Chapter VIII: Appendix: 371 (6)

Moral beauty comprises, as we shall subsequently see,[110] two distinct elements, equally but diversely beautiful, justice and charity, respect and love of men. He who expresses in his conduct justice and charity, accomplishes the most beautiful of all works; the good man is, in his way, the greatest of all artists. But what shall we say of him who is the very substance of justice and the exhaustless source of love? If our moral nature is beautiful, what must be the beauty of its author! His justice and goodness are everywhere, both in us and out of us. His justice is the moral order that no human law makes, that all human laws are forced to express, that is preserved and perpetuated in the world by its own force. Let us descend into ourselves, and consciousness will attest the divine justice in the peace and contentment that accompany virtue, in the troubles and tortures that are the invariable punishments of vice and crime. How many times, and with what eloquence, have men celebrated the indefatigable solicitude of Providence, its benefits everywhere manifest in the smallest as well as in the greatest phenomena of nature, which we forget so easily because they have become so familiar to us, but which, on reflection, call forth our mingled admiration and gratitude, and proclaim a good God, full of love for his creatures!

Thus, God is the principle of the three orders of beauty that we have distinguished, physical beauty, intellectual beauty, moral beauty.

In him also are reunited the two great forms of the beautiful distributed in each of these three orders, to wit, the beautiful and the sublime. God is, _par excellence_, the beautiful--for what object satisfies more all our faculties, our reason, our imagination, our heart! He offers to reason the highest idea, beyond which it has nothing more to seek; to imagination the most ravishing contemplation; to the heart a sovereign object of love. He is, then, perfectly beautiful; but is he not sublime also in other ways? If he extends the horizon of thought, it is to confound it in the abyss of his greatness. If the soul blooms at the spectacle of his goodness, has it not also reason to be affrighted at the idea of his justice, which is not less present to it? God is at once mild and terrible. At the same time that he is the life, the light, the movement, the ineffable grace of visible and finite nature, he is also called the Eternal, the Invisible, the Infinite, the Absolute Unity, and the Being of beings. Do not these awful attributes, as certain as the first, produce in the highest degree in the imagination and the soul that melancholy emotion excited by the sublime? Yes, God is for us the type and source of the two great forms of beauty, because he is to us at once an impenetrable enigma and still the clearest word that we are able to find for all enigmas. Limited beings as we are, we comprehend nothing in comparison with that which is without limits, and we are able to explain nothing without that same thing which is without limits. By the being that we possess, we have some idea of the infinite being of God; by the nothingness that is in us, we lose ourselves in the being of God; and thus always forced to recur to him in order to explain any thing, and always thrown back within ourselves under the weight of his infinitude, we experience by turns, or rather at the same time, for this God who raises and casts us down, a sentiment of irresistible attraction and astonishment, not to say insurmountable terror, which he alone can cause and allay, because he alone is the unity of the sublime and the beautiful.

Thus absolute being, which is both absolute unity and infinite variety,--God, is necessarily the last reason, the ultimate foundation, the completed ideal of all beauty. This is the marvellous beauty that Diotimus had caught a glimpse of, and thus paints to Socrates in the _Banquet_:

"Eternal beauty, unbegotten and imperishable, exempt from decay as well as increase, which is not beautiful in such a part and ugly in such another, beautiful only, at such a time, in such a place, in such a relation, beautiful for some, ugly for others, beauty that has no sensible form, no visage, no hands, nothing corporeal, which is not such a thought or such a particular science, which resides not in any being different from itself, as an animal, the earth, or the heavens, or any other thing, which is absolutely identical and invariable by itself, in which all other beauties participate, in such a way, nevertheless, that their birth or their destruction neither diminishes nor increases, nor in the least changes it!... In order to arrive at this perfect beauty, it is necessary to commence with the beauties of this lower world, and, the eyes being fixed upon the supreme beauty, to elevate ourselves unceasingly towards it, by passing, thus to speak, through all the degrees of the scale, from a single beautiful body to two, from two to all others, from beautiful bodies to beautiful sentiments, from beautiful sentiments to beautiful thoughts, until from thought to thought we arrive at the highest thought, which has no other object than the beautiful itself, until we end by knowing it as it is in itself.

"O my dear Socrates," continued the stranger of Mantinea, "that which can give value to this life is the spectacle of the eternal beauty.... What would be the destiny of a mortal to whom it should be granted to contemplate the beautiful without alloy, in its purity and simplicity, no longer clothed with the flesh and hues of humanity, and with all those vain charms that are condemned to perish, to whom it should be given to see face to face, under its sole form, the divine beauty!"[111]

FOOTNOTES:

[103] If one would make himself acquainted with a simple and piquant refutation, written two thousand years ago, of false theories of beauty, he may read the _Hippias_ of Plato, vol. iv. of our translation. The _Phaedrus_, vol. vi., contains the veiled exposition of Plato's own theory; but it is in the _Banquet_ (_Ibid._), and particularly in the discourse of Diotimus, that we must look for the thought of Plato carried to its highest degree of development, and clothed with all the beauty of human language.

