means of lines, colours, gestures, sounds, or words, of emotions experienced by man (Vion). This is the practical definition. Or, according to Sully's most recent definition, 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'
In spite of the superiority of these definitions over metaphysical definitions based on the concept of beauty, they are still far from precise. The first, physiological-evolutionary definition is imprecise because it speaks not of the activity that constitutes the essence of art, but of the origin of art. The definition by physiological impact upon man's organism is imprecise because many other activities of man can fit into it as well, as occurs in the new aesthetic theories which reckon as art the making of beautiful clothing and pleasant perfumes and even foods. The practical definition which supposes art to be the expression of emotions is imprecise because a man may express his emotions by means of lines, colours, sounds and words without affecting others by it, and the expression will then not be art.
The third definition, by Sully, is imprecise because under the production of objects that afford pleasure to the producer and a pleasant impression to the spectators or listeners, apart from any advantage to them, may be included the performance of magic tricks, gymnastic exercises and other activities which are not art, and, on the other hand, many objects that produce an unpleasant impression, as, for instance, a gloomy, cruel scene in a poetic description or in the theatre, are unquestionably works of art.
The imprecision of all these definitions proceeds from the fact that in all of them, just as in the metaphysical definitions, the aim of art is located in the pleasure we derive from it, and not in its purpose in the life of man and of mankind.
In order to define art precisely, one must first of all cease looking at it as a means of pleasure and consider it as one of the conditions of human life. Considering art in this way, we cannot fail to see that art is a means of communion among people.
Every work of art results in the one who receives it entering into a certain kind of communion with the one who produced or is producing the art, and with all those who, simultaneously with him, before him, or after him, have received or will receive the same artistic impression.
As the word which conveys men's thoughts and experiences serves to unite people, so art serves in exactly the same way. The peculiarity of this means of communion, which distinguishes it from communion by means of the word, is that through the word a man conveys his thoughts to another, while through art people convey their feelings to each other.
The activity of art is based on the fact that man, as he receives through hearing or sight the expressions of another man's feelings, is capable of experiencing the same feelings as the man who expresses them.
The simplest example: a man laughs, and another man feels merry; he weeps, and the man who hears this weeping feels sad; a man is excited, annoyed, and another looking at him gets into the same state. With his movements, the sounds of his voice, a man displays cheerfulness, determination, or, on the contrary, dejection, calm -and this mood is communicated to others. A man suffers, expressing his suffering in moans and convulsions - and this suffering is communicated to others; a man displays his feeling of admiration, awe, fear, respect for certain objects, persons, phenomena - and other people become infected, experience the same feelings of admiration, awe, fear, respect for the same objects, persons or phenomena.
On this capacity of people to be infected by the feelings of other people, the activity of art is based.
If a man infects another or others directly by his look or by the sounds he produces at the moment he experiences a feeling, if he makes someone yawn when he himself feels like yawning, or laugh, or cry, when he himself laughs or cries over something, or suffer when he himself suffers, this is not yet art.
Art begins when a man, with the purpose of communicating to other people a feeling he once experienced, calls it up again within himself and expresses it by certain external signs.
Thus, the simplest case: a boy who once experienced fear, let us say, on encountering a wolf, tells about this encounter and, to call up in others the feeling he experienced, describes himself, his state of mind before the encounter, the surroundings, the forest, his carelessness, and then the look of the wolf, its movements, the distance between the wolf and himself, and so on. All this - if as he tells the story the boy relives the feeling he experienced, infects his listeners, makes them relive all that the narrator lived through - is art. Even if the boy had not seen a wolf, but had often been afraid of seeing one, and, wishing to call up in others the feeling he experienced, invented the encounter with the wolf, telling it in such a way that through his narrative he called up in his listeners the same feeling he experienced in imagining the wolf - this, too, is art. In just the same way, it is art if a man, having experienced in reality or in imagination the horror of suffering or the delight of pleasure, expresses these feelings on canvas or in marble in such a way that others are infected by them. And in just the same way, it will be art if a man has experienced or imagined the feelings of merriment, joy, sadness, despair, cheerfulness, dejection, and the transitions between these feelings, and expresses them in sounds so that listeners are infected by them and experience them in the same way as he has experienced them.
Feelings, the most diverse, very strong and very weak, very significant and very worthless, very bad and very good, if only they infect the reader, the spectator, the listener, constitute the subject of art. The feeling of self-denial and submission to fate or God portrayed in a drama; the raptures of lovers described in a novel; a feeling of sensuousness depicted in a painting; the briskness conveyed by a triumphal march in music; the gaiety evoked by a dance; the comicality caused by a funny anecdote; the feeling of peace conveyed by an evening landscape or a lulling song - all this is art.
Once the spectators or listeners are infected by the same feeling the author has experienced, this is art.
To call up in oneself a feeling once experienced and, having called it up, to convey it by means of movements, lines, colours, sounds, images expressed in words, so that others experience the same feeling-in this consists the activity of art. Art is that human activity which consists in one man s consciously conveying to others, by certain external signs, the feelings he has experienced, and in others being infected by those feelings and also experiencing them.
Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea, beauty, God; not, as the aesthetician- physiologists say, a form of play in which man releases a surplus of stored-up energy; not the manifestation of emotions through external signs; not the production of pleasing objects; not, above all, pleasure; but is a means of human communion, necessary for life and for the movement towards the good of the individual man and of mankind, uniting them in the same feelings.
