Part 10 (2/2)
Croce lost sight of the importance of that phase of art which deals with the thinking man who feels, and he tried to bridge over the gap by a.s.serting that what determined the difference of the intellectual and intuitive fact lay in the result, in the effects aimed at by their authors. Yet Virgil thought he was a poet in his _Georgics_ but he gave us a book in farming instead. Plato sought to be a philosopher in his _Banquet_ but he wrote a poem also.
Croce's conclusions lead to strange anomalies. His view that philosophical pa.s.sages, that is, intellectual concepts occurring in a novel or play, become part of the intuition of the author, would mean that the most unecstatic concept transposed from, say Hegel, to a Shakespearean play, becomes intuition. The converse would also follow that a pa.s.sage of Shakespeare incorporated in Hegel is no longer poetry.
One of the results of Croce's aesthetic views on intuition is to drive out of literary criticism the exercise of the intellect. He would have us judge a book by its own standards and merely seek to find if the author succeeded in doing what he intended. This view has been wrongly attributed also to Goethe and Carlyle. It is, however, Maupa.s.sant's view about the novel as he expounded it in his preface to _Pierre and Jean_.
We cannot accept this view. We must ask why does the author intend what he does, and is he justified in his intentions? We must go back of his intentions and show him that his intellect and outlook are due to certain causes and we must state whether or not we agree with him, and why. An author may record his ecstasy in expounding absurd ideas. I want to know why he believes in these ideas and I want to see if he can make me believe them. If he does not, I cannot satisfy myself with studying his intentions, even when they are in the form of verse or in a novel. I also am concerned with the question whether he is right in accepting these ideas, though I admit his sincerity.
Again I take up a Puritanical poem. I cannot judge the author by merely studying the writer's intentions and contenting myself with the knowledge that he has faithfully and beautifully recorded them. No, I want to know why he is a Puritan; I seek to show the folly of his expression; I must register my protest that I have not been moved by him, that I consider him intellectually and morally deficient.
The great fault of Croce's views, however, is that in looking upon art as expression he takes no interest in the question whether it meets with sympathy. It is true he recognizes that the poet often expresses our own intuitions for us, when he expresses his own. But he is not concerned with the question whether the poet has a right to feel that way and whether he has a sympathetic audience no matter how small. Yet the artist who expresses his intuitions is always bound to have some audience. It is because ”every atom that belongs to me as good belongs to you.” He is bound to have sympathizers. If Croce had said that the artist should not be concerned because the majority does not agree with him, we could follow him, but only because we think the artist is right and the majority is wrong. But to cast aside the question of sympathy altogether, to refuse to take into consideration the emotions of any readers, is to demoralize art and cast intelligence out of it.
It cannot be repeated then too often that poetry is not a matter of emotions only, but of intellectual perception and moral outlook as well.
The poet who has described a painful episode in his life does not always just merely record the pain, he goes further than his intuition. He thinks and judges and condemns and plans. He is also a philosopher and a moralist, excited to such states by his intuition. It wasn't intuition that created the plays of Shakespeare and Ibsen, it was a moral and intellectual vision working with the poet's intuition. Logic, science, metaphysics, ethics, are part of the poetic material. All ideas are philosophic or scientific, and emotionally and beautifully expressed may become poetry or literature.
However, Croce did good service in calling for the independence of art, since reformers and moralists often seek to force upon art a practical end outside and beside it. He also admits that the practical and aesthetic are often found united, and that it would be erroneous to maintain that the artist's independence of vision should be extended to the communication. ”If art be understood as the externalization of art, then utility and morality have a perfect right to deal with it; that is to say, the right one possesses to deal with one's own household.” Since the artist selects from his intuitions when he writes, his selection is governed by the economic conditions of life and of its moral direction.
Hence Croce finds the artist's use of the concepts of morality to some extent justified.
But where the ideas dealt with by an author are such as all accept, the beauty of the work depends on the manner in which it is written. Here he does not write for the purpose of the underlying idea, which he uses merely as a pretext for artistic work. He seeks to portray an emotion and to make the reader feel it. Drawing a picture may be the object of the author. He may merely try to reproduce with vividness what we all see; or narrate what we all know. The importance of his work lies then in its technique. There is no question that technique is always to be considered in determining one's greatness as a writer.
What distinguishes the layman from the artist is that the former has no power of craftsmans.h.i.+p; he does not understand the secrets of any of the forms of literature; he does not know how to set down his thoughts or sentiments in a pleasing or beautiful manner. There are many laymen who have better views on morality and who possess a greater intellect than many successful authors, but they are not artists. If by knowing how to tell a story or sing a poem they could move the world,--if they had craftsmans.h.i.+p,--then we would call them artists.
It does not follow, however, that because an author has certain technical genius, but is dest.i.tute of any intellect, and dallies with trite ideas, that he is a great artist. To rank among the great artists perfection of form should be welded with great and important ideas of life.
FOOTNOTES:
[146:A] Wordsworth was on better ground when he said, ”Our continued influxes of feeling are modified and directed by our thoughts.” _Preface to Lyrical Ballads_ (1800).