[104] See the _Hippias_.

[105] First _Ennead_, book vi., in the work of M. B. Saint-Hillaire, on the _School of Alexandria_, the translation of this morsel of Plotinus, p. 197.

[106] Winkelmann has twice described the Apollo, _History of Art among the Ancients_, Paris, 1802, 3 vols., in 4to. Vol. i., book iv., chap. iii., _Art among the Greeks_:--"The Apollo of the Vatican offers us that God in a movement of indignation against the serpent Python, which he has just killed with arrow-shots, and in a sentiment of contempt for a victory so little worthy of a divinity. The wise artist, who proposed to represent the most beautiful of the gods, placed the anger in the nose, which, according to the ancients, was its seat; and the disdain on the lips. He expressed the anger by the inflation of the nostrils, and the disdain by the elevation of the under lip, which causes the same movement in the chin."--_Ibid._, vol. ii., book iv., chap. vi., _Art under the Emperors_:--"Of all the antique statues that have escaped the fury of barbarians and the destructive hand of time, the statue of Apollo is, without contradiction, the most sublime. One would say that the artist composed a figure purely ideal, and employed matter only because it was necessary for him to execute and represent his idea. As much as Homer's description of Apollo surpasses the descriptions which other poets have undertaken after him, so much this statue excels all the figures of this god. Its height is above that of man, and its attitude proclaims the divine grandeur with which it is filled. A perennial spring-time, like that which reigns in the happy fields of Elysium, clothes with lovable youth the beautiful body, and shines with sweetness over the noble structure of the limbs. In order to feel the merit of this _chef-d'oeuvre of art_, we must be penetrated with intellectual beauty, and become, if possible, the creatures of a celestial nature; for there is nothing mortal in it, nothing subject to the wants of humanity. That body, whose forms are not interrupted by a vein, which is not agitated by a nerve, seems animated with a celestial spirit, which circulates like a sweet vapor in all the parts of that admirable figure. The god has just been pursuing Python, against which he has bent, for the first time, his formidable bow; in his rapid course, he has overtaken him, and given him a mortal wound. Penetrated with the conviction of his power, and lost in a concentrated joy, his august look penetrates far into the infinite, and is extended far beyond his victory. Disdain sits upon his lips; the indignation that he breathes distends his nostrils, and ascends to his eyebrows; but an unchangeable serenity is painted on his brow, and his eye is full of sweetness, as though the Muses were caressing him. Among all the figures that remain to us of Jupiter, there is none in which the father of the gods approaches the grandeur with which he manifested himself to the intelligence of Homer; but in the traits of the Apollo Belvidere, we find the individual beauties of all the other divinities united, as in that of Pandora. The forehead is the forehead of Jupiter, inclosing the goddess of wisdom; the eyebrows, by their movement, announce his supreme will; the large eyes are those of the queen of the gods, orbed with dignity, and the mouth is an image of that of Bacchus, where breathed voluptuousness. Like the tender branches of the vine, his beautiful locks flow around his head, as if they were lightly agitated by the zephyr's breath. They seem perfumed with the essence of the gods, and are charmingly arranged over his head by the hand of the Graces. At the sight of this marvel of art, I forget every thing else, and my mind takes a supernatural disposition, fitted to judge of it with dignity; from admiration I pass to ecstasy; I feel my breast dilating and rising, like those who are filled with the spirit of prophecy; I am transported to Delos, and the sacred groves of Syria,--places which Apollo honored with his presence:--the statue seems to be animated as it were with the beauty that sprung of old from the hands of Pygmalion. How can I describe thee, O inimitable master-piece? For this it would be necessary that art itself should deign to inspire my pen. The traits that I have just sketched, I lay before thee, as those who came to crown the gods, put their crowns at their feet, not being able to reach their heads."

[107] See the last part of the _Banquet_, the discourse of Alcibiades, p. 326 of vol. vi. of our translation.

[108] We here have in mind, and we avow it, the Socrates of David, which appears to us, the theatrical character being admitted, above its reputation. Besides Socrates, it is impossible not to admire Plato listening to his master, as it were from the bottom of his soul, without looking at him, with his back turned upon the scene that is passing, and lost in the contemplation of the intelligible world.

[109] We are fortunate in finding this theory, which is so dear to us, confirmed by the authority of one of the severest and most circumspect minds:--it may be seen in Reid, 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 23. The Scotch philosopher terminates his _Essay on Taste_ with these words, which happily remind us of the thought and manner of Plato himself:--"Whether the reasons that I have given to prove that sensible beauty is only the image of moral beauty appear sufficient or not, I hope that my doctrine, in attempting to unite the terrestrial Venus more closely to the celestial Venus, will not seem to have for its object to abase the first, and render her less worthy of the homage that mankind has always paid her."

[110] Part iii., lecture 15.

[111] Vol. vi. of our translation, p. 816-818

LECTURE VIII

ON ART.