Just as, owing to man's capacity for understanding thoughts expressed in words, any man can learn all that mankind has done for him in the realm of thought, can in the present, owing to the capacity for understanding other people's thoughts, participate in other people's activity, and can himself, owing to this capacity, convey the thoughts he has received from others, and his own as they have emerged in him, to his contemporaries and to posterity; so, owing to man's capacity for being infected by other people's feelings through art, he has access to all that mankind has experi-enced before him in the realm of feeling, he has access to the feelings experienced by his contemporaries, to feelings lived by other men thousands of years ago, and it is possible for him to convey his feelings to other people.
If people were incapable of receiving all the thoughts conveyed in words by people living before them, or of conveying their own thoughts to others, they would be like beasts or like Kaspar Hauser. If men were not possessed of this other capacity-that of being infected by art-people would perhaps be still more savage and, above all, more divided and hostile.
And therefore the activity of art is a very important activity, as important as the activity of speech, and as widely spread. As the word affects us not only in sermons, orations and books, but in all those speeches in which we convey our thoughts and experiences to each other, so, too, art in the broad sense of the word pervades our entire life, while, in the narrow sense of the word, we call art only certain of its manifestations.
We are accustomed to regard as art only what we read, hear, see in theatres, concerts and exhibitions, buildings, statues, poems, novels . . . But all this is only a small portion of the art by which we communicate with one another in life. The whole of human life is filled with works of art of various kinds, from lullabies, jokes, mimicry, home decoration, clothing, utensils, to church services and solemn processions. All this is the activity of art. Thus we call art, in the narrow sense of the word, not the entire human activity that conveys feelings, but only that which we for some reason single out from all this activity and to which we give special significance.
This special significance has always been given by all people to the part of this activity which conveys feelings coming from their religious consciousness, and it is this small part of the whole of art that has been called art in the full sense of the word.
This was the view of art among the men of antiquity - Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. The same view of art was shared by the Hebrew prophets and the early Christians; it is understood in the same way by the Muslims and by religious men of the people in our time.
Some teachers of mankind, such as Plato in his Republic, the first Christians, strict Muslims, and Buddhists, have often even rejected all art.
People holding this view of art, contrary to the modem view which considers all art good as long as it affords pleasure, thought and think that art, unlike the word, to which one need not listen, is so highly dangerous in its capacity for infecting people against their will, that mankind would lose far less if all art were banished than if every kind of art were tolerated.
Those people who rejected all art were obviously wrong, because they rejected what cannot be rejected - one of the most necessary means of communication, without which mankind cannot live. But no less wrong are the people of our civilized European society, circle and time, in tolerating all art as long as it serves beauty-that is, gives people pleasure.
Formerly, there was fear that among objects of art some corrupt-ing objects might be found, and so all art was forbidden. Now, there is only fear lest they be deprived of some pleasure afforded by art, and so all art is patronized. And I think that the second error is much greater than the first and that its consequences are much more harmful.
VI.
But how could it happen that the same art, which in antiquity was either barely tolerated or altogether rejected, should come to be regarded in our time as invariably a good thing, provided it affords pleasure? It happened for the following reasons.
The appreciation of the merits of art-that is, of the feelings it conveys-depends on people's understanding of the meaning of life, on what they see as good and evil in life. Good and evil in life are determined by what are called religions.
Mankind ceaselessly moves from a lower, more partial and less clear understanding of life to one that is higher, more general and clearer. And, as in every movement, so in this movement there are leaders-those who understand the meaning of life more clearly than others - and among these leading people there is always one who, in his words and in his life, has more vividly, accessibly and forcefully manifested this meaning of life. This man's manifestation of this meaning of life, together with the traditions and rites that usually form around the memory of such a man, is called religion. Religions are indicators of the highest understanding of life accessible at a given time in a given society to the best of the leading people, which is inevitably and unfailingly approached by all the rest of society. And, only because of that, religions have always served and still serve as a basis for evaluating people's feelings. If their feelings bring people closer to the ideal to which their religion points, agree with it, do not contradict it - they are good; if they move them away from it, disagree with it, contradict it - they are bad.
If religion places the meaning of life in the worship of one God and the fulfilling of what is regarded as his will, as with the Jews, then the feelings resulting from the love of this God and his law, conveyed by art - the sacred poetry of the prophets, the Psalms, the stories in the book of Genesis - make for good, high art. Everything opposed to that, such as conveying the feeling of the worship of alien gods, or feelings discordant with the law of God, will be regarded as bad art. If religion places the meaning of life in earthly happiness, in beauty and strength, then art that conveys the joy and zest of life will be considered good art, while art that conveys feelings of delicacy or dejection will be bad art, as was thought among the Greeks. If the meaning of life lies in the good of the nation or in continuing the way of life of the ancestors and revering them, then art that conveys the feeling of joy in the sacrifice of personal good for the good of the nation or the glorification of the ancestors and the maintaining of their tradition will be considered good art, while art that expresses feelings contrary to these will be considered bad, as among the Romans and the Chinese. If the meaning of life lies in liberating oneself from the bonds of animality, then art that conveys feelings which elevate the soul and humble the flesh will be good art, as it is regarded among the Buddhists, and all that conveys feelings which enhance the bodily passions will be bad art.
Always, in all times and in all human societies, there has existed this religious consciousness, common to all people of the society, of what is good and what is bad, and it is this religious consciousness that determines the worth of the feelings conveyed by art. And therefore, always, in all nations, art that conveyed feelings resulting from the religious consciousness common to the people of the nation was recognized as good and was encouraged, while art that conveyed feelings discordant with the religious consciousness was recognized as bad and was rejected; the whole enormous remaining field of art by which the people communicated among themselves was not valued at all . . .
|