CHAPTER IX
HIGH FORM OF POETRY ECSTATIC PRESENTATION OF ADVANCED SOCIAL IDEALS
We are always fascinated by the poet who comes to the aid of the people, and is even rejected by them for his advanced ideas. We like to think of the poet as one who belongs to the minority, as a non-conformist, as a champion of liberty, as a sponsor for advanced views. We want him not to be uttering and singing the commonplaces of to-day but the truths of the morrow. In the long run it is the Sh.e.l.leys and Whitmans and Ibsens that count. Even though the poets be mad like Don Quixote or Brand, and do evil with good intentions, we admire them.
What sad figures the versifiers of unimportant conceits make when confronted with the great poets who use their intellect. These petty minstrels are the same types whom Milton attacked; they are the gossips of literature who like housewives think every trivial fancy must be voiced. And when we are bored by their nuances, their play with words, their records of unprofitable incidents, they tell us we cannot appreciate poetry, that we have not ”taste.” Man will always listen even though disapprovingly and hostilely, if the poet reveals a soul. But the minor versifier has no soul, or if he has he keeps it out of his verses.
He is ready to talk to you about his spectacles, his bath, or his dinner, but he cannot refer to his inner thoughts and feelings. Even if he does experience an emotion he often conveys it through the images of books.
Poetry which champions human liberty and shows characters battling for truth amidst persecution is always great poetry. We like to think of the poet as Baudelaire characterized him, one whose own mother does not understand him, one in whose food the public puts ashes, one with whom his own wife is not in sympathy. We like to think of him as an Ishmaelite, as one who is against his age, since the majority is often incapable of welcoming a new and great idea even emotionally treated. If he is merely a patriotic or a religious or conventionally moral poet, he will appeal to most people, but these represent the audience that is not of an elevated intellectual order. He is not universal, for people of other countries and religions, and the people of the future who will break away from the old morality will not find that he reaches their sentiments.
We want the progressive poet, and not the eternal harper on the commonplace.
Nor are these views inconsistent with the a.s.sertion that poetry should not be the handmaid of religion and morality. If it must be a handmaid, then let it be the handmaid of a universal religion, which finds its roots in thought and sane feeling; of a morality of love and justice that is still too ideal to be grasped by the age. No worthy poet to-day would write a poem merely to teach us simple precepts of morality. In a rude age, an emotional treatment of the most commonplace ethical maxims was great poetry because these were in advance of the age. To us such a production is stale. Hence the ”great” poem of one age may become nauseating to a later epoch.
Poetry is a progressive art. The emotion playing about the old ballads and legends is not as compelling as that found in the great modern novels and plays. Our great later poets and thinkers are more advanced and do not wors.h.i.+p superst.i.tion and defend false beliefs, or celebrate revenge and war, as the old primeval poets do. When we think of the ideal poet, it is not the champion of the middle cla.s.s like Longfellow and Tennyson, or one full of the early martial spirit and drawing fighting heroes like the author of _Beowulf_, or the _Nibelungen Lied_.
Nor do we think of the poet who incorporates the religious errors and legends of his time and imitates ancient epics, nor of one who portrays a preceding and bygone age. We, or at least a few of us, like to think of him as a man drawing people in the grip of pa.s.sions and battling for advanced ideas. We like to think of men like Shakespeare and Ibsen, Isaiah and Job, Balzac and Cervantes, Moliere and Goethe, Byron and Sh.e.l.ley, Burns and Heine, Whitman and Swinburne, Carducci and Nietzsche, Carlyle and Ruskin, Dostoievsky and d.i.c.kens, Hugo and Rolland. We like to think chiefly of men who were largely personal in their appeal, and depicted their own sufferings, and described grief brought about by the social construction of society which they criticized. Such poets are no dalliers with anaemic feelings. They felt what they sang and were not afraid to give sway to their emotions and ideas. They are not didacticists nor moralists, but emotional thinkers. They do not think that they ought to deny the claims of the intellect and the moral vision. I do not say that other kinds of emotional writers are not great poets. I merely cite what I think is a high order of poetry. I do not deny that poets may avoid any moral mission and just sing private emotions, whether in prose or verse. The Troubadours, and the Roman Elegists, De Musset and Verlaine, Hafiz and Keats, are among the very greatest poets, even though they are not prophets.
Much of our so-called democratic poetry is not democratic at all. Poetry does not become democratic because some poets dwell on the privileges the working people of to-day have in contrast with those working people had generations ago, or because writers have discovered that even common people experience most of the emotions of the upper cla.s.s. Literature cannot be democratic, while poets write for the few who use them as tools for their own interests, to defend a system which is courteously called compet.i.tion instead of exploitation. Much of our democratic literature is either capitalistic or bourgeois literature that gives a slight condescending nod to the proletariat. Many wealthy and cultured authors have taken up the cause of the laborer just as they would that of caged animals. They have suggested improvements in the treatment of captives, but not complete freedom. Fortunately we have had works like Galsworthy's _Strife_, Hauptmann's _Weavers_, Verhaeren's _Dawn_, Sinclair's _Jungle_, Zola's _Germinal_, Gissing's _Nether World_.
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