Genius:--its attribute is creative power.--Refutation of the
opinion that art is the imitation of nature.--M. Emeric David,
and M. Quatremere de Quincy.--Refutation of the theory of
illusion. That dramatic art has not solely for its end to excite
the passions of terror and pity.--Nor even directly the moral
and religious sentiment.--The proper and direct object of art is
to produce the idea and the sentiment of the beautiful; this
idea and this sentiment purify and elevate the soul by the
affinity between the beautiful and the good, and by the relation
of ideal beauty to its principle, which is God.--True mission of
art.

Man is not made only to know and love the beautiful in the works of nature, he is endowed with the power of reproducing it. At the sight of a natural beauty, whatever it may be, physical or moral, his first need is to feel and admire. He is penetrated, ravished, as it were overwhelmed with the sentiment of beauty. But when the sentiment is energetic, he is not a long time sterile. We wish to see again, we wish to feel again what caused us so vivid a pleasure, and for that end we attempt to revive the beauty that charmed us, not as it was, but as our imagination represents it to us. Hence a work original and peculiar to man, a work of art. Art is the free reproduction of beauty, and the power in us capable of reproducing it is called genius.

What faculties are used in this free reproduction of the beautiful? The same that serve to recognize and feel it. Taste carried to the highest degree, if you always join to it an additional element, is genius. What is this element?

Three faculties enter into that complex faculty that is called taste,--imagination, sentiment, reason.

These three faculties are certainly necessary for genius, but they are not sufficient for it. What essentially distinguishes genius from taste is the attribute of creative power. Taste feels, judges, discusses, analyzes, but does not invent. Genius is, before all, inventive and creative. The man of genius is not the master of the power that is in him; it is by the ardent, irresistible need of expressing what he feels, that he is a man of genius. He suffers by withholding the sentiments, or images, or thoughts, that agitate his breast. It has been said that there is no superior man without some grain of folly; but this folly, like that of the cross, is the divine part of reason. This mysterious power Socrates called his demon. Voltaire called it the devil in the body; he demanded it even in a comedian in order to be a comedian of genius. Give to it what name you please, it is certain that there is a I-know-not-what that inspires genius, that also torments it until it has delivered itself of what consumes it; until, by expressing them, it has solaced its pains and its joys, its emotions, its ideas; until its reveries have become living works. Thus two things characterize genius; at first, the vivacity of the need it has of producing, then the power of producing; for the need without the power is only a malady that resembles genius, but is not it. Genius is above all, is essentially, the power of doing, of inventing, of creating. Taste is contented with observing, with admiring. False genius, ardent and impotent imagination, consumes itself in sterile dreams and produces nothing, at least nothing great. Genius alone has the power to convert conceptions into creations.

If genius creates it does not imitate.

But genius, it is said, is then superior to nature, since it does not imitate it. Nature is the work of God; man is then the rival of God.

The answer is very simple. No, genius is not the rival of God; but it is the interpreter of him. Nature expresses him in its way, human genius expresses him in its own way.

Let us stop a moment at that question so much discussed,--whether art is any thing else than the imitation of nature.

Doubtless, in one sense, art is an imitation; for absolute creation belongs only to God. Where can genius find the elements upon which it works, except in nature, of which it forms a part? But does it limit itself to the reproduction of them as nature furnishes them to it, without adding any thing to them which belongs to itself? Is it only a copier of reality? Its sole merit, then, is that of the fidelity of the copy. And what labor is more sterile than that of copying works essentially inimitable on account of the life with which they are endowed, in order to obtain an indifferent image of them? If art is a servile pupil, it is condemned never to be any thing but an impotent pupil.

The true artist feels and profoundly admires nature; but every thing in nature is not equally admirable. As we have just said, it has something by which it infinitely surpasses art--its life. Besides that, art can, in its turn, surpass nature, on the condition of not wishing to imitate it too closely. Every natural object, however beautiful, is defective on some side. Every thing that is real is imperfect. Here, the horrible and the hideous are united to the sublime; there, elegance and grace are separated from grandeur and force. The traits of beauty are scattered and diverse. To reunite them arbitrarily, to borrow from such a face a mouth, eyes from such another, without any rule that governs this choice and directs these borrowings, is to compose monsters; to admit a rule, is already to admit an ideal different from all individuals. It is this ideal that the true artist forms to himself in studying nature. Without nature, he never would have conceived this ideal; but with this ideal, he judges nature herself, rectifies her, and dares undertake to measure himself with her.

The ideal is the artist's object of passionate contemplation. Assiduously and silently meditated, unceasingly purified by reflection and vivified by sentiment, it warms genius and inspires it with the irresistible need of seeing it realized and living. For this end, genius takes in nature all the materials that can serve it, and applying to them its powerful hand, as Michael Angelo impressed his chisel upon the docile marble, makes of them works that have no model in nature, that imitate nothing else than the ideal dreamed of or conceived, that are in some sort a second creation inferior to the first in individuality and life, but much superior to it, we do not fear to say, on account of the intellectual and moral beauty with which it is impressed.

Moral beauty is the foundation of all true beauty. This foundation is somewhat covered and veiled in nature. Art disengages it, and gives to it forms more transparent. On this account, art, when it knows well its power and its resources, institutes with nature a contest in which it may have the advantage.

Let us establish well the end of art: it is precisely where its power lies. The end of art is the expression of moral beauty, by the aid of physical beauty. The latter is only a symbol of the former. In nature, this symbol is often obscure: art in bringing it to light attains effects that nature does not always produce. Nature may please more, for, once more, it possesses in an incomparable degree what makes the great charm of imagination and sight--life; art touches more, because in expressing, above all, moral beauty, it addresses itself more directly to the source of profound emotions. Art can be more pathetic than nature, and the pathetic is the sign and measure of great beauty.

Two extremes are equally dangerous--a lifeless ideal, or the absence of the ideal. Either we copy the model, and are wanting in true beauty, or we work _de tete_, and fall into an ideality without character. Genius is a ready and sure perception of the right proportion in which the ideal and the natural, form and thought, ought to be united. This union is the perfection of art: _chefs-d'oeuvre_ are produced by observing it.

It is important, in my opinion, to follow this rule in teaching art. It is asked whether pupils should begin with the study of the ideal or the real. I do not hesitate to answer,--by both. Nature herself never offers the general without the individual, nor the individual without the general. Every figure is composed of individual traits which distinguish it from all others, and make its own looks, and, at the same time, it has general traits which constitute what is called the human figure. These general traits are the constitutive lineaments, and this figure is the type, that are given to the pupil that is beginning in the art of design to trace. It would also be good, I believe, in order to preserve him from the dry and abstract, to exercise him early in copying some natural object, especially a living figure. This would be putting pupils to the true school of nature. They would thus become accustomed never to sacrifice either of the two essential elements of the beautiful, either of the two imperative conditions of art.

But, in uniting these two elements, these two conditions, it is necessary to distinguish them, and to know how to put them in their place. There is no true ideal without determinate form, there is no unity without variety, no genus without individuals, but, in fine, the foundation of the beautiful is the idea; what makes art is before all, the realization of the idea, and not the imitation of such or such a particular form.

At the commencement of our century, the Institute of France offered a prize for the best answer to the following question: _What were the causes of the perfection of the antique sculpture, and what would be the best means of attaining it?_ The successful competitor, M. Emeric David,[112] maintained the opinion then dominant, that the assiduous study of natural beauty had alone conducted the antique art to perfection, and that thus the imitation of nature was the only route to reach the same perfection. A man whom I do not fear to compare with Winkelmann, the future author of the _Olympic Jupiter_,[113] M. Quatremere de Quincy, in some ingenious and profound disquisitions,[114] combated the doctrine of the laureate, and defended the cause of ideal beauty. It is impossible to demonstrate more decidedly, by the entire history of Greek sculpture, and by authentic texts from the greatest critiques of antiquity, that the process of art among the Greeks was not the imitation of nature, either by a particular model, or by several, the most beautiful model being always very imperfect, and several models not being able to compose a single beauty. The true process of the Greek art was the representation of an ideal beauty which nature scarcely possessed more in Greece than among us, which it could not then offer to the artist. We regret that the honorable laureate, since become a member of the Institute, pretended that this expression of ideal beauty, if it had been known by the Greeks, would have meant _visible beauty_, because ideal comes from [Greek: eidos], which signifies only, according to M. Emeric David, a form seen by the eye. Plato would have been much surprised at this exclusive interpretation of the word [Greek: eidos]. M. Quatremere de Quincy confounds his unequal adversary by two admirable texts, one from the _Timaeus_, where Plato marks with precision in what the true artist is superior to the ordinary artist, the other at the commencement of the _Orator_, where Cicero explains the manner in which great artists work, in referring to the manner of Phidias, that is to say, the most perfect master of the most perfect epoch of art.

"The artist,[115] who, with eye fixed upon the immutable being, and using such a model, reproduces its idea and its excellence, cannot fail to produce a whole whose beauty is complete, whilst he who fixes his eye upon what is transitory, with this perishable model will make nothing beautiful."

"Phidias,[116] that great artist, when he made the form of Jupiter or Minerva, did not contemplate a model a resemblance of which he would express; but in the depth of his soul resided a perfect type of beauty, upon which he fixed his look, which guided his hand and his art."

Is not this process of Phidias precisely that which Raphael describes in the famous letter to Castiglione, which he declares that he followed himself for the Galatea?[117] "As," he says, "I am destitute of beautiful models, I use a certain ideal which I form for myself."

There is another theory which comes back, by a circuit, to imitation: it is that which makes illusion the end of art. If this theory be true, the ideal beauty of painting is a _tromp-l'oeil_,[118] and its master-piece is the grapes of Zeuxis that the birds came and pecked at. The height of art in a theatrical piece would be to persuade you that you are in the presence of reality. What is true in this opinion is, that a work of art is beautiful only on the condition of being life-like, and, for example, the law of dramatic art is not to put on the stage pale phantoms of the past, but personages borrowed from imagination or history, as you like, but animated, endowed with passion, speaking and acting like men and not like shades. It is human nature that is to be represented to itself under a magic light that does not disfigure it, but ennobles it. This magic is the very genius of art. It lifts us above the miseries that besiege us, and transports us to regions where we still find ourselves, for we never wish to lose sight of ourselves, but where we find ourselves transformed to our advantage, where all the imperfections of reality have given place to a certain perfection, where the language that we speak is more equal and elevated, where persons are more beautiful, where the ugly is not admitted, and all this while duly respecting history, especially without ever going beyond the imperative conditions of human nature. Has art forgotten human nature? it has passed beyond its end, it has not attained it; it has brought forth nothing but chimeras without interest for our soul. Has it been too human, too real, too nude? it has fallen short of its end; it has then attained it no better.

Illusion is so little the end of art, that it may be complete and have no charm. Thus, in the interest of illusion, theatrical men have taken great pains in these latter times to secure historical accuracy of costume. This is all very well; but it is not the most important thing. Had you found, and lent to the actor who plays the part of Brutus, the very costume that of old the Roman hero wore, it would touch true connoisseurs very little. This is not all; when the illusion goes too far, the sentiment of art disappears in order to give place to a sentiment purely natural, sometimes insupportable. If I believed that Iphegenia were in fact on the point of being immolated by her father at a distance of twenty paces from me, I should leave the theatre trembling with horror. If the Ariadne that I see and hear, were the true Ariadne who is about to be betrayed by her sister, in that pathetic scene where the poor woman, who already feels herself less loved, asks who then robs her of the heart, once so tender, of Theseus, I would do as the young Englishman did, who cried out, sobbing and trying to spring upon the stage, "It is Phedre, it is Phedre!" as if he would warn and save Ariadne.

But, it is said, is it not the aim of the poet to excite pity and terror? Yes; but at first in a certain measure; then he must mix with them some other sentiment that tempers them, or makes them serve another end. If the aim of dramatic art were only to excite in the highest degree pity and terror, art would be the powerless rival of nature. All the misfortunes represented on the stage are very feeble in comparison with those sad spectacles which we may see every day. The first hospital is fuller of pity and terror than all the theatres in the world. What should the poet do in the theory that we combat? He should transfer to the stage the greatest possible reality, and move us powerfully by shocking our senses with the sight of frightful pains. The great resort of the pathetic would then be the representation of death, especially that of the greatest torture. Quite on the contrary, there is an end of art when sensibility is too much excited. To take, again, an example that we have already employed, what constitutes the beauty of a tempest, of a shipwreck? What attracts us to those great scenes of nature? It is certainly not pity and terror,--these poignant and lacerating sentiments would much sooner keep us away. An emotion very different from these is necessary, which triumphs over us, in order to retain us by the shore; this emotion is the pure sentiment of the beautiful and the sublime, excited and kept alive by the grandeur of the spectacle, by the vast extent of the sea, the rolling of the foaming waves, and the imposing sound of the thunder. But do we think for a single instant that there are in the midst of the sea the unfortunate who are suffering, and are, perhaps, about to perish? From that moment the spectacle becomes to us insupportable. It is so in art. Whatever sentiment it proposes to excite in us, must always be tempered and governed by that of the beautiful. If it only produces pity or terror beyond a certain limit, especially physical pity or terror, it revolts, and no longer charms; it loses the effect that belongs to it in exchange for a foreign and vulgar effect.

For this same reason, I cannot accept another theory, which, confounding the sentiment of the beautiful with the moral and religious sentiment, puts art in the service of religion and morals, and gives it for its end to make us better and elevate us to God. There is here an essential distinction to be made. If all beauty covers a moral beauty, if the ideal mounts unceasingly towards the infinite, art, which expresses ideal beauty, purifies the soul in elevating it towards the infinite, that is to say, towards God. Art, then, produces the perfection of the soul, but it produces it indirectly. The philosopher who investigates effects and causes, knows what is the ultimate principle of the beautiful and its certain, although remote, effects. But the artist is before all things an artist; what animates him is the sentiment of the beautiful; what he wishes to make pass into the soul of the spectator is the same sentiment that fills his own. He confides himself to the virtue of beauty; he fortifies it with all the power, all the charm of the ideal; it must then do its own work; the artist has done his when he has procured for some noble souls the exquisite sentiment of beauty. This pure and disinterested sentiment is a noble ally of the moral and religious sentiments; it awakens, preserves, and develops them, but it is a distinct and special sentiment. So art, which is founded on this sentiment, which is inspired by it, which expands it, is in its turn an independent power. It is naturally associated with all that ennobles the soul, with morals and religion; but it springs only from itself.

Let us confine our thought strictly within its proper limits. In vindicating the independence, the proper dignity, and the particular end of art, we do not intend to separate it from religion, from morals, from country. Art draws its inspirations from these profound sources, as well as from the ever open source of nature. But it is not less true that art, the state, religion, are powers which have each their world apart and their own effects; they mutually help each other; they should not serve each other. As soon as one of them wanders from its end, it errs, and is degraded. Does art blindly give itself up to the orders of religion and the state? In losing its liberty, it loses its charm and its empire.

Ancient Greece and modern Italy are continually cited as triumphant examples of what the alliance of art, religion, and the state can do. Nothing is more true, if the question is concerning their union; nothing is more false, if the question is concerning the servitude of art. Art in Greece was so little the slave of religion, that it little by little modified the symbols, and, to a certain extent, the spirit itself, by its free representations. There is a long distance between the divinities that Greece received from Egypt and those of which it has left immortal exemplars. Are those primitive artists and poets, as Homer and Dedalus are called, strangers to this change? And in the most beautiful epoch of art, did not AEschylus and Phidias carry a great liberty into the religious scenes which they exposed to the gaze of the people, in the theatre, or in front of the temples? In Italy as in Greece, as everywhere, art is at first in the hands of priesthoods and governments; but, as it increases its importance and is developed, it more and more conquers its liberty. Men speak of the faith that animated the artists and vivified their works; that is true of the time of Giotto and Ciambue; but after Angelico de Fiesole, at the end of the fifteenth century, in Italy, I perceive especially the faith of art in itself and the worship of beauty. Raphael was about to become a cardinal;[119] yes, but always painting Galatea, and without quitting Fornarine. Once more, let us exaggerate nothing; let us distinguish, not separate; let us unite art, religion, and country, but let not their union injure the liberty of each. Let us be thoroughly penetrated with the thought, that art is also to itself a kind of religion. God manifests himself to us by the idea of the true, by the idea of the good, by the idea of the beautiful. Each one of them leads to God, because it comes from him. True beauty is ideal beauty, and ideal beauty is a reflection of the infinite. So, independently of all official alliance with religion and morals, art is by itself essentially religious and moral; for, far from wanting its own law, its own genius, it everywhere expresses in its works eternal beauty. Bound on all sides to matter by inflexible laws, working upon inanimate stone, upon uncertain and fugitive sounds, upon words of limited and finite signification, art communicates to them, with the precise form that is addressed to such or such a sense, a mysterious character that is addressed to the imagination and the soul, takes them away from reality, and bears them sweetly or violently into unknown regions. Every work of art, whatever may be its form, small or great, figured, sung, or uttered,--every work of art, truly beautiful or sublime, throws the soul into a gentle or severe reverie that elevates it towards the infinite. The infinite is the common limit after which the soul aspires upon the wings of imagination as well as reason, by the route of the sublime and the beautiful, as well as by that of the true and the good. The emotion that the beautiful produces turns the soul from this world; it is the beneficent emotion that art produces for humanity.

FOOTNOTES:

[112] _Recherches sur l'Art Statuaire._ Paris, 1805.

[113] Paris, 1815, in folio, an eminent work that will subsist even when time shall have destroyed some of its details.

[114] Since reprinted under the title of _Essais sur l'Ideal dans ses Applications Pratiques_. Paris, 1837.

[115] Translation of Plato, vol. xii., _Timaeus_, p. 116.

[116] _Orator:_ "Neque enim ille artifex (Phidias) cum faceret Jovis formam aut Minervae, contemplabatur aliquem a quo similitudinem duceret; sed ipsius in mente insidebat species pulchritudinis eximia quaedam, quam intuens, in eaque defixus, ad illius similitudinem artem et manum dirigebat."

[117] _Raccolta di lett._ _Sulla pitt._, i., p. 83. "_Essendo carestia e de' buoni giudici e di belle donne, io mi servo di certa idea che mi viene alla mente._"

[118] "A picture representing a broken glass over several subjects painted on the canvas, by which the eye is deceived."

[119] Vassari, _Vie de Raphael_.

LECTURE IX.

THE DIFFERENT ARTS.

Expression is the general law of art.--Division of
arts.--Distinction between liberal arts and trades.--Eloquence
itself, philosophy, and history do not make a part of the fine
arts.--That the arts gain nothing by encroaching upon each
other, and usurping each other's means and
processes.--Classification of the arts:--its true principle is
expression.--Comparison of arts with each other.--Poetry the
first of arts.

A _resume_ of the last lecture would be a definition of art, of its end and law. Art is the free reproduction of the beautiful, not of a single natural beauty, but of ideal beauty, as the human imagination conceives it by the aid of data which nature furnishes it. The ideal beauty envelops the infinite:--the end of art is, then, to produce works that, like those of nature, or even in a still higher degree, may have the charm of the infinite. But how and by what illusion can we draw the infinite from the finite? This is the difficulty of art, and its glory also. What bears us towards the infinite in natural beauty? The ideal side of this beauty. The ideal is the mysterious ladder that enables the soul to ascend from the finite to the infinite. The artist, then, must devote himself to the representation of the ideal. Every thing has its ideal. The first care of the artist will be, then, whatever he does, to penetrate at first to the concealed ideal of his subject, for his subject has an ideal,--in order to render it, in the next place, more or less striking to the senses and the soul, according to the conditions which the very materials that he employs--the stone, the color, the sound, the language--impose on him.

So, to express the ideal of the infinite in one way or another, is the law of art; and all the arts are such only by their relation to the sentiment of the beautiful and the infinite which they awaken in the soul, by the aid of that high quality of every work of art that is called expression.

Expression is essentially ideal: what expression tries to make felt, is not what the eye can see and the hand touch, evidently it is something invisible and impalpable.

The problem of art is to reach the soul through the body. Art offers to the senses forms, colors, sounds, words, so arranged that they excite in the soul, concealed behind the senses, the inexpressible emotion of beauty.

Expression is addressed to the soul as form is addressed to the senses. Form is the obstacle of expression, and, at the same time, is its imperative, necessary, only means. By working upon form, by bending it to its service, by dint of care, patience, and genius, art succeeds in converting an obstacle into a means.

By their object, all arts are equal; all are arts only because they express the invisible. It cannot be too often repeated, that expression is the supreme law of art. The thing to express is always the same,--it is the idea, the spirit, the soul, the invisible, the infinite. But, as the question is concerning the expression of this one and the same thing, by addressing ourselves to the senses which are diverse, the difference of the senses divides art into different arts.

We have seen, that, of the five senses which have been given to man,[120] three--taste, smell, and touch--are incapable of producing in us the sentiment of beauty. Joined to the other two, they may contribute to the understanding of this sentiment; but alone and by themselves they cannot produce it. Taste judges of the agreeable, not of the beautiful. No sense is less allied to the soul and more in the service of the body; it flatters, it serves the grossest of all masters, the stomach. If smell sometimes seems to participate in the sentiment of the beautiful, it is because the odor is exhaled from an object that is already beautiful, that is beautiful for some other reason. Thus the rose is beautiful for its graceful form, for the varied splendor of its colors; its odor is agreeable, it is not beautiful. Finally, it is not touch alone that judges of the regularity of forms, but touch enlightened by sight.

There remain two senses to which all the world concedes the privilege of exciting in us the idea and the sentiment of the beautiful. They seem to be more particularly in the service of the soul. The sensations which they give have something purer, more intellectual. They are less indispensable for the material preservation of the individual. They contribute to the embellishment rather than to the sustaining of life. They procure us pleasures in which our personality seems less interested and more self-forgetful. To these two senses, then, art should be addressed, is addressed, in fact, in order to reach the soul. Hence the division of arts into two great classes,--arts addressed to hearing, arts addressed to sight; on the one hand, music and poetry; on the other, painting, with engraving, sculpture, architecture, gardening.

It will, perhaps, seem strange that we rank among the arts neither eloquence, nor history, nor philosophy.

The arts are called the fine arts, because their sole object is to produce the disinterested emotion of beauty, without regard to the utility either of the spectator or the artist. They are also called the liberal arts, because they are the arts of free men and not of slaves, which affranchise the soul, charm and ennoble existence; hence the sense and origin of those expressions of antiquity, _artes liberales_, _artes ingenuae_. There are arts without nobility, whose end is practical and material utility; they are called trades, such as that of the stove-maker and the mason. True art may be joined to them, may even shine in them, but only in the accessories and the details.

Eloquence, history, philosophy, are certainly high employments of intelligence; they have their dignity, their eminence, which nothing surpasses, but rigorously speaking, they are not arts.

Eloquence does not propose to itself to produce in the soul of the auditors the disinterested sentiment of beauty. It may also produce this effect, but without having sought it. Its direct end, which it can subordinate to no other, is to convince, to persuade. Eloquence has a client which before all it must save or make triumph. It matters little, whether this client be a man, a people, or an idea. Fortunate is the orator if he elicits the expression: That is beautiful! for it is a noble homage rendered to his talent; unfortunate is he if he does not elicit this, for he has missed his end. The two great types of political and religious eloquence, Demosthenes in antiquity, Bossuet among the moderns, think only of the interest of the cause confided to their genius, the sacred cause of country and that of religion; whilst at bottom Phidias and Raphael work to make beautiful things. Let us hasten to say, what the names of Demosthenes and Bossuet command us to say, that true eloquence, very different from that of rhetoric, disdains certain means of success; it asks no more than to please, but without any sacrifice unworthy of it; every foreign ornament degrades it. Its proper character is simplicity, earnestness--I do not mean affected earnestness, a designed and artful gravity, the worst of all deceptions--I mean true earnestness, that springs from sincere and profound conviction. This is what Socrates understood by true eloquence.[121]

As much must be said of history and philosophy. The philosopher speaks and writes. Can he, then, like the orator, find accents which make truth enter the soul, colors and forms that make it shine forth evident and manifest to the eyes of intelligence? It would be betraying his cause to neglect the means that can serve it; but the profoundest art is here only a means, the aim of philosophy is elsewhere; whence it follows that philosophy is not an art. Without doubt, Plato is a great artist; he is the peer of Sophocles and Phidias, as Pascal is sometimes the rival of Demosthenes and Bossuet;[122] but both would have blushed if they had discovered at the bottom of their soul another design, another aim than the service of truth and virtue.

History does not relate for the sake of relating; it does not paint for the sake of painting; it relates and paints the past that it may be the living lesson of the future. It proposes to instruct new generations by the experience of those who have gone before them, by exhibiting to them a faithful picture of great and important events, with their causes and their effects, with general designs and particular passions, with the faults, virtues, and crimes that are found mingled together in human things. It teaches the excellence of prudence, courage, and great thoughts profoundly meditated, constantly pursued, and executed with moderation and force. It shows the vanity of immoderate pretensions, the power of wisdom and virtue, the impotence of folly and crime. Thucydides, Polybius, and Tacitus undertake any thing else than procuring new emotions for an idle curiosity or a worn-out imagination; they doubtless desire to interest and attract, but more to instruct; they are the avowed masters of statesmen and the preceptors of mankind.

The sole object of art is the beautiful. Art abandons itself as soon as it shuns this. It is often constrained to make concessions to circumstances, to external conditions that are imposed upon it; but it must always retain a just liberty. Architecture and the art of gardening are the least free of arts; they are subjected to unavoidable obstacles; it belongs to the genius of the artist to govern these obstacles, and even to draw from them happy effects, as the poet turns the slavery of metre and rhyme into a source of unexpected beauties. Extreme liberty may carry art to a caprice which degrades it, as chains too heavy crush it. It is the death of architecture to subject it to convenience, to _comfort_. Is the architect obliged to subordinate general effect and the proportions of the edifice to such or such a particular end that is prescribed to him? He takes refuge in details, in pediments, in friezes, in all the parts that have not utility for a special object, and in them he becomes a true artist. Sculpture and painting, especially music and poetry, are freer than architecture and the art of gardening. One can also shackle them, but they disengage themselves more easily.

Similar by their common end, all the arts differ by the particular effects which they produce, and by the processes which they employ. They gain nothing by exchanging their means and confounding the limits that separate them. I bow before the authority of antiquity; but, perhaps, through habit and a remnant of prejudice, I have some difficulty in representing to myself with pleasure statues composed of several metals, especially painted statues.[123] Without pretending that sculpture has not to a certain point its color, that of perfectly pure matter, that especially which the hand of time impresses upon it, in spite of all the seductions of a contemporaneous[124] artist of great talent, I have little taste, I confess, for that artifice that is forced to give to marble the _morbidezza_ of painting. Sculpture is an austere muse; it has its graces, but they are those of no other art. Flesh-color must remain a stranger to it: there would nothing more remain to communicate to it but the movement of poetry and the indefiniteness of music! And what will music gain by aiming at the picturesque, when its proper domain is the pathetic? Give to the most learned symphonist a storm to render. Nothing is easier to imitate than the whistling of the winds and the noise of thunder. But by what combinations of harmony will he exhibit to the eyes the glare of the lightning rending all of a sudden the veil of the night, and what is most fearful in the tempest, the movement of the waves that now ascend like a mountain, now descend and seem to precipitate themselves into bottomless abysses? If the auditor is not informed of the subject, he will never suspect it, and I defy him to distinguish a tempest from a battle. In spite of science and genius, sounds cannot paint forms. Music, when well guided, will guard itself from contending against the impossible; it will not undertake to express the tumult and strife of the waves and other similar phenomena; it will do more: with sounds it will fill the soul with the sentiments that succeed each other in us during the different scenes of the tempest. Haydn will thus become[125] the rival, even the vanquisher of the painter, because it has been given to music to move and agitate the soul more profoundly than painting.

Since the _Laocoon_ of Lessing, it is no longer permitted to repeat, without great reserve, the famous axiom,--_Ut pictura poesis_; or, at least, it is very certain that painting cannot do every thing that poetry can do. Everybody admires the picture of Rumor, drawn by Virgil; but let a painter try to realize this symbolic figure; let him represent to us a huge monster with a hundred eyes, a hundred mouths, and a hundred ears, whose feet touch the earth, whose head is lost in the clouds, and such a figure will become very ridiculous.

So the arts have a common end, and entirely different means. Hence the general rules common to all, and particular rules for each. I have neither time nor space to enter into details on this point. I limit myself to repeating, that the great law which governs all others, is expression. Every work of art that does not express an idea signifies nothing; in addressing itself to such or such a sense, it must penetrate to the mind, to the soul, and bear thither a thought, a sentiment capable of touching or elevating it. From this fundamental rule all the others are derived; for example, that which is continually and justly recommended,--composition. To this is particularly applied the precept of unity and variety. But, in saying this, we have said nothing so long as we have not determined the nature of the unity of which we would speak. True unity, is unity of expression, and variety is made only to spread over the entire work the idea or the single sentiment that it should express. It is useless to remark, that between composition thus defined, and what is often called composition, as the symmetry and arrangement of parts according to artificial rules, there is an abyss. True composition is nothing else than the most powerful means of expression.

Expression not only furnishes the general rules of art, it also gives the principle that allows of their classification.

In fact, every classification, supposes a principle that serves as a common measure.

Such a principle has been sought in pleasure, and the first of arts has seemed that which gives the most vivid joys. But we have proved that the object of art is not pleasure:--the more or less of pleasure that an art procures cannot, then, be the true measure of its value.

This measure is nothing else than expression. Expression being the supreme end, the art that most nearly approaches it is the first of